Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
I am actively attempting to deradicalize myself. I dislike puritanism and intolerance. DM me if you want my Discord, Twitter, Reddit, etc.
User ID: 1719
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
Is it my imagination, or has the political balance tipped to the right since The Motte switched sites? There's still left-wing people here, obviously, but it feels more right-wing than before. It could be my imagination. The main reason I come here is to be challenged by people I disagree with who also happen to be smarter than me.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
Ye's post that Musk identified as an "incitement to violence" was a swastika embedded in a Star of David, to signify how both sides should love each other. I don't understand why he'd identify that as an incitement to violence, and I think it'd have been better for Musk to just admit he's doing this because Ye is off his rocker.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I wish he'd been open about that.
I've learned to be distrustful of mainstream conservative commentators, but I still had hope that Dennis Prager was one of the intellectually honest ones. Having read his latest column, my disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
I understand that accusing someone of intellectual dishonesty without clear evidence that they are lying is frowned upon here and likely anywhere else that meaningful discussion happens. If anyone has a defensible reading of this column, I would greatly appreciate hearing it, because I can only see two possible readings.
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The subject of the holocaust hits so close to home for Prager that he suspends all rational thought when discussing it, leaving him incapable of recognizing his own hypocrisy or recusing himself to avoid embarassment.
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He is consciously trying to enforce a norm that you can't question anything about the holocaust; he is aware that this contradicts his encouragement of vaccine hesitancy and other forms of wrongthink, but he doesn't care, because those are forms of wrongthink he likes, and this is one he doesn't like.
The first possibility fills me with pity. The second one fills me with outrage, not only because I consider that attitude to be morally wrong, but because I consider it to be counter-productive. The best way to encourage holocaust denial, and the anti-Semitism that it so often leads to, is to tell people not to question any details about it. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that Prager does not want people to question any details about it whatsoever. He says so himself.
Yet, some people, including an American named Nick Fuentes, aggressively deny the Holocaust, asserting that a few hundred thousand Jews, not millions, were killed.
Prager does not define the holocaust as "the German government's mass-murder of Jewish citizens," or even "the deliberate attempt by the German government to kill all of the Jews in Europe." He defines the holocaust specifically as the murder of millions of Jews, meaning that if you put the death toll at anything under 7 figures, you are denying the totality of the event in his mind. If Prager was giving a live lecture, I would excuse this implication as an accidental result of speaking off-the-cuff, but this is a written column, which means he had the opportunity to proof-read his words and think about what they mean, and he still thought that this was acceptable.
Based on my conversations with others about holocaust denial and revisionism, I suspect there's an unspoken implication in this column that people who are neurotypical (or just not autistic in the same way I am) are capable of picking up on: that anyone who questions any detail about the holocaust is a bad faith actor trying to Ship of Theseus it out of the historical record. I've had many people, even in ratspace, tell me that this is so obvious a reason to ostracize holocaust revisionists that it doesn't even have to be stated explicitly when condemning them. Well, not only is it not obvious to me, but I think it takes an astonishingly poor imagination to think that there might not be anyone out there who, in good faith and without denying Hitler's genocidal ambitions, questions how many people were killed in the holocaust or what methods were used.
This is not a defense of Nick Fuentes. While I can't read Fuentes's mind, I have inferred based on his tone when speaking about the holocaust that he likely either doesn't believe it happened or wants other people to not believe it happened. The column, however, is not about Nick Fuentes. It's a column about the general subject of holocaust "denial," and it merely uses Fuentes as an example. And while I'm at it..
Second, Holocaust denial is not only a Big Lie; it is pure Jew-hatred, i.e., antisemitism. The proof that it emanates from antisemitism is that no other 20th-century genocide is denied (with the exception of the Turkish government’s denial of the Turks’ mass murder of Armenians during World War I). No one denies Stalin’s mass murder of tens of millions of Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago or his deliberate starvation of about five million Ukrainians (the Holodomor); or the Cambodian communists’ murder of about one in every four Cambodians; or Mao’s killing of about 60 million Chinese. The only genocide-denial is the genocide of the Jews.
Prager, buddy, do you have any idea how many people on my university campus alone denied "Stalin’s mass murder of tens of millions of Soviet citizens in the Gulag Archipelago?" I don't, because once you're counting in the dozens, it's impossible to keep track without administering a structured survey. I know that Bob Avakian's group canvassed there every day for years without incident, while right-wing events were met with hostile protests. I was one of the first people to know that Quentin Tarantino spoke at one of their events, but it took Breitbart a month to report on my tip, and not a single other outlet picked up on it because they didn't care.
What world does Prager live in where Stalin apologists are marginalized, but holocaust denial runs free? It's not the world he lived in five years ago, because 3 minutes into this video, he approvingly quotes a professor's statement that denial Stalin's genocide is common. Did Prager's assessment of the culture change over the past five years, or is he just contradicting himself to effectively enforce his preferred censorial norms? I'm inclined to think the latter, and it's a darn shame. I used to be a Ben Shapiro fan until I caught him doing stuff like this, and my search for people who recognized the problems with wokeness without enforcing their own intellectual taboos drove me further right to places like VDare and Unz, because they were less obviously dishonest. Several years later, I don't think those places are particularly honest, but I'm sure they're more honest than Daily Wire, and I expect many people to get stuck at that level of the radicalization rabbit hole without graduating to the general agnosticism and confusion I'm at. Shit, now I'm getting emotional.
Also, whoever chose that headline did a bad job. Prager is Jewish, and his reference to hell in the column was clearly meant to be a figure of speech. Making it the headline makes it sound literal. I wonder if Prager approved it.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I expected better from Dennis Prager.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
What did Vox Day say?
Putting it at less than 1/6th of the actual total does seem like, pretty much, denying the totality of the event
If you want to consider it a denial of the event, then, fine, but it's not a denial that something equally evil was committed. Would the Columbine shooters and/or their actions have been more evil if they successfully blew up their school and slaughtered all the police officers who showed up in response, as they (delusionally) planned to? Shooting random people was their Plan B, which they resorted to because their bombs didn't go off. I think their Plan B is just as evil as their Plan A would have been, because murder is murder.
What to you would constitute denying the Holocaust?
Denying that the German government, under the rule of the Nazi party, deliberately murdered Jewish people for the sole crime of being Jewish. However, I consider any death that occurred in the concentration camps to be a deliberate murder, so long as the death was caused by the conditions in the camp. If the Nazis abducted 200,000 Jews and placed them in prisons where they died of starvation or typhus, I would not see it as morally different from the Nazis gassing 6,000,000 Jews with Zyklon B. It's still a murder of an excessive number of people because of their bloodline. That's genocide. That's the evil of the Holocaust.
If the next Fuentes popped up and said that Jews not only weren't the subject of targeted killings, but actually survived the war at a higher rate than Gentiles! Would that constitute denying the Holocaust?
Absolutely.
Or do you state that the historicity of the Holocaust is unimportant?
The details matter for historical purposes. Not for moral ones.
Moreover, if you're looking for Conservatives, you aren't going to find one who denies the Holocaust for all the reasons Prager cites.
I don't want a conservative who denies the Holocaust! I know that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis. I just want a conservative who doesn't morally castigate people for disagreeing over details of a historical event, use mistake theory instead of conflict theory when someone does a wrongthink, or say that Holocaust revisionism/human biodiversity/etc are right to be condemned on moral (and not just factual) grounds while it's okay to Just Ask Questions about vaccines or gender identity. You can't criticize the left for silencing dissent, then turn around and do the same, without being a hypocrite.
Looking for an American conservative who will disavow Eisenhower and Patton is like looking for a Christian who will disavow Jesus. It's a contradiction in terms.
Who said anything about that?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
Nobody is incapable of bias, but something this blatant makes me unwilling to take him seriously in the future. And it's a shame, because I liked his stuff.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I can't tell whether you're making a moral argument or a taxonomical one in this post.
Take the Rotherham grooming gangs, a conservative cause celebre in which largely Pakistani young men allegedly raped 1400 girls in the town of Rotherham over a 30 year period. Imagine if you responded to those accusations with the argument that “look, I’ll agree that maybe some Pakistani lads did molest about 15, maybe 20 girls over maybe 20 years, but that’s the same rate you’d expect from the white population, if not less, so really it’s not the big problem you seem to think”.
The leftists in this example are not arguing that molesting 20 girls is less evil than molesting 1400. They are arguing that because the problem is so small, dedicating resources to fixing it isn't worth it. I didn't pay much attention to the Rotherham stuff, but my inference is that people were paying attention because they were worried the gang rapists would strike again. Is that correct? If so, it's not comparable to the holocaust, because the holocaust is over and the perpetrators are almost all dead. However, this is only a rebuttal to your argument if you're making a moral one, and not a taxonomical one.
Taxonomically speaking, I consider holocaust denial to be "denying the specific thing that makes the holocaust bad and worthy of remembrance."
Saying that 300,000 died instead of 6 million is denial.
If it is, then I don't know why denial would be seen as morally wrong. I also don't know how much of the story you'd have to change in order to be committing denial.
If someone rapes you and the case goes to trial and they argue that they did non-consensually touch you but they patted your thigh instead of raping you
See, you're replacing rape with poking. That's replacing an act of horrific violence with a minor annoyance. Murder is murder no matter how many people are murdered, but when you change rape to poking, you are changing the nature of the crime.
I fear I'm letting my emotions cloud my mind as I'm writing this, but I am genuinely frustrated by this common sentiment that the more murders you carry out, the more monstrous you are. Maybe that's true if we're talking about murdering one person versus murdering their whole family, but when we're working with a scale that is beyond emotional comprehension for most (all?) people, I don't think the distinction is important.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I mean, obviously they did. I don't want to argue about that. The question is whether having doubts about that specific claim as you phrased it makes one a denier and/or whether that is a moral failing. Prager's insistence upon both is what bothers me. It feels hypocritical given his vaccine hesitancy, willingness to ask hard questions about gender and sex, etc.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
he writes, after implying that the total death toll was fewer than a million
What?? I don't understand where you're getting that, but I don't want to argue with it because it feels like a distraction.
After all, if it was only half a million Jews who died, well then that would be roughly similar to the number of German civilians who died via the Allied strategic bombing campaign, or the number of ethnic Germans who died in the ethnic cleansing campaigns in Eastern Europe in 1944-46.
It would not be similar to the civilian casualties of war. War is morally complicated in a way that straight genocide isn't. As for your second example, I wasn't aware that there was a genocide that took place against ethnic Germans, but if such a thing did happen and was deliberately orchestrated by the government of whatever European country this took place in, then I do think it is morally equivalent to the Holocaust. That doesn't, however, mean it warrants as much attention as the Holocaust. The Holocaust is exceptionally well-documented by the very people who perpetrated it, and there are also thousands of hours of recorded interviews with survivors. The ethnic cleansing you speak of here is presumably less well-documented because I haven't even heard of it.
Germans were disproportionately and unequally punished for this
To my knowledge, their only punishment is living in a country where "hate speech" is illegal, and every Western country except America has unfortunately been given this punishment.
Hell, given the rough-and-tumble nature of total war it would be natural then to suggest the Holocaust wasn't deliberate,
They were put in camps, for Pete's sake! The camps are still standing! How can people be accidentally put in camps? I know you're trying to play devil's advocate, but I can't even follow the devil's advocacy you're doing.
I'm much too well-versed in the rhetorical style and strategies of Holocaust deniers not to get a lot of red flags popping in my brain as I read this post.
If I have to accept the label of Holocaust denier to have this discussion, then fine. I don't care. My point is that I don't understand why getting details wrong about a historical event is a moral failing and that people who do it should be "damned to hell." I also don't understand how someone could feel that way about the Holocaust, then turn around and express other taboo ideas without any cognitive dissonance. Dennis Prager is viewed by many leftists in prominent positions in the same way that he views people who underestimate the death toll of the Holocaust.
Again, I apologize if I'm making less sense now. This is one of the few subjects that makes me really emotional, and when I'm emotional, I don't make as much sense as I otherwise would. But that's why I need to talk about this, and there aren't any other places for me to talk about it.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I appreciate your response. When I hear you put it like that, I do think this might be a problem unique to me. If two million people in my state were murdered, but they were all people I don't know, then it would be just as bad to me as one million people who are scattered across the country being murdered.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
Elon Musk was transparently lying about his level of offense as an excuse to keep one of the most controversial public figures in America off his platform. He was also transparently lying about Kanye West inciting violence. I hate liars, but Musk is in a uniquely tough spot where he wants Twitter to be freer than it was under the previous owner, but he can't make it too free because that would drive away advertisers and make the site unprofitable.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
Holy moly. I hadn't thought of it like this. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that what upsets people about the Holocaust isn't just that millions of people were murdered, but that the end goal was exterminating a group of people in its entirety. I'm deracinated enough that it makes little difference to me, but if I had a stronger sense of Jewish identity, then that might make a difference. Thank you.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I don't think of myself as a decoupler, but rather, as someone who is all but incapable of coupling. I would never be able to form the link between "removing the Jews" and "imperialist empire." However, if your hypothesis that people have subconsciously formed this link in response to social pressures, then that is quite interesting and I will have to consider it.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I understand what you're saying, and I think we're at a point where my issue is no longer that I don't understand, but that I disagree. I don't mean that I disagree with what you're saying, but rather, that I disagree that this is acceptable behavior for public intellectuals. If Prager doesn't care to understand why people might question aspects of the Holocaust or how his behavior may do more to encourage Holocaust denial than discourage it, then he shouldn't write a column above the subject for both ethical and pragmatic reasons.
Also, the reasoning you've given for why people hate Nazis and the Nazi-adjacent certainly applies Prager, but I don't think it actually applies to most people, because if it did, they would hate communists as much as Nazis and respond to any attempt to rehabilitate Marx's image with the same anger they have towards anyone who they believe is trying to rehabilitate Hitler's image. Instead, Chapo Trap House has a best-selling book that was prominently displayed at my local library for over a year, with a favorable blurb by Tim Heidecker, the same person who thought Sam Hyde was too chummy with Nazis.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I understand that Holocaust denial can be motivated by anti-Semitism, and obviously the desire to murder Jews is motivated by anti-Semitism (in conjunction with other pathological traits), but I don't know that one necessarily leads to the other. If someone is motivated to deny the Holocaust, that implies a recognition that the Holocaust was a bad, right? If somebody thinks it was a good thing, wouldn't they prefer to claim that it happened? But I'm speaking of psychological territory I'm unfamiliar with. I only empathize with Holocaust revisionism and denial when they are motivated by contrarianism and a disdain for ideological taboos, because that's the kind of person I am. I don't know if you've read this Richard Hanania post, but it sums up my feelings well if you replace "pronouns" with "morally castigating anyone who asks questions about a specific historical event, especially if you don't do the same with different historical events" and add the caveat that I think the p̶r̶o̶n̶o̶u̶n̶s̶ castigation will increase the chances of a genocide.
This is kind of a tangent, but my reaction to the alt-right over the years has continually been "well, they have legitimate grievances and are being treated unfairly," and I didn't feel a twinge of genuine fear about the possibility of another holocaust (or widespread pogroms) until I saw Nick Fuentes and Kanye West team-up for an interview tour and possible presidential campaign. I still think the odds of it happening are low, but they get higher every time "the Jewish media" takes action against Kanye. Look at this video, and look at the comments. Jonathan's behavior isn't just wrong, but it's creating the enemy he claims to be afraid of. And sometimes I think that he knows this, and is doing it deliberately so that he has something to fight. It's like an exterminator who breeds rats and strategically places them in local businesses so that he can be hired later to kill them. But what happens when the rats (anti-Semites in this analogy) start reproducing too fast for the exterminator to keep up? Has Greenblatt considered that a possibility?
Okay, tangent over. Thank you for explaining why you think the Holocaust is treated with more reverence than other genocides. I think that what you're describing is actually similar to the point that Kanye was trying to make before Nick Fuentes started whispering in his ear: that Jews aren't morally inferior to gentiles, but their overrepresentation in the media leads to a degree of unintentional bias, such as overlooking the death toll of communism. As I've said before on this sub, it's similar to the (valid!) complaint feminists make that when men are in positions of power, they tend not to think about the needs of women. I advocate meritocracy, so to me, the solution isn't removing Jews from power, as Fuentes has taught Kanye. The solution is asking people to be aware of their biases and listen to people outside of their group. Kanye is past that now, and so are the people listening to him, and so I fear for the future. Not too much, but enough that I feel compelled to voice this fear. (Or maybe I'm just afraid to admit the extent to which I fear a resurgence of pogroms because it would make my priorities seem ridiculous.)
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
Are you able to articulate why?
I don't think the line from Marx to the Holodomor is pretty short. Seizing the means of production and having the government (euphemistically referred to as "the people") make all economic decisions inevitably leads to mass deaths. In my view, the only different between a socialist (in the original Marxist sense of the term) and a tankie is that a socialist believes if Snowball wasn't exiled, then Animal Farm would've worked, while a tankie believes Napoleon did nothing wrong. I think that Napoleon just accelerated an inevitable decay.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
"just another casualty of war".
That's if they were killed by another country that was bombing indiscriminately, not by their own governments because of ethnic animus.
can you really not see why someone Jewish might be upset about being told they should be glad that the death plan wasn't as efficient as claimed
Of course I can! What happened is still an abomination, either way.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
You make a very good point, and I hate this because it should be a cause for people to recognize their own hypocrisy.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
I don't understand what you're saying. Are you saying that historical inaccuracy will get people killed because people will misidentify who Nazis are and use that as an excuse to invade nearby territory?
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
That sounds like prejudice on your part. Using pure logic, there is no reason for me to trust a communist other than Nazi, other than that because communism is more acceptable (even though it shouldn't be), it attracts people who are less psychologically deviant than white supremacy/fascism/National Socialism/etc.
Conservautism
Doubly Afraid of Change
1yr ago
Okay, I'll agree with you that Marx isn't equivalent to Hitler, because he didn't actually do anything and only wrote about wanting other people to do things. But he's at least equivalent to.. oh, Richard Spencer.
It now means "What's the deal with the Jews?"
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