Martin Amis: Comparing Stalin & Hitler [CC]

Author Martin Amis points out the similarities between dictators Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler.
This is an excerpt from "Martin Amis: "The Zone of Interest" Watch the full program: • Martin Amis: "The Zone...
This program was recorded on October 30, 2014 as part of the 25th Anniversary Chicago Humanities Festival, Journeys: chf.to/2014Journeys
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[@absolutelyfookinnobody2843]

If you killed your kid and ate them to survive. Then you didn't survive. There is no way someone is coming back from that

[@atothetop3779]

Then you don’t know what starvation is like

[@DannyBoy777777]

You're not very good at logic. By definition, you'd survive. For a while.

[@alanbeck7093]

@@DannyBoy777777 Insane.

[@jedaaa]

If you knew the child wasn't possibly going to survive but you might .... Heard similar stories in Stallingrad where on finding a frozen to death infant child some mother's would secretly feed the dead kid to their surviving kid/s in a stew or something

[@jedaaa]

If you knew the child wasn't possibly going to survive but you might .... Heard similar stories in Stallingrad where on finding a frozen to death infant child some mother's would secretly feed the dead kid to their surviving kid/s in a stew or something

[@markstanton63]

Who's to say that Hitler didn't have perfectly normal sexual tastes (remember them?). He could well have been quite a romantic old fool for all we know.

[@coreycox2345]

Vaguely, Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond.

[@kamuelalee]

Aka, the Adolph of Amare

[@jakebarnes28]

We know you're a twit.

[@ShaneBermingham616]

Lots of silly assumptions here

[@Arjmm]

It's quite interesting that somehow Stalin is rightfully held accountable for his crime despite fighting Nazis but somehow Churchill doing the same things Stalin did is somehow hailed as a hero.

[@Camel76]

The Greatest Story Never Told

[@samuelkovac1008]

Czechoslovakia part is lie.

[@lsobrien]

I'm not sure Howard Stern's new hair colour does anything for him.

[@JackKlumpass]

That’s not Stern, that’s John Cooper Clarke!

[@kamuelalee]

Andrea Martin

[@capnskiddies]

This comment is criminally underrated.

[@MUFFINHEAD1985]

pahahahahahhahhahahhaha Howard Stern has let himself go

[@solb101]

Amis actually imagined Hitler having sex and he probably got aroused.

[@JackKlumpass]

Makes a change from him perving over the peasantry

[@civilizationandbeer]

and now you have too, Miles.

[@solb101]

@@civilizationandbeer You haven’t? Must be beer dick.

[@ge0rgeharris218]

Novelists make poor historians and opinion is not knowledge and never will be!!!

[@jaykay6387]

He's obviously erudite and witty but has no bloody idea what he's talking about.

[@jedaaa]

He said it was his personal hunch, not historical fact . Calm down .

[@jaykay6387]

@@jedaaa Calm down? Here's an idea, why don't you calm down?

[@kamuelalee]

Only artistic license and a bit of truth

[@ge0rgeharris218]

@@kamuelalee It goes much deeper than that and can't be explicated in E-MAIL type messages!

[@luciferdzhugashvili]

What the HELL is he talking about?

[@hunter23138]

At what point does he lose you? Is it when he says something complex?

[@bradleybarnett9545]

He's talking about the humanity of monsters. Or is it the monstrosity of humans?

[@jakebarnes28]

​@@bradleybarnett9545The Banality of Evil - Hannah Arendt. Try harder. Sheesh.

[@bradleybarnett9545]

Show some originality, people. Play with the words. Don't just name-drop the titles of books you've never read.

[@markjones464]

What he Talking about ? , a lot of Crap , that ten minutes I cannot get Back !!!!

[@robertwilliams-mv9ok]

I assume he is drunk. This is complete nonsense.

[@Vlad65WFPReviews]

Having parents who survived the Ukrainian famine, which included cannibalism and many horrors, hearing a privileged Westerner saying Stalin "had to do it" is, frankly, revolting

[@vaclavmiller8032]

I don't think you're quite catching his meaning. What he means is that any seriously communist leader of the Soviet Union would have done the same evil as Stalin, not that he "had" to do it in some justificatory sense. Amis was opposed to the whole project.

[@BonnChnd]

And that privileged man’s relatives fought against the Germans in two World Wars.

[@13olibrown]

You mistake his meaning. He means someone with the ideological commitments of Stalin would ‘have to do’ what he did, not that it was morally necessary for any sane person.

[@thesolarengineer]

Your anger should be squarely focused on your invidious 'brothers' in Russia who have dearly loved Ukrainians and their quest for independence over the last 400 years. You were all better off under the Poles but were too dumb to see it.

[@sagarm4983]

Stalin is understandable? I do not understand a man who forced his loyal and close comrades into false confessions at courts and the destroy them. Even harder is to understand that he destroyed the best and brightest of his country - army officers, scientists, engineers, writers and artists - to such an extend that Russia found it hard to defeat even a small Finland. Stalin had 10 million Ukrainians starve to death, 2 million shot during the purge and jailed 20 million in Gulags of Siberia and Arctic (out of a total Soviet population of 200 million) and you find this also normal?

[@charliemorris2338]

Trump

[@andyok3625]

It is logical if you are paranoid and power hungry. I think the suggestion is that Hitler's antisemitism is less logical because its application furthered his defeat and removal from power. I think he has a point. There were a lot of other Jew haters of course but he seemed to make a special study of all the whacky conspiracy theories and he let it undermine his strategic advantage.

[@patrickt.2136]

The comparison is essentially about sexuality.

[@roadking.118]

@@charliemorris2338 troll. Trump is nothing like stalin or Hitler. Geez talk about reaching

[@jakebarnes28]

You can't understand much.

[@stephensharp3033]

It sounds glib.

[@kamuelalee]

Comparing the two: Hitler was a monstrous murderer; Stalin was a monstrous, monstrous murderer.

[@JK-br1mu]

No need for either to have an additional monstrous over the other.

[@Arjmm]

Don't forgot to include Churchill.

[@markfrancis4384]

who could understand ( I can't) running through the wholesale, class divided slaughter of the first War and what it could do to one. yea, the guy was bad ... and ?

[@gregzeng]

Hitler's sexuality seems within the boundaries of normal human sexuality to me. Obsessive- compulsives can be very narrowly focussed that other "normal" interests are ignored. Having a non- human companion of any sexuality is okay also,

[@charliemorris2338]

He had mommie issues as did Norman Bates.

[@chadwilliams9141]

@Juicy Extra Clean yeah wtf?

[@MattSingh1]

*This brief three-sentence statement managed to fall off a cliff with the it's last sentence.*

[@keithschwartz5723]

You are a trolling brown shoes wearing super perv or a trolling BS artist.

[@MUFFINHEAD1985]

Hitler's sex life is probably so normal

[@JK-br1mu]

Dull, what a boring angle to take to talk about Hitler vs. Stalin.

[@danielgreene6480]

Forget the political philosophy. Both were dictators who killed.their opposition a d both wanted world domination. Both stressed being a part of the country and puttimg it first whether you call it the motherland or fatherland. One ran all the commerece while one regulated all the commerce. Both claimed a love for commoners while livinv and flaunting a life of excess in all aspects.

[@James-nl6fu]

Very amusing. A vegetarian?. Hitler never told lies(did he?) Stalin had to?... oh dear this guy must be really "British"

[@davidallen8611]

I love how people show hate for Hitler......but everyone can tell they admire him so much.

[@mediumdensity6850]

Hi David. I don’t think you’re right about that.

[@chadwilliams9141]

Admire and infamous or two different things

[@chrisblatner31]

The same way people admire Jeffrey Dahmer

[@mrcool2107]

I admire and hate him at same time

[@roadking.118]

Ya idk about that. I see people hate Hitler yet for some reason love stalin. Makes no sense. Both were equally horrible humans

[@sagarm4983]

Intellectuals are so much concerned about human life and dignity. But why are they completely indifferent to the fact that Marxism is an ideology which attach scant regard for these? Do not these intellectuals feel ashamed when they justify Marxist atrocities? When Stalin kill, it is matter of ideological necessity. But if Hitler kills then it is atrocity! If one can consider Marxism as an ideology, then what prevents one from recognizing that Nazism is also an ideology? Stalin exterminated peasantry using famine to further his ideological goal. Hitler exterminated Jews to attain his ideological goal also. But why is it that our left leaning intellectuals refuse to see that it was millions of innocents who had caused none any trouble who were ill treated and murdered? - be they victims of Hitler or Stalin Communism is filth. Anyone who have taken pain to read Marx would be struck by the fact that he is a deluded person with non sensical destructive ideas. How could anyone see sense in Marxian claims that State will whither away and that humans will one day live in live sharing and caring for all times to come! Does this not betray a complete disregard for human nature? It is a matter of surprise that millions of fools, for over hundred years, around the world, fell for Marx's rhetoric which had no root in human reality. I do not understand why intellectuals like Amis show the courage to tell the plain truth that Marxism is non-sense and those who found it attractive are either fools or criminal elements. And history have shown it again and again that Marxists are essentially a bunch of criminals who use veneer of an ideology. Do you doubt my claim? Then please note the fact that Marxists never came to power with support of majority and also --- do note that Marxists cannot rule without secret police, prison camp, mass murder and slave labor.

[@fabesey2016]

That isn't what he said, and he isn't apologising for communism, and certainly not Stalin. He said the cruelty of the Holodomor (the mass starvation of ukrainian peasants) was comparable to the holocaust. What he was arguing was that Stalin's actions are consistent with the ideological goals he wanted to acheive. Hitler's goals, by contrast, were always kind of vague and fuzzy. Both because hitler himself was physically and mentally decaying and often drugged up to the eyeballs, and because naziism as an ideology is far more incoherent than communism, and hence that his actions became increasingly irrational to the point of utter insanity at the end, when he tried to order the destruction of Germany itself out of spite.

[@alanbeck7093]

You'll be relieved there is much less Communism and don't need to polemicise at length. Keep an eye on the Nazism, but.

[@john.premose]

Marxism has nothing to do with any atrocities, you embarassing, brainless old woman.

[@john.premose]

​@@fabesey2016 no they are not consistent with the ideals he wanted to achieve. Amis, just like you, is a blind addict of western fantasy propaganda.

[@tomfilipiak3511]

@sagarm4983 I rad your post,I know it was 6 years ago,but you hit the nail on the head on Marxism,and for that comment about Nazism,you were spot on!Having lost relatives,to both the Marxist,and the Nazis,horrible people!Old Polish,and eastern Slavic person!

[@hamzaalmdghri8741]

Complete success has to do with piety and chastity and the accumulation of quantitative strength and aura of color