Or even more likely, as soon as you make a point even slightly against their beliefs they call you a socialist/communist/fascist/Nazi/whatever cliche they hate the most that particular day.
you can read it - I have read portions of it - but it’s still a pretty bad book by a lot of metrics.
It’s just famous like maos red bible is famous - but both are horrible literature
Edit: so if you read and like it there is something wrong with you
Who start reading "mein kampf" beside scholar anyway?
I haven't actually started it yet, but I have a copy on my shelf waiting. Along with Das Kapital, Mao's "Little Red Book", etc.
Why? Especially given that I'm closer to a Randian than anything else (I really did like Atlas Shrugged although it's not my favorite book). Well, I feel like if you're going to reject a belief system, or feel somewhat at-odds with followers of a given system of thought or whatever, it's best to have some familiarity with that system of thought. It's just a matter of intellectual honesty.
I mean, looking back over the years here on HN and the various discussions that pop up around Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand. You can tell that a LOT of the people criticizing Rand and Atlas Shrugged have never read the book (or probably any of her other works) and are attacking straw-men.
I refrain from (most) attacks on Marx (and the specifics of what Hitler, Mao, etc had to say) because I don't have the deep familiarity with their material. OTOH, I have no problem saying I have enough general familiarity to mostly reject the thinking of those folks in a sort of abstract sense. The point being, one may read a work that you disagree with (or expect to disagree with) just so you can have an intellectually honest conversation about it, or a deeper conversation that goes beyond a superficial familiarity.
Who start reading "mein kampf" beside scholar anyway?