this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
27 points (93.5% liked)
Books
12265 readers
1 users here now
Book reader community.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've forced myself to read Mein Kampf, Atlas Shrugged, Imperialism by Lenin and various other political works from various philosophies. Do these count?
I've found many of them to be dry at best and abhorrent at worst (thanks Hitler).
None of them have changed my mind in drastic ways but have helped me understand the viewpoints of people I talk to.
Mein Kampf is notoriously just not a good text in any way, even when ignoring the abhorrent views. It's an unhinged shapeless rant. It's pretty funny to see the wikipedia page quoting translators comments about how poorly-written the original is. Of course, neo-Nazis insist that any faithful translation is a [communist/Jewish/pick one] trick to make them look bad.
Yeah, it just read like the angry rantings of a man left alone with hateful thoughts for too long. I can't speak to the quality of German in it and I'm certain some translations make his writings seem academic but they all just fall flat if you take a few hours to read up on economics and policy in Europe around the time he wrote the book.
Just the angry rants of some dude who feels like he isn't getting what he deserves. Some things never change. We just have podcasts for that now.