In fact, racists do tend to downplay the evils of slavery as much as they can manage. They don’t generally carry it to the absurd extreme of outright denial, probably because slavery, having occurred over a couple centuries under well-documented peacetime conditions, is less susceptible to obfuscation that the Holocaust, which took place within a decade under conditions where deaths can be handwaved under the Irvingoid “this crap happens in war” rationalization.
From Jesus Is Magic
I’ve heard an awful lot of “The blacks had it much better here, even as slaves then they would have in the jungles of Africa” from too many sources.
Personally, I would consider him an ex-acquaintance. A friend/relative/lover/ I can see making an attempt to change his/her view, but I would not waste any of my time on an acquaintance.
Okay, let’s accept your friend’s argument that the Holocaust “only” killed one million Jews.
In 1942 the U.S. government sent 110,000-120,000 Japanese-Americans to internment camps for the rest of the war. The last of them weren’t released until March 1946.
The death toll in the 11 camps totaled 1,862. That’s about 1.7%.
Your friend is arguing that Nazi practices were so poor that ONE MILLION Europeans died in their camps while the U.S. could keep the mortality rate in its camps below 2%? And that’s supposed to be proof of their innocence?
So if the Nazis weren’t deliberately trying to kill the Jews, they were really, really, really bad at housekeeping.
Africa does kinda suck…
and
They got to ride Jefferson
My favorite dichotomy - evil or incompetent.
Yeah, Germans are well renouned for their incompetence.
They also twist themself up into real knots over the Middle East. If my enemy’s friend is my friend and all, then hating on the Jews puts them in bed with the Arabs. But they are dangerously non-white and all.
They always manage to throw in here as well the idea that “international Jewry” declared war on Germany, and so internment was legitimate. And for the Jews own good.
And I the effort at shifting things onto allied bombing/blockades is nauseating too - when you look at the photos of well fed Germans being made to carry emaciated bodies to mass graves post-liberation. Looking down the thread, there is an estimate of 12 million victims - well, if we use the Deniers’ mathematics, because Allied actions were supposedly partially responsible for these deaths, we can put Hitler’s death toll much higher - surely we have to include the 20 million Soviet citizens killed in the Great Patriotic War.
Pretty much what Little Nemo said above. The claim is that a large number of Jews did die, but it was mostly due to the chaos at the end of the war, as well as isolated instances of persecution, not due to a program of extermination.
This hasn’t been addressed. Ayn Rand wasn’t a Libertarian. She considered herself to be an Objectivist. The Libertarian Party founded themselves largely on her philosophy but she didn’t care for them very much. She was from Russia and was ethnically Jewish but didn’t practice the religion.
I have dealt with this one before.
“Look dad (or FIL in some cases), 1 million or 6 million - they rounded up anyone they considered “undesirable,” and either actively or passively killed them all. That makes them the bad guys.”
Quibbling about numbers is just a way to ignore the horrors, and it lets your debate opponent play on their home field. Don’t step into the trap, just ask whether 1 million vs. 6 million takes them from Totally Fucking Evil Bastards to only Totally Evil Bastards.
If you’re talking about an actual Objectivist, there’s nothing in the philosophy that is anti-semitic.
Jefferson Bus Lines? Now that’s movin’ on up!
I’ve seen a few misconceptions among non-deniers over the years, like assuming the six million were killed at Auschwitz and similar camps. Rather than some ultra-secret industrial process controlled and executed by a handful of fanatics making people disappear without a trace, most of the killings were done openly with the compliance (if not the eager assistance) of collaborators wherever the Nazis invaded, typically by force-marching the Jews out of the town they were living (or had been relocated to) to a nearby pit or ravine and shooting them.
The Holocaust, I figure, doesn’t represent some aberration in European history - pogroms and abuses and murders of Jews had been going on for centuries. The Holocaust was only unusual in that it was coupled with then-modern communication and then-modern (but by no means cutting-edge) technology, and recorded with then-modern cameras to leave evidence that deniers can’t simply wish away.
Thanks for all the responses. So from what I can gather, we came up with the 6 million number based on how many Jews were around before the Holocaust compared to how many Jews were around after the Holocaust and you get something like 6 million.
He’s not a friend, he’s someone I run into at barbecues and stuff because he works with a friend of a friend.
In the words of another mass murderer:
I’m not suggesting baiting the guy at your next barbecue, but one of the more terrible, hilarious statements I’ve ever heard from someone with a similar opinion to your acquaintance is that “Only one million were killed by the Nazis, the rest moved to New York”, said completely seriously.
So if you feel like it, ask him where the other four to five million Jews went and see if you get something like that out of him.
The six million figure originally came from Adolf Eichmann (Mr. “Final Solution”) himself. And there’s a lot of documentation besides population estimates pre- and post Nazism, using death camp records (about 3.5 million killed) and investigation by Soviet authorities of those murdered by SS squads after the invasion of the Soviet Union.
According to this article, the commonly accepted death figure for the Holocaust may well be too low.
People who deny major aspects of the Holocaust including presenting ludicrously low estimates of casualties do this for one reason only - to advance their anti-Semitic beliefs. Look at any major figure in the Holocaust denial movement from David Irving on through all the other top bozos, and it’s easy to find examples of obvious bigotry. A casual acquaintance who’s glommed on to this stuff and has already reached adulthood is probably a lost cause. Facts will be handwaved away as part of a conspiracy by Them.