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Alan Jacobs /

Operation Edgelord

Four common ways of denying the ‘Myth of the Good War.’
A military officer in uniform with cap and medals makes a peace sign gesture while smoking a cigar, set against a textured background with blue and beige overlay elements.

Third in a series.


Those who deny the Myth of the Good War—the belief, described in my previous essay in this series, that World War II is a distinctively, perhaps uniquely, good war—fall, I think, into four broad categories.  

One: A Plague on Both Your Houses. The serious writers who say explicitly that there is no moral difference between the Allies and the Axis are few and far between.

Alan Jacobs is a professor of humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University, and a senior fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. His most recent book is ‘Paradise Lost: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books).’

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