The Holocaust is not really comparable to all the people who died under Stalin or other communists. Most of those people were peasants who died from starvation…this is a horrible thing, no doubt, but it is not the same as being deliberately rounded up, put on trains, and shipped to a death factory for the purpose of permanently exterminating their bloodlines forever.
I don’t think the Holocaust was all that unique, horrific though it was. It was preceded by the Armenian genocide in 1915 in which about 1.5 million Armenians were killed. They weren’t a separate country at the time, so I’d argue that this, too, happened to a people, not a country.
Yes, the Armenian genocide was the same sort of thing. And the Turks are still busy denying it.
Thank you for starting this thread. Every time I open teh Dope and see that piece of shit thread on the top page I want to cry.
My dad has a number.
My mom’s last vision of her mother and younger sister were of them walking away to the gas chamber as she and three other sisters clutched on to each other in silent desperation.
I get nauseated just looking at the name of that thread.
You are most welcome. The deniers and the sly deniers like human_extinction play to people who have talk show idiots do their heavy lifting thinking for them. They do not understand that mature people who have dedicated their lives to the crimes of the Holocaust (and I am of the group that says it is not unique, but rather common throughout history, just much more extensive in the case of the Nazis trying to exterminate the Jews) can and have made museums and storehouses and vast databases proving these claims beyond any doubt raised by a bigoted blowhard. There are about six million known names of Jewish people who were exterminated. The Nazis kept records that were mind numbing in their comprehensiveness.
We cannot be a free people without access to historical knowledge and an acceptance of the truth. The deniers, birthers, creationists have truly marked themselves with the mark of the beast as serving ignorance. Hitler and his goons forced this kind of ignorance on their world and millions died. They were not monsters, they were homo sapiens that gave in their own cult of hateful revenge fantasy and excluded all outside from their definition of humanity. Any of us could turn into Heinrich Himmler if we give in to our innate greed, arrogance and lust for control over our environment.
Exactly. All of you crying outrage would do well to include the non-Jews killed by the nazis as well.
ETA: Also, what mhendo said.
The first time someone told me that there were people who denied that the Holocaust happened, I thought that it was “wishful thinking”, that to them it was so horrible that they just couldn’t believe it.
What I don’t get is why everyone is just so polite to this guy?
That is complete bullshit. Ever heard of a gulag?
(Note – I’m not trying to down play the Holocaust here. However, don’t start on “Well, the Soviets really weren’t all that bad.” I had a professor who spent time in one of the gulags. He could tell you otherwise.)
Don’t hijack this thread. If you want to start another thread about your related subject feel free to do so. This thread is about denial of the systemic genocidal murder of Jews. Nobody here is denying that millions of others were killed by the same people. What we are pitting here is the casual denial of the genocide of European Jews as though it were an acceptable subject of normal conversation.
Blow me. Report the post and shut up, if that’s how you feel.
Holocaust deniers deny all of the killings by the nazi regime. Failing to mention other ethnicities or groups murdered by nazis might not be as bad as overall denial, but it’s highly disrespectful, especially as you keep talking about how we need to learn lessons from history, and prevent these atrocities in the future, etc. etc.
And wasn’t it you who posted about the Turks still denying the Armenian genocide? That’s not “about denial of the systemic genocidal murder of Jews.”
(Also you meant systematic, not systemic.)
(my bolding)
Really? Are you so arrongantly stupid that you can compare the three in the same breath?
Holocaust denial require denying one single fact for which there is lots of evidence, it requires no interpretation.
Birthers are a microscopic and US-centered brand of stupidity that will disappear in 8 years max.
Creationism, at worst, requires not understanding the concept of radioactive decay and half-life and it doesn’t require hating people.
…you forgot tenthers in your shitlist.
You’re the kind of person who tries to hijack a thread about Holocaust denial.
human_extinction is a moron, you can get a feel that he’s a moron just from the user name. Then you read his OP in the thread, and he confirms it. There’s having an open mind, and there’s having a hole in the head so that any stray object can cause brain damage. He has the latter and thinks it’s the former.
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.
You know, when i think “Holocaust,” i think of Nazi extermination. I don’t just think of the Jews, but of the gays, the Roma, and all the others involved. I recognize that the term Holocaust is often applied specifically to the killing of Jews, but i don’t see it that way, and holocaust deniers often include these other groups in their denial of systematic Nazi atrocities.
I don’t see that it’s a hijack to mention them. YMM—and apparently does—V.
Responding to someone you think hijacked the thread is hijacking the thread. In fact, it is probably worse, as there can now be an infinite number of posts like mine. You do better to just try to steer the conversation back on track.
Anyways, I actually think ivn1188 has a point (for once :D). The public is already rewriting the Holocaust history by leaving out the non-Jews. That does not bid well, if such things are cumulative*.
*Definition 3b. Best word I could think of.
I don’t think it’s a hijack, but I do think the situation with Roma, gays, etc is different. The reason being, nobody accuses a giant conspiracy of Roma or gays of trying to perpetrate a great hoax about the Holocaust onto the world. The denial of the Holocaust is, in effect, a direct continuation of the specifically anti-Jewish sentiment which alleged that the Jews were a predatory and deceitful people whose aim was only to sap and destroy Gentile nations, and that they acted as a unified group and had the power to hurt Germany. This “big Jewish conspiracy” attitude is still around now (except it’s called "big Zionist conspiracy.) Holocaust denial is very closely tied with conspiracy theories about Jewish domination of the world or of America.
This is absolutely untrue - there is much MORE discussion of the non-Jewish groups who were killed nowadays than there was in the past. No question about it. And if I remember correctly the Holocaust Museum has sections about the non-Jews who were killed.
Which suggests that it is perfectly appropriate to include those groups in a discussion of the holocaust and holocaust denial. If the Holocaust Museum isn’t an authority, i’m not sure who else would qualify.
Depends on the context of course. If the Denier is using their Conspiracy Theory to claim that there is an evil world-wide Jewish conspiracy and/or to claim that “Zionism” created/allowed/deliberately distorts the Holocaust, or some such then no.
If the Denier claims that the Nazis were just misunderstood, then pointing out that they butchered gays, Jews, Rom, etc… is well within the scope.
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. Any attempt to deny the holocaust, whatever the reason, will also, by definition, erase the history of those victims of Nazi crimes.
It’s not that he is inaccurate, he isn’t. Many people who were not Jewish were exterminated too. Anyone considered an enemy of the state was exterminated. Ukrainians were exterminated in mass, etc. 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.
Wiki has a pretty good article on the Holocaust. The Holocaust - Wikipedia