johnfabian
1yr ago
I've spent enough of my life having exchanges where people say "oh wow, my username means 'race science' in German? I had no idea, I just thought it sounded cool. Anyways, here's why Britain and France were responsible for starting WWII..."
The guy's initials are SS. C'mon.
johnfabian
1yr ago
The thing that this meme forgets about (and a lot of men in general forget about) is all the women who aren't beautiful
johnfabian
1yr ago
I feel like your response is a bit CW-brained, so to speak; that is to say it's rooted in a kind of contrarianism that is overriding your faculties. Yes, it's annoying and silly and perhaps unfair that the media does its best to overlook levels of violence among black Americans. That does not mean it alone is the secret ingredient that explains everything wrong with American society. If you removed all gun violence caused by black Americans from the picture tomorrow the US would still have a higher murder rate than most other western nations with significantly more gun deaths. And I would note that specifically I was addressing these kind of random mass shootings, which as far as I'm aware aren't disproportionately committed by blacks.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I honestly think straw vegetarians are much more a product of the cognitive dissonance of meat-eaters who realize deep down the incredible cruelty of the meat industry and on some level register vegetarians as a walking mirror of their own hypocrisy.
(I say this as a somewhat self-hating meat eater)
johnfabian
1yr ago
Given your obvious bent and contempt for academic history, again I don't know if you're being deceitful, ignorant, or just plain dumb. The "functionalist" camp is the pre-eminent one in Holocaust studies; scarce few contemporary historians hold that the Holocaust was masterminded by Hitler from the beginning. The Holocaust began roughly simultaneously within three separate Nazi bureaucracies, each with specific problems, methods, and goals. Again, like almost all deniers do, you steadfastly ignore the Holocaust by bullets. By the time the Holocaust moved onto a more deliberate stage and the combined resources of the Nazi state begin to dedicate itself to the task, yes then we have plenty of documentation of that effort (which again you just ignore). Surely you know you're not convincing anyone who has ever opened a history book on the subject?
Here's an alternative hypothesis: there was no order and never a plan to exterminate the Jews as the "final solution", and that's why the historians have been unable to find documents or even agree on a basic timeline of how this occurred.
Well, Himmler would've disagreed with you. And Heydrich and Eichmann, and Goebbels. C'mon dude, these are your heroes! Why are you denying them their greatest works? Think of the shame they would have if 80-odd years on people who claim to follow in their footsteps would disavow the immense effort and sacrifice in attempting rid Europe of Jewry!
johnfabian
1mo ago
it's some dude in the midwest who every time he has a bratwurst thinks "Heil Hitler, we must save the Fatherland"
johnfabian
1yr ago
I don't follow this logic at all. Why would I be obliged to enjoy gay sex if I supported gay rights? It's not a question of taste: I don't think pineapple on pizza is unethical because I don't like it. I wouldn't seek to criminalize things that are simply not my preference. The hypocrisy would be to deny others the right to marry the people (i.e., consenting adults) they love, when I already enjoy that ability.
The crux is that you get meat by killing a sentient, emotionally complex, intelligent animal. I think that if you can't bring yourself to do that (and have to rely on the emotional distance of someone else doing the dirty work), then yeah, I don't reckon you should eat meat, because industrial meat processing takes that one bloody act and multiplies it billions of times yearly. We all have our hypocrisies and have to pick where to draw the extent of which we tolerate them, so I think if you can't stomach the very simple act the meat industry is built upon, you shouldn't seek to benefit from its utterly horrific economies of scale.
johnfabian
1yr ago
The problem is his claims aren't concrete, but they take a much more time to debunk than they take him to spew out. They're classic conspiracy nonsense; if you were to listen to say, a charming and intelligent flat earther, he could spend all day telling you why this experiment or this photo or this piece of evidence is false in ways that seem eminently reasonable. He would also be completely unable to provide an alternative theory.
SS can come in here and say, "well, given that we lack a written order from Hitler, maybe there was no German attempt to kill European Jews?", but he can't and won't explain his idea of how ~5.7-5.9 million Jews just disappeared off the continent. They always argue by chipping away at the "narrative", never by providing one of their own.
SS, I think it's fair to assume, does not speak German. He doesn't speak Polish or Russian either. Those are the languages, at minimum, you need to be a historian of the Holocaust. Yiddish and some other eastern European languages help too, because the Holocaust was almost entirely an Eastern European phenomenon (somewhat at odds with its perception in the west). He has not done archival work, he has not done first person interviews, he has not grappled with primary sources in their original languages. He has done nothing himself except to read the biased and bigotry-poisoned works of other people who have also not done that work.
I'd be more interested in writing a post about the general logical failures of Holocaust denial than engage with him.
johnfabian
3mo ago
That may be tolerable for someone who wasn't Netanyahu. Netanyahu built his image on being the Great Defender, while simultaneously burning his political capital with his corruption and mismanagement. Maybe another leader could've weathered the storm in trying to show restraint, but Netanyahu had to strike back disproportionately. Every Palestinian killed works towards rebuilding his position.
johnfabian
5mo ago
I mean it is a direct analogy to a current geopolitical crisis to bring this up now.
I was merely inspired by a discussion with a friend. No point on sitting on the prompt for a few months hoping Israel/Palestine clears up.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Boy, it sure would've been a big coup if somehow, someone had managed to get a hold of the guy who prepared those minutes and asked some questions about it. Maybe have a big trial or something, I'm just spitballing. Then we could really get to the bottom of this. Too bad it never happened.
I would like to note that this entire time Mr. SS has been using the exact "levering" tactic I wrote about in the comment that sparked this whole chain of discussion. Of course it's all disingenuous, and there's ultimately no end to it because the impetus isn't just a bullish sort of contrarianism but also (rather obviously) a hate for Jews. There's no way to win on logic or a sound argument because that's not what put him in his position.
johnfabian
1yr ago
It seems strange to use the word "tyrannizing" in the context of the government voiding constitutional rights, but having it apply to the ones whose rights are being violated
johnfabian
5d ago
Would there be? Does NATO risk nuclear war for the sake of Estonia?
What if it's just a border incursion? The Russians penetrate some 20 or 30 km and then stop. What if it's just shelling or a few bombs dropped on military bases?
I don't think this is something particularly likely, but the Russians might think it valuable to test the waters on how united NATO really is, especially if Trump is elected again.
johnfabian
14d ago
he says "puck". It's an old saying about why Wayne Gretzky was so good.
johnfabian
1mo ago
There's a UK "quiz culture" and corresponding infrastructure; local leagues, regional leagues, prestigious competitions, popular club at universities, etc. It's just a much more popular pasttime from what I can tell.
johnfabian
3mo ago
Man, if only they had somehow tracked the guy who wrote those Wannsee minutes down. Maybe interrogated him, or had a big trial or something. What an incredibly insightful process that would have been. Shame it didn't happen.
Your hate is too obvious, it makes the shtick too visible. You need to apply a few more layers of lacquer or something. I don't get the point of it all either, it's too effortful to be merely the product of some kind of stubborn contrarianism. I know you're lying, you know you're lying, you know I know you're lying, what's the point?
johnfabian
5mo ago
I suppose at its heart it's a more complex trolley problem with a historical context. It's an interesting moral dilemma to tease out.
johnfabian
11mo ago
The September massacres were spontaneous and the French government had no part in planning it (though the Parisian government did). It fit more in the pattern of this kind of spontaneous violence that the élites would then affirm as "regrettably necessary."
johnfabian
11mo ago
Emotions were always "high" among the larger mass of people; the poster below referenced the "Great Fear" which was a mass paranoia following the storming of the Bastille as an example. This kind of paranoia around "ordinary" property crime was very common around that time; France had experienced a series of bad harvests, inflation, and general privation leading up to and during the early years of the Revolution. There was a persistent economic desperation among the peasantry and urban poor that helped fuel more radical elements.
Among the revolutionary élites who were generally of the well-off middle class, Tackett argues it was the completely unexpected success and then rapid reforms of the Revolution that caused this sudden emotional heightening. It's hard to imagine for myself what it would've been like to live through if you had been born into a world that seemed fixed and unchangeable, and all of a sudden in a matter of months you had been able to mold it to your (very recently arrived at) worldview. There are quotes from various figures in that period of 89-90 (that Tackett constantly references as the "spirit of '89") of this general sense of euphoria and utopianism.
So you have a weird scenario where the East had the custody of most of the key evidence, but the Holocaust did not become part of cultural consciousness (where it actually happened (!)), but in the West, which did not have custody of most of the key evidence, the Holocaust became central to the culture. This was accomplished with the memoirs and Hollywood productions that @johnfabian accuses Revisionists of opportunistically using for their agenda. Just pause to appreciate the inversion of reality he is trying to pull, by accusing Revisionists of exploiting memoirs and Hollywood blockbusters which have formulated mass public perception of the Holocaust in the West.
I don't think it requires some vast conspiracy to explain why communist eastern Europe did not place great cultural relevance upon the Holocaust, given that the Soviets very much wanted to downplay crimes specifically against Jews and place Russians and socialists as the chief victims of German aggression. Not to mention the rather... "awkward" issues that Ukrainian or Polish nationalists might run into when trying to shed more light on the Holocaust, these countries had more than their own fair share of murdered civilians to mourn and commemorate.
And public opinion is always formed more of pop culture than academic history. The popular image of the Eastern front in western popular culture was for decades based off the memoirs of German generals which, to put it very mildly, were very loose with the truth (especially with respect to their own culpability in committing war crimes). Some of the more famous "fighting soldier" memoirs are themselves either largely or fully inventions.
johnfabian
1yr ago
I think it merits separating "revisionists" from "denialists"; revisionism is a legitimate practice in history. For example the claims of tens of millions of GULAG victims were inevitably going to see a revisionist movement once the Soviet Union collapsed and historians had access to the Soviet archives. Or Holocaust revisionism (like the functionalism-intentionalism debate, for example) is an ongoing process like it is in every other historical subject that sees active scholarship.
"Denialism" on the other hand is an ideologically-driven act aimed at specific goals, working outside the historical method and essentially in bad faith. They're lying liars who lie, to put it more bluntly.
johnfabian
1yr ago
Are you looking for a discussion of historiography, or specifically a focus on primary sources?
johnfabian
1yr ago
there are lots of Roma in the US, they just integrated rather than forming societal enclaves
johnfabian
1yr ago
Since then there have been numerous instances of governments using back-to-work laws. Off the top of my heads the feds used it for Canada Post in 2018 and CP Rail in 2019
One does wonder if it isn't some gap in the rules if we have to re-litigate "did Auschwitz really have gas chambers???!?!?" every week though.
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