On 2022-11-19 at 11:31, Dominik George wrote: >> The specific query was about Nazi quotes from someone in Europe - I >> don't believe our database currently contains these, as they were >> purged from the BSD package from which ours is derived but I would >> be prepared to be very wrong here. >> >> The point was made that if the database did contain Nazi quotes / a >> swastika it might make it illegal to host the content on mirrors in >> at least Germany or Austria. > > ❯ apt source fortunes-off [snip] > ❯ grep -ri "Mein Kampf" fortune-mod-1.99.1/datfiles | wc -l > 52 > > > The question is not whether hosting is illegal (I don't think it is). > > The question is whether we promote Nazi ideology or not. And the > answer is clearly "No", and that is a fact, not sumething that is up > for discussion. I would like to take what I think is a slightly different disagreeing angle from those who have objected to this thus far. I run with 'fortune -a` in my ~/.bashrc, so I see an excerpt from the fortunes database - the full scope of that database, including fortunes-off - with every terminal I open. As such, I have sometimes seen these quotes from Hitler in those locations. I have never once interpreted them as promoting Nazi ideology. Rather, I have always interpreted them as being a useful reminder of the sorts of things that Nazis said and stood for - and it's important to remember those things, both in terms of remembering the things that Nazis *did*, and so that we have the additional warning if we ever find ourselves at risk of stepping towards the same paths. I have the vague impression that I may have also occasionally seen a quote in this way which I would have found utterly unobjectionable if it hadn't been marked as being from Hitler. Those too have value - both in that they can serve as a warning of the directions which seemingly unobjectionable sentiments can lead towards, and in that they can (more rarely) help remind us that a good sentiment or insight is not rendered less good just because a horrible person also felt the same way. I am not always - nor, indeed, often - pleased to see one of these quotes come up in a new terminal, but they do serve as helpful / useful reminders, and I would not be pleased to see them vanish entirely. Indeed, I would probably wind up going out of my way to install the most recent version of that leaf package from snapshot.d.o, until such time as a better way of retaining access to these uncomfortable but important reminders could be arranged. I'll also note that most (all but three) of the named "Mein Kampf" excerpts are found in the 'atheism' file; their purpose there seems to be to argue against (Christian) religion by pointing out the degree to which Hitler claimed to adhere to it, not to glorify Nazism or Hitler's own views in any direct way. As such, the claim that shipping these quotes constitutes "promoting Nazi ideology" seems rather wide of the mark. There are also rather a few other quotes from Nazis, including Hitler, in that file which do not come from "Mein Kampf"; they seem to all be in that same vein, of advocating for atheism by pointing out its opponents. But if you're wanting to cite the presence of such quotes as reason to drop this package, or these quotes from this package, then you're undercounting to some noticeable degree. There are also quite a few non-Mein-Kampf quotes from Hitler in the 'politics' file, which from a skim seem to be mostly or entirely in the vein of "warning of how dangerous a particular line of thought can be, by reminding that Hitler promulgated it". That latter file also includes a quote which *is* from Mein Kampf, and strikes me as relevant to the modern political moment, in that it's been referenced continually throughout the US political-news media for the past couple of years: >>> The broad mass of a nation... will more easily fall victim to a >>> big lie than to a small one. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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