Everyone in the notes talking about the importance of Holocaust education is missing the point, I worry. Not that Holocaust education isnβt importantβand I agree that it is conducted very poorly in many placesβbut the idea that liberals just need to understand Hitler/Nazism better is . . . well letβs just say misguided?
Most western liberals believe that Hitler is bad for tautological reasons: He was because he was. There is already a tendency to try and vindicate some aspect of his governance (e.g., the absurd statements at least Hitler made the trains run on time, or at least Hitler would have handled COVID well), and I fear that a deeper understanding of Nazi economics and anti-communism amongst liberals would only feed into this.
Because X is bad because thatβs what the Nazis believed is actually a very poor argument! You need to actually a) understand some degree of materialist economics, and b) care about human beings more than capital in order to get anywhere in this business; and a liberal is someone who definitionally misses at least one of these criteria.