# Holocaust Denial? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 21, 2019, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762 "2019-11-21T07:43:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MortSahlFan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@MortSahlFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MortSahlFan)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/21 "2019-11-21T20:59:29Z")
I wonder why the US Congress finally acknowledged the Armenian genocide. It took over 100 years!!! ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/22 "2019-11-21T21:25:21Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > One would think that real Nazis are all about genocide and ethnic cleansing. They do not view it as a bad thing. There was once an interview on TV with a nice young man from the American Nazi Party who, when asked, were they in power, what his party’s policy would be towards American Jews, politely explained that they would be “encouraged to leave, one way or another.” He did not for a second hesitate or seem uncomfortable with the idea. I expect he would have hesitated for considerably more than a second to say, at any rate on public TV, “We’re going to murder right off all the children and old people except for a few to do medical experiments on, keep some of the prettier young women alive so we can rape them, and work/starve the ablebodied adults to death.” Whether that particular individual wanted to do so I don’t know – though I bet he could have been gotten there if his party got enough of a chance – but saying so in public tends to put off the people he needs to at least keep pacified in order to give his party a chance. And pointing out that there’s plenty of historical evidence that that’s where letting Nazis get power winds up also tends to put people off Nazis. So yes, they’re going to deny that historical evidence. – Sage Rat’s also right about the change the Holocaust caused in general Western culture in attitudes toward Jews. > [@Jragon](#): > > Also note that White Supremacy and White Fascism is essentially a death cult that progressively more narrowly defines “white” based on the predominant prevailing identities of the people in charge as they get more power. So they may even allow some “useful” POC when they’re low on power to be in their sphere, but once they get power those get purged (either from the party/positions of power or literally in the sense of genocide or exile), and then Italians get purged, and then Irish People, and then… say… the Spanish, then the French etc etc until suddenly only Baltic people or German people or English people or someone who can prove they’ve never had any non-what-is-now-defined-as-white ancestry going back 5 centuries or whatever are “white”. There’s always an increasing standard of “purity” among white supremacist communities. This usually ends up extending to other marginalized people too, such as the disabled, or gay people or trans people. Yup. The problem – well, one of the problems, and one often not brought out enough – with groups who take and/or keep power by working up hatred against an out-group is that, in order to continue keeping power, they always have to have an out-group to demonize. Whenever whichever outgroup they started with isn’t getting them enough traction, they have to move on to defining and attacking another one. “Everybody’s wrong but me and thee and thee’s a little queer --” (yes, I know that’s not quite the quote.) ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/23 "2019-11-21T21:28:27Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > Not all Holocaust deniers outright deny it, though, either. A more common form of holocaust denial is what you may call “Holocaust minimization”. That is “okay, sure, it happened, and that’s awful and everything but the claims are **grossly exaggerated** it was maybe like a few hundred tops.” Sure, like, “Yes, a great many political dissidents, including Jews, were rounded up by Germany during WWII, in the same sense that Americans rounded up and interred the Japanese. As it happens, things didn’t go we for Germany, and so conditions in the Germany internment campus were that much worse than in America, and through starvation and disease many people died. Yes, a few people were deliberately executed, but only in as much as they endorsed treason against the state. So it’s not that I’m saying millions of people didn’t die during WWII—indeed, many died—only that the situation in Germany wasn’t all that different than in the US, it was just a matter of much worse conditions. It’s a real shame the Soviet Union was so awful, though. I mean, what with their gulags and their purges, they killed even more than Germany, right? Those damn communists…” Of course it’s a crock, but a committed white supremacist doesn’t really care about what’s true. ---
**Author:** ![MortSahlFan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3bc359/32.png) [@MortSahlFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MortSahlFan)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/24 "2019-11-21T21:31:49Z")
My older relative had a teacher who got fired for saying, “Communists, homosexuals, gypsies were rounded up and killed. Most happened to be Jewish.”… I asked for more about the guy, but he couldn’t remember. The next time I do another [newspaper.com](http://newspaper.com) free trial, I’d like to look at these questions raised, but comparing the years. What were they saying in 1948, 1958, etc. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/25 "2019-11-21T21:39:40Z")
As mentioned, Anglo-American elites did not consider Irish and Italians as white. The press depicted Irish literally as apes - see ubiquitous 19th-century cartoons. White supremacists of Irish or Italian background are nuts. I have no use for deniers of the Nazi holocaust. I only learned of my uncle’s US Army unit’s role in liberating death camps after he died, when we looked through his notes. He witnessed. Deniers are scum. I’m puzzled by 2000 years of antisemitism based of biblical tales. Jewish Jesus was executed as a “bandit”, a rebel leader, by Romans, not Jews. If Christians need to blame anyone, start with Italians. Racial purity. That means inbreeding, right? Alsatian dogs suffer from hip displasia because of that. For the greatest purity, incest is indicated. Darwin, Poe, Einstein, Giuliani all married their cousins and are white, so there you have it. Don’t accommodate deniers or the next holocaust will be here. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/26 "2019-11-21T21:45:28Z")
> [@MortSahlFan](#): > > I wonder why the US Congress finally acknowledged the Armenian genocide. It took over 100 years!!! Politics. Turkey was in NATO. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was very much NOT. Real rapprochement did not begin until after 1991 when Armenia became independent and even then it was a far less important geopolitical entity to the U.S. than Turkey. Basically it took a good long while for relations with Turkey to sour to the point where political expediency was no longer the dominant issue. Even at that it might not have happened if relations with Turkey had nose-dived so severely in the wake of the Syrian mess. Cynically, one might suggest the recognition was ultimately more political theater/punishment than a heartfelt belief finally acted on. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2019, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/27 "2019-11-21T22:33:59Z")
> [@MortSahlFan](#): > > I wonder why the US Congress finally acknowledged the Armenian genocide. It took over 100 years!!! Congress did not. Only the House of Representatives did; the Senate has yet to act on the bill (And Moscow Mitch has indicated that he does not plan to bring it up for a vote. Even the House took a long time; it was introduced 12 years ago, in 2007. ---
**Author:** ![str8cashhomie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7cd45c/32.png) [@str8cashhomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/str8cashhomie)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/28 "2019-11-22T00:24:53Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > One would think that real Nazis are all about genocide and ethnic cleansing. They do not view it as a bad thing. There was once an interview on TV with a nice young man from the American Nazi Party who, when asked, were they in power, what his party’s policy would be towards American Jews, politely explained that they would be “encouraged to leave, one way or another.” He did not for a second hesitate or seem uncomfortable with the idea. That is what neonazis privately think, but holocaust denial/minimization is a tool they use when speaking publicly. When the general public hears someone ostensibly just talking about the evidence and not being overtly hateful, it plants the seed in people’s minds that the actual hateful ideas behind it are reasonable to consider and debate. A small proportion of those people will actually buy into some of the arguments and become useful idiots to further spread the message. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/29 "2019-11-22T00:41:31Z")
And there are still people who deny it out there, or at least, claim it wasn’t an actual “genocide”. ☹ (I think it’s illegal to refer to it in Turkey, isn’t it?) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/30 "2019-11-22T04:59:14Z")
> [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](#): > > It’s not limited to white supremacists. Here in Minneapolis, my Congressperson is a non-white, non-Christian woman, and she is a holocaust denier. Of the Armenian holocaust, at least, based on her recent vote on that. Well, that one is much more debatable. I mean, there was a war and the Armenians did side with the enemy\*, and\* what happened is less well known, not to mention it is hard to tell if the Government actually organized a _planned systemic genocide_. The Ottoman Empire was falling apart and massively corrupt and incompetent, so perhaps the “planned” part is questionable, as it’s reasonable to doubt they could plan a birthday party, let alone a genocide. Most experts consider it so, but it’s somewhat debatable whereas the Nazi genocide is not. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/31 "2019-11-22T05:07:26Z")
> [@MortSahlFan](#): > > My older relative had a teacher who got fired for saying, “Communists, homosexuals, gypsies were rounded up and killed. Most happened to be Jewish.”… I asked for more about the guy, but he couldn’t remember. > … Well, that raises a point. If you say it wasnt _six_ million Jews, it was more like three or four or five million- you could be called a denier. I got called a denier by pointing out that yes, Communists, homosexuals, and gypsies were _also_ killed off. So were “politicals”, my Euro relatives were sent to Dachau where perhaps, they had it a tiny bit better than the Jews. But not much as when the Allies captured the camps, many Politicals were sent to Soviet Gulags. So “denier” is waved around a bit too much. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/32 "2019-11-22T05:18:46Z")
> [@MortSahlFan](#): > > My older relative had a teacher who got fired for saying, “Communists, homosexuals, gypsies were rounded up and killed. Most happened to be Jewish.”… I asked for more about the guy, but he couldn’t remember. WTF. That’s simply the truth. 6 million Holocaust victims were Jews, 6 million were other groups. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/33 "2019-11-22T05:19:04Z")
Prior to the public learning details about the Holocaust, anti-semitism was a lot more…I don’t want to say it was “respectable,” but it was a lot more mainstream, and could be again of the notion of a massive human atrocity could somehow be minimalized or denied. ---
**Author:** ![str8cashhomie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7cd45c/32.png) [@str8cashhomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/str8cashhomie)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/34 "2019-11-22T05:23:34Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > WTF. That’s simply the truth. 6 million Holocaust victims were Jews, 6 million were other groups. I think the implication of “happened to be Jews” was that the Nazis weren’t intentionally trying to mass murder Jews. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/35 "2019-11-22T05:24:50Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > WTF. That’s simply the truth. 6 million Holocaust victims were Jews, 6 million were other groups. Yeah, sure. But what I was told, and called a “denier’ is that _"to mention anyone else but the Jews, who were the REAL targets of Nazi hatred, is to dilute the Holocaust_” and thereby I was a “denier”. ---
**Author:** ![str8cashhomie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7cd45c/32.png) [@str8cashhomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/str8cashhomie)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/36 "2019-11-22T05:29:46Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Well, that one is much more debatable. I mean, there was a war and the Armenians did side with the enemy\*, and\* what happened is less well known, not to mention it is hard to tell if the Government actually organized a _planned systemic genocide_. The Ottoman Empire was falling apart and massively corrupt and incompetent, so perhaps the “planned” part is questionable, as it’s reasonable to doubt they could plan a birthday party, let alone a genocide. > > Most experts consider it so, but it’s somewhat debatable whereas the Nazi genocide is not. It is very clearly supported by the historical record that the Ottomans orchestrated the Armenian genocide from the highest levels of government. The Pashas (the 3 joint leaders of the Ottoman Empire at the time) admitted (or arguably bragged) as much. > [@Talat Pasha](#): > > Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention. What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians. > [@Enver Pasha](#): > > The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation. Source: [Popular Quotes regarding the Armenian Genocide of 1915](https://www.genocide1915.info/quotes/) ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/37 "2019-11-22T05:52:37Z")
And Hitler mentions the genocide of Armenians [https://www.armenian-genocide.org/hitler.html](https://www.armenian-genocide.org/hitler.html) > [@](#): > > Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It’s a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. > > I have issued the command – and I’ll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need.\*\* Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?\*\* ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/38 "2019-11-22T07:22:25Z")
There are Holocaust deniers, and there are Holocaust [minimizers](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/04/16/blood-libel) _David Irving, the British writer of history books… is not so much an outright Holocaust denier as a Holocaust minimizer. He is convinced that no one was gassed at Auschwitz. He does not deny that many Jews died there, but claims this was mostly from disease. He also concedes that others were shot, in Poland and elsewhere, by overenthusiastic S.S. men, but he has argued that Hitler had nothing to do with this. So no gas, no plan by Hitler, thus no Holocaust. People who remember differently are, inI rving’s peculiar phrase, “the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust, and Other Liars—A.S.S.H.O.L.E.S.”_ Then there’s Fred Leuchter, who claimed cyanide wasn’t used in the camps to gas people but to delouse them. To “prove” this, he went to Auschwitz and other camps and surreptitiously chipped samples off walls, ceilings, and floors. Then he took them to a lab in Boston He didn’t tell the lab the source of the chunk or his intentions. The lab found only traces of cyanide in the sample, which Leuchter then trumpeted as proof nobody was gassed at the camps. But cyanide only penetrates the depth of a human hair, and when the lab pulverized the samples, they diluted them. Too late: Leutner had already spread word of his “proof.” It’s easy to convince people of the lies they want to believe but difficult to argue them out of those beliefs, no matter how strong the evidence. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/39 "2019-11-22T07:25:22Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Well, that one is much more debatable. No, it isn’t. > [@](#): > > I mean, there was a war You may have heard of a little thing called WWII? > [@](#): > > and the Armenians did side with the enemy Like all those Polish and French and other enemy Jews, you mean? > [@](#): > > it is hard to tell if the Government actually organized a _planned systemic genocide_. Other than by literally bragging about just that, you mean… When your whole argument hinges around “weren’t quite as efficient at planning their murder as the Nazis would later be”, you may want to rethink your stance. Anyway, a shittily-planned genocide is still a genocide, so still not debatable at all. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2019, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762/40 "2019-11-22T10:33:10Z")
Holocaust deniers come in three flavors. 1. Nazis (Odd because you would think anyone who is a real Nazi would be cool with mass murder.) 2. Troublemakers (I recall a story of a denier who brought a Black lady as his date to a Holocaust denier dinner. Holocaust denier dinners seem to be a thing.) 3. Kids who simply are saying strange stuff because they are not too educated. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holocaust-denial/843762.md?page=3)