Denying the jewish holocaust

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B_DWTS00

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Ok this issue recently came up, and it seems to me that too much attention is being payed to it and people are way too offended about hearing it being denied.

Why is only this holocaust against the law to deny when other genocides HAVE AND ARE being commited around the world but nothing is being done about them let alone illegalize denying them.:rolleyes:

What about the kurds that sadam killed and aired on national Iraqi tv, why is it not illegal to deny that?

What about almost exterminating native americans? why is it legal to say this never happened?

etc..... etc.....

Why is it only illegal and offensive to deny this genocide, and most importantly why is there an act passed in 2002 in the US(not 100% sure) that anyone or any country that denys the holocaust will be monitored?

I personally see this as propaganda and as I do not trust the media in many issues and do not trust alot of the history books and events and mainly because I have not seen the holocaust, I conclude that it never happened.

Opinions?
 
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B_Stronzo

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I don't know of anyone who possesses any real grasp of sanity trying to deny the existence of the death camps and the Jewish holocaust DWT. You're simply trying to provoke. Either that or you're just generally pissed off at the world.

That logic's gained momentum because of people like Hutton Gibson (Mel's daddy) who are trying to promote the return to pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism and in doing so have attempted to diminish the Nazi so-called "Final Solution".

I agree other genocides are not given proper attention... but then again the genocide conducted by the Nazis included vast numbers of homosexuals and mentally challenged people too. You hear very little about that.

The attempted annihilation of the Native American population simply took more years so it appears (on the surface) to be less obvious. Those paying attention are aware of all of humankind's atrocities.

If trying to remind us of the mistakes of the past is "propaganda", I'm a monkey's uncle. This doesn't qualify.
 

B_DWTS00

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If trying to remind us of the mistakes of the past is "propaganda", I'm a monkey's uncle. This doesn't qualify.

I did not say killing millions of jews is propaganda, If the holocaust infact did happen, then it was deffinatly wrong and no justfication for it.

But then again, If we look at the current war in Iraq where I think 23,000 civivlians have been killed, mostly muslims, it does not qulaify as a genocide? but as war??

The thing is, why is this and only this genocide illegal to deny?

1st of all I dont think it should be illegal to deny any holocaust, our 1st amenmant is slowly being destroyed and absloutly nothing is being done about it, people are taking it for granted.

The point is, people should not be afraid to speak their minds and the goverment should not monitor them or apply restrictions to freedom of speech.

But the fact is, whenever something "new" comes up, thats the only thing people should worry about, when its over and the media focuses on another issue, its that we should worry about then.:rolleyes:
 

mindseye

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You keep using this word "illegal". I do not think it means what you think it means.

If you're being sincere, then you are an piss-poor lazy historian. "Not trusting history books" is appropriate for folks who've done enough research into primary sources to know of what they speak; not for conspiracy squids who wishful-think things must have been different.

The assertions you make are extraordinary, and thus require extraordinary justification which you haven't provided.

I've been of the opinion, since this thread, that you're more interested in provoking and shocking people rather than in legitimate discourse. I support free speech, but do not suffer trolls lightly.
 

madame_zora

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What, is someone going to give you a ticket to pay if you say you don't believe the holocaust happened? No, they're just going to think you're a moron, which is fine.

While history is always written by the winners in charge, it's a really bad idea to trust only that which you personally can verify unless you plan to live tabula rasa for the rest of your life, learning nothing from all of history. Yes, the need is huge to read with critical discernment and to research the AUTHOR'S background to know why she/he said what they did and why they felt that way. Further, you can sometimes discover what their contemporaries thought of them and their opinions to get a better persepctive, while still maintaining your own judgement as the final say.

However, if you do not do ANY of that and just haphazardly naysay everything you read, that would make you stupid, in my less-than-humble opinion. Good luck getting through life.
 

potato51

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But seriously, I'll accept the holocaust, whatever...But everyone knows the dinosaurs are just bones the Jews burried in the ground to throw us good creationist christians off right?:tongue:

Hutton Gibson quotes:
http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/hutton_gibson/

I'm being totally facetious up there. Please don't take me literally. Sorta goes without say what with that purple tongue face thing, but you never know...
 

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madame_zora said:
What, is someone going to give you a ticket to pay if you say you don't believe the holocaust happened? No, they're just going to think you're a moron, which is fine.
What he's saying is that the Holocaust is the only genocide people seem to want to significantly affect modern politics. BTW as far as I know regarding laws in the UK, Germany and France, if he would publish what he said in those places, he'd most likely be brought to trial and possibly imprisoned/fined. Here's the Wikipedia page on what the characteristics of Holocaust denial are:

Holocaust denial, or Holocaust revisionism as it is referred to by its supporters, is the belief that the Holocaust did not occur as it is described by mainstream historiography. Key elements of this belief are the explicit or implicit rejection that, in the Holocaust:
  • The Nazi government had a policy of deliberately targeting the Jews and the Gypsies for extermination as a people;
  • Over five million Jews were systematically killed by the Nazis and their allies.
  • Tools of efficient mass extermination, such as gas chambers, were used in extermination camps to kill Jews.
In addition, most Holocaust denial implies, or openly states, that the current mainstream understanding of the Holocaust is the result of a deliberate Jewish conspiracy created to advance the interest of Jews at the expense of other nations. For this reason, Holocaust denial is generally considered an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Because of this, Holocaust denial is also illegal in a number of European countries, as their governments hold that it is motivated by an anti-Semitic and anti-democratic agenda.
Now, I think these laws are stupid, but they serve as a good gauge of what exactly Holocaust denial is.
 

dolf250

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Fine, do not trust the history books, trust the books printed as history was happening. Look at Hittlers “Mein kempf” and I think you will agree that he had a real hatred for Jews and would happily put them to death if possible. Do a little rational thinking and you may come up with the idea that as dictator of a country surrounded by other vicious Jew haters he may have attempted to kill a few of them. Then read the pamphlets of the day and discover that anti-Semitism was not a small movement in Europe. It was large and growing. Now read the transcripts of the Nuremburg trials. (Or were they doctored as well?) Now read the stories of the survivors and the Germans who lived and/or worked in or around the “ghetto” and the camps.
If you are going to take the time to publicly question the holocaust then perhaps you should take the time to acquaint yourself with history. If you chose not to believe the history books then look to things printed/recorded when the event was happening. As for other genocides, they have happened, are happening and will happen again and yes, we are just to damned busy ignoring them and hoping they will go away to actually do anything.
 

bigschlotsky

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DWTS00 said:
I did not say killing millions of jews is propaganda, If the holocaust infact did happen, then it was deffinatly wrong and no justfication for it.

Shut up you f---ing bigot. It sounds like you're not entirely convinced the holocaust happened. I definitely sense a strong whiff of anti-Semitism and I resent you using this forum for your misguided racial hatred that probably is an attempt to cover up some personal inadequacy.
As for your obviously misinformed and foolish question, why in some countries is it only illegal to deny the holocaust, there are a few reasons:
1. There has never been another genocide on the same scale as the holocaust. There have been other genocides but not of the same degree.
2. Jews have been persecuted for centuries, long before the holocaust. At some point it has to stop.
3. It's a common tactic for bigots to deny the holocaust. Holocaust denial is outlawed in some countries because it's been a common phenomenon.

By the way, that job you didn't get, that girl you didn't get, or that general failure you feel your life has been - just so you know it wasn't the Jews fault. Yeah, I sense some definite bigotry.
 

steve2727

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Dr. Dilznick said:
What he's saying is that the Holocaust is the only genocide people seem to want to significantly affect modern politics. BTW as far as I know regarding laws in the UK, Germany and France, if he would publish what he said in those places, he'd most likely be brought to trial and possibly imprisoned/fined. Here's the Wikipedia page on what the characteristics of Holocaust denial are:

Now, I think these laws are stupid, but they serve as a good gauge of what exactly Holocaust denial is.

I'm fairly certain it isn't illegal to deny the holocaust in the UK, that's why David Irving (a British holocaust denier and Nazi apologist, calls himself a historian but I wouldn't agree the term applies) had to go and preach his rubbish in Austria before being imprisoned.

I agree these laws aren't helpful, the way to deal with this kind of person is to tear their ridiculous arguments to shreds using the overwhelming evidence there is to the contrary and make them look stupid, not lock them up.
 

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bigschlotsky said:
1. There has never been another genocide on the same scale as the holocaust. There have been other genocides but not of the same degree.
.

Actually Hitler massacred 6 million jews, Stalin massacred 17 million Russians, Mao Zedong was responsible for the death of 30 million Chinese. I'm not quite sure why the Nazi holocaust is so engraved on the Western conciousness when other equally bad or worse genocides are not.

My (admittedly incredibly cynical) opinion is that it's because it happened in a modern 'civilised' western country, for some reason people expect things like this to happen in places like Russia and China, but when it happens in Germany it makes them realise it wouldn't be impossible to happen in the USA or the UK. Also the Russian massacres don't sit well because it sort of upsets the simplistic 'good vs evil' view of WWII a lot of people seem to have. The biggest murderer being on our side sorta ruins that.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Nazi holocaust deserves all the recognition it gets and more, it's just a shame that other genocides tend to be under recognised
 

bigschlotsky

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steve2727 said:
Actually Hitler massacred 6 million jews, Stalin massacred 17 million Russians, Mao Zedong was responsible for the death of 30 million Chinese. I'm not quite sure why the Nazi holocaust is so engraved on the Western conciousness when other equally bad or worse genocides are not.

Massacre and genocide are not the same thing. The other situations you mention were not genocides. Stalin killed a few hundred thousand Cossacks, and that can be considered a genocide because he singled out the Cossacks as an ethnic group. But overall Stalin and Mao killed their political enemies and whoever stood in their way. They did not select certain ethnic groups to eliminate on the same scale Hitler did.
 

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bigschlotsky said:
Massacre and genocide are not the same thing. The other situations you mention were not genocides. Stalin killed a few hundred thousand Cossacks, and that can be considered a genocide because he singled out the Cossacks as an ethnic group. But overall Stalin and Mao killed their political enemies and whoever stood in their way. They did not select certain ethnic groups to eliminate on the same scale Hitler did.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=genocide

Genocide can be used to refer to the extermination political groups as well. I'm not overly concerned with semantics though, mass murder is mass murder and the reasoning behind it doesn't make it any more or less horrific in my view.
 

bigschlotsky

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steve2727 said:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=genocide

Genocide can be used to refer to the extermination political groups as well. I'm not overly concerned with semantics though, mass murder is mass murder and the reasoning behind it doesn't make it any more or less horrific in my view.

I agree it doesn't make it more or less horriffic, but the motivation of a mass murder is not semantics in my mind. It may not effect our moral judgment of it, but it does make a difference in terms of the need of Germany and Austria to have laws on the books. These countries have a long history of violence against Jews. Not Cossacks, not Catholics, not political enemies - JEWS. In those countries there is a need to restrict free expression on the Holocaust to make it more difficult for mass propaganda to be disseminated.
 

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steve2727 said:
I'm fairly certain it isn't illegal to deny the holocaust in the UK, that's why David Irving (a British holocaust denier and Nazi apologist, calls himself a historian but I wouldn't agree the term applies) had to go and preach his rubbish in Austria before being imprisoned.
I stand corrected.
Laws against Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial is illegal in ten European countries: France (Loi Gayssot), Belgium (Belgian Negationism Law), Switzerland (article 261bis of the Penal Code), Germany, Austria (article 3h Verbotsgesetz 1947), Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Poland; it is also illegal in Israel. Many of these countries also have broader laws against libel or inciting racial hatred, as do a number of countries that do not specifically have laws against Holocaust denial, such as Canada and the United Kingdom. The Council of Europe's 2003 Additional Protocol to the Convention on cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems includes an article 6 titled Denial, gross minimisation, approval or justification of genocide or crimes against humanity, though this does not have the status of law.

Of the countries that ban Holocaust denial, half (Romania, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) were among the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and many of these also ban other elements associated with Nazism, such as Nazi symbols. Additionally, scholars have pointed out that countries that specifically ban Holocaust denial generally have legal systems that limit speech in other ways, such as banning hate speech. In the words of D. Guttenplan, this is a split between the common law countries of the US, Britain, and former British colonies from the civil law countries of continental Europe. In civil law countries the law is generally more prescriptive. Also under the civil law regime the judge acts more as an inquisitor, gathering and presenting evidence as well as interpreting it"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial



steve2727 said:
I'm not quite sure why the Nazi holocaust is so engraved on the Western conciousness when other equally bad or worse genocides are not.
Jews are a powerful political force. Also, the unique and bizarre process of how it happened, showing deeply unsettling things about human nature and modern state bureaucracies: it's not only the lunatics who are genocidal, it's "ordinary" people too.


bigschlotsky said:
I agree it doesn't make it more or less horriffic, but the motivation of a mass murder is not semantics in my mind.
Agreed. I still think it's disgusting that the Israeli and American governments refuse to label Armenian or Cambodian cases a genocide, and in this case Israel has a vested interested in holding down other genocides. Also, you can't compare anything else to the 20th Century genocides, because they fully incorporated modern post-industrial technology in order to make killing routine and sanitized. This wasn't people going around stabbing others, or doing a slow process like the US government did to Indians. This was a process which turned death into an assembly line, and the Nazis were more efficient in this than the Turks or the Khmer Rouge.
 

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Dr. Dilznick said:
Jews are a powerful political force.

Not in Germany, Slovakia, etc. Not in most of the countries that have laws against Holocaust denial. For centuries antisemites have claimed a Jewish conspiracy, or claimed that Jews controlled processes vastly greater than what's reflected in reality.

[/quote]Also, the unique and bizarre process of how it happened, showing deeply unsettling things about human nature and modern state bureaucracies: it's not only the lunatics who are genocidal, it's "ordinary" people too. [/quote]

That's a HUGE difference between the Holocaust and the massacres in other countries - Hitler was DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED BY THE GERMAN PEOPLE. Not only that, but Austria welcomed the German occupation with open arms, and most eastern European countries TOLD HITLER WHERE TO FIND THE JEWS. This was not an atrocity perpetrated solely by the political and military leaders. The extermination of the Jews was a joint effort by the general population of eastern and central Europe, that makes it wholly differnent than what the armies of Stalin and Mao did.
 

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bigschlotsky said:
That's a HUGE difference between the Holocaust and the massacres in other countries - Hitler was DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED BY THE GERMAN PEOPLE. Not only that, but Austria welcomed the German occupation with open arms, and most eastern European countries TOLD HITLER WHERE TO FIND THE JEWS. This was not an atrocity perpetrated solely by the political and military leaders. The extermination of the Jews was a joint effort by the general population of eastern and central Europe, that makes it wholly differnent than what the armies of Stalin and Mao did.
It does have enormous implications for our understanding of human nature and the nature of modern bureaucracies. If the Holocaust wasn't just a "top down" directive from the highest levels, and was in fact something that almost spontaneously emerged from the problems and rivalries of petty bureaucrats, it says really bad things about "ordinary" people and their willingness to participate in horrible levels of evil. It's no longer even a question of "following orders," but of being the ones responsible for the orders in the first place. This makes it all the more horrible. It wasn't just one or two maniacal leaders ordering the deaths of millions. It was hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of "ordinary" people. This is the primary lesson we learn from the Holocaust, that it's just political leaders but seemingly "ordinary" people that can commit atrocities.

People also have to remember that, if the goal of the Holocaust was to wipe out European Jewry, unfortunately it succeeded in spectacular fashion. There were hardly any Jews left in Europe after they were done. I don't have the percentages, and someone can look them up maybe, but the sheer effectiveness of the process is truly terrible.
 

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bigschlotsky said:
I agree it doesn't make it more or less horriffic, but the motivation of a mass murder is not semantics in my mind. It may not effect our moral judgment of it, but it does make a difference in terms of the need of Germany and Austria to have laws on the books. These countries have a long history of violence against Jews. Not Cossacks, not Catholics, not political enemies - JEWS. In those countries there is a need to restrict free expression on the Holocaust to make it more difficult for mass propaganda to be disseminated.

I thing in a strange way laws like this are counter-productive, when someone tries to claim something like this, other's line up to point out why they are so wrong, and then what happened is being debated and discussed, the implications of the horrors of what happened are being considered.

I think restricting free speech on this particular issue just makes it easier for the majority population to sweep it under the carpet, because debate is being stifled it's easier to ignore, 'Yes it happened but there's no reason to actually go around talking about it...'. In it's own way this is almost as dangerous as outright denial.

As I've said before, I just think these fools need to be out in the open and held up for the ridicule they deserve, not silenced and imprisoned. The way to defeat anti semitism is to educate people so they aren't vulnerable to being sucked in by this sort of propoganda, not censorship.
 
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