Do you know who else was hard to tell from far right or far left?
My take on the OP and his ilk was best and most simply said in a line from an old song by the Grateful Dead…
“You Aint Gonna Learn What You Dont Want To Know” (Black Throated Wind)
All the facts, figures and personal eyewitness accounts in the world wont change these people’s minds and your time (IMHO) is probably best served elsewhere, actually engaging reasonable people who really DO strive for the truth as opposed to merely pretending to want to learn, for the sake of appearance…
Sometimes you just have to allow people to steep in thier own ignorance, and realize that there are some who are simply beyond reach; hopefully, we can keep them from infecting others, but they need to just be written off as lost causes.
I admit that I, too, was troubled by the post from which you have quoted, but I still contend that even those remarks may be produced as the result of Hanlon’s Razor, (substituting “ignorance” for the final word), until such time as we see an intransigent refusal to acknowledge genuine evidence.
I actually know a couple of CT adherents who started out as simply naïfs, but hardened into CT zealots because they were treated rudely when they first asked some questions. They decided that those attacking them must have something to hide and became skeptical of all evidence.
It simply does not hurt anyone to provide accurate information without condescension or vitriol until such time as the Denier or CT “questioner” begins to actually defend the Conspiracy Theory.
Okay Tom, then let’s take this op as a specific case.
If we, as Princhester suggests, look at this poster’s history, we see a record of “I’ve seen this youtube or read this article somewhere and maybe there is something to this or that …” with a host of ideas, some flaky and some not. Usually without much follow through.
So maybe he is just someone who is trying to learn something, who gets easily swayed by internets sources of questionable validity, and who does not have an extant knowledge base sufficient enough to fend off the intertubes idiocies. And not much attention span. Fine. Larning him some critical thinking might be the order of the day without attacking his motivations. If he is interested in learning instead of posturing that boy aren’t I the “open minded” one for “questioning” established historic facts.
But then we have the subsequent behavior which refused to accept or acknowledge the fact of the eye witness reports of survivors, etc. etc. etc. etc… which at the minimum comes awfully close to “an intransigent refusal to acknowledge genuine evidence” if not into the range.
So I dunno about our op, or where to stop engaging and when to start attacking in general even.
What I can’t see doing in any case is debating the Deniers on their own terms, allowing them to frame a debate in terms of some specific detail and ignoring the totality of the evidence. And that seemed to be all that this poster was interested in doing. Educating about that totality of evidence I can see. That is another thing altogether. But not what this op was asking for- for us to watch some denier video and debate on their terms. Engaging in that way serves not the purpose of reducing ignorance.
In the case of Holocaust denial, it strains belief past the breaking point that someone would become a determined adherent of hate-mongering because someone was rude to them.
Not infrequently, people who espouse some dingbat theory online will pass over all the sober, factual rebuttals of their position to hone in on some flip or nasty comment, pretending that’s the norm and that such cruel rejection has hardened their position. Echoing this is the concern troll who similarly ignores solid evidence to admonish posters on their lack of congeniality.
I’m not saying any of this applies to what tomndebb is saying. I think if he knew more about the nature of Holocaust denial, his views would not come across as so startlingly naive.
Frankly, neither do i.
In this paerticular case, however, I note that he has not really participated recently and, while the comments you and Finn have noted are troubling, I do not yet find them to be enough for condemnation. If further posts indicate the sort of insistence that there is something “wrong” with the generally accepted historical reports, then I would agree that it is time to cry “Havoc!” I just have not yet seen that.
On this we agree. The evidence is already overwhelming in favor of accepted history. Once a question has been answered, then a series of further goalpost shifting follow-up questions are a good sign of a bad faith argument and there is no need to play that game. (That is why I explicitly asked for specific questions with citations to the exact claims. If there is a legitimate question based on faulty sources, it should be easy to refute, either putting the matter to rest or being follwed up by more questions displaying a more malevolent intention.)
At this point, the OP might have actually read the information provided and seen the accuracy of the standard historical record or he might come back with the requested links or he might come back in Denier mode or he may never return (and his fate is still unlearned). Until one of those scenarios plays out, I don’t see the point in making nasty accusations.
False dilemma.
One might become the typical CT loon without engaging in the hate mongering.
I know one guy, (not one of those I mentioned earlier), who actually supports Israel in the current conflicts, but often moans that he wishes they would not play the “Holocaust card” when it was “clearly not as bad as it has been ‘distorted’” in history books. :rolleyes:
The folks I mentioned earlier were not actually Deniers, just CT loons. However, since there are a number of similarities among Deniers and CT loons and Troothers, I suspect that many of them are susceptible to the same sort of emotional situations.