I’m certainly no expert on Namibian history and culture, most of what I know comes from just now skimming the Wikipedia article
But a couple things jumping out at me
The area was at one point a German colony (and also at one point they carried out a genocide against the Herero people that some think may have been sort of a model for the Holocaust)
They also had apartheid similar to South Africa.
And to this day a whole lot of Africa doesn’t exactly have stellar access to education, the internet, etc. and even in some parts of the world that do have better access, there’s a lot of people in other parts of the world outside of Europe and the Americas who don’t quite grok* just how bad the Nazis were because it’s not something they cover so extensively in their history classes. I feel like every couple years I see some story come out of Asia somewhere where some business opens up with a Nazi theme and they don’t get why so many people in the West are mad about it.
So kind of taking a couple stabs in the dark here
It could be that his father named him after Hitler maybe trying to soften things up for him, like maybe the white people at the top of the apartheid heiarchy would be a little nicer if he was named after the biggest whitest racist he could think of.
Or maybe they were in a bit of an information bubble where he just really didn’t fully understand how bad Hitler and the Nazis were and went with it because he thought it had a nice ring to it
Maybe it was a way to give a giant middle finger to racists. Sort of a “haha, how do you like your leader’s name when it’s on a black kid? Suck it Nazis.”
Or maybe it was something else. That’s just a couple thoughts off the top of my head.
*fuck muskrat for trying to steal this word for his own bullshit.
Robert A. Heinlein was good friends with L Ron Hubbard — you may want to rethink your assertion that Musk is ‘stealing’ the word. Pretty sure that ship sailed long before Musk.
I’m certainly no expert on Namibian history and culture, most of what I know comes from just now skimming the Wikipedia article
But a couple things jumping out at me
The area was at one point a German colony (and also at one point they carried out a genocide against the Herero people that some think may have been sort of a model for the Holocaust)
They also had apartheid similar to South Africa.
And to this day a whole lot of Africa doesn’t exactly have stellar access to education, the internet, etc. and even in some parts of the world that do have better access, there’s a lot of people in other parts of the world outside of Europe and the Americas who don’t quite grok* just how bad the Nazis were because it’s not something they cover so extensively in their history classes. I feel like every couple years I see some story come out of Asia somewhere where some business opens up with a Nazi theme and they don’t get why so many people in the West are mad about it.
So kind of taking a couple stabs in the dark here
It could be that his father named him after Hitler maybe trying to soften things up for him, like maybe the white people at the top of the apartheid heiarchy would be a little nicer if he was named after the biggest whitest racist he could think of.
Or maybe they were in a bit of an information bubble where he just really didn’t fully understand how bad Hitler and the Nazis were and went with it because he thought it had a nice ring to it
Maybe it was a way to give a giant middle finger to racists. Sort of a “haha, how do you like your leader’s name when it’s on a black kid? Suck it Nazis.”
Or maybe it was something else. That’s just a couple thoughts off the top of my head.
*fuck muskrat for trying to steal this word for his own bullshit.
Robert A. Heinlein was good friends with L Ron Hubbard — you may want to rethink your assertion that Musk is ‘stealing’ the word. Pretty sure that ship sailed long before Musk.