What’s concerning about Mein Kampf to me is that not only was it so widely disseminated in Germany, but it was published as a legitimate pseudo-academic work of literature. All you have to do is walk into Barnes and Nobles to see a whole table of books published by self proclaimed experts and adherents to every sort of political ideology. Questioning news sources, claims made on social media, and even political speeches made at debates and rallies is second nature to most americans. In fact, our media often feeds and encourages our distrust of our media with messaging manipulating viewers to trust only one source, claiming that only it will give you the truth. This is a different problem, but especially in the technology and short form media dominated landscape of today, books are sometimes psychologically elevated above all the noise about trustworthy information. I have been lectured on evaluating sources since elementary school, but not until I arrived at college did the idea of questioning published books come up in my classes. Many of the political literature being published is just as extreme, polarizing, and ideologically driven as the news networks, but the author’s names aren’t as easily recognizable as the ideologues on TV. The presentation of the information, in a format that allows for lengthy explanation and seemingly reasonable arguments to be made, might sway populations of society that otherwise might have remained deradicalized because of their knowledge and resistance to the messaging in a lot fo traditional media. Mein Kampf itself was written to help shift the image of the Nazi party from brawlers in the streets after the Beer Hall Putsch, to academic and political thinkers, a less threatening and more legitimate organization. Overall, the simple publishing of an idea in a book lends it societal weight and legitimacy that it otherwise could not have earned on its own merit.