Holocaust denial

[Gandalf]

I don't even need to ask miles anymore about America, I already know he assumes the worst of the nation, the people, and the culture. Why that is the case is a bit curious, he seems to believe it's the sophisticated liberal intellectual elite view and that is true those people who preach their gospel of white guilt see America as the great evil in the world. It's not a matter of defeating Facism or Communism or anything, it's about rising to a level of power so high that we "must have cheated" in order to have obtained it and the cries of how "unfair" things are will continue until the end.

Lyle you treated those good human beings with no respect and wanted them dead to the last. Your own politicians admitted as much. It is as simple as that. It is simple called immoral bad behaviour, which are moral truisms.

[TitoFan]

These threads have a way of going round and round. No one ever convinces anyone else of anything, and just about everyone is incapable of ever saying "You know... you might have a point".

Miles, keep on living in your fantasy land. Words are words. Look up the meaning of "genocide" in the dictionary... and you can very well apply it to the killing of American Indians during the colonization of America. But you can also use it to describe just about any war, or violent conflict where masses of people of a specific race or ethnic group die. Words are words.

Bottom line is this: Nazi Germans lined up Jews (yes... and other unfortunate souls who were born inferior according to Hitler) by the millions, and herded them single file into gas chambers. Four million... one million... whatever. There were a BUNCH of senseless deaths. If lowering the number down to one million makes you feel better, knock yourself out. These human beings were not in battle... they were not armed. They were so many men, women and children who were summarily exterminated.

By contrast, the American Indians, as has been explained to you half a dozen times at least, died over the course of many, many years. Many died in battle... many died of disease. To compare one event with the other is beyond stupidity. And whether you admit it or not, all your arguments carry this tired, old agenda you've been pushing since Day One, about the U.S. being this evil empire and whatnot. I have tried to use reason with you, admitting that the U.S.'s international policies are not always correct... and they tend to intervene where they don't belong. I've even agreed that the use of drones does more harm than good (when you put things in their proper perspective). But to no avail. To you, anyone who doesn't believe in this "evil empire" shit like you do, is not worth arguing with.

So carry on.

[El Kabong]

Lyle you treated those good human beings with no respect and wanted them dead to the last. Your own politicians admitted as much. It is as simple as that. It is simple called immoral bad behaviour, which are moral truisms.

Ok and were those feelings out of the ordinary for other cultures of the same times?

[VictorCharlie]

For starters Chomsky is neither a respected historian on American Indians or a paleontologists so he is no more an authoritarian on the subject than your or I. I know you have a man-crush on him but unless we are talking linguistics his opinion is no different than Bilbos. I can't respond to your link b/c it wouldn't work for me.

Regarding your reponse to Lyle: The Indians were no better than the Europeans. They enslaved, raped, and destroyed other tribes. The only reason the Indians helped the English settlers was purely strategic and political, they offset the power of the dominant tribe of the region. The oppressed tribes of Mexico supported the Conquistadores for the same reasons. Indians weren't noble, they weren't holier than the Europeans, they did the exact same things for the exact same reasons. Just that the Europeans were better at it, and they learned by having it done to them. The US perpetuated some pretty horific things on the Natives but not really that different then what tribes did to other tribes and all in all was pretty par for the field regarding how victors treated losers at the time.

Since you started this by comparing the two then lets finish it that way. The Holocaust was a sytematic rounding up of European Jews and other less desirables by Nazi Germany to work in forced labor camps and/or death camps with the "final solution" being extermination of the race. Many Jews were flat out murdered as well as dying of disease and malnutrition in the camps. The process was not only continued but accelerated as the war wound down even to the detriment of the Nazi War effort.

North American exploration (excluding Viking colonies in the far north) is often thought to have started with Columbus but John Cabot was probably the first to actually land on what we now call the US in 1497 but his actual point of landing is disputed. In the early 16 century a slew of explorers land on the US East and Gulf Coasts. Over the first century and a half after Columbus's voyages, the native population of the Americas (North, South and Central) plummeted by an estimated 80% (from around 50 million in 1492 to eight million in 1650) mostly by outbreaks of old world diseases. The Smallpox History of the World states "Epidemics of smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1555,diptheria (1614) and measles (1615 swept ahead of initial European contact,[killing between 10 million and 20 million people, up to 95% of the indigineous population of the Americas."So by the time the first lasting colony (James Town) was established in 1607 the process of de-population in North America was in full swing. There were about a dozen major conflicts during the colonial period some of which were perpetrated by the tribes on the colonials such as the Indian Massacre of 1622 where the indians were welcomed into homes and then massacred over 300 people. Most were different tribes working with colonials to attack rivals or ingratiate themselves with the Europeans. The US was involved in around 40 different military conflicts with Indian Tribes between 1775 and 1918. Many of these were ugly conflicts with atrocities on both sides and I'm also not going to try to sugar coat the treatment of defeated tribes some of which were handled with compassion and some of which were horrendous.

If you read these two descriptions (I admit over simplified a bit) and feel that they are similar then ok but I feel that is a representation of your lack of objectivity when discussing the US versus a well versed opinion.

[El Kabong]

Noam Chomsky is a pompus dick......and soon he will die

[VictorCharlie]

Does he have a terminal illness or something?

[Beanz]

Does he have a terminal illness or something?

He has a chronic case of (zevi'ut).

[Beanz]

This is a topic I have been looking into a little. The very term denial would indicate that you are saying something didn't happen, that you refute something existed, but most revisionists openly accept that the holocaust existed. It is just that they dispute certain aspects of the traditional claims and in some respects have been proven correct. Initial claims of 4 million Jews killed at Aushwitz were revised down to 1.1 million. Not a small number and it makes you wonder.

I have also been following the story of David Cole, an intelligent young man who raised some interesting questions about traditional historical claims about the holocaust. Money was offered by the Jewish Defense League for information about where Cole lived and seemingly Cole went into hiding. A few years later he retracted all of his former views apparently of his own volition.

Clearly in some nations it is a crime to deny the holocaust. Well, actually it is a crime to even question the extent of the holocaust. Nobody is denying the holocaust, but merely questioning the lack of evidence concerning numbers and documents supporting key elements. This should not be a crime and to classify it as such is Orwellian in nature.

It seems that a holocaust denier is anyone who questions official accounts of the holcaust. Obviously revisionist is a far more apt term. Just as you critizise the terrorism of Israel and become an anti-semite, you criticize the lack of evidence on the holocaust and become a denier.

It just sounds more extreme than the so called deniers themselves. Thoughts?

It seems that you wish to avoid being labelled as a Holocaust Denier. You wish to be seen as a revisionist. I presume then, that you do not seek to deny the accepted definition of the Holocaust and merely to revise this universally accepted depiction. You are not employing misdirection or trying to pull the wool over our eyes whilst tickling your own ears? We will dismiss the tidal wave of evidence provided by eyewitnesses and survivors, historians and observers because the controversial nature of such, renders them as nothing more than Pro Israeli propaganda, for use in justifying the establishment of the state of Israel. Your important breakthroughs in this historical field of research have been overwhelmingly convincing and thorough, and you have in no way tried to stifle debate or ignore all evidence to the contrary by using a device in which anyone disagreeing with you is portrayed as an Orwellian hook nosed baddy accusing you of mean things like anti-Semitism ?

Seriously now, Are you sure your parents were not Zionists like Chomskys ? Are you so desperate to blame Israel for everything that you have stooped to inventing claims on behalf of the Jews in order to discredit them? Is it you that is the victim for being wrongly labelled a denier and not the millions whose suffering you seek to diminish by minimising such an atrocity?

[El Kabong]

Does he have a terminal illness or something?

He's a bit old you know

[Gandalf]

Some of you are just being ridiculous. The term holocaust has been used for centuries. It isn't only to be applied to a single case in the twentieth century.

I don't deny anything, but I do deny that the holocaust was solely a Jewish problem. It blatantly wasn't. Anyone who criticises the contemporary interpretation of the Nazi holcaust is labelled a deniar and it is an erroneous term.

I have never denied the existence of a Nazi Holocaust and likewise we cannot deny the existence of a North and South American Holocaust.

[Gandalf]

For starters Chomsky is neither a respected historian on American Indians or a paleontologists so he is no more an authoritarian on the subject than your or I. I know you have a man-crush on him but unless we are talking linguistics his opinion is no different than Bilbos. I can't respond to your link b/c it wouldn't work for me.

Regarding your reponse to Lyle: The Indians were no better than the Europeans. They enslaved, raped, and destroyed other tribes. The only reason the Indians helped the English settlers was purely strategic and political, they offset the power of the dominant tribe of the region. The oppressed tribes of Mexico supported the Conquistadores for the same reasons. Indians weren't noble, they weren't holier than the Europeans, they did the exact same things for the exact same reasons. Just that the Europeans were better at it, and they learned by having it done to them. The US perpetuated some pretty horific things on the Natives but not really that different then what tribes did to other tribes and all in all was pretty par for the field regarding how victors treated losers at the time.

Since you started this by comparing the two then lets finish it that way. The Holocaust was a sytematic rounding up of European Jews and other less desirables by Nazi Germany to work in forced labor camps and/or death camps with the "final solution" being extermination of the race. Many Jews were flat out murdered as well as dying of disease and malnutrition in the camps. The process was not only continued but accelerated as the war wound down even to the detriment of the Nazi War effort.

North American exploration (excluding Viking colonies in the far north) is often thought to have started with Columbus but John Cabot was probably the first to actually land on what we now call the US in 1497 but his actual point of landing is disputed. In the early 16 century a slew of explorers land on the US East and Gulf Coasts. Over the first century and a half after Columbus's voyages, the native population of the Americas (North, South and Central) plummeted by an estimated 80% (from around 50 million in 1492 to eight million in 1650) mostly by outbreaks of old world diseases. The Smallpox History of the World states "Epidemics of smallpox (1518, 1521, 1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1555,diptheria (1614) and measles (1615 swept ahead of initial European contact,[killing between 10 million and 20 million people, up to 95% of the indigineous population of the Americas."So by the time the first lasting colony (James Town) was established in 1607 the process of de-population in North America was in full swing. There were about a dozen major conflicts during the colonial period some of which were perpetrated by the tribes on the colonials such as the Indian Massacre of 1622 where the indians were welcomed into homes and then massacred over 300 people. Most were different tribes working with colonials to attack rivals or ingratiate themselves with the Europeans. The US was involved in around 40 different military conflicts with Indian Tribes between 1775 and 1918. Many of these were ugly conflicts with atrocities on both sides and I'm also not going to try to sugar coat the treatment of defeated tribes some of which were handled with compassion and some of which were horrendous.

If you read these two descriptions (I admit over simplified a bit) and feel that they are similar then ok but I feel that is a representation of your lack of objectivity when discussing the US versus a well versed opinion.

So look into American Holocaust then if you don't take Chomsky's word. Lest we forget Chomsky is quoted in academic research more than any other contemporary scholar and it isn't all down to linguistics. Clearly he is somewhat more significant than Bilbo or you or I.

I know the history and have done my reading. My views don't appear out of the ether. I'm busy so cannot give this any more time, or anything else for that matter. I shall return.

[VictorCharlie]

I think we've pretty much exhausted this but if you feel the need to respond I'll be waiting breathlessly.

[El Kabong]

Lest we forget Chomsky is a twat.

Good, glad we can agree

[mofo2]

This is a topic I have been looking into a little. The very term denial would indicate that you are saying something didn't happen, that you refute something existed, but most revisionists openly accept that the holocaust existed. It is just that they dispute certain aspects of the traditional claims and in some respects have been proven correct. Initial claims of 4 million Jews killed at Aushwitz were revised down to 1.1 million. Not a small number and it makes you wonder.

I have also been following the story of David Cole, an intelligent young man who raised some interesting questions about traditional historical claims about the holocaust. Money was offered by the Jewish Defense League for informationy about where Cole lived and seemingly Cole went into hiding. A few years later he retracted all of his former views apparently of his own volition.

Clearly in some nations it is a crime to deny the holocaust. Well, actually it is a crime to even question the extent of the holocaust. Nobody is denying the holocaust, but merely questioning the lack of evidence concerning numbers and documents supporting key elements. This should not be a crime and to classify it as such is Orwellian in nature.

It seems that a holocaust denier is anyone who questions official accounts of the holcaust. Obviously revisionist is a far more apt term. Just as you critizise the terrorism of Israel and become an anti-semite, you criticize the lack of evidence on the holocaust and become a denier.

It just sounds more extreme than the so called deniers themselves. Thoughts?

There are clearly people who believe that Holocaust never happened or have views that the Jews brought it upon themselves, the Numbers of people exterminated at Auschwitz isn't as important as the overall figure given by SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Hoettl in evidence to the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 somewhere in the range 5.7 milllion to 6.0 million or even slightly higher.

[Gandalf]

This is a topic I have been looking into a little. The very term denial would indicate that you are saying something didn't happen, that you refute something existed, but most revisionists openly accept that the holocaust existed. It is just that they dispute certain aspects of the traditional claims and in some respects have been proven correct. Initial claims of 4 million Jews killed at Aushwitz were revised down to 1.1 million. Not a small number and it makes you wonder.

I have also been following the story of David Cole, an intelligent young man who raised some interesting questions about traditional historical claims about the holocaust. Money was offered by the Jewish Defense League for informationy about where Cole lived and seemingly Cole went into hiding. A few years later he retracted all of his former views apparently of his own volition.

Clearly in some nations it is a crime to deny the holocaust. Well, actually it is a crime to even question the extent of the holocaust. Nobody is denying the holocaust, but merely questioning the lack of evidence concerning numbers and documents supporting key elements. This should not be a crime and to classify it as such is Orwellian in nature.

It seems that a holocaust denier is anyone who questions official accounts of the holcaust. Obviously revisionist is a far more apt term. Just as you critizise the terrorism of Israel and become an anti-semite, you criticize the lack of evidence on the holocaust and become a denier.

It just sounds more extreme than the so called deniers themselves. Thoughts?

There are clearly people who believe that Holocaust never happened or have views that the Jews brought it upon themselves, the Numbers of people exterminated at Auschwitz isn't as important as the overall figure given by SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Hoettl in evidence to the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946 somewhere in the range 5.7 milllion to 6.0 million or even slightly higher.

Those numbers have been heavily revised over ensuing decades, even by accredited historians. Evidence obtained by a witness under duress is just one factor. One should also consider the other evidence available which is what many other historians have done.

Anyone who believes the initial points you made is a nutter, but some of the more extreme estimate do also appear to extremely questionable. The truth is likely much more conservative.