The Excuses For The Hitler Banner Don’t Really Wash With Me
Thailand’s premier university is apparently having some problems because it allowed students to put up a graduation billboard mixing Adolf Hitler with a group of superheroes. They are apologizing, but they are also offering some excuses. I’m not really buying them.
According to the article, the billboard “was painted by ignorant students who didn’t realize Hitler’s image would offend anyone.” The article also reports that the teaching of Thai history involves mainly Thailand and that world history is barely covered, the holocaust not at all. However, the school dean also describes that he called the responsible students in to explain themselves and they said it was supposed to show that the world has both good and evil and that Hitler was supposed to be conceptually juxtaposed against Superman, Batman, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man.
That means that the students were not simply ignorant. Whether the university was or not, the students clearly realized who Hitler was enough to use his image to represent evil. I don’t think you can say they didn’t know who Hitler was or what he did based on gaps in their education. Clearly, the students are better educated than their university gives them credit for.
Frankly, I think the students well understood that Hitler’s image could offend. At the same time, I don’t find fault with their concept, but rather the execution. Since their idea was to show that there is good and evil in the world and that the forces of good (represented by the superheroes) protect the world from the forces of evil (represented by Hitler), I don’t think the concept was a problem. I actually kind of like the concept. The problem was that the execution wasn’t good enough that people could understand what they meant. Their intention reportedly wasn’t to label Hitler a superhero, but the billboard didn’t make that clear. People were confused as to what the billboard was saying.
I don’t know why the university didn’t simply say that the students had not intended to portray Hitler as a superhero and screwed up in making their billboard confusing. That is apparently what actually happened and would have been much more believable than simply saying that the students were too ignorant to know who Hitler was right before making statements that clearly showed that the students knew full well.
Ignorance just doesn’t appear viable as an excuse here.
