Holocaust denial

[Berzerker]

I was thinking of all the other non-Jewish semites

 

[Hygro]

Spicer should lose his job because it's a stark example of how incompetent he is. A press secretary should not be acting so amateurishly. It's very doubtful that he denies elements of the Holocaust, although it's possible he would downplay elements of it, or just be historically ignorant. In this case his amateurishness simply makes him look like a buffoon, but it's entirely possible that in other circumstances it could have real adverse consequences for the US, e.g. if he accidentally says something that precipitates conflict.

The fact that your (our) mind(s) wandered to the bolded shows just how bad his remark was.

 

[red_elk]

Just another case when US PR representative was talking out of his ass. Not the first, not the last time.

Nobody is saying to ignore Hitler's other victims. What people are saying is that it makes sense that a Jew-centric organization would refer to the Jews.

I'd say not-ignoring other Hitler's victims should apply to everybody including Jew-centric organizations.

 

[CKS]

I think some people heard: Even Hitler didn't use chemical weapons. This is just another stupid statement in a host of stupid statements.

I heard: Hitler didn't use chemical weapons _on his own people_. This leads to one of two rather disturbing conclusions, either the murdered people aren't "his people" - disturbing because Trump believes that many Americans aren't REAL Americans - or that the murdered people aren't people, which I'd say is not exactly Holocaust denial, but more like Holocaust approval - disturbing because of the racist tones in the current administration.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Or they knew he just made a dumbass mistake and they're using it to nail him because that's their agenda.

It seems that "holocaust-related-ignorance" is included in the concept of holocaust denial... which actually makes sense given Spicy's position. When you have the White House issuing statements that downplay or gloss over the holocaust, it lends credibility (such as it is) to others who would do the same.

In other words, I can see the justification for going after him on this.

 

[Ryika]

It seems that "holocaust-related-ignorance" is included in the concept of holocaust denial... which actually makes sense given Spicy's position. When you have the White House issuing statements that downplay or gloss over the holocaust, it lends credibility (such as it is) to others who would do the same.

In other words, I can see the justification for going after him on this.

It would make sense if they actually went after him by calling him an idiot, but they weren't doing that. They were accusing him of actually denying the holocaust, which his initial statement didn't do, and his later remarks (while being just as stupid as what he said first) pretty much clarified that he doesn't actually deny the holocaust.

The argument that "You didn't actually deny the holocaust, but you're still a holocaust denier because of <reasons>." is just stupid, and twisting the logic behind the phrase doesn't change that. They should have reacted by calling out his stupidity, not by making accusations that are clearly not true.

 

[Lexicus]

Hitler also said the Russians were subhuman, among tons of others. Jews were NOT the only minority the nazis were trying to wipe out. If antisemites use this to promote jew hatred that can't be helped, but that doesn't make it wrong. If David Duke says the grass is green and the sky is blue, he would still be correct.

You are wrong, the Jews were specially targeted for extermination. And attempting to deny this is playing into anti-Semitic nonsense at best, verging on Holocaust denial at worst.

I have genuinely no idea what you are trying to say to me.

He's peddling the usual anti-Semitic nonsense. Dude has a track record, it's not like we haven't seen him being anti-Semitic before.

 

[Ryika]

You are wrong, the Jews were specially targeted for extermination. And attempting to deny this is playing into anti-Semitic nonsense at best, verging on Holocaust denial at worst.

He didn't deny that though.

Both of you are right, I don't even understand what you're arguing about. The Jews WERE the major target of the holocaust, but at the same time they were not the ONLY targets of the holocaust.

 

[red_elk]

To be fair, I don't think he meant to whitewash Hitler. What he said was a stupid mistake, but not 'classic' Holocaust denial.

 

[Flying Pig]

The problem is that insisting that everyone mentions the non-Jews along with the Jews creates the sense that the two are vaguely equivalent, or at least vaguely in the same league. Hitler tried to completely annihilate the Jews and came close to it - something like a third of all the Jews in the world died in the Holocaust. An awful lot of other people died in the Holocaust too, and they should be remembered. But it should also be possible to acknowledge that the Holocaust has particular meaning to Jews, and to emphasise that Jews were not just one group caught up among many - they were the focus of the genocide and it continues to have important repercussions for Jewish people, in a way that it doesn't for most (but not all) of the other groups involved. The Nazis never had a plan to wipe out the Russians, though they killed about 3 million non-Jewish Russian PoWs (not counting millions more killed in battle, or starved in their homes). But Nazi ideology was all about wiping out the Jews.

There's also an important question of agenda. It matters that most people who say 'the Holocaust wasn't just about Jews' then go on to play down how severe it was for Jews, and usually on to say something about how 'Zionists' (that is, Jews) use it as a way of covering their various alleged evil-doings. It doesn't take long for that to get into exactly the same talk of an 'international Jewish (or 'Zionist') conspiracy' that was all too popular in Germany in the 1930s. When what you're saying plays to the interests of Neo-Nazis, it's a good time to examine whether you ought to be saying it.

EDIT: A bit of Googling brought me to this page, which is a rabbi explaining the problem with 'the Holocaust wasn't just about Jews'. To quote selectively:

Without detracting in any way from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated against all victims of Nazism, it seems that major distinctions exist between their Jewish and non-Jewish victims:

Only the Jews were singled out for total destruction. From the ideological principles formulated in Mein Kampf to the original anti-Jewish legislation in Germany of the 1930s, the Jews were singled out as the focus of German wrath. According to the Commentaries to the German Racial Laws of 1936:

"The Blood Protection Law deals with the segregation of Jewish and German blood from the biological point of view… As an acute danger threatened the German people from Jewry alone, the law aims primarily at the prevention of further mixing of blood with the Jews."2

The government-sponsored pogroms in November 1938 did not include Polish nationals or businesses or Catholic churches. Mass Jewish emigration was Germany's goal at that point. The formulation of the "Final Solution" to the Jewish problem in January 1942 did not treat the Polish or Russian ethnic problem or outline worldwide extermination of homosexuals, but dealt exclusively with the anticipated extermination of the 11 million Jews of Europe. At no point did any plan for the total murder of any other population exist formally or informally other than of the Jews.

These distinctions between Jewish and non-Jewish victims continued into the final months and days of the war. As the German Army retreated both on the Eastern and Western fronts, the effort to exterminate as many Jews as possible continued unabated. The ideal of reducing inferior Polish and Russian populations to make room for an expanded German Reich would not be realized, but the removal of as many Jews as possible from the world stage remained Germany's highest priority, to which resources continued to be directed even as the war was being lost. Nor were the Jews given a chance to reform or correct their ways. German homosexuals willing to accept therapy and rehabilitation would certainly have been spared, as would have the masses of Poles and Russians had they acquiesced to Aryan conquest of their lands.

No such option existed for the Jews.

At no point were the religious texts, objects, edifices or spiritual leaders of other populations targeted as were those of the Jews.

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

And then of course, there's Stalin's holocaust against the Ukrainians, the Holodomor...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Spicer should mention this in his next speech regarding Russia...

 

[Dida]

Its true that 6 million Jews died in ww2 but 20 million Russians died (some of whom were Jews) and 25 million Chinese died also. Total death toll of ww2 is something like 60m. Yes the Jews were the subject of genocide, but I think it is not in any way anti semitic to say they were not the only people that suffered hugely during that period of time. This does not in any way absolve the nazis of their crime but actually adds to it.

 

[red_elk]

The problem is that insisting that everyone mentions the non-Jews along with the Jews creates the sense that the two are vaguely equivalent, or at least vaguely in the same league.

The other problem is mentioning Jews only creates the sense that there were no other victims except them.
Some people were selected for total extermination, others (like Slavs), for partial. I think this makes two cases at least vaguely in the same league

 

[Bootstoots]

Well, the Nazis focused primarily on the Jews as their first targets, but Generalplan Ost envisaged killing or deporting to a rump state in Siberia large percentages of the Slavs in their way (ranging from 50% of Czechs, to 85% of Poles, Lithuanians, and Russians, to 100% of Jews of course). They got around to killing the Jews first because they were Nazis, but then they lost the war with the vast majority of the secondary Slavic targets still alive. If they'd won, it's reasonable to assume that the majority of Slavs in their new Lebensraum would have been killed, forcibly assimilated, or deported (mostly killed, I assume) over the following couple of decades.

Of course, Hitler's thinking here was basically that he wanted to be like the US, where we did push continually westward, committing a long series of wars and genocides until the conquest was complete and we had the whole temperate part of a vast continent by 1890, with the few survivors consigned to worthless chunks of land in the middle of nowhere, where their descendants continue to suffer desperate poverty to this day. The Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders did the exact same thing with the same success. I fault his tactics and his focus on the Jews specifically, but as a member of a settler colonial society myself, I totally understand the brutal and inhumane logic of the whole settler-colonial scheme.

To my mind, the main difference between them and us is that our genocides worked. Germany committed the faux pas of attempting a huge settler colonial project in Europe, and doing it too quickly without the aid of disease, thereby biting off more than he could chew. He also did it like a century after settler colonialism had become uncool, not that it was ever really cool to do it in Europe rather than to find some other continent to exploit.

 

[AmtrakQuebec]

Well, the Nazis focused primarily on the Jews as their first targets, but Generalplan Ost envisaged killing or deporting to a rump state in Siberia large percentages of the Slavs in their way (ranging from 50% of Czechs, to 85% of Poles, Lithuanians, and Russians, to 100% of Jews of course). They got around to killing the Jews first because they were Nazis, but then they lost the war with the vast majority of the secondary Slavic targets still alive. If they'd won, it's reasonable to assume that the majority of Slavs in their new Lebensraum would have been killed, forcibly assimilated, or deported (mostly killed, I assume) over the following couple of decades.

Of course, Hitler's thinking here was basically that he wanted to be like the US, where we did push continually westward, committing a long series of wars and genocides until the conquest was complete and we had the whole temperate part of a vast continent by 1890, with the few survivors consigned to worthless chunks of land in the middle of nowhere, where their descendants continue to suffer desperate poverty to this day. The Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders did the exact same thing with the same success. I fault his tactics and his focus on the Jews specifically, but as a member of a settler colonial society myself, I totally understand the brutal and inhumane logic of the whole settler-colonial scheme.

To my mind, the main difference between them and us is that our genocides worked. Germany committed the faux pas of attempting a huge settler colonial project in Europe, and doing it too quickly without the aid of disease, thereby biting off more than he could chew. He also did it like a century after settler colonialism had become uncool, not that it was ever really cool to do it in Europe rather than to find some other continent to exploit.

Erm, no... Canada DId NOT massacre the natives, nor did they give them purposely diseased blankets. In fact, Canada took in the natives that were getting slaughtered by the Americans.

 

[Flying Pig]

Hitler occupied Poland for 6 years, and made no meaningful efforts to get rid of the Polish Slavs, however you interpret that euphemism. Removing the Jews from Germany was part of Nazi rhetoric and policy for as long as Hitler was involved with them. It wasn't that he hated Jews and Poles, but hated Jews more - all of Nazism was tied around hating and eliminating Jews.

There's a good book - The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze - which is on paper an economic history, but does an excellent job of pointing out that Hitler's foreign policy (particularly war with America) and his hatred of Jews were not separate. Everything the Nazis did was part of what they saw as the crusade against international Jewry. Bolshevism was evil because it was part of the Jewish conspiracy. 'Jewish Bolshevik' was one word. America was (apparently) a country taken over by international Jewry, and so had to be attacked even when that made no military or political sense, because they were only going to get stronger and the apocalyptic clash of civilisations was inevitable, at least if you subscribe to Nazi ideology.

There is a huge difference between that sort of single-mindedness and the policy of Lebensraum, or Hitler's hatred of anyone who wasn't blonde and German.

 

[caketastydelish]

He's peddling the usual anti-Semitic nonsense. Dude has a track record, it's not like we haven't seen him being anti-Semitic before.

And when was this?

 

[caketastydelish]

Side note: Jews were definitely the primary target of the holocaust (more Jews were killed than everything else combined) but they were not the only people stuck in the concentration camps.

Anyway, link me a post I made on CFC where I was anti-Semitic, or apologize.

 

[Lexicus]

Anyway, link me a post I made on CFC where I was anti-Semitic, or apologize.

I wasn't talking about you.

Side note: Jews were definitely the primary target of the holocaust (more Jews were killed than everything else combined) but they were not the only people stuck in the concentration camps.

True, but Jews were the overwhelming majority of those sent to extermination and death-by-slave-labor camps. Since the context of this is the chemical weapons analogy, and the vast majority of those killed by Hitler via chemical weapons were Jews, "what about the non-Jews!" is just completely out of place here.

To my mind, the main difference between them and us is that our genocides worked. Germany committed the faux pas of attempting a huge settler colonial project in Europe, and doing it too quickly without the aid of disease, thereby biting off more than he could chew. He also did it like a century after settler colonialism had become uncool, not that it was ever really cool to do it in Europe rather than to find some other continent to exploit.

Yep. Almost everything Hitler did had been prefigured by the behavior of the colonial powers at some point or another.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It would make sense if they actually went after him by calling him an idiot, but they weren't doing that. They were accusing him of actually denying the holocaust, which his initial statement didn't do, and his later remarks (while being just as stupid as what he said first) pretty much clarified that he doesn't actually deny the holocaust.

The argument that "You didn't actually deny the holocaust, but you're still a holocaust denier because of <reasons>." is just stupid, and twisting the logic behind the phrase doesn't change that. They should have reacted by calling out his stupidity, not by making accusations that are clearly not true.

I think I understand your point, but I don't think I got my point adequately across here. The reason they didn't call him "an idiot" instead of calling him "a holocaust denier", is because they very intentionally do not want to give any quarter to people who fail to recognize the holocaust, regardless of context. In a way it goes back to what Hygro said about their focus (agenda), ie raising (and keeping high) the awareness, recognition, etc., of the holocaust.

So in that framework, "being an idiot" or "ignorant" or "forgetting (in the haste to make some other point)" about the holocaust is placed in the same category as "denial"... the theme is "The holocaust must never be forgotten, overlooked, diminished, lessened, excused, or denied in any way, and to do any of those things will make you subject to the broad accusation of "holocaust denial"

And in that sense I can understand why they went after him. What you seem to be saying is that you want some recognition of nuance between "holocaust denial" and "holocaust overlook'ance". You want the word "denial" to be used and interpreted literally, so that people who merely "overlook" are given the benefit of the doubt. I understand that position (IIRC you've taken a similar position in other areas), but what I am saying is you are at cross-purposes with them here. They have no interest whatsoever in giving "holocaust overlookers" the benefit of the doubt, they want all forms of glossing over the holocaust condemned in the strongest terms possible.

Now we can debate the effectiveness of this stance, obviously it isn't effective with you, but then we dance back to the repeated theme of "don't like/support the who/what... gonna disapprove of the how regardless.