Indian Comics Irregular #62

Most people think Hitler and his genocidal policies were the unique
product of an evil mind. Not quite. As John Toland notes in his
book "Adolf Hitler," a key source for Hitler's Final Solution was
none other than the good ol' US of A:

Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the
practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies
of English and United States history. He admired the camps for
Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild
west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of
America's extermination--by starvation and uneven combat--of the
red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.

If that isn't bad enough, here's the kicker: Hitler got his ideas
from Western novels. As David A. Meier explains on his website
"Hitler's Rise to Power":

His favorite game to play outside was cowboys and Indians. Tales
of the American West were very popular among boys in Austria and
Germany. Books by James Fenimore Cooper and especially German
writer Karl May were eagerly read and re-enacted. May, who had
never been to America, invented a hero named Old Shatterhand, a
white man who always won his battles with Native Americans,
defeating his enemies through sheer will power and bravery. Young
Hitler read and reread every one of May's books about Old
Shatterhand, totaling more than 70 novels. He continued to read
them even as Führer. During the German attack on the Soviet
Union he sometimes referred to the Russians as Redskins and
ordered his officers to carry May's books about fighting Indians.

Dime novels were the pulp fiction of Hitler's day--the equivalent of
today's comic books and straight-to-video movies. Hitler read about
the slaughter of Indians...and was inspired to engineer the
Holocaust. Has there ever been a better testament to the power of
make-believe violence?

For more on Hitler's motivations, visit
http://www.bluecorncomics.com/hitler.htm.

Superman/Batman Aggression Hour

Like many people, I've watched ultra-violent cartoons all my life. I
thought they were harmless compared to "real" media violence: the
kind where people shoot and kill each other without moral
consequences. Now I'm not so sure.

I came across a study in which nursery-school children watched either
Batman and Superman cartoons, "Mister Roger's Neighborhood," or
neutral programming. The results:

Researchers found that the youngsters who watched Batman and
Superman cartoons were more physically active, both in the
classroom and on the playground. Also, they were more likely to
get into fights and scrapes with each other, play roughly with
toys, break toys, snatch toys from others, and get into little
altercations. No mass murders broke out, but, they were simply
more aggressive and had more aggressive encounters.

Or as one parent said, "Try putting your kids in front of a Jackie
Chan movie sometime and see how long it takes for them to start
karate-kicking things." The evidence against media violence
continues at http://www.bluecorncomics.com/grossman.htm.

Praise for BlueCornComics.com

Our website received some nice compliments recently. Violence expert
David Grossman called it "THE reference source" on the link between
media and real-life violence. Native activist Matthew Richter called
it "the bomb" on the subject of Indian stereotyping. See what they
had to say at http://www.bluecorncomics.com/pr8.htm.

Before I forget, congratulations to the NBA champion Los Angeles
Lakers. Preaching his Native-themed philosophy, coach Phil Jackson
led them to another championship--their second and his eighth. Could
it be a coincidence?

Rob Schmidt
Blue Corn Comics