I'm sure that very few Dartmouth students are strangers to Facebook.com, or the myriad of "fake" Facebook.com profiles that are scattered across the website's electronic landscape. Unlike the standard profiles, which are representative of actual students, the profiles of which I speak are designed by students but often represent pop culture or historical figures. They range from the benign -- Jesus Christ, for example -- to the hilarious -- take a look at the Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy profiles if you don't believe me.
Sometimes, however, these profiles cross the line of what is funny or acceptable. The specific profile I have in mind is the profile of Heinrich Himmler that a friend of mine showed me a short while ago. For those who are unfamiliar with who exactly Heinrich Himmler is, he was the third in command of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man. He was also the commander of the SS, the branch of the Nazi party responsible for devising the Final Solution to European Jewry. Consequently, he was responsible for murdering 11 million people, among them over 6 million Jews in death camps scattered across Germany and Poland.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha... isn't that funny. I nearly fell off my chair laughing when I came across this Facebook.com profile. I mean, there's just plain funny, and then there's mass murder and extermination funny!
Wait a minute. That's not actually funny. Just ask any of the lucky few to survive the Nazi death camps; I'm sure they would tell you just how not funny Heinrich Himmler and the Nazis are.
Now, understand that I'm not usually the easily offended type who walks around looking for things that upset or insult me. I generally take the world with a grain of salt. However, I think I'm pretty justified in this case in saying that this crude attempt at humor is immature, insensitive and ignorant. I say "humor" because I don't believe that this Facebook.com profile is the work of some hardcore Nazi sympathizer looking to foster the rebirth of the Third Reich. Rather, it seems more likely that it is the handiwork of some sort of far-left, non-conformist funny guy who is, like, totally out to stick it to the "corporations" and show us how much our "Disneyland morals" are, like, totally crap, man. You know the type.
The bottom line is that even in our world of moral relatives and vast grey areas, there are still some things that are either right or wrong, good or bad. To clarify, the Nazis were evil. Sorry, no two ways of going about that one -- it's beyond debate or discussion. I thought Dartmouth students would be above this sort of typical college anti-conformist stuff where boundaries between simple rights and wrongs break down.
I guess I gave us too much credit. The person or persons who created this horrible excuse for a profile -- not to mention the 14 Facebook.com "friends" of Heinrich Himmler -- should be ashamed of themselves. You should have enough pride in yourselves and in the education you are receiving to not stoop to this level of ignorant and morally bankrupt "comedy". While you obviously have the right to make or befriend whatever Facebook.com profile you see fit -- we fought for that right against Nazi Germany in World War II -- that doesn't mean you should. The Himmler profile is both ignorant and anti-Semitic and it reflects poorly on anyone who associates with it. The hatred that spawned the Nazis' rise to power and their subsequent campaign of war, murder and butchery is not something to be taken lightly. It is truly disturbing that at an institution like Dartmouth, students are not intelligent enough to realize this.
