From this Reuters wire story:
I was under the impression that most holocaust deniers were neo-nazis-skin-head-type people. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my brother’ would make Muslim extemists some how aligned with neo-nazis? That can’t be right. But what purpose does it serve Muslim extemists to deny the holocaust?
Please note I’m only refering to the extemist elements and not the Muslim mainstream.
You can’t generalize too much about these things. David Irving, a British ideolouge who wrote history books, and who was once famous for denying the Holocaust (loudly, and was convicted in a German court for it), is very middle-class.
I’ve known of deniers who were Christians, Muslims, Buddists, athiests, agnostics and even a few Jews (yup, I said Jews). There’s some in every group.
The “purpose” it serves, as in any group, is different for everyone, but primarily it is an anti-semitic position that holds that the Jews made up the whole thing to gain sympathy for their cause (which, in this mode of thought, is world domination by Jews). In their hatred of Jews, anti-semites don’t really care about common sense or evidence, just as Bush-haters don’t, or Clinton-haters, or Kerry-haters, or anyone else with a grudge against any individual or group.
Now, we aren’t talking about common sense here; we’re talking about an ideological position that simply denies that evidence of the mass murder of some 11 million people between 1938 and 1945 actually exists. This position studies the existing artifacts and declares them to be fakes, misinterpreted or inoperable, and eyewitness accounts as being either fabrications or mass delusions.
Remember, we aren’t talking about common sense or a reasoned position, we’re only talking about the tons of evidence and millions of stories and tattoos just being dismissed as “mistakenly interpreted” or “fabricated.”
Using the same “logic” we could unequivacally state that slavery never existed in the US.
However, using the techniques that the Holocaust-deniers say are at work people have managed to pull off some real atrocity hoaxes that slipped by for at least a few minutes, the most prominent being the No Gun Ri non-massacre from the Korean conflict. This bit of fantasy was described primarily by one individual who demonstrably was not doing what he said he was doing (he was a mechanic, not a combat soldier), nor was he in the place he said he was (in fact, he wasn’t even in Korea at the time). Nontheless a book was rushed to press in the late '90s (now something of an oddity), that is now dismissed in historical circles as a complete fabrication.
Yet, Holocaust denial is still a boom industry. Some people’s kids…
Thanks John. I guess that’s the part that causes the most concern, ‘some people’s kids.’ I got the impresson that these were high school age kids. They are getting these ideas from home. They are sent to school not to get an education. Are they there only because education is manditory? Subjects like holocaust denial make my head spin.
Tell me more about this No Gun Ri thing. You’re saying it was a hoax?
Cheers.
Can you please change the title of your thread in:
Some schoolchildren in France seem to deny the Holocaust happened.
Or do you actualy believe that some schoolchildren who want to rebel because of rebellion and choose for this whatever that suits them best to provoke (wether they believe themselves in it or not) represent" Muslims" as in “all Muslims” as your title indicates.
If yes, do you have objections to thread titles like:
"Christians deny … "
Fill in at will. We can start for example with “Holocaust” and end with “evolution”.
Then we can go on with other religions and next start with non-religious people until we had all the different groups that live on this globe.
Can you in addition post where I can find publications of academic researches proving your assertion that these children “aren’t sent to school to get an education”?
I think that in case you can provide for this we actually can get a debate started on that one.
Thank you.
Salaam. A
Green Feather,
The rest of us read your caveat about your referring only to some extremists. Don’t sweat it.
There is a fair amount of Holocaust denial in Arab media, and not just extremist media but mainstream state run media as well. The sources documenting it are no doubt biased and do not document any more moderate views if they exist. They include the ADL site and MEMRI http://www.memri.org/antisemitism.html But the cites they make, while perhaps selective, are real.
Holocaust denial, claims of Holocaust exaggeration, slanderous accusations that Jews “abuse the memory of the Holocaust” for political means - to intimidate the West to support Israel … all are common themes. Antisemitism, not just for skinheads anymore.
Seems like if you hate Jews and blame them for everything, you can find friends wherever you go or (more relevant to the OP, maybe) whatever you think or look like. Wish somebody would tell me why that is.
I agree that the title is over stated. The title of the Reuters story is ‘French Law to Also Hit Pupils Denying Holocaust’. However, your suggested title is understated.
They don’t seem to deny it. They are in fact disrupting class to deny it. And it is a growing problem. That says to me that they are not there for an education, but to make a political statement.
I agree there are extreme Christians that deny evolution. The point I was trying to make was that I was unaware there were extreme Muslims that deny the holocaust. I can see why neo-nazis would deny it. After all, the nazis did it. I just don’t understand what advantage the extreme Muslims see in it.
I’ve noticed that oftentimes the perceived size and significance of the Holocaust appears to be a sort of counterweight to some peoples’ arguments about what right Israel has to exist today.
An emotive argument can be attacked both by questioning both the facts and/or the logic supporting it. It seems to me that when the questioning is also factually or logically flawed, it’s really just another emotive argument.
And that’s about all I care to say about that.
Some Muslims see Israel as the enemy, especially many Palestinians and Palestinian supporters. As in all wars, propaganda negative to the other side, even propaganda without merit, becomes more readily embraced as fact by the other. Thus, we have stories of WMDs in Iraq believed by two presidents, and treatises denying the magnitude of the Holocaust written by prominent historians treated as school texts in many Arab/Muslim areas.
Why would anyone who really hates the Jews want to deny the Holocaust? You’d think they’d admire Hitler’s bold attempt to rid the world of jews, and be sorry it failed.
Can you say bad PR? There’s been a long standing desire to make their goals more ‘mainstream’ so you have to soften the image. You talk about white power not black suppression (and more recently ‘loving’ your own race not mentioning that seems to imply hating the other race). You talk about keeping the races separate not murdering the other colors. It must be hard to lose every arguement b/c your greatest hero was just a jumped up mass murder.
I knew a guy back in the 70s who’d been a Peace Corps worker in Afghanistan, and was surprised to find a statue of Hitler in some small town. The locals didn’t feel strongly about the Holocaust one way or another; they were just really impressed that he’d killed so many Russians.
Not just me. Congress, DOD, even the New York Times says is was. One of the few retractions of a story they ever ran was on No Gun Ri. One month they were demanding an inquiry on the front page, and the next month they were running a retraction on page 10.
Ironically the guy who made up the whole thing, and was instrumental in “gathering the facts” – which amounted to contacting a bunch of Korea War veterans, none of whom remembered him initially, and talking about a massacre until they were sure they remembered it – sticks to his story. According to one source he’s been on and off treatment for depression for about thirty years.
This is what’s called creating an implanted memory, and it’s what some folks – ex-spouses and their leach/lawyers, psychoanalyists, prosecutors – do to children they want to testify about child abuse that never happened. This is what Holocaust deniers say millions of people have done to “manufacture” such horror.
The reason I ask is that I saw a documentary on it, with info put together by AP types. There were scarred koreans aplenty with harrowing tales to tell. Also, the programme (on UK History) told us that the South Korean authorities have registered 61 complaints of ‘war crimes’, one of which has been acknowledged. So the whole thing was made up?
I’m more concerned about the documents they showed (forged?) that specifically told US units not to allow columns of refugees to cross their lines. No Gun Ri was only one of the incidents they mentioned. Another was the shelling of civilians on a beach by US vessels.
Apologies for the hijack. I would have thought holocaust denial is just silly. But then teenage kids can be, particularly if they feel they are being persecuted by the French government. Also, dare I say it, I would have thought that holocaust guilt is a given in relations with Israel, and Sharon has noticed this, and accuses all-and-sundry of being anti-semitic as a result.
I’m probably wrong.
Cheers.
Amongst the guys in the office is a real belief the Holocaust has been exaggerated and that in some way the Jew provoked the Nazis. This is not as silly as it sounds. Many people who do not study history seem to think that the mass killing was some sort of punishment for behavior.
Marwan, my little AQ sympathizer has a standing order with me to get him a DVD of Shindler’s List. It is still not out, the director wants to add a bunch of extra stuff. The tape is banned here, but I smuggle stuff in all the time.
Anyway, to most Saudis the Holocaust is just another part of European history, a pretty obscure subject.
Pretty much, yes. That 20/20 special report was made to capitalize on the original allegations from the sole source that became widely disseminated after a unit reunion in 1999. The “Korean interviews” were conducted on camera with a native interpreter present. Most of the translations were provided post-production, and when the entire interview was reviewed it became clear that the questions that the “refugees” were asked were not the same the news crew was putting. THose that responded in Englisn were asked questions off-camera and the camera was turned on when they responded.
Those documents are quite genuine, were the policy of the time (and make perfect tactical sense). The NKPA at the time was infiltrating into US laager areas inside refugee columns, and it was impossible for tactical units to conduct through searches, so the traffic was just cut off.
“Civilians” in the Korean conlict were often difficult to parse from guerrillas (Vietnam was not our first guerilla war). I will not make apologies for any atrocities that may have happened, but No Gun Ri was not one of them.
That was a reasoned, informative post, right up to the point where you say you won’t apologise for atrocities. Why? Fair enough, No Gun Ri might not have been one of them, but why would you be unrepentant about war crimes? Do you extend the same priviledge to other nations?
Again, apologies for not talking about the holocaust, but there’s only so much you can talk about.
Cheers.
The context may be worth noting here - some teenagers pipe up in a classroom saying something shocking and insulting - so what’s new ?
If you add in the rivalry between jews and ‘beurs’ that can be found in many French neighborhoods, these remarks are not so surprising.
I wouldn’t interpret this stuff too literally. My take is that French politicians and media are playing a dangerous game, focussing way too much attention on ethnic and religious divisions.
I was under the impression that they were attempting to control those divisions, by reducing the outward symbols of religions from their (secular) schools. Admirable, I would have thought - and not really deserving of the Hitler-comparison Ken Livingstone weighed in with…
Cheers.