Nadsat as an indicator of a lack of empathy

I found Anthony Burgess’s references to World War II very off-putting in this book.  As part of the Ludovic treatment, Alex sees films from WWII featuring both German and Japanese soldiers.  However, it isn’t clear that Alex really understands what he’s seeing. He refers to it by the name “the 1939-45 War,” so he clearly knows the history to some degree (105). Yet later he refers to a swastika as “that like crooked cross that all the malchicks at school like to draw” (113). He also uses the words “Nazi” and “Germans,” which indicates the degree of specificity of his understanding (113). Yet, it feels as though he lacks a deeper emotional understanding or any sort of empathy related to the situation. Even while watching atrocities of the Holocaust with “Germans prodding like beseeching and weeping Jews – vecks and cheenas and malchicks and devotchkas – into mestos where they would snuff it of poison gas,” Alex has to feign an emotional response (119). He has to force himself to cry, and his experience of what he is watching is very distant. In this case, and somewhat throughout the book, his nadsat and casual language acts as a distancing mechanism separating him from the darkness and reality of what he describes.  The insertion of “like” in this sentence adds uncertainty, and though it is false uncertainty it still separates Alex in some way from what he is saying.  Furthermore, his many words “vecks,” “cheenas,” “malchicks,” and “devotchkas” that replace “men,” “women,” “boys,” and “girls” function as a dehumanizing step that removes the inhumanity from violence.  It might be grave to hit a man, but is it as bad to tolchock a veck? If these Jewish people are forced into rooms where they will die, that sounds a little harsher than them being “prodded” and “snuff[ing] it.” Alex’s language reveals his callousness, and perhaps explains or merely illustrates how he and his droogs can live with their own violence and crime.