If you want to make an argument against WWII you really need to show evidence for the counterfactual that without the fact less than that would have died as a result of Hitler’s twisted ambitions,
I think a major point is (outside of the ant-Jew screeds going on here), that the halocaust ought not be in ones evaluation for entering or not entering WWII. Mainly due to knowledge of the times as to what was going on, the results of WWII, and a general stance against “humanatrian” wars.
6) Anti-semitism is really, really ugly.
The word anti-Semitism comes with the risk of the disparagment of the vast majority of Semites in favor of subsizing one particular religous/cultural group of Semites; what is really usually meant by “anti-Semite” is “anti-Judean”, and yes it has produced some of the more disgusting acts in history. It must be noted however, that many other anti- religous/cultural acts within history are comprable to what the Jews have been through. Christianity has had some very rough times in the east, Zoroastrianism has been pretty much wiped out, Manicheanism has been wiped out, etc.
careful reading of this topic is required to make sense of it. yes, some of the deniers hate jews, but others merely want to investigate history, without blinkers. slavery and other execrable practices are open to scrutiny, it’s rather peculiar that this episode is untouchable by all save one (interested) party. as an economist, you will be interested in finkelstein’s analysis of the economic rents that flow from this “industry”.
Can’t say I care for people that believe they are the chosen ones. It’s pure irony that the Nazi’s also believed they were chosen ones. If jews were not such a minority you can be sure they would do at least as bad and probably worse.
me too. i’m not sympathetic to the übermensch mentality, be it jewish, aryan, causcasian or whatever. hitler’s quest for aryan purity was modeled on what he admired about the jews - their racial integrity (as an artist, jews were amongst his most loyal clients. he lived in a doss-house with jews, and spent long hours learning about the culture). only after the end of world war one did hitler express anti-jewish sentiment, later institutionalizing racial policies. i cannot think of one historical instance where racial laws have had any felicitous outcome, and that includes affirmative action, too. private prejudice is one thing (and will always exist), state prejudice quite another.
just as interpersonal comparisons of utility are rejected by austrian economists as meaningless, i reject interpersonal comparisons of disutility - pain and suffering. that is my credo.
and yes, i have read and understood finkelstein who does believe in the holocaust (his parents having survived internment), but isn’t blind to the manipulation of the event to extract rents. i can disbelieve the official story whilst understanding who the beneficiaries are. (and unsurprisingly, they’re often not those who suffered directly in the camps).
mostly coming from the screeds being posted by the anti semites and holocaust deniers
Smear tactic.
Nonetheless, the Final Solution only got going in 1942.
Proof?
5.2 million Jews were still killed … 5.2 million Jews were still slaughtered at the hands of Hitler amongst millions of other minorities.
One of the concerns raised with the Holocaust argument is the emphasis put on Jews over other groups, as they have a special seat in history. Still, I must add whether or not anyone was actually slaughtered (through the use of gas chambers), it’s still questionable. Somehow, the deaths of Jews out weighs any deaths of innocent Europeans during the war.
The argument “WWII sucked and is justified by invocation of the Holocaust, therefore the Holocaust did not happen” is not valid.
That’s not the argument, your analysis is not valid.
Jews have been hated throughout history for largely the same reasons that they’re hated today. Jealousy is a strong motivator and Jews have always been disproportionately represented in the group of people who are high achievers. The fact that the Jews never had a strong central government to go to war with a nation that treated them badly unlike most other people hardly helped.
Jealousy has nothing to do with any hatred towards Jews. It’s on an entirely different spectrum. Whatever angst there is towards Jews has to do with them being foreign to whatever culture they are integrating to. People see Jewish integration into a culture as a parasite (in the most blunt way). That they feed off of (and control) the host culture/people. There are people who don’t feel at ease that a majority of the media outlets are in a minority of Jewish hands.
It’s pure irony that the Nazi’s also believed they were chosen ones.
The Nazi “vision” is pretty sad, and especially that the German population fell for it due to it’s salesman being a charismatic politician with ideas of hope and change. The integration of traditionalism and politics failed.
quoting figures like 6 million, 5.2 million (in some nuremburg testimonies over 20 million!) shows a lack of humility that even orthodox historians do not display. all warn of the rubberyness of the estimates and the difficulty at coming to definitive figures. if you actually do some research, you see the significant obstacles such an endeavour faces.
6 million was the figure mooted in that first “holocaust”, world war I. the one that apparently all now agree was a false alarm.
in your collection of media moguls, it is worth noting, that rupert murdoch’s mother, elisabeth joy greene, is alleged to have been an orthodox jew, though it’s not something he’s ever spoken on publicly. see p.88 “the transparent cabal” by stephen sniegoski. he is, regardless, an ardent supporter of israel.
No it doesn’t. The Wansee Conference didn’t happen until 1942, the Americans certainly did not open their doors to refugees of Nazi Germany, and you can make that argument that if the Western Allies had stayed out there would be a much larger part of the Europe that people could have fled to. I think we should have stayed neutral, but the case of Finland is interesting. They were allied with the Nazis for a while, but Jews and other groups persecuted by the Nazis fared much better in Finland than in other European countries. There were rabbis in an army ostensibly allied with Nazi Germany. So neutral in the best case solution, but if my choice was limited to the Nazis or Communists I would have chosen the Nazis.
newson, I’ll read that link if I get the chance, but for the record I’m all for challenging accepted history, that’s how advance comes in any field. Granted, in history it’s a lot more speculative than other fields and this is where I see the problem, it’s easy for anti-semites to sneak in their ideological biases and produce screed after screed in the name of the “knowledge”.
Like I said, if we believe the official record than the Holocaust as we speak of didn’t really start until well after WWII was underway, so that should already cause people to put less weight on any justification of WWII that invokes the Holocaust. Nonetheless, one could still argue that preventing the Holocaust was a good, albeit unintended outcome of WWII, in which case yes we do need to look at the relationship between attempted extermination of a race and the rest of the war.
This is a welcome reminder to be clear about our language, but I was trying to use anti-semitism in the sense that it’s generally used, at the expense of some accuracy. In other words, I was being lazy.
I don’t wish to whitewash the atrocities that others have gone through but the fact remains, throughout history the Jews have had a pretty tough time. Attempts to put them at the center of some grand conspiracy are, quite frankly, disgusting and rub salts in a very real wound.
most, like myself until quite recently, believe in the accepted view because it would seem outrageous that something so widely believed could be false. after all, eyewitnesses, court convictions, schools, universities, media, every source is agreed that it happened as recounted. i’d been to dachau, germany, and had no doubt that those nasty germans turned a blind eye to the genocide that was going only several miles from town. only recently did i have it pointed out to me that in fact dachau was not the scene for any gassings, or any mass killings, and that is agreed on by all, orthodox and revisionists alike. the story i got told at the camp (admitedly nearly three decades ago) was different.
this started me questioning whether the story really did stack up as it’s told today, and i have been amazed to find how shaky this edifice’s foundations really are. i’d suggest watching “one third of the holocaust”, even if you are wed to the official version. it’s not hateful, it’s dispassionate. i think most jews and gentiles alike are convinced of the veracity of the traditional version. i’m still shocked at losing my faith.
one could still argue that preventing the Holocaust was a good, albeit unintended outcome of WWII, in which case yes we do need to look at the relationship between attempted extermination of a race and the rest of the war.
Correct. It is odd that some people seem a little too over eager in their anti-war stance that this unintended outcome wasn’t a positive, and the reactions seem a bit dubious.
I don’t wish to whitewash the atrocities that others have gone through but the fact remains, throughout history the Jews have had a pretty tough time. Attempts to put them at the center of some grand conspiracy are, quite frankly, disgusting and rub salts in a very real wound.
the fact that some have hijacked the holocaust for profit/power doesn’t make it false, of course. but it does remind you of how little shame some have in manipulating what everyone agrees was a tragedy of gigantic proportions.
there was an open letter published in le monde 21 february 1979, signed by 34 eminent historians. it reads:
“One doesn’t need to ask oneself how such a mass butchery was technically possible. It was technically possible because it occurred. There is no debate, and nor can there be one, on the existence of the gas-chambers”.
This sort of blind dogmatism is quite typical when it comes to this subject.
Out of curiosity would you object to something like
“One needn’t ask oneself how such a massive population is technically possible. It was technically possible because it occurred.There is no debate, and nor can there be one, on the existence of over 1billion people alive today in India”
would it be blind dogmatism, or something not quite as bad?