the_dunk_tank

Nah this is a rare moment for libs getting something right in politics and acknowlegding the great man theory that is hypothetically going back in time to kill Hitler (or get him into fine arts lol) as if Germany wasn't riddled with fascists anyway due to material conditions and the rising appeal of communism that needed to be dealt with by the system.

Edit: after reading your other comments, yeah this person suffers from incurable brain

Lib on the reason why the assassination wouldn't work (fear, martyr, blah blah blah), but there's a not-bad point buried somewhere in there.

It avoids great man of history-ing Hitler, since killing him wouldn't change the material conditions of Germany that lead to Hitler. The Holocaust is probably the worst-case scenario for what could happen (idk if Hitler 2 does the super Holocaust), and idk enough about intra-party politics of the Nazis other than the purges they did.

Maybe the second in command of the party wouldn't be as effective of a leader and fizzle the nazi party out and we instead get the moderate nazi party, and who knows how that would end up. Communism was spreading at that time, and fascism was going to pop-up regardless in response to this, but the exact shape of what happens would be slightly different and maybe the genocide wouldn't be as bad.

Also why imply someone with a time machine couldn't make it look like an accident. They could just drop a piano or anvil on his head and everyone would see it as a common hazard and think nothing of it.

If I had a time machine, I would simply go to the future and pick up some cool weapons first, then go back and give Rosa Luxemburg a mech suit and a badass plasma sword.

marter

It's simple: if a new hitler raises to power, you kill them too.

Killing figures is destabilising for any movement. When movements need unity around a certain problem they can default to whatever the leader says. When the leadership becomes unpredictably vacant, there can be succession struggles leading to splits. There's a reason the CIA attempts to assassinate leaders

I would go back in time and kill baby Hitler just so we never had to have this type of conversation again.

I would kill hitler and then go back a few more minutes and kill him again

Killing Hitler is good and funny and I would do it without hesitation, but I don't think this is dunk worthy.

The original argument is basically a condemnation of great man history - even if you killed Hitler, you would not necessarily avert the rise of German fascism. Fascism arises in response to certain material and social conditions and contradictions which were present in Weimar Germany. Perhaps German fascism without Hitler would look or behave differently to Nazism, but if we believe in materialism then we must acknowledge the strong possibility that German fascism would arise without any specific individual.

The only good reasons for not killing Hitler are:

1. Because someone less drugged up and more competent would have taken his place at the head of the Reich

2. After the destruction of the Nazi war machine, imprisoning him so that he can be subjected to an endless struggle session so that victims of his crimes could achieve some degree of closure by yelling at him and/or spitting on him

I'm not entirely convinced that the second option would be worth it but if that's what was decided by the community, I wouldn't waste my time debating whether or not it's a good reason to keep him alive.

Go back in time and drop an atomic bomb on Germany

All I said was the PLP are almost indistinguishable from the Tories, how the fuck did they end up here