Forbidden Texts

When watching Triumph of the Will, one of the things that stands out the most is just how grandiose everything is. The movie opens up with an aerial shot, flying through the clouds, and descends until you can see the city of Nuremberg, which almost looks like it’s out of a fairytale. This continues as the movie goes on, with large displays of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, enormous swastikas, and giant eagles that loom over the shots as if the film itself is trying to point the the apparent power of the Nazi movement.

One thing that strongly stood out to me was how disturbingly similar it is to the modern world. In fact, when Hitler first got off the plane at the start of the movie, the enormous crowd of cheering people almost reminded me of the clip of the Beatles first arriving in New York. The people in the film look like normal, friendly people, individuals who I would walk past every day, and that’s because they were. The film shows the more “human” side of the Nazi party, which is where the danger of harmful ideologies like Nazism comes from. Anyone can become entangled in them, and by recognizing the Nazis as humans, it allows us to better identify the causes behind their beliefs, and ultimately prevent anything like the Nazi movement from occurring again.

In fact, the movie takes great strides to try and legitimize the Nazi party as the only reasonable way forward for Germans. A lengthy scene shows Hitler talking to the gathered members of the Hitler youth. This scene, as well as others showing Nazi officials interacting with Nuremburg’s children, appears to be a way to further endear the party in the eyes of the German people.

Interestingly, despite the facade of power projected by Hitler during the rallies, there appear to be cracks forming. Hitler speaks extensively about the SA (more commonly known as the brownshirts), reassuring them that they won’t be dissolved and that they’re an important part of the movement. I was curious about this, and as it turns out that this movie was made shortly after the Night of the Long Knives, where the SA leadership was purged by the SS. In light of this, it makes sense why Hitler seemed so desperate to maintain order; the party was undergoing a serious period of infighting, and Hitler didn’t want the cause losing any momentum.

Overall, Triumph makes great strides to show off Hitler’s vision of the Nazi party, and I think that it does have quite a lot of value from a historical perspective. While it does serve as propaganda, I think that that negative is outweighed by the fact that it lets viewers get a look into the mechanics of how strength and power is projected, and how even the most ordinary-looking people can become swept up into dangerous ideologies.

The goal of this paper is to understand how often people, who speak out against societal norms, get punished. There are many cases we learn about in school of people who took a public role in speaking out and then facing some form of retributions in return. For each person I investigate I want to understand what they did, how was the public reception to what they did, what were the consequences for the public position they took, and where they ended up as a result for it. The people I’m researching won’t be just activist who got in trouble. I’m interested in looking into Malala, a women’s activist from Pakistan who protested against the Taliban banning girls from school, Malcolm X a Black activist from the United States who advocated for black empowerment, and Galileo a scientist who said argued for the heliocentric theory against the predominant Catholic church. I am aiming to keep this paper diverse in people who were shunned for a belief.
            This idea originally stemmed from learning the context behind the 120 Days of Sodom. Although de Sade himself faced no real consequences from his book, the book eventually became a piece of debate in communities of research and censorship of books.

References I intent to use:

X, Malcolm, and production company Educational Video Group. Great Speeches Video Series. Volume 16, Malcolm X : “Democracy Is Hypocrisy” Speech. Educational Video Group, 1960.

X, Malcolm, and production company Educational Video Group. Malcolm X : “Who Taught You to Hate?” Speech Excerpt. Educational Video Group, 1962.

Glyde, Tania. “Malala: Agent of Change.” The Lancet [London], vol. 386, no. 10006, Nov. 2015, pp. 1814–1814, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00770-9.

Attia, Shaimaa Mohamed Shehata. “Malala’s Mission: Challenging Taliban Rule and Patriarchal Norms in Pakistani Education.” Maǧallaẗ Kulliyyaẗ Al-Adāb Wa Al-ʿulūm Al-Insāniyyaẗ – Ǧāmiʿaẗ Qanāẗ Al-Siwaīs, no. 49, 2024, pp. 457–82.

Liana, Zbigniew. “Criteria for the Acceptability of Scientific Theories as Locus Theologicus: A Methodological Analysis of Catholic Church’s Reactions to the Cases of Galileo and Darwin (Bellarmine—Pius XII—John Paul II).” Religions (Basel, Switzerland ) [Basel], vol. 16, no. 2, Feb. 2025, p. 153, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16020153.

One of the most striking things I noticed about Triumph of the Will was that it did not mention Jews or any other racial group as a source of Germany’s problems, especially since this propaganda film was produced in 1934, a time when Germany was trying to lift itself out of economic struggle following global disasters like WWI and the Great Depression. I found this very interesting because, in my mind, I associate Hitler and the Nazi movement most strongly with the Holocaust, and how scapegoating “inferior” racial groups was a primary ideology of the Nazi regime, and yet, this film seemed to me more focused on German nationalism and the German people themselves uniting as one and working together to save Germany from economic ruin. In fact, there was a huge emphasis on encouraging Germans to put themselves to work in the film. There were several long scenes of men working tirelessly, but with a smile on their faces, appearing as though they were happy to be working. The one work scene that stood out to me the most was where Hitler was addressing 52,000 German working men with shovels in their hands (“soldiers with hammers” as they are referred to in the film) where he tells them to make more fields for the farmers and “carry Germany into a new era.” He also declares that “no one in Germany shall not work.” This scene did an excellent job of portraying how the focus of Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1934 was to get every able-bodied German employed to resolve Germany’s economic issues. The emphasis on working also highlighted for me how the goals of the Nazi Party changed throughout the course of Hitler’s reign. At first, their goals seemed to be more oriented towards increasing German nationalism and promoting work to lift Germany out of its dire economic condition at the time in order to maintain their existing state, whereas after this had been achieved, and Germany became a force to be reckoned with, the goals of the Nazi Party became more focused on expansion and purifying the “Aryan race.”

Overall, Triumph of the Will does have historical and artistic relevance. I can also see why it was essential in promoting the Nazi movement and some of their ideologies (German nationalism, working), especially during a time where the German people were likely not happy with the direction that Germany was heading after struggling through the Great Depression and WWI, and wanted a leader like Hitler that presented the possibility of not only moving forward, but becoming a great nation.

For my research paper, I plan to answer the question, “Why does the Western political right love artificial intelligence”. From my personal anecdotal evidence, it seems the the biggest supporters and users of AI (artificial intelligence), specifically generative Ai and LLMs (large language models), tend to be members of the political right. I will be examining this relationship through prominent figures like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel.

I will first establish a relationship between the political right and AI. I will then analyze some of the potential reasons for why these people and their allies might be interested in this technology. One of the most obvious advantages of using AI is the replacement of workers. AI cannot unionize or advocate for workers rights. AI images and videos are also used heavily by the right. Members of the right have historically devalued artists and creativity. AI is used to replace artists while still getting the “art”. Another aspect of the right and AI that I will explore is how it is used to accumulate capital. When AI generates wealth, it goes to very few people.

Beyond just the reasons for why the right might like AI now, I will also explore the potential future laid out by some notable right wing figures. Most notably the Techno-feudalistic future proposed by Peter Thiel.

I will use a variety of sources for this paper. I will use scholarly papers and journal articles that relate to the right and its use of AI. I also plan to use the social media of both prominent and lesser known conservatives and analyze their uses of AI, their stances on AI, and their Ideas for the future and AI. I can also use any interviews of notable right-wing figures relating to AI.

For my research paper I want to study how the Protocols of the Elders of Zion became useful to propaganda. The Protocols was an antisemitic text that pretended to be the record of secret meetings where Jewish leaders were supposedly planning to control governments, money, the press and society. The text was first published in Russia in 1903. Was later exposed as a forgery but it continued to spread to other countries.

I want to focus on the connection between the Protocols and Adolf Hitler. The Nazis did not create the Protocols. They found it useful because some of its ideas matched the antisemitic beliefs they wanted to spread. Hitler referred to the Protocols in Mein Kampf and Nazi leaders continued to use the text and its ideas in propaganda. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum explains that Hitler and other Nazi leaders knew the Protocols was not a historical document but they still used it to spread their message.

My main research question will be: How did Nazi leaders use the ideas from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to support propaganda and why was the text useful even though it had already been exposed as a forgery? To answer this I want to look at the Protocols, Mein Kampf and other examples of Nazi propaganda. I also plan to use sources from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and scholarly articles from Simpson Library. I want to focus on how ideas about money, government, the press and control were presented.

I think this topic is interesting because it shows how a false document can still have a historical impact. The fact that the Protocols was known to be a forgery but was still used by Nazi leaders makes me want to understand why propaganda can be effective when the information, behind it is not true. This research could also help me understand how the Nazis used existing ideas and turned them into a political message.

The historical argument that I will aim to answer in my research paper is to what extent did Richard Wagner’s own writings, ideas, and cultural legacy make his music particularly usable for Nazi ideology. This topic is particularly relevant because Wagner died in 1883, which was way before Nazism became popularized, and was even before Adolf Hitler, the dictator of the Nazi regime, was even born. Based on my preliminary search for potential sources for this research paper topic, I found that Wagner did write antisemitic essays such as Judaism in Music and also utilized nationalist and antisemitic rhetoric within his artistic works, which were widely circulated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to him being one of the most famous and influential German composers at the time. Additionally, his relation to the Bayreuth Circle, a network of Wagner fans that centered around the annual Bayreuth Festival and Wagner’s family, also seems to play a role in promoting nationalist and antisemitic ideologies that Hitler’s Nazi Party later appropriated. As far as sources go, I will aim to use sources that discuss Wagner’s antisemitism and nationalism and how these ideologies present themselves in his works and the impact of these works on Nazism. Examples of articles I found through the Simpson Library’s website that seem related to my research topic include but are not limited to: The Darker Side of Genius: Richard Wagner’s antiSemitism by Jacob Katz, Richard Wagner and the Impact of his Anti-Semitism by Pierre-Michel Menger, The Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, and Wagner’s Anti-Semitism by Stephen McClatchie, Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner by Paul Lawrence Rose, Wagner, Hitler, and Germany’s Rebirth after the First World War by David Ian Hall, Revolutionary Art – Nationalism – Anti-Semitism: The Case of Wagner by Goran Gretic, The Effect of Richard Wagner’s Music and Beliefs on Hitler’s Ideology by Carolyn Ticker, and Why Fans of the Evil Genius Remain Fans: The Case of Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival by Florian Stoll and Philip Smith.

The museum starts with explaining the growing antisemitism in the German population. It’s almost unsettling read about how the hatred for Jewish people was building up and leading to things like boycotts and vandalism, while simultaneously they have the audio of people chanting and singing as celebration of the rise of the Nazi party. Events like Bloody Sunday and the boycotts really put it into perspective the mistrust in people who practice a religion. There was a part that spoke about someone vandalizing a Jewish establishment writing “Jews are our misfortune” and it reminded me of the protocols and how people truly believe that Jewish people were the root of the crisis’s Germany was facing.

There were so many events where people destroyed things simply because they came from Jewish minds. I think the night of burning books shows how destructive and totalitarian the mindsets were becoming. It’s like a reflection of the question “who decides what gets banned and what stay”.
However, the Night of Broken Glass stays the longest in my mind. I remember learning about the destruction of the synagogues. The fact that people had blamed it on Jewish people when it had just been a last-minute attack.

There was a section about what did the Americans know, and I’m sure the museum did complete research and had real stories when building that section, but oddly enough I questioned this section the most. This part of the museum strongly suggested that we stayed out of involving ourselves or we’re not supportive of Germany. There was a debate on boycotting German products which led to a 2/3 voting against it. The Jewish-Americans were the ones who had to spread awareness about what was happening in Germany, and even so the Americans decided not to act. I just feel like this section was almost vague in a way and it made me want to do more research on what reactions of real Americans were.

In one of the final exhibits, The Final Solution, it truly goes into detail about Hitler’s switch to genocide. Moving Jewish people to ghettos that were overcrowded, lacked resources, and let to many starving to death. What causes a person to switch to mass genocide and expanding to kill anyone but the “perfect’ person he had in mind? Did the power get to his head or did he genuinely just have so much hate that killing so many people felt like a real solution.

Although I wasn’t necessarily interested in the liberation exhibit, the stories of survivors stuck the hardest. There were so many quotes and stories gathered from survivors. There was a particular story of a woman who, I believe, was in hiding with her group, and she had made a bet with one of her friends that they would split a pastry when they were finally liberated. The day they were liberated, the woman went to find her friend and when she finally found her, she had passed away. It broke my heart to think someone could manage to live through that and when she might’ve finally been able to feel relieved, she never got to.

Distrust of the government is nothing new. In the days of Flock cameras, political division, and mass online surveillance, it’s common for the younger generation especially to feel as if the American government doesn’t exactly have it’ best interests in mind. Occasionally, though, tensions boil over, and a person’s hatred towards the government results in tragedy, such as in the case of the Oklahoma City Bombing.
This bombing, the deadliest domestic terror attack in United States history, was motived by the then-recent incidents that occurred between the ATF and fringe extremists in Waco and Ruby Ridge, as well as racist ideals formed as a result of the perpetrator’s fascination with The Turner Diaries. This paper seeks to examine the motivation behind both this attack and the other incidents that preceded it (such as the Unibomber’s spree in the late seventies and eighties), establishing a pattern of anti-government sentiment resulting in preventable tragedy. This paper will also discuss the factor of literature as a motivator to these attacks, and whether or not it is worthwhile to prioritize national security over full freedom of expression.
I’ve already found a few sources for the paper. The library has a fair few books and journal articles on Waco (including one on the impact of it being televised!) which could definitely be interesting. The same goes for the OKC bombing and Ruby Ridge. Combined with the fact that we’re reading the Unibomber manifesto, I don’t think i’ll have any shortage of sources for my paper.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum really helps to personalize the Holocaust and realize its scale. When thinking about the Holocaust, it is easy to think of it abstractly as a historical tragedy and forget that it had real victims. Similarly, the scale is difficult to grasp; Six-million is such a large number that it is hard to wrap your head around. I think that the museum did a great job illustrating a small glimpse into the true horrors of the Holocaust.

This starts before you even enter the elevator. While in line, you are given a pamphlet that tells the story of someone who lived during the Holocaust. The person on my pamphlet was Miru Alcana. The pamphlet covers her life before and the horrors she faced during the holocaust. At the end of the pamphlet, there is a number. This number helps remind us that her tragedy was not unique and that there are millions of similar stories.

Another way that the museum shows the true devastation of the Holocaust is through the “Tower of Faces” exhibit. This was the multi-story room that was covered in over 1000 pictures. These are the photos of the Jewish people that lived in just one village that was destroyed during the holocaust. There was also additional information that shed light on the lives of some of the people in the pictures. To see so many smiling people while knowing their ultimate fate was harrowing. To see so many faces and learn their story helps to understand the true scale and tragedy of the Holocaust.

One quote that I found notable during the visit was

“There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.” -Abel Herzberg

Visiting the US Holocaust Memorial Museum was different from most museums I have visited before. When I first walked in, I knew the museum was going to be serious, but I did not really know what to expect. There were a lot of pictures, objects, and information about people who lived during the Holocaust. Seeing all of this in person felt different than just learning about the Holocaust in a class or reading about it online. 

One thing that really shocked me was learning about the experiments that were done on prisoners. I had heard about this before, but seeing the information in the museum made it feel much more real. What also shocked me was seeing some of the uncensored photos of the experiments. They were very difficult to look at, but at the same time, seeing the images without being censored made me understand more clearly what people actually went through. It was honestly crazy to see those images in person because they made the history feel much less distant. 

Another thing that stood out to me was seeing the personal side of the Holocaust. There were stories and pictures of real people and families, and that made the history feel more close to me. Sometimes when we learn about historical events, we only think about the big numbers and important people. At the museum, I was thinking more about the individual people who had normal lives before everything changed. 

Overall, I think the visit was an important experience for me, I learned things, but more than that, the museum made me think about how easily people can become numbers when we only study history from a textbook. Seeing the personal stories, the photographs, and learning about what happened to people made the Holocaust feel much more close to me. I left the museum thinking more about the people who lived through it and how important it is to remember what happened. 

Image Credit: Medium

I wouldn’t say that I am necessarily desensitized to hatred, but when reading things like Mein Kampf, or Protocols, there’s a degree of seperation, where, while they both lead to mass amounts of violence and cruelty, the reader isn’t necessarily confronted by the real-world effects of the pages they have on hand. That’s why I think it’s so valuble that we wound up visiting the Holocaust Museum, because it served to provide context to the readings we had recently finished, and ground the class discussions in the all-too-real ramifications of unchecked hate.

The Holocaust Museum is an example of purposeful design. When you first enter the permanent exhibit, you are taken there by elevator. You are forced to walk along the path that Germany went down, with no easy way to get back out apart from pushing forward. In doing this, it immerses the museumgoer in the exhibit, making them confront the horrors that happened during the Holocaust. This idea of confrontation is immediate, with the first site you see when exiting the elevator being a pile of the charred corpses of prisoners, found by the allied liberators. Another way this is demonstrated is by making the visitor walk under a casting of the infamous Il macht frei arch, which hung over the gates to Auschwitz. I felt a pit in my stomach when I walked under it, which I imagine was purposeful. Things walking under the arch, through a train car, and through a room full of the shoes taken from Holocaust victims really left a palpable feeling of dread and grief.

Overall, the museum was extremely interesting, and I left it thinking harder about how this class, and why some of the books we dicuss within it were banned. While I still think that all human art and writing has value, it’s a little harder to justify the continued publishing of Protocols and Mein Kampf in light of the obvious consequences of their existence. But, still- the books themselves didn’t commit the genocide. They were merely vessels for human ideas that many already believed in, and still do today, and by focusing efforts on banning them it’s taking away attention from real-world genocides, with countless people being killed daily. Holocaust museum sheds light on the mechanics of hate, and hopefully, we all walk away from it a little more skilled at recognising hate, bigotry, and genocide when it appears.

Looking at the film, “The Circle”, with contemporary analysis, this paper examines the impact of surveillance on society. As technology continues to infiltrate everyday life, it should be considered how much should be shared with the public and if such communication should be necessary. Another focus would be whether personal identities are fading as social media usage increases. The difference between truth and falsification will be tested, and this research will ask if governments should be allowed to monitor the population in their everyday lives. Additionally, it will question whether such actions are invasive.

Modern-day demonstrations against government and corporate control through cameras like those run by Flock and Axon will be studied along with movie reviews and scholarly articles. It will discuss the dangers of basing knowledge on ratings from the internet instead of personal experience or credentials and peer-reviewed work. It will reflect on the ideas of requiring participation in society, focusing on mandatory voting. Most of all, the right to privacy will be analyzed.

Accountability, knowledge, unity, and nature are becoming more and more important as the number of people getting information or communicating through screens increases. Therefore, it must be determined how much this can hurt humanity and the environment. Diverse perspectives must be explored and civilization must be protected. This research paper will examine such subjects and provide a conclusion explaining the different answers one may find.

One of the things I found most interesting about the Holocaust Museum information blurbs was the way they portrayed Hitler with respect to D. Cameron Watt’s introduction to the edition of Mein Kampf that we read in class. In the museum, Hitler is frequently portrayed as a criminal mastermind whereas D. Cameron Watt interprets Hitler as someone that attempts to make himself appear smarter than he is through Mein Kampf and that he did not really know what he was doing and was doing a lot of improv foreign policy, which he supports by saying that a lot of the things Hitler talked about doing in Mein Kampf were either never done, or not done in the same way. The Holocaust Museum had a more accurate interpretation/portrayal of Hitler’s intelligence. Even for someone that was self-educated, Hitler went from a nobody to the dictator of one of the most infamous regimes of all time. He also drastically expanded Germany’s territory from 1939-1942 (which was very effectively visualized in the permanent exhibition maps at the museum) and rebuilt Germany’s completely decimated economy after WW1 and even led them to be a dominant world power by hugely expanding the German military and being at the forefront of technological and warfare innovation (e.g., rocket propulsion and poison gas). Because of the success and effectiveness of the Nazi regime and Hitler’s role as dictator, demonstrated by what I read in the museum, I think that Watt did not give Hitler enough credit for his effectiveness as a leader. 

As for my thoughts on the Holocaust Museum in general, I really liked how there were castings of real objects of historical significance from the Holocaust, as well as personal items from Holocaust victims. For example, I had the opportunity to see a casting of the Warsaw ghetto wall which the local German administration used to establish a “closed” ghetto for Jews that separated them from non-Jews and made them easier to control. I also saw the original main door to the chief hospital in the heart of the Łódź ghetto, an original prisoner bunk bed from the Auschwitz concentration camp, personal belongings such as spoons that concentration camp prisoners were forced to give up upon their arrival, original film of the actions of the mobile killing squads, the 3D model of the Auschwitz gas chamber and crematorium, and so much more. 

All of these physical and visual objects were really cool to me in the sense that they represent literal pieces of history and they made my experience in the museum so much more visceral because I was able to directly see with my own eyes what Holocaust victims were subjected to and the horrific conditions, they were forced to live in. The addition of these pieces that appealed to the senses made the exhibit so much more effective than solely reading text. Overall, I walked away from the Holocaust museum with a much deeper appreciation for the stories of Holocaust victims and survivors as well as for Mein Kampf and its fundamental role in the Holocaust.