If you take a look at "extremism" in the US, you would have to say the expected value of each extremist group would be the damage they can do if they got power times the probability that they would. Socialism destroys every country it touches as does Nazism. However, the probability that we will enact socialism is much greater than the chance we will be goose stepping around the living room any time soon.
I saw that YouTube took down lots of historical videos, many of them from the Nazi era. That's too bad and it seems to me like the avoidance of something that wasn't going to happen anyway. I liked to watch their propaganda films from a historical perspective. It's the only way you will ever see a Dornier Do-17 in flight as they were all destroyed.
One day, driven by curiosity, I watched bits and pieces of Leni Reifenstahl's documentary of the Nuremberg Nazi rallies, Triumph of the Will. It was fascinating. The whole thing shouted out, "You thought you beat us in WW I, but you didn't! We're coming back and we're going to make you all pay!" You can't watch it without thinking you could see what was coming. And yet, the British and French didn't see what was coming and kept giving in to Hitler. Madness!
Going back to YouTube, I'd be far more worried about pro-socialism videos than old time Nazi propaganda. Much of the socialism stuff is new and well done. The Nazi films are clumsy, dated and probably have little impact on modern audiences. As we know from Venezuela, socialism leads to barbecuing zoo animals over trash can fires followed by the water and electricity being turned off.
That doesn't sound like a lot of fun and it's a heck of lot more probable than Swastika flags being raised over Chicago.
You know, for people that live and die by the algorithm, it seems to me like the folks running YouTube forgot about the calculation of Expected Value.
But fighting a current threat is dangerous.
ReplyDeleteFighting a defeated threat is safe.
See also, Hollywood on Nazis vs USSR.
Yeah. It's a lot easier to be a superhero fighting whiteness than a superhero fighting for traditional morality and marriage. The first will be popular, the second will only get you scorn and derision.
ReplyDelete