Hitler and the Chinese Internet
generation By Richard Komaiko
On Thursday, May 19, prominent Danish film
director Lars von Trier publicly expressed
sympathy for Adolph Hitler. The board of directors
of Cannes, the world's pre-eminent film festival,
promptly announced that Von Trier was no longer
welcome at the festival. [1]
This was a
brave decision, especially considering that Von
Trier's latest film is considered a contender for
the festival's top prize. Meanwhile, an ocean
away, sympathy for Hitler is proliferating, but
bravery is nowhere to be found. There is a growing
trend in the Chinese blogosphere to vocalize
praises and expressions of support for Hitler. If
Chinese authorities fail to address this
problem, dangerous
consequences may ensue.
The rumor A rumor is spreading virally throughout the
Middle Kingdom that asserts that Austrian-born
Hitler was raised by a family of Chinese expats
living in Vienna. According to the rumors, a
family named Zhang found young Adolf - born on
April 20, 1889, when he fell on hard times as a
young man in Vienna.
They took him in,
sheltered him, fed him and paid for his tuition.
As a result of this assistance, Hitler held
eternal gratitude and admiration for the Chinese
people. The rumor also asserts that Hitler
secretly supported China in World War II, and that
his ultimate ambition was to conquer the world in
order to share power with China, with everything
west of Pakistan to be administered by the Fuhrer,
and everything east of Pakistan the province of
the Chinese people.
This rumor apparently
resonates deeply with the Chinese Internet
generation. On May 10, 2011, a user of Kaixin, the
Chinese equivalent of Facebook, posted a version
of the rumor on his wall. The post attracted an
enormous following, with more than 170,000 views
and 40,000 comments.
Of the people who
left comments, 38.8% believe that Hitler was
raised by Chinese, 7.1% believe that Hitler
supported China in World War II, 4.6% regard
Hitler as a hero, and 9.1% hope that China will
have a leader similar to Hitler.
As the
rumor spreads throughout the Chinese social web,
admiration for Hitler is growing stronger and
stronger. Blog posts with titles like "Why I like
Hitler" [2] are popping up every day, and an
increasingly greater share of young Chinese are
choosing to express their nationalism by voicing
support for Hitler.
The reality To a cosmopolitan audience, it should go
without saying that the rumors of Hitler's Chinese
upbringing have no grounding in history or fact.
Nonetheless, for the benefit of my Chinese
comrades who do not see the obvious falsity, I
would like to take a moment to dispel the rumors
and explain the reality of Hitler's relationship
with China.
Hitler was not raised by
Chinese people. Hitler lived with his parents
until roughly the age of 15, whereupon he moved to
Vienna. His years alone in Vienna are detailed in
Chapter II of his memoirs, Mein Kampf. [3]
Nowhere in the chapter is there any mention of a
Chinese family.
The word "China" doesn't
even appear in the text, nor do the words
"Chinese", "Zhang" or "Cheung". There is
absolutely no indication that Hitler had any
meaningful contact with Chinese people in his
youth.
Hitler did not admire Chinese
people. In fact, nothing could be further from
the truth. Hitler regarded Chinese as an inferior
race. Many Chinese bloggers are quick to point out
that Hitler once said, "The Chinese people are not
the same as the Huns and Tartars, who dressed in
leather, they are a special race; they are a
civilized race."
This quotation only
stands for the proposition that Hitler considered
the Chinese to be higher on the racial totem pole
than Mongolians, but it says nothing about where
they rank overall. In fact, Hitler believed that
Aryans were the only "culture-creating race",
while the Chinese and Japanese were merely
"culture-bearing".
Hitler viewed the
Chinese people as an inferior race, and actually
blamed them for many of the world's problems. For
more information, see The racial state:
Germany, 1933-1945 by Michael Burleigh.
Hitler did not support China in World
War II. China's principal support in World War
II came from the United States. In 1941, the
American Air Force created a special squadron
called the Flying Tigers (fei hu) to fly
covert missions over East Asia to defend the
Republic of China against Japanese incursions.
As a descendent of someone who served with
the Flying Tigers, I am deeply proud of the
support that America provided to the Chinese
people. China also received material support from
Great Britain and the Soviet Union. China did not
receive any support from the Nazi regime. There is
an extensive historical literature on this topic.
For further information, see Hitler's Foreign
Policy 1933-1939: The Road to World War II by
Gerhard L Weinberg.
Hitler did not
endeavor to share power with China. There is
not the slightest shred of historical evidence to
suggest that Hitler entertained any such notion.
On the contrary, Hitler delivered China into the
hands of its arch-nemesis, Japan. And even then,
Hitler only reluctantly accepted the notion of
Asian sovereignty over East Asia.
The
reason How did the Chinese Internet
generation come to acquire this sense of sympathy
for Hitler, and why are they so readily prepared
to believe rumors that are so obviously false?
In 2007, Chinese author Song Hongbing
published a book called The Currency War.
It was a hodge-podge of anti-Semitic conspiracies
about how the Jews control the money supply and
manipulate world events in order to grow their
fortunes. When the global economy ground to a halt
in 2008, The Currency War shot to the top
of the Chinese best-seller list, and Chinese
bookstores couldn't keep enough copies on the
shelf. [4]
Aside from this incident,
however, China is not often associated with
anti-Semitism.
Indeed, according to
several Beijing college students interviewed for
this article, the word "Hitler" does not evoke
images of anti-Semitism or genocide, but rather,
strong leadership and nationalism. They say that
they admire Hitler for his ability to unify his
country and restore it to a position of respect in
the international arena.
According to
them, conditions in China today are similar to the
conditions in Weimar Germany that brought Hitler
to power: crippling inflation, wounded national
pride and a perception of rivals around every
corner. It may come as a surprise to many
Westerners to learn that young Chinese actually
feel stifled by a lack of economic opportunity.
Westerners often focus myopically on the
growth rate of China's gross domestic product
(GDP), which is roughly 9% per year. While this is
an important indicator of prosperity, it must be
considered in tandem with other important metrics,
such as inflation and the increasing cost of
residential real estate.
China's consumer
price index rose 5% in the first quarter of 2011.
This means that the effective real growth rate in
GDP was only 4%. On top of that, the cost of real
estate in many cities is growing at 20% per year.
Considering these numbers, put yourself in the
shoes of the average recent college graduate in a
city like Shanghai.
You make a decent
income, but you can't afford to make a down
payment on a piece of real estate, so you rent for
a few years. But because the price of real estate
is growing many times faster as the overall
economy, the longer you wait, the less you can
afford to buy. And in Chinese culture, if you
can't afford a home, you can't start a family, and
so forth.
Appreciating this economic angst
brings us one step closer to comprehending the
admiration that the Chinese Internet generation
feels for Hitler: they crave a strong leader to
lift them out of their economic woes. But aren't
there other strong leaders in history to choose
from? Why not choose a leader whose reputation is
unsullied by the stains of aggression? At this
point, nobody really knows. While it's not clear
why they have chosen Hitler as their rallying cry,
what is certain is that this affinity for Hitler
will have a detrimental impact on China's ambition
of foreign relations.
The
repercussions The most immediate impact of
the Hitler phenomenon will be felt in Japan. For
decades, the Chinese government has demanded that
Tokyo revise its high school history curriculum in
order to reflect the full horrors that the
Japanese military visited upon Nanjing during
World War II.
This demand has been one of
the largest and most persistent friction points in
Sino-Japanese relations. If it turns out that
China's own history curriculum lacks adequate
coverage of the horrors that the German military
inflicted upon European Jewry, the Chinese
government will lose the moral high ground and
appear completely disingenuous in its relations
with Tokyo.
The Hitler phenomenon will
also have a negative impact on China's relations
with its continental neighbors. Countries like
India and Vietnam are already concerned about
Beijing's military buildup, which has seen
double-digit increases for each of the past five
years.
When they discover that the most
popular personality among young Chinese is a man
best known for expansionism, their sense of
suspicion will flare, and they will invest a
greater share of societal resources in preparing
for confrontation. This response may have a
paradoxical effect of further stoking the flames
of Chinese nationalism and increasing tensions
around the borders.
The most consequential
effect of the Hitler phenomenon, however, will
undoubtedly be felt on China's relationship with
Washington. The Chinese foreign policy
establishment expends considerable resources in
Washington to promote the idea of "China's
peaceful rise", a form of exceptionalism which
holds that China's rise to power will be free of
armed conflict.
Due to the overwhelming
weight of historical authority against it, the
peaceful rise theory has gained only limited
traction inside the beltway. But when the
engineers of America's foreign policy discover
that young Chinese idolize the most famous
aggressor in history, the peaceful rise theory
will lose all credibility, and those who seek to
paint China as a threat to American interests will
be emboldened.
The resolution Immediate action must be taken to educate
Chinese youth on the truth about World War II and
show them how critically history has judged the
rule of Hitler.
As a first step, Kaixin
should remove the inflammatory post and issue a
public correction of facts. Just as Facebook
ultimately realized that it had a public security
duty to remove a page calling for the "third
intifada", [5] so too Kaixin must realize that as
one of the largest media outlets in China, it
cannot tolerate expressions of support for
proponents of aggression.
Second, the
Chinese Ministry of Education should conduct a
thorough review of the history curriculum taught
in Chinese high schools in order to make sure that
its treatment of World War II is in line with
international academic standards.
Finally,
relevant Jewish organizations, from the Israeli
Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the United States
Holocaust Museum, should engage with Chinese
partners, such as the Shanghai Center for Jewish
Studies and the Sino-Judaic Institute, to promote
Holocaust education and awareness of modern
genocide.
Spanish-American philosopher,
essayist, poet and novelist George Santayana
taught that those who do not learn from history
are doomed to repeat it. The only thing more
lamentable than repeating history because we
failed to learn from our mistakes would be
repeating history because others failed to learn
from them.
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