# human\_extinction thinks we should consider Holocaust denial **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 27, 2009, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733 "2009-09-27T06:33:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/41 "2009-09-28T02:36:39Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > I don’t really agree with the first part. Just because the Denier happens to have a specifically anti-Semitic motivation doesn’t erase those other groups from reality. I said even approaches a tacit implication that any groups are “erased from reality”. What I did point out is that in the context of accusations of a global Jewish conspiracy, one can address the actual accusations rather than bringing up German homosexuals, which while factually accurate are contextually irrelevant to claims of a global Jewish conspiracy. ---
**Author:** ![Claude\_Remains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/898d66/32.png) [@Claude\_Remains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claude_Remains)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/42 "2009-09-28T02:50:53Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > The above is why holocaust denial will probably be politically mainstream by 2050. As it stops being part of living memory, people will keep trying to disprove it, and they’ll eventually succeed. How in fuck will it stop being part of living memory? And if you would be so kind as to P.M. me maybee you could tell me how to get this Jesus guy the fuck out of here. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/43 "2009-09-28T02:52:55Z")
Do you understand what the concept of “living memory” means? ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/44 "2009-09-28T02:54:16Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > The point of Holocaust denial is to deny that the Jews were specially targeted as scapegoats for everything wrong that happened to Germany and as the specific enemy within and murdered for it. Denial suggests that special efforts were not made to murder all European Jews above and beyond all other categories of hated people. All too often denial is about denying that all European Jews were targeted and the vast majority murdered. While I am among the camp that includes all victims of the Holocaust, the Holocaust was motivated by a specific hatred of Jews. The contention that the Holocaust was a peculiarly Jewish event (with perhaps an occasional non-Jewish victim as well) is far from as incontrovertible thesis as you suppose. And while I don’t think anyone here will deny that there was a very real and murderous anti-Semitic dimension to the Holocaust, or that there is such a thing as the Jewish experience of the Holocuast, your apparent claim that this particular experience of the Holocaust as being the most authentic or most meaningful is, in my opinion, an unsupportable position. ---
**Author:** ![Claude\_Remains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/898d66/32.png) [@Claude\_Remains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claude_Remains)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/45 "2009-09-28T02:55:17Z")
Yes.Perhaps you do not. ---
**Author:** ![Claude\_Remains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/898d66/32.png) [@Claude\_Remains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claude_Remains)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/46 "2009-09-28T03:04:11Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Do you understand what the concept of “living memory” means? Did I fuck you up with the Jesus snark? Sorry. Still some folks claim that Jesus is alive and well and talk to him every day. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/47 "2009-09-28T03:04:55Z")
Macmillan Dictionary defines living memory as “during the time that anyone still alive can remember.” Maybe you have some super-dictionary that has the _real_ meaning, but I think the commonly accepted definition of the phrase refers to the memories of people who are still alive. In other words, Holocaust survivors. There will be a time when no Holocaust survivors remain. Just like there will be a time when no World War II veterans remain. ---
**Author:** ![Claude\_Remains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/898d66/32.png) [@Claude\_Remains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claude_Remains)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/48 "2009-09-28T03:25:39Z")
Oh, I get it now. Thank you. so now that the last survivor of the Titanic has perished it never happened? ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/49 "2009-09-28T04:03:31Z")
> [@Claude\_Remains](#): > > Oh, I get it now. No, apparently you don’t. Nobody said anything about it never happening, just that when it fades from living memory, it will be that much easier for those who don’t believe it (or claim not to) to make that claim, because there will only be inanimate reminders, and noone to say, “Yes, I was there, I saw it, it happened to me.” Records and artifacts are easier to dismiss or explain away. ---
**Author:** ![Claude\_Remains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/898d66/32.png) [@Claude\_Remains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claude_Remains)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/50 "2009-09-28T04:10:57Z")
Oh, now I get it. ---
**Author:** ![emcee2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7bcc69/32.png) [@emcee2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emcee2k)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/51 "2009-09-28T05:57:57Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > I don’t agree, at least in terms of the way you argue it. > > Sure, the holocaust is unique, like just any historical phenomenon. But it’s not unique in the way it’s so often portrayed. I get frustrated by the constant attempt to place Hitler and the Holocaust outside of history, to assume that they constitute a phenomenon that is so unusual that it cannot be explained logically and historically. I think, in fact, that the scariest thing about Hitler and the Holocaust is that they are eminently comprehensible, and that they are different only in degree from many other cases of horrible inhumanity that one could point to in the historical record. > > Hitler and the Holocaust are often portrayed as somehow inexplicable by reference to normal ideas of logic and historicism. But to take this position is to suggest that we really can’t say anything about them at all, that they are like the boogey-man under the bed, existing not as a real historical phenomena, but simply as a metaphor to be dragged out when we need to embody “evil.” I’m not saying that the Holocaust was unique, as in inexplicable. My point is to refute the idea that the Holocaust gets too much notice today, and the idea that the amount of notice a tragic event gets should be directly proportional to body count. Historical tragedies can be put in categories. To understand how and why an event in one of those categories occurred, you only need to study the category as a whole. When I say that the Holocaust is unique, I’m saying that it doesn’t fit neatly into one of those categories. Therefor, specific notice has to be given to it to understand it, and to prevent it’s recurrence. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/52 "2009-09-28T06:15:28Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > What I don’t get is why everyone is just so _polite_ to this guy? GD rules. If he was in the pit, I would had told him to stick his dick in a can of Zyklon-B.. For delousing purposes, that is. As he never came back with the source of where he came with the idea that many experts claimed that the gas was used mostly for delousing, I have to say that my suspicions gained just by seeing his user name were correct. He was not just being a “devil’s advocate” ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/53 "2009-09-28T07:36:02Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > The public is already rewriting the Holocaust history by leaving out the non-Jews. Except they aren’t. Any credible history, at all, will include a figure of roughly 11 million. That isn’t in dispute. What also isn’t in dispute was that Hitler rose to power by fomenting hatred of Jews, cemented his power by using Germany’s hatred of Jews, directed that power via an organized and deliberately targeted campaign of extermination against the Jews and did all of this in full transparency while stating that Germany’s real enemies were the Jews. The drive of certain people to make the Holocaust ‘just something that happened to a bunch of people, some of whom happened to be Jews’ is… weird. It was about the Jews from day one, and while other groups were certainly targeted for opposition to Nazi policy or Nazi (racial) ideology, ignoring that the Holocaust was about the Jews is nonsensical. ---
**Author:** ![emcee2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7bcc69/32.png) [@emcee2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emcee2k)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/54 "2009-09-28T08:01:00Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Except they aren’t. Any credible history, at all, will include a figure of roughly 11 million. That isn’t in dispute. What? No. It’s definitely in dispute. Whether or not the murder of non-Jews, should be include under the term Holocaust has been debated for years. I don’t even think the 11 million count is even in the majority. On the other hand, the idea that excluding non-Jews from the term is “rewriting history”, is also false. It referred specifically to the Jewish genocide before it became a blanket term for all the Nazis’ mass killings. ---
**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:** [September 28, 2009, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/55 "2009-09-28T11:22:43Z")
> [@emcee2k](#): > > What? No. It’s definitely in dispute. Whether or not the murder of non-Jews, should be include under the term Holocaust has been debated for years. This is true. > [@](#): > > I don’t even think the 11 million count is even in the majority. I used it because it was the lowest commonly-cited figure. > [@](#): > > On the other hand, the idea that excluding non-Jews from the term is “rewriting history”, is also false. Agreed. I wouldn’t use the expression. Probably “A little twee” or something would be more appropriate. > [@](#): > > It referred specifically to the Jewish genocide before it became a blanket term for all the Nazis’ mass killings. …and before that Churchill used it for the Armenian Genocide, and it was used to refer to WWI _in toto_, et-bloody-cetera. So that point is irrelevant - Jews don’t own the term, never have. Use “Shoah” or “Endlösung” or whatever if you want to get specific as to the Jewish-only aspects of the Holocaust. ---
**Author:** ![emcee2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7bcc69/32.png) [@emcee2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emcee2k)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/56 "2009-09-28T12:23:25Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > …I used it because it was the lowest commonly-cited figure. By the “11 million count” I meant including non-Jews in the Holocaust. > [@MrDibble](#): > > …Agreed. I wouldn’t use the expression. Probably “A little twee” or something would be more appropriate…and before that Churchill used it for the Armenian Genocide, and it was used to refer to WWI _in toto_, et-bloody-cetera. So that point is irrelevant - Jews don’t own the term, never have. Use “Shoah” or “Endlösung” or whatever if you want to get specific as to the Jewish-only aspects of the Holocaust. I should be more clear. I mean “the Holocaust”, with a capital H, and the word “the” in front of it. ---
**Author:** ![Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Kimmy\_Gibbler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimmy_Gibbler)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/57 "2009-09-28T13:57:17Z")
> [@emcee2k](#): > > I should be more clear. I mean “the Holocaust”, with a capital H, and the word “the” in front of it. I understand what you meant, but there is a problem with using the first-in-time method, isn’t there? Some of these groups were denigrated among the liberators as well. The 1940’s in Western Europe and America wasn’t exactly a high-water mark for the rights of racial, ethnic, or sexual minorities or the disabled. It was only in 1942 that _Skinner v. Oklahoma_ began to abate the compulsory sterilization of the mentally handicapped that won Supreme Court approval in _Buck v. Bell_. The Allies are said to have _re-imprisoned_ gay men, as Paragraph 175 was in their sight A-OK, and sentences thereunder did not need to be commuted. Thus, to say “The Holocaust” originally was used to refer specifically to Nazi atrocities against Jews–while an accurate statement–surely doesn’t account for the fact that our own prejudices were definitely still at play. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/58 "2009-09-28T15:04:27Z")
> [@Valgard](#): > > Years ago I watched a documentary on white supremacists. They showed some of the modern video tapes that those guys distribute and one tactic they push is that you don’t come out and tell somebody that “black people are inferior” or “Jews are evil” or whatever your actual message is. > > You say “I saw this fascinating film. It’s controversial. Why don’t you watch it and tell me what you think?” > > Now, every time I see some kind of whackjob theory presented that way - not by actually presenting any facts, but by asking people to sit through some extended diatribe and asking them “What do you think of that?” my BS meter pegs. Quite, Human Extinction was obviously a fascist troll who should have been banned 1.5 seconds after posting. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2009, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/59 "2009-09-28T16:32:26Z")
> [@emcee2k](#): > > What? No. It’s definitely in dispute. Do you mean “in dispute” much like it is “in dispute” whether or not we landed on the moon? If you claim that the rough estimate of 11-to-twelve million people butchered by the Nazis is in serious dispute (not, “It was 10.78!” “No, it was 11.42!”), please provide a cite from a reputable historian. If, on the other hand, you mean that some (or many) non-historians tend to understand that it was an effort to exterminate the Jews that ended up including others, as well, then that’s light years different from the 11 million figure being in dispute. And even then, I’m not aware of anybody, at all, who has argued that there should only be the six million counted and that anybody else butchered by the Nazis simply doesn’t count and shouldn’t be counted. That sounds like a massive strawman and I’d like a cite for that if anybody is claiming it. > [@emcee2k](#): > > Whether or not the murder of non-Jews, should be include under the term Holocaust has been debated for years. Notice what I was responding to, a claim that “Holocaust history” was being rewritten. But it isn’t. It’s not. Except by Deniers. Any reputable historian who looks at the death counts will note what they were. Historians are not, regardless of the strange views of some in this thread, engaged in covering up the deaths of gentiles in any way, shape, or form. History has not been ‘rewritten’. Any accurate and reputable historian who conducts an analysis of the period will mention all the deaths. ---
**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:** [September 28, 2009, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733/60 "2009-09-28T16:48:31Z")
> [@emcee2k](#): > > By the “11 million count” I meant including non-Jews in the Holocaust. Which you admit is up for debate… > [@](#): > > I should be more clear. I mean “the Holocaust”, with a capital H, and the word “the” in front of it. In which case, I’d just shrug and say “words change, get over it” - _especially_ when there **are** non-ambiguous terms that do refer to the specifically Jewish part of the whole sad affair. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/human_extinction-thinks-we-should-consider-holocaust-denial/511733.md?page=4)