You Could Have Stopped Me With Memes Comparing Me To Myself

By Adolph Hitler

It’s too bad you haven’t learned all the lessons from the cataclysmic episode of history in which I starred. Fascism is indeed on the rise once more, but believe you me, I’m not going to get into which one is the genuine article – the fascism of the Left or the fascism of the Right. My point is that if you want to stop a fascist, the only way to do it is to share internet memes comparing him (or her, I guess) to Hitler. In my day, there was no other Hitler, so the world had to go through years of industrialized murder and destruction. You could have stopped me with memes comparing me to myself, is what I’m trying to say.

We didn’t have any of that fancy technology. Broadcast media had a limited reach, with television in its infancy and radio unable to engage the audience visually. And for most people a radio wasn’t remotely portable, so mobile communication was a fantasy for the masses. Even if there had been a Hitler to whom I could be compared, sharing memes wouldn’t have worked. I guess that’s too bad.

But you twenty-first-century people bear none of those handicaps, so you’d better get cracking at comparing your ideological or political opponents to me, using stock images of my visage with oh-so-clever text superimposed on them. It’ll be snark that undoes their nefarious schemes! Sarcasm is by far the most effective weapon in your arsenal, and your enemies must quake in their jackboots with each scornful iteration of them-as-me in an old photo.

One can only imagine how history would have turned out differently for Europe, for the Jews, for the Soviets, the Japanese – everybody, really – had the people of the time had smartphones and the technological infrastructure to use them as you can, as well as a previous Hitler to whom I could be compared. In an instant, the world would know your sardonic fury, and you would thus undermine the fascist system rising up before your eyes to trample on your rights and persecute the Other. If only that were so!

Alas, we didn’t have that means of political revolution, and the world had to suffer because of it. I can never attain absolution for making it necessary, but you can avert a repetition of that disaster because you can compare your opponents to me by means of memes!

History can rest easy now.

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