Thread by @mariachong

Evil and domestication: how puff pieces in 1930's Vogue, Life, Home and Garden, NYT normalized Nazis. placesjournal.org/article/hitler…

The SS opened Buchenwald a few months after American Kennel Gazette published “Hitler Says His Dogs Are Real Friends” in 1937.

"Hitler's Mountain Home" extolled Hitler's fine taste and was published in November 1938 by Home and Garden (same month as Kristallnacht).

Vogue gushed about Hitler's cozy chalet in a style feature—in 1937, while Nazi's were arresting hundreds of clergy & sending them to camps.

Great insight. Vogue "reinforced the normalizing effort...by shifting attention from political ideology to interior design."

As with this NYT's white supremacist article, Vogue erred, thinking it could apply a "carefully comparative and neutral approach."

While Vogue was rhapsodizing over swastika throw pillows, Jesse Owens competed in a stadium of deranged Aryans who had tried to bar him:

The New York Times itself published puff pieces on Hitler in 1935, 1937 and, believe it or not, as late as 1939.

1935: "Hitler His Own Architect: He Practices His Art on a Simple Chalet." Nuremberg Laws were stripping citizenship from millions of Jews.

Human rights? Oh, but the chalet was "furnished more simply and in rather better taste than the average home of the Bavarian peasant..."

1937's “Where Hitler Dreams and Plans,” was more foreboding. But still—ah, leisurely breakfasts! The music hall! The Führur's charming side!

German Luftwaffe have just bombed Guernica. Hitler and Mussolini just formed an alliance. Oh, but the honey and cheese, at a rustic table.

1939. Kristallnacht has occurred. Germany has invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Who could possibly publish a puff piece in 1939??

THE NEW YORK "We-must-provide-fair-and-balanced-reporting-at-all-costs" TIMES, that's who.

How quaint. How lovely. “Herr Hitler at Home in the Clouds.” He's a good listener. He enjoys elderberry pie.

You can read excerpts from this monstrosity of a journalistic abomination in this Twitter thread someone Storified: storify.com/Claud_Alexande…

(Sorry, two tweets above should have said that Germany invaded Poland twelve days after this idyllic ode to the chalet life was published.)

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Why does this matter?

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Humans construct meaning from context. We rely on semantic, social, interpretative fames to understand reality.

What does "row" mean? Is it a place to plant seeds? A motion of an oar? An argument in London? A line in Excel?

Media is not neutral. Context is powerful. To frame intolerance, violence & dehumanization in banal RELATABLE domesticity is a grave error.

"this context....its carefully comparative and neutral approach, reinforced the normalizing effort by blurring the political differences..."

As essay author Despina Stratigakos implies—leaving out conflict, rage, faces of the Jewish victims, bombs fails by omitting VITAL CONTEXT.

My Twitter friend & philosopher asks a good question: how much signaling is needed to alert the average reader?

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Highly-literate, critical thinkers who easily find significance, patterns of association & subtext may need less overt signaling.

Y'all have one fatal error that dogs your thinking: MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT LIKE YOU. #pizzagate #JerryBruckheimer #CandyCrushNation #Trumpism

Nazis and white supremecists should not be de-humanized. Neither should they be made more humane/decent than they are by omitting context.

The terror of their victims, the injustice, the hate, the damage, the attempts at humiliation, the evil motives cannot be sugar-coated.

NEUTRALITY is not the goal of journalism. (Say that 5000 times.) The goal of the news is to reveal THE TRUTH.

Removing personal bias and being fair is not the same as neutrality. Evil things must be placed in proper context: utter reprehensibility.

Journalists: don't equivocate. It takes deep insight, skepticism and courage to write a fair piece that exposes horror in the right context.

It is a grave disservice to the public to remove the context of horror from evil. Don't expect little hints to convey your apprehension.

Consider the St. Louis: our nation hosile to immigrants, in denial about atrocity, turning away Holocaust refugees: ushmm.org/wlc/mobile/en/…

“Your silence gives consent.” —Plato

“All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie...“
—W.H. Auden

“We've had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with 100,000 tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence.”StCatherine

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Thank you again to Despina Stratigakos, professor of architecture at SUNY Buffalo, for this incredible essay, “Hitler at Home."

It was published before this current dark age, in September 2015, by @PlacesJournal. Excellent analysis. READ IT: placesjournal.org/article/hitler…

From book of the same name, published by @YaleBooks: yalebooks.yale.edu/book/978030018…. We need this deeper insight into darkness & dehumanization.

“Propaganda by its very nature is an enterprise for perverting the significance of events & of insinuating false intentions.” Jacques Ellul

“Reality doesn't interest me.”
—Leni Riefenstahl

Dammit, journalist—don't feed into that because of stupid unnecessary pride in an unobtainable golden calf of cowardly objectivity!