Comment on Elon Musk Had Grok Rewrite Wikipedia. It Calls Hitler “The Führer.”

khannie@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

• dukemirage@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Führer is not just „leader“, it is tainted and using it as a substitute for Hitler in a factual text is super weird, like casually calling Jesus in his Wikipedia article „our lord and savior“ now and then.

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  • OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Thank you for this comparison. That’s a fun one and one that’s made a little more ‘subtle’ in the US if only because of how common that language is among the populace in regions and how pervasive protestantism is in advertising/messaging.

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    • themurphy@lemmy.ml ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Jesus would’ve hated America. I think according to the bible he lost his shit twice - both because of capitalism.

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      • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        There was one other time, when he cursed a tree because he didn’t like its fruit

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  • khannie@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yeah I fully agree with this. I am thick in the middle of “Third Reich Trilogy” which gives an enormous amount of context to the word though.

    If they changed it, it’s further evidence of scummy behaviour, but on its own it’s not a huge red flag for me with historical context.

    Can’t recommend the books enough if you’re into that. The lad must have spent half his life in primary sources.

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    • desentizised@lemmy.zip ⁨32⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

      Is the word still used there?

      Leader would be “Anführer” these days. “Führer” was probably a perfectly neutral word before 1933. Now you just can’t use it anymore without alluding to that period. You can call your mountain guide “Bergführer”. All such derived terms are unaffected, but “Führer” is basically off limits for anything outside the Nazi Germany context.

      In it’s used context for Hitler it straight up means dictator

      From what I gather I don’t think the German people meant it like that (read: they weren’t supposed to). Of course he was the solitary head of state and everybody knew that his word was above any other’s, but addressing him as “my Leader” is much more about ideology than politics. The honorific would’ve probably been “my Chancellor” if it had been about his political authority. As “Führer” he was the figurative savior of the German people after the perceived injustices encapsulated in the WW1 armistice. And he did lead them back towards a sense of national pride that was completely shattered after 1918.

      Being a political figure was just a means to an end for him. If he hadn’t been dismissed as a bad artist by a Jewish professor and if WW1 had taken a different course who knows what he would’ve ended up doing with his life. His weapon was his voice and that weapon was fueled by all these toxic convictions. If your hatred is aimed towards entire peoples and nations I guess your only shot at revenge is becoming a politician.

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  • damnedfurry@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Is there another more ‘generic’ German term that would fit when talking about this period of time in retrospect? So you could have one line that says the German equivalent of ‘he was the leader in Germany during this time period, commonly referred to by the title Fuhrer’, and then no need to keep using “Fuhrer” anymore in the rest of the article.

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    • arschflugkoerper@feddit.org ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Pretty sure its usually “Diktator” in that context.

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    • Prime@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Maybe Staatsoberhaupt

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• freebee@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Not German but moved to Germany. The word is still a normal word, it can be used, only in certain contexts not.

  To me it is very very weird.

  Especially in a comboword there is 0,0 issue: Reiseführer, Bergführer, etc. The no go zone seems very subtle to me, it’s more about pronunciation and context, not the word itself. Especially the word “Führerschein” is super weird to me when used in regular conversations. I automatically hear translated “license to be the Führer”, but it just means driver’s license and nothing else and no one finds it weird.

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  • RedstoneValley@sh.itjust.works ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Exactly this. If you use it as part of a compound word or as a verb it’s totally fine. However “der Führer” (the Führer) is exclusively used to describe Hitler, and it usually has a negative or ironic vibe depending on who says it.

    About the Führerschein… führen and fahren have the same etymological root… It is still used in “Führen eines Fahrzeugs” which simply means “driving a car” and that is where the term comes from.

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  • BlackLaZoR@fedia.io ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    "Führerschein" is super weird to me when used in regular conversations. I automatically hear translated "license to be the Führer"

    Not weird for point of view of polish speaker - we use same word "prowadzić" for driving a car, running a company or just leading someone to some destination. From that perspective concept of leading a country and "leading" a car is perfectly intuitive

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  • nuko147@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Führer means driver also. So literally Driver’s license.

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• CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Why would they use the honorary, German word Fuhrer in an English language wiki article though?

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  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Exactly.

    If you are describing hitler’s role in WW2? Yes, he was The German Fuhrer.

    I would say that, honestly, I prefer the second version as it is more accurate to what he was. But any time you change something you have to ask “what does it mean that we are changing things?”

    And since musk is, at best, someone who wishes he was as cool as the losers on LUE back in the day? This is very much intentional.

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  • cygnus@lemmy.ca ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    We also use “Dalai Lama”, for example. Changing it to “leader” would lose a lot in translation. There’s a very long list of more problematic things with Musk and this ego project than this particular wording choice.

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    • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I agree with the second half but disagree on the first. We do use Dalai Lama because thats what he’s known as across the world (at least fron my understanding) . We didn’t refer to Angela Merkel as Furher of Germany when she lead it so it seems weird to include this in the introductory summary of Hitler especially considering it’s an English article. I dont think you’re losing anything in translation in this example by calling him the “leader of Germany” at that time. Down below, in the verbose write-up, seems like the more appropriate place to use it.

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      • cygnus@lemmy.ca ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I don’t think the Merkel cmparison is accurate - no one called her Leader, we called her the Chancellor (Kanzler), because that’s the job title. “Chancellor” is a pretty specific word in English with a narrower meaning and clearer connotation than “leader”, which can be used in a huge variety of contexts. The problem is that English doesn’t have a 1:1 translation of Fuehrer as we do with Kanzler.

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• ceiphas@feddit.org ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  As a german, the word is very seldom used, and everybody cringes on use of it alone. We even use the english word guide instead for situations where it fits.

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  • khannie@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Thanks so much. I thought that would be the case but I wondered around things like “team leader” or “band leader” or whatever.

    My guess was that it was forever tainted so I appreciate the context.

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• r3tr0_97@ani.social ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Not a german national, but I’m learning it at school, and they say that if you go to a german-speaking region, it’s better to say “chef”, because “führer” is still connected to that guy

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• CosmoNova@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  You don‘t really call him just the Führer in academic works so anything that works like an encyclopedia shouldn‘t either. The title is charged with either mockery or admiration. It should have no place in this context, because it should at least try to be neutral if you ask me.

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  • khannie@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’m in the thick of a 90 hour audiobook trilogy on the third Reich which is absolutely incredible (link) and Fuhrer is used liberally, partly to describe his ascent to absolute dictator as opposed to just Reich’s Chancellor.

    I’m not defending shitopedia for one second! I’m just not sure it’s as outrageous as other shit that’s taking up our limited attention span at the moment is all.

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• Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Only his followers actually use that title for him, everyone else when using that word about him, would say it’s the title his followers call him. Like how wikipedia is using it. Grok is just using it as his title, like a follower would.

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  • lefthandeddude@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago

    It’s true and terrifying.

    We have a Nazi on his way to controlling a robot army.

    Liberals make the mistake, both with Musk and Trump, of dismissing them as ignorant bumbling men when they are both extremely intelligent and do not act in an arbitrary manner. This is not Musk being weird after too much ketamine. This is an extraordinary engineer showing his allegiance to Hitler. It’s apparently too shocking for most people to accept.

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• turdcollector69@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  It’s funny that they made a conservative Wikipedia (snowflake safe space much?) because those people don’t read shit.

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• samus12345@sh.itjust.works ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Fuhrer is just “leader” in German.

  Yeah, go to Germany and call any leader “Führer” and see how well that goes. Uh, maybe not in Eastern Germany where they’ll probably like it.

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