imagine being the dorks that got put next to hitler lmao
So what they have on this cover:
Jesus, a man who may or may not have even existed
Steve Jobs, a guy who did what exactly? Was a presenter for the iPhone?
Oprah, was a talkshow host.
What they don't have:
The Red Army and the Allies, who saved the world from the Nazis
The essential workers who were forced to literally die or cripple themselves to work though covid and keep the world running.
Hitler did change the world alright. Not for the better (quite the oppositie actually), but he did change it.
I've seen this technicality before, but it always feels hollow to me.
Like yeah, hitler changed the world, but he was an opportunist at the right place at the right time when his style of rhetoric and politics appealed to a country going through the aftermath of a world war and the Great Depression.
He didn't change the world because of something clever or intrinsically special about him. He wasn't special at all. That's what makes fascism so dangerous.
To describe him as a supernatural outlier of a person builds a myth that the things he did could only happen under the influence of a single charismatic person.
Putting him on the list and the cover gives him credit he doesn't deserve.
He didn’t change the world because of something clever or intrinsically special about him. He wasn’t special at all.
No one is. Like the OP said. Great man theory, the magazine.
Synthesis: 1930s' Soviet Union had a ton of great men, but the material conditions lead to one of them, who was the most fitting for the situation, becoming the general secretary.
1920s you mean. By the 30s I think the only other old bolshevik leaders still around were Lazar Kaganovich and Kalinin. Maybe Molotov if you count him.
Edit: I tell a lie. Bubov was still in government until 36
Synthesis: 1930s' Soviet Union had a ton of great men, but the material conditions lead to one of them, who was the most fitting for the situation, becoming the general secretary.
I dunno this still smells like idealist thinking to me, it implies the material conditions have some metaphysical power to guide the right people to the right place. Considering how chaotic internal party politics were at the time Lenin could have easily been replaced by Trotsky or some other dildo like that. There could have also been a better person than Stalin for the job we can't really know for sure. Also I'd wager the USSR would maybe still be standing today if Lenin had lived longer than he had and planned the transition of power better.
Just the other day I had been looking for an excuse to complain about this:
This is offtopic, but the way that people whitewash the Weimar Republic by talking about Hitler like he was a wizard who cast a spell on Germany doesn't just have the effect of obscuring the political-economic conditions of fascism and its connection to long-standing European society, but further feeds into a fetishistic reverence for Hitler that encourages modern readers to hang off his every word to try to understand how the magic works, effectively working to spread his speeches even further than they would otherwise spread and lending a gravity to everything he says because, as far as many liberal histories were concerned, what he said was literally magic. It seems like a choice of characterization deliberately made so that the sins of the past can happen all the more easily for having already happened once, rather than protecting society from it using our past experience with it.
Coverage like this rag provides is functionally carrying water for fascism by mystifying its causes
It is one thing to recognize him and it is another to honor a place for him on the fucking cover. I don't know, I just very much don't like it.
Don't be so dramatic, Hitler and Oprah are basically at the same level.
I'm an atheist, an anti-theist, and the first person to point out fabrications in the Bible (shout-out to all of Matthew's testament on the resurrection), but there is absolutely no reason to believe Jesus wasn't a historical figure
Yeah it's there's broad consensus on the historicity of Jesus as a man who definitely existed
Mother Teresa did not change anything. She positioned herself in some of the most impoverished areas of the world and told dying people how great their suffering was for their souls.
She also accepted money from and defended "Baby Doc" Duvalier and corrupt businessmen.
I think the Catholic Church just needed some kind of W after the allegations came out, and that's why she was propped up. What I don't understand is why in my non-Catholic country she was mentioned in school books as a great person.
POCs who changed the word: fought racism and imperialism
White people who changed the world: got rich and / or were Hitler
I could see Oprah doing a genocide in another timeline. It wouldn't be shocking if she somehow funded one in this one.
Oprah but it's Obama: AND YOU GET A BOMB! AND YOU GET A BOMB! LOOK UNDER YOUR SEAT - THERE'S A BOMB! EVERYBODY GETS A BOMB!
They put the guy who bathed his feet in the toilets at Atari and died trying to cure cancer with smoothies next to Einstein
one of the tech guru’s go-to stress relievers during the early days of Apple was to head to the company toilets and soak his bare feet in the toilet water. In fact, the guy had a little bit of a hygiene problem — Isaacson also revealed how Jobs was put on the night shift while he worked at game-maker Atari because he rarely bathed and would walk around the office in his bare feet
okay so what are the mechanics of this? is he... sitting on the floor and then putting his feet up and over the rim of the toilet bowl? is he standing in the toilet? did he bring a chair into a stall?
maybe he's sitting on the tank? idk but this sounds so disgusting. Maybe his cancer came from chronic Hep C from doing this or something.
Oh, I misremembered and kind of mashed the two together. I thought that was an Atari thing.
the fact that you said "next to" instead of "below" made me cackle like a hyena when I scrolled up and saw Jesus
Isn't Oprah just a TV star what is the argument for how she (or the Beatles) changed the world?
Oprah was unbelievably influential in promoting quack medicine and psychology which gave mainstream legitimacy to frauds like Dr Oz and Dr Phil and more. She has undoubtedly played a role in the collective damaging of the American psyche
yeah i find it funny how making popular media is portrayed here as basically being the same as jesus
Imaging sailing across the Atlantic to build a shitty town so you can practice your version of Oprahism away from the other Oprahites
The fact that so many books still name the Beatles as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success. The Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worthy of being saved.
It's just ossified boomer culture that has become the cosmic background of modern cracker culture
The Beatles were the first band to accumulate a large, consumerist fanbase like we know of modern day examples ranging from Taylor Swift, to the niche bands. Their music is genuinely pretty good (Rubber Soul is their best album imo) and doesn't really sound too dated.
Lists of artists considered the best do often feature the Beatles at the very top, but that is both a regional preference geared towards the mostly American internet user-base and commercial film-making capacities and a circlejerk written to earn money, not inform. Other parts of the world might not care about music that's apparently well liked in Anglo countries, among music nerds or the public. Also, subjective quality does not guarantee the band being seen as better. For example, the band De/Vision is imo a better Depeche Mode copycat than Camouflage imo, but it's the latter who had commercial success.
Really, the greatest [x] artist rankings are kinda useless, especially in music - but I'm just rambling.
Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe.
You can go further than that, as it has been pointed out that the canonicity of figures like Beethoven (who, to be clear, was a brilliant musician who deserves to be studied) was in large part due to the projects of historical-cultural revisionism by German nationalists and provides a warped understanding of the history of the development of music in Europe.
people know im a good person when i put Hitler on the front of a "best people ever" book
Don't forget..... the most important ones...... Satoshi Nakamoto & Vitalik Buterin 😤😤
Don't they publish this every other year or something? I swear I've seen that title and cover forever.
the maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
So, you can get the table of contents from the sample here:
https://frontrange.overdrive.com/frontrange-lafayette/content/media/6724435?cid=1160906
Gorbachev gets a spot but Stalin doesn't. They include Mao and Lenin. Under philosophers, they ignore obvious choices like Plato, Nietzsche, [Marx is relegated to "cultural icon"], and really anyone but Buddha, Confucius, and Aristotle for people who are conventionally seen in the west as "philosophers". Thank God they didn't waste a spot on Kant, had to make sure to include Billy Graham and Mother fucking Theresa! "But Graham was a Civil Rights activist!" This would maybe be a valid point if they had Malcolm X (let alone someone like Huey Newton), but they don't.
Also Mary Wollstonecraft gets put in "cultural icon" instead of "philosopher", which I find kind of odd, but Beauvoir doesn't appear anywhere either.
Furthermore, the list is extraordinarily American-centric, but that goes without saying. Who in their right fucking mind puts Obama on this list? Elvis? Dr. Seuss, maybe, but how in the world does P.T. Barnum qualify?
for actually looking into it. the cover made my skin crawl too much to investigate
anything for an opportunity to complain more