“Nazism has disappeared, but [not] the obsession it represents for the contemporary imagination. . . . Is such attention fixed on the past only a gratuitous reverie, the attraction of spectacle, exorcism, or the result of a need to understand; or is it again and still, an expression of profound fears and, on the part of some, mute yearnings as well?” ——Saul Friedlander, “Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death” (1984) To paraphrase a recent German historian, we may think we are finished with Hitler—but Hitler is not finished with us. Very true in the twenty-first century. Hitler Chic—a symptom of the perversity of our times—is alive-and-well in many lands and far from limited to Holocaust deniers and Fuhrer-loving skinheads. Outdistancing Lincolniana and rivaling Elvis and the British royals, “Hitler” as a title word in an online search produced 1564 books published during the year 2000 alone, adding to the 120,000 already in publication. In Lebanon in 2013, the answer to the question—Who’s ‘Got Talent”? Who’s “The Talk of the Town”?—was Najwa Karam, the pop star with 50 million record sales under her belt and the Arab face till last year of L’Oreal. She announced her Admiration for Hitler. Given the Arabic nickname of “The Good Soldier,” the Fuhrer has long been popular in the Muslim world among Israel haters—and Jew haters—for obvious historical and contemporary reasons. But the resonance of Hitler—and “Mein Kampf”—is global. Given the propensity of haters of the Jewish state, especially on the left, to equate Israelis with Nazis (school children in Brazi were recently tested on who’s worse), one might think they detest Hitler. But the opposite is true. Showing an capacity to entertain two contradictory ideas at the same time, they loathe “Judeo-Nazis” and at the time love the Fuhrer as the arch enemy of “the Zionist evil.” While anti-Semitic Hitler fans read “Mein Kampf” as a blueprint for finishing Hitler’s Final Solution, anti-Hitler readers urge attention to the book as a cautionary tale of the perennial lure of fascism. This ideological divide in reading Hitler tends to be largely limited to Europe, the U.S., and the Middle East. Elsewhere in the Third World, the Fuhrer has an appeal that transcends ideology and even anti-Semitism. From India, to Thailand, to Korea and Japan there have been restaurants and sports bars, ads campaigns for cosmetics, rock groups and university banners promoting Hitler, the SS and the swastika. In most cases, these “perpetrators” had virtually no knowledge of Hitler’s Final Solution. The Fuhrer is a “how to” guy, a leadership genius, and Mein Kampf is read as an organizational manual on a par with the best seller of some years ago, “The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun.” In Bangkok, Thailand’s leading school, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand’s premier university has apologized for displaying a billboard that was a tribute to the graduating class showing Hitler alongside Superman and other superheroes. Down the road, Asian college grads could get a clone of the superhero they wish for. Let’s hope for their sake the continent’s natural resources include a large supply of Kryptonite. See Andre Heisel, “Who Reads ‘Mein Kampf’?” in “The Awl” (August 23, 2014) at http://www.theawl.com/2014/08/who-reads-mein-kampf?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAwl+%28The+Awl%29