John Green (Letters, 4 October) asks us to imagine if Hitler and Goebbels had had television and social media at their disposal. Someone already has. Timur Vermes’s brilliant satirical novel Look Who’s Back is predicated on the idea that Hitler wakes up in 2011 and is taken in hand by PR and marketing people to become a huge success. The message doesn’t matter as long as they can ride the wave of the success. For many Hungarians, and others, it must be eerily prescient.
Les Mondry-Flesch
Lymington, Hampshire
• Gary Younge is quite right (It comes as no shock that the powerful hate identity politics, 5 October). A century ago, attempting to define “our goal” for socialists, Karl Kautsky concluded that it was “the abolition of every kind of exploitation and oppression, be it directed against a class, a party, a sex or a race”.
Ian Bullock
Brighton
• Noting Gaby Hinsliff’s discussion of the relative merits of clapping or jazz hands to show appreciation of a speech (Opinion, 6 October), as someone who speaks fairly frequently in public I welcome any sign that the audience is paying attention rather than checking their smartphones. That includes muttering and booing.
Keith Flett
London
• Re your dating article (How much would you spend in a search for love?, 7 October), I wish you would bring back the Soulmates column that used to be in the Guardian and Observer. It was brilliant, easy and free.
Jude McGowan
London
• Elaine Aspinwall-Roberts (Letters, 6 October) claims that the old bridge from Runcorn to Widnes was free. But surely the ferry cost “per tuppence per person per trip”?
Gavin Ross
Harpenden, Hertfordshire
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