There are certain human character traits, which are indefensible by any stretch of the imagination. And if you are a sensible human being you will do well to keep your distance in order to preserve your integrity. It takes a lot of wisdom and self-restraint to achieve that. In the piece that triggered my Nkrumah series, I made a statement that ‘On Hitler’s Mein Kampf, if I haven’t read it I would have done so out of curiosity. I wouldn’t do it for intellectual or academic reason, because it is complete twaddle.’ Strangely, because Mr Kwarteng was bent on a particular narrative he put words in my mouth shamelessly just like his darling Chomsky who falsifies evidence to enhance his thesis. Mr Kwarteng’s approach to Hitler is classic Chomsky obfuscation. No wonder he loves that brazen liar. And I am not just saying it; I have proved it beyond all reasonable doubt in the piece under his name. He preceded his shameless praise of Hitler’s regime, because of his socialism with a damage control that he does not condone the Holocaust, which I share. However, the reason for that effort is to show that socialism works and he exposed himself so badly. I have not seen such stupidity in scholarship. There are certain data which does not fit, and when you are trying seriously to prove something it helps to leave them out. Hitler said his Third Reich will last for a thousand years. And because it was built on false foundation it lasted for just 12 years 4 months and inevitably went down like Wotan in Valhalla in a holocaust of blood and destruction. Hitler’s socialism is the fast forward of the idiotic political system that gained prominence in the earlier 20th century. It has an inbuilt time bomb, which can be extended when you keep massaging the fuse, but eventually it goes off, perhaps not in the first generation, but the next. Britain paid her dues through a bitter pill of austerity during the Thatcher administration to bring her back to health after a generation of needless economic atrophy under socialism, i.e. mixed economy.
To understand why Mr Kwarteng was adamant about me reading Mein Kampf you have to understand Nazism. Though, he claims he has read the book I can definitively assure all my readers that he hasn’t. And he has not done any serious studies on Nazism, other than that he wouldn’t write the third rate account and the misuse of facts in his article under the microscope, rendering it a broth of silly mistakes. What is Nazism? According the Merriam Webster’s dictionary, it is the body of political and economic doctrines held and put into effect by the Nazis in Germany from 1933 to 1945 including the totalitarian principle of government, predominance of especially Germanic groups assumed to be racially superior, and supremacy of the Führer. This is how Oxford learner’s dictionary defines it: the policies and beliefs of the National Socialist party which controlled Germany from 1933 to 1945. Nazism comes from the acronym Nazi, which means National Socialist German Workers' Party. The word socialism is the key to Mr Kwarteng’s thinking on Hitler’s Mein Kampf, because it is the book that forms the theoretical foundation of Nazism. To understand Mein Kampf you first have to understand the philosophies that influenced Hitler’s thinking, and what happened during the Third Reich.
I am not going to take you to school on Mein Kampf, but rather to debunk the outlandish and rubbish things that Mr Kwarteng wrote, and, of course, his so called ignorant pathetic professors he kept making references to their work. Mr Kwarteng wrote and I quote, ‘Other scholars have also studied and researched the book as a serious inquest of political theory.’ What is the seriousness about Mein Kampf as a political theory other than being an absolute third rate borrowed philosophical nonsense not worthy of the word philosophy. It is very strange that people like Mr Kwarteng keep a straight face to write in glowing account of Hitler’s achievements when most thinking people describe his tenure, as the Chancellor of the German Reich, as the greatest darkness in the history of mankind. This is what Hans Frank, one of Hitler's top lieutenants, Governor-General of occupied Poland, said during his trial in Nuremburg before he was hanged. ‘A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased.’ This is the product of a book that Mr Kwarteng claim is a serious inquest of political theory. He further said, ‘we on the other hand have read it.’ What gem is there to glean from reading Mein Kampf that someone will have to flaunt as a badge of honour? It is filled with hodgepodge of Hegelian nonsense and Nietzschean barbarism. As for Nietzsche, hardly do philosophers have harsh words for their own. Santayana, the Spanish born American philosopher, said of Nietzsche as the author of boyish blasphemies. I have read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations from cover to cover more than once. It is a classic book that I am proud to have read, and most importantly it has enriched my life and given me a wealth of knowledge that I couldn’t have gotten from anywhere. On the other hand, when I was reading Mein Kampf, I used to cover the back to conceal what I was reading when I was on the train. Hitler said, ‘If you wish the sympathy of the broad masses, you must tell them the crudest and most stupid things’, he did not disappoint in his book; he proceeded to do just that in his Mein Kampf by writing crude, stupid and silly things that unfortunately his lobotomised followers believed and followed him to destruction. There is no doubt in my mind that Mr Kwarteng share a prominent place among the group of intellectuals I describe as the apostles of destruction for thinking that Mien Kampf is a book worthy of commendation for anybody’s perusal.
There is nothing that sounds like economics in that book, except some crackpot theories on interest slavery developed by Dr Gottfried Feder, which formed the foundation of Hitler’s economic philosophy. So if you are going to buy that book for any knowledge of economics, please, don’t do it; you going to curse yourself. The man never understood economics and the subject bored him. What we are labouring at is inherently about economics. It is, therefore, insane for Mr Kwarteng to introduce a book, which has got nothing to do with the subject. This is what Hitler wrote in his book, ‘To my mind, Feder's merit consisted in the ruthless and trenchant way in which he described the double character of the capital engaged in stock-exchange and loan transaction, laying bare the fact that this capital is ever and always dependent on the payment of interest. In fundamental questions his statements were so full of common sense that those who criticized him did not deny that au fond his ideas were sound but they doubted whether it be possible to put these ideas into practice. To me this seemed the strongest point in Feder's teaching, though others considered it a weak point.’ [James Murphy’s translation page 179] It is obvious he realised the silliness of the idea by alluding to the fact that people thought it was impractical. However, knowing what he was capable of, he knew he could put it into practice. And Mr Kwarteng who I am convinced does not understand economics warms up to such idiotic ideas.
In the same page he explained further, ‘It is not the business of him who lays down a theoretical programme to explain the various ways in which something can be put into practice. His task is to deal with the problem as such; and, therefore, he has to look to the end rather than the means. The important question is whether an idea is fundamentally right or not. The question of whether or not it may be difficult to carry it out in practice is quite another matter. When a man whose task it is to lay down the principles of a programme or policy begins to busy himself with the question as to whether it is expedient and practical, instead of confining himself to the statement of the absolute truth, his work will cease to be a guiding star to those who are looking about for light and leading and will become merely a recipe for every-day life. The man who lays down the programme of a movement must consider only the goal. It is for the political leader to point out the way in which that goal may be reached.’ It is clear that Hitler believed in the principle that the end is what justifies the means. It doesn’t matter whether he breaks people’s legs, confiscate the properties of the Jews, put his opponents in concentration camps and break international laws; it is the end that matters. To Mr Kwarteng, it is alright if a third of Cambodia’s population is sacrificed for the two thirds. It doesn’t matter if the lives of 30 million Chinese are murdered so long as the rest live a subsistence life. It is okay for the Russians to put a man in space at the expense of 20 million lives in the Gulag. He will try to refute my claims, but don’t be fooled. The fact is these are the end product of the insane ideas he espouses and supports. He has described my hammering of these facts in his piece and his comments as sentimental. And I must add that if you want the picture of evil don’t look any further – this is the zenith of pure evil thoughts. There is an Akan proverb which literally states that when you are devouring the finger of a monkey pause and look at your own. It is alright when it happens in China, Russia and Cambodia, which is very far away, but people like Mr Kwarteng can make it happen in Ghana. Thank you.
Philip Kobina Baidoo Jnr
London
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