A Nobel Prize-winner floats the theory, the Associated Press reports:
The spread of information on the Internet has given the world a new tool to forestall conflicts, Nobel literature prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio said Sunday. In his Nobel lecture to the Swedish Academy, the 68-year-old Frenchman said an earlier introduction of information technology could even have prevented World War II. “Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler’s criminal plot would not have succeeded—ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day.”
In other words, the internet is a race, and sometimes humanity loses.
On the other hand, imagine if Hitler had Karl Rove and Fox News
What about all the genocides that have happened SINCE the internet was created?
If that idea is founded in any truth, I’d like to see some discussion about post-Internet genocides.
Maybe people would be more aware of it happening, and maybe it would have helped get people out of harms way, but I doubt it could have stopped it.
@2 agreed.
I doubt it. Not only does information, internet or otherwise, tend not to travel very freely outside the walls of its respective dictatorship, it’s just as likely the internet would have been used a tool by the party.
Not only that, but the Germany had illegally been building its military complete since 1923, whose ranks were replete with Generals just champing at the bit to do what Hitler initially did to kick off WWII.
Facebook groups can stop ANYTHING!
The internet stop Hitler???
(SPOILER ALERT!)
Tom Cruise can’t stop Hitler…what makes you think the Internet can?
(END SPOILER)
Bad theory, it assumes that Hitler would not have adapted his methodology to deal with the existing parameters. In other words, if the internet existed consider what else would have existed as well. It is pretty shoddy to “dump” some arbitrary technology into a period of time to see what happens.
A total waste of time and effort that diverts us from current problems like Dafur etc.
I smell a Hitlery Channel movie of the week — Allied forces try to infiltrate secret Nazi facility where the internet is being developed
Yeah if it wasn’t for the Internet we might have become involved in a drawn-out war in Iraq.
Rove is better than Goebbels was hmmmm don’t think so.
Look how the internet has stopped that trouble in Darfur from getting out of hand. And Mugabe in Zimbabwe — he didn’t stand a chance against bloggers. The war in Congo — the deadliest since WWII, probably twice as many dead as in Vietnam — except that the internet stopped it.
Uh-huh.
Here’s a more fitting photo for your post, via 23/6
On the other hand, Britney Spears would not be the 2nd ranked search term on Google (after Barack Obama).
A Hobson’s Choice, at best…
Actually, if the Internet, with camera phones everywhere that upload pics of concentration camps and cattle cars had existed, and webcams showing Krystalnacht was a fake …
Nah, people are too gullible. Just remember, we attacked Iraq after the Saudis with Pakistani/Afghani help attacked us on 9-11. Even though we had the Internet and KNEW it was a lie.
Don’t be silly. The internet couldn’t even stop a cowardly wimp like George W Bush
If a frog had wings, would it bump its ass when it hops?
[Spoiler Alert] Tom Cruise gets shot at the end of the movie!
Hitler would have written Mein Kampf on LiveJournal and had his gallery on DeviantArt.
The internet would have been used by the Nazi party to catapult the propaganda. It would have been just another medium to be used to communicate and manipulate the volk.
I’m confused… how does Godwin’s Law apply to a post like this?
Don’t forget that the internet is also a place for like-minded crazies to find each other. That kind of global audience might have spurred Hitler even further.
This theory isn’t what Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize for is it?
The internet couldn’t stop Bush. Sooo…
If only… because then Israel wouldn’t exist!
The Internet would probably have helped Hitler. I mean, after Yahoo and Google gave him the names and IP numbers of anyone who opposed him.
The internet could have helped people mock Hitler, certainly. Prevent him from invading Poland? Not so much.
The Internet could have been useful when Hitler was just starting out. Anonymous bloggers could have attacked him, mocked him, and exposed him with a lower likelihood that his goons would track them down and intimidate them, beat them, or kill them.
If Hitler still managed to take control, however, the Internet would have made little difference. The Chinese have already proven how easy it is to shut down cyber dissent within your own country.
Actually, as far as I can tell the main function of the internet in politics is to act as an enormous echo chamber in which whoever shouts the loudest seems to win.
Witness what we’re enduring in Canada with our current and hopefully-soon-former Prime Minister. His talking points have been on the ‘net since day one, propelled by the home-field advantage of government money, and whaddaya know–polls indicate that his replacements are losing the PR war.
Hitler would have embraced the net in much the same way, I’m sure.
Sure . . . The Internet’s done a great job stopping China in Tibet, Sudan in Darfur, Israel in Palestine, Hamas in Israel, the US in Iraq, Mexico in Chiapas, Russia in Chechnya . . . Need I go on? We know more, but the Internet only hardens us. No one really doubted the Holocaust was happening, but the US was so isolationist that had the news been spread all over the radio at all times of the day in the 30s it wouldn’t have mattered.
It takes knowledge combined with will to oppose evil effectively, not just knowledge. We know all about the evils of poverty and racism and violence and poor education and more in our own soceity, many times over, and we do very little to stop it. What’s changed? Only exposure. Human nature and American complacency are the same.