This is really the key point here. Intent has an enormous amount to do with any public statement, commercial or otherwise.
We’re all just speculating as to what the intent of this label is, or what will happen when/if it hits the market. It’s not the strongest ridicule I’ve ever seen of Hitler, but it’s certainly not a glorification of him or his deeds.
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its bound to be one heil of a beer!
the companies next offering might be ’ale hitler’ or ’scheisse-son’.
i have others, but it should probably be moved to off topic at anything past this.
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While that’s true, I think it’s striking a very raw nerve given the comparatively recent historical events of Hitler-era Germany. If we ever saw a "Genghis Khan" beer label or something like that, people would not be as offended because of the centuries of time that put a safe enough distance to make any kind of ’playfulness’ seem trivial rather than insensitive.
Keep in mind there are still people out there who have survived concentration camps and other extreme events such as losing most of their families to state-organized extermination. In our safe little western societies we have little idea what inhuman treatment of people continues on in the world in the past few decades and even today.
"Things will get much worse before they get better" it has been put.
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do you mea that things will get much worse than hitler before they get better?
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Whatever it does mean, I personally take it to mean that WW-II Germany is just a symptom of the kind of "hell-on-earth" to which all humanity NOW has the potential of falling. And so we should not automatically assume humanity is progressing away from barbarism. We have historically had many ’dark ages’ that came between high points in our human civilization. A few little power shifts in the current global scene could bring unimaginable wars and absolute, inhuman horror.
Visiting Dachau (the KZ camp easy to get to just north of Munich) I was appalled that ’civilized western society’ could allow this thing to happen so palpably, so recently... but it also felt like both a commentary on OUR present day humanity, and a warning. There are no words really, being there.
Well I know that was not so cheerful. But it’s well worth a thoughtful visit to a Concentration Camp by any means possible.
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lots of bellyaching over something that happened so long ago. auschwitz the old and in with the new!
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I’m all for free speech, and accordingly do not think that any government should step in and prohibit the label, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s highly offensive. Some of you apparently see it differently, but I see it as "cutesifying" a monster in a manner that portrays him as innocuous. And that monster and his Final Solution killed my great grandparents and a great uncle, among millions of other victims.
I would hope the brewery would be capable of understanding why the label is offensive, and change it accordingly. If not, I don’t care how good the brewery’s product is -- I would avoid all of their beers, not just that one.
BTW, we could debate the other comparisons made in this thread, but comparing this label to Chaplin’s caricature is a non-starter -- arguably the Final Solution hadn’t even been decided on when Chaplin made his movie, much less implemented or known to the outside world -- Chaplin was mocking a war-mongering dictator, not a systematic mass murderer.
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Yet of course ’mere’ war-mongering dictators will commit anything they can get away with, including systematic mass-murder. Only to say I don’t draw a tidy distinction with Chaplin’s work. Hitler was simply a psychopath. Chaplin was defeating how people viewed Hitler. 2¢
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I too have visited Dachau on a 5th grade class field trip. I was 10. I will never forget the images and the experience. Very solemn place. I even have a lot of Jewish family. I feel that free speech is much more important then censorship. This is a bad public relations move on the part of the company. If they suffer or succeed because of it then it is what it is. I don’t have to buy thier product. And that choice we all have collectivly is far more powerful then censorship.
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