Albrecht Koschorke

Pretty decent book analysing the implicit allure Mein Kampf managed to exert in spite of its unreadability and general negative critical reception. Koschorke presents Hitler’s book as something akin to Machiavelli’s The Prince, a guide on how to conduct effective propaganda that allows one to terrorise the opposition, bring in the dissuaded through a pact of initiation (‘you’ve read my book Mein Kampf this far so you can’t be one of the feckless masses/rabble’) and allows one to feel as if they can become a Nazi while maintaining an ironic and mocking position towards Hitler, thinking they could puppet this unthinking brute and quietly giggle at his insane theories on biological racism all the while secretly guiding him into which ever idiosyncratic direction they wanted (that went well didn’t it....)

All this so a few dishevelled bohemians could get their hands on power and point a gun in the face of people more educated than themselves. What a colossal fuck up. Still, Bataille was quite right to dedicate himself to examining this quixotic logic in the 1930’s and see how it could be implemented in a Leftist regime, you might hate the Nazis (join the club) but you’ve got to admit those bastards did really whip up the fanaticism of Germany in an astounding, and profoundly disturbing, manner.… (mer)