I don’t understand why it’s still going, actually. Just from reading the topic title I thought “DFTT”.
So the holocaust never happened? Who knew?
Really, the OP of that topic is either a troll or batshit insane. I’m leaning more towards the former. Nothing anyone says will change his mind since he’s just here to get reactions (well, at least I think that, YMMV).
I don’t reply at all in GD. It scares the hell out of me. But I read it pretty often. It’s topics like that, though, that I wish they’d close down when it’s apparent it’s just silliness.*
*Actually some good discussion came out of it–so it wasn’t all bad–but at this time I’m thinking it’s time to stick a fork in it and say hi to the OP here.
Well, although the less detailed reports frequently leave this out, the Holocaust actually took place on the Holodeck, so there is considerable debate as to whether it really occurred or not.
Only a half hour? Apparently I’m a glutton for punishment, because I know I spent longer than that on the hope that it would get better.
I usually enjoy reading stuff like that because I find it interesting to try and figure out how people like the OP of that thread think. So far though, my conclusion is that they don’t.
I don’t think it’s a troll, as such (other than the highly amusing user name), or someone who’s insane. There are simply people who believe this, and base their world view on a single conspiratorial lens, through which every thing that has ever happened can be viewed. For him, it’s that Jews are to blame for everything. For others, it’s that a race of alien lizards is secretly behind the world governments. For still others, the alien lizards are Jewish.
This is what happens when you deprive people of a common mythological source for evil (eg the Devil), leave them to their own devices, and create the world wide web for them to nurture each other!
As for the rest, you got nuthin. As nutcases go, he’s certainly not the crunchiest. I’ve definitely seen way more far-out stuff on other message boards.
Are you pitting the mods for not closing it, the OP for creating it or yourself for reading it? Please note that self-pits are not allowed.
Good question. While making it the thought in my mind was the first: Just the fact that it hadn’t been closed yet. But right before I hit submit I thought how some ignorance was fought in the thread and how it spawned off SOME interesting discussion (hence the footnote I added).
But, really–at least in my opinion–the “okay, this is officially never going to go anywhere” point was reached in that thread by post 120 or so.
I’d like to take this opportunity to say- Germans, stop apologizing for the Holocaust! You were not personally involved!
Seriously, every German I meet feels the need to apologize. ‘I was not even born yet’ is a plenty good excuse. Besides which, I’m of German descent. Instead of apologizing, get me some beef wurst and play some Mozart.
Allan Gurfinkle shows his true colors in posts 205 and 275. He only cares about the holocaust in that it was used by some to rationalize the establishment of Israel as a Jewish state. This lead me to think he was your typical pro-Palestinian plant.
However, post 275 is particularly revealing when he says that slanders against the Nazis equals slanders against white Christian European society. I now think he believes the Palestinians are just as bad as the Jews but the Palestinians can be used (for now) to further his cause.
He’s your typical white supremacist. Nothing is going to change is his mind. I hope he either never has children or, if he does, they rebel something awful.
One standard reply to this sort of thing is that people may be reading the thread other than the people replying to it and the Monster Raving Loony who started it. Let’s face it, many people–most people–are probably pretty ignorant about a great many things. They believe the Holocaust happened for the same reason they believe the War of 1812 happened, or that there’s a country called Nepal somewhere in Asia–they learned about it from a book back in high school.
Now, along comes some guy who says the so-called War of 1812 is a big fat lie, or there’s not really any such place as “Nepal”, and he reels off all sorts of statistics and very practiced arguments allegedly debuking the nefarious Nepal Conspiracy. Well, how the hell are they supposed to know what’s true or not?
So, we post facts and arguments (in between truly massive amounts of snark) because supposedly this place is or will soon be indexed by Google, and you never know who might wander in here–maybe even someone who has run across one of these guys and is thinking “Damn, that can’t be right, can it? I mean, old Mrs. Wormwood, my high school history teacher, said there was a war in 1812/country called Nepal/deliberate mass murder of the Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II. Old Mrs. Wormwood wouldn’t have lied to me, would she?” and so they Googled “Holocaust hoax” and out we popped as link #12,742.
Also, hard-core deniers may be unlikely to see the error of their ways barring the discovery and succesful removal of a brain tumor; but I believe there have been cases of naive people who’ve been roped in and then later changed their minds (see Jean-Claude Pressac). Again, who knows who all could be reading that thread (or any other public argument on the subject); maybe someone who’s lurking and saying “Yeah, that’s right! Give those Holohoaxers what for! You tell 'em…Huh, I’d never heard that before. That–that can’t be right, can it?” Not right away of course, but cumulatively, perhaps simply from having the same old lies shot down and the same old facts presented over and over again, with new presentations.
