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6 - Between tragedy and farce: Nazism on the Internet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2014

Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
Affiliation:
Fairfield University, Connecticut
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Summary

Adolf Hitler … was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party … Hitler’s supremacist and racially motivated policies resulted in the systematic murder of eleven million people, including nearly six million Jews.

Wikipedia

Hitler did his best for his people. He was only a man and a man can only do his best. It was the traitors who led white nations against Hitler that messed it up for white people, not Hitler. Hitler was for whites and his enemies were agianst [sic] whites. Hitler deserves our respect.

Stormfront

All cats want to rule the world, that’s part of the nature of the species, but to be a genuine Kitler there has to be some other similarity … to that ever popular German/Austrian dictator. We’re looking for that toothbrush ’tache …Or the flock-of-seagulls hairdo. Perhaps an evil glint in its eye …Of course, the best Kitlers will have all of the above.

Cats That Look Like Hitler.com

Anyone using the Internet to learn about the history of the Third Reich had better beware. Typing key words associated with the history of Nazi Germany, such as “Hitler,” “Nazism,” or “Holocaust,” into search engines like Google or Yahoo instantly yields a cacophony of results. The first hits appear on largely reputable websites, such as Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Answers, as well as sites connected to major research institutions, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. A few more clicks, however, bring the unsuspecting web user to extreme right-wing sites, such as Stormfront, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, and Institute for Historical Review. Still further clicks lead in a more humorous direction: to Uncyclopedia, which offers mock entries about Hitler and Nazism; to Hipster Hitler, which features comic strips of the bespectacled Führer wearing ironic, Nazi-themed T-shirts; and to YouTube, with its innumerable video parodies of the Führer. Finally, the intrepid web surfer will arrive at sites that can only be described as bizarre, such as Cats That Look Like Hitler, which displays adoring photographs of fascist-looking felines, and – taking things a step further – Things That Look Like Hitler, which purports to detect the Führer’s face in photographs of random objects, ranging from smoke detectors to fried zucchini.

Type
Chapter
Information
Hi Hitler!
How the Nazi Past is Being Normalized in Contemporary Culture
, pp. 292 - 339
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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