I’ll go with the low-hanging fruit: Mein Kampf. I’ve read it, cover to cover. As a piece of propaganda, it’s good. As an example of good writing? Absolutely not (though I will admit I have only read it in translation). Oh, and the whole fascist, racist, and generally shitty worldview of the author that he infuses into the text. And the fact that the author is literally Hitler. You 5-star that book? You’re a Nazi. Period. And as a Jewish person, I don’t look too kindly on them.
The Turner Diaries
I read this out of morbid curiosity, and it’s so bad. It tries to appear logical, but asserts conclusions that you can’t reach unless you already believed them. Basically trying to convince racists that they’re right.
That was my take as well. Morbid curiosity got the best of me and holy shit terrible writing indeed and just so fucking racist
Even the author preferred his second book to it and recognized how juvenile that attempt was, but the other never really got the same notoriety. The whole mini genre of self-insert neo-Nazi revenge fantasy that was published in the '90s by Resistance Books was pretty cringe. (Several other books that tried to be similar to this but managed to be even worse including at least one god-awful sci-fi version).
The first rule of writing is to know your audience so if you’re courting a bunch of bigots by writing a bunch of racist nonsense I’m not the least bit surprised that “juvenile” is what they felt drawn to…
I was surprised at how readable it was. Honestly I’d expected a turgid Mein Kampf experience. (I feel I need to add quickly that I’m a historian. Read part of MK for a college class.)
I was interested at how early it was for the “group of plucky resistance fighters up against occupying force” storyline. It was only a few years later that V was a huge miniseries hit. I also expected it to be 100% racist and antisemitic and was interested that while it was those things, it was focused on hating the federal government. I think even now a lot of liberals miss how much resentment of the federal government underlies a lot of the bigotry that draws more attention.
I have never discussed it on a date! I don’t even admit to my friends that I read it.
Well, the book was written post-civil rights, meaning that those kind of people were (and are) full of resentment against the US federal government for having ruined their dream of state-based apartheid.
likewise. it was at least as readable as tom clancy.
There’s a documented phenomenon nicknamed the “Crunchy to alt-right pipeline” and I think one of the things that connects those two groups is distrust of the government.
I remember reading this years ago, and boy could I feel the author’s hatred for minorities.
I just read the Wikipedia synopsis and it radiated from the screen. God, I can’t imagine dedicating so much energy to hatred. Isn’t it exhausting?
And educated people.
It has 57% liked on Google when I looked this up.
In my experience that’s actually really low as car as google ratings go
That actually implies brigading by haters- it is actually under its true rating by a lot. Normally if something is some extremist thing, almost all the people engaging with it like that thing, and no one else has any interest at all. In this case, there must be people going in and doing hate-votes. There’s all manner of hate literature, devoted to demonizing or lionizing absolutely every race, religion, or nation, but a normal person has never heard of any of it. This one, unusually, has notoriety.
It’s a pretty important historical text that gets engaged with more by people who are seeking it out for historical context and understanding than most texts of the sort that are mainly sought out by those who agree. Not so much people brigading, just people who don’t share the views of the author being more likely to have read it and be disgusted by it than most hate texts because of the historical significance to a time period that many have interest in and that we’re still seeing consequences of to this day
I had forgotten about this. Thanks for the memories (not!).
Had to read this first a class…someone’s idea of utopia…being able to lock up those they hate.
Easily the most reprehensible book I’ve ever read.
Wow. Never heard of this before so thanks, I guess, for making me aware.
Fun? Fact: That book inspired the Oklahoma City Bombing.
This was my second choice
What’s it about?
The J6ers were super influenced by this book. They wouldn’t shut up about the “day of the rope”
I fucking hate those books. Racist and bad writing? Nah.