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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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It's pretty dishonest to pretend that nobody would react to the revelation that the entire extermination camp and gas chamber story was a lie, and nobody was killed in that fashion. You are saying you wouldn't care if that turned out to be false (I don't believe you by the way) but it would be shocking to many people. Certainly that story is the epicenter of the placement of Hitler as the anti-Christ of Western Methology. Things get very awkward if you admit the entire gas chamber and extermination camp story was all just a huge lie meant to manipulate the public, a lie you will get arrested in Europe for challenging.

The Germans were capable of a 1% death rate in prison camps (the death rate of American POWs).

The Typhus epidemic killed 2-3 million people during WWI, mostly civilians. The Germans did not have a vaccine for Typhus during WWII.

The conditions in the concentration camps were also tolerable throughout most of the war, save for outbreaks of disease. It was in the final months of the war when German infrastructure was being destroyed from all sides that the catastrophic conditions became ubiquitous, a fact that this Revisionist film covers very well.

You misread me.

Imagine an alternate world where no one claimed gas chambers and said 2-3 million Jews were rounded up and effectively murdered through horrible conditions and starvation. My assertion is that the end result would have been much the same. It was still a horrible atrocity and large scale genocide carried out with the machinery of the state, and under the guise of a racial ideology. I believe there still would have been a push for a Jewish state, the Nazi ideology would still be viewed as evil antichrist stand in, and this alternate history world would be mostly indistinguishable from our own.

(It should be worth noting that they did not need to be rounded up. So the death rate should be compared to the general civilian population, not the general prison camp population. The choice to round them up in such large numbers was still that: a choice.)

And yeah I will still say I don't really care if they lied about the method of death and doubled the numbers. But I mostly don't care because everyone that would have perpetrated the lie is dead and out of power. Had this lie been 10 years ago, yes I absolutely would care, and I'd want to punish the liars.

I've self assessed this on other issues I care about. I care about communism being an evil ideology that leads to mass murder and starvation. The New York Times is now known to have had active communist agents on the payroll in the 30s-50s. And that these reporters actively helped cover up the atrocities committed by the USSR. But it all doesn't actively bother me very much. And it bothers me far far less than the errors and lies perpetrated over covid. I have a recency bias, and WWII is not recent.

Imagine an alternate world where no one claimed gas chambers and said 2-3 million Jews were rounded up and effectively murdered through horrible conditions and starvation.

What you don't understand is that those 2-3 million did not die in concentration camps, if that many died at all which is highly doubtful. The death toll in the concentration camps is a small fraction of that number. And most who died in the concentration camps did so in final months of the war due to Germany being destroyed on all sides and infrastructure totally collapsing. Many died under the custody of Stalin during and after the war, and never came under German occupation in the first place. The death toll in the concentration camps was a small fraction of that number.

After the war, 12 to 14 million Germans were expelled and estimates for the number of Germans who died vary but exceed 2 million on the higher end. Nobody knows that fact at all. You are completely wrong that if 2 million Jews had died throughout the war due to general wartime conditions, which would put their attrition similar to the people around them where they lived (Poles, Ukranians, etc.), that the Holocaust mythos would stand as prominently as it does today.

What shocks the conscious is the gas chamber story. That is what makes Jewish suffering more important than the suffering of everyone else in the eyes of the culture.

And yeah I will still say I don't really care if they lied about the method of death and doubled the numbers. But I mostly don't care because everyone that would have perpetrated the lie is dead and out of power.

It says more about you that a radical change of facts on a historical event like this wouldn't register at all with you- you maintain the same opinion even when the historical premise radically changes. You also couldn't possibly be more wrong- the people responsible for perpetuating the lie are very much alive and in power, and they are using their power desperately to keep the lie alive using all means available. Civil and criminal measures enforcing Belief in the ridiculous gas chamber story are far stronger and more widespread than ever before. And banning Holocaust Denial has always been a primary impetus of increased censorship across social media.

I have a recency bias, and WWII is not recent.

I have a recency bias too, and I have eyes and ears and can clearly see the delineation between culture war issues which are fundamental to issues discussed by those like OP and the Holocaust mythos. It's a living mythos, the Hitler anti-Christ narrative is so fundamental to modern culture war issues, saying "WWII is not recent so it doesn't matter much" is incredibly myopic and wrong.

What you don't understand is that those 2-3 million did not die in concentration camps, if that many died at all which is highly doubtful. The death toll in the concentration camps is a small fraction of that number. And most who died in the concentration camps did so in final months of the war due to Germany being destroyed on all sides and infrastructure totally collapsing. Many died under the custody of Stalin during and after the war, and never came under German occupation in the first place. The death toll in the concentration camps was a small fraction of that number.

Eh this is why the conversation with you reminds me of other generic conspiracy theorists. It all feels very wishy washy. Like you are doing a cold reading of me, and will push as far as you can in the direction of "nothing bad happened to the jews". Just so we are clear, I still think about 6 million jews died, and that there was a mass extermination effort of some kind. They weren't just killed off as a side effect of being rounded up and put in camps where there was no food and diseases ran rampant.

I just remember seeing that "middle ground" estimate from another conversation someone had with you.


I still think Churchill was uniquely unlikely to mention "gas chambers" because he had a history of controversy around chemical warfare. He was publicly willing to use it against the Germans if they used it first in warfare. And before WWII he was caught in a private conversation advocating that gas attacks be used on 'uncivilized' people. He did publicly talk about the holocaust after the war.

Grok AI does seem to think that there are passages referencing holocaust things:

Growing awareness of a Nazi policy to exterminate Jewish communities and calls it a crime against humanity. That is in volume 4

In volume 5 churchill mentions the unprecedented scale of Nazi massacres. He mentions the liquidation of ghettos, and the use of special camps for mass killings.

Maybe the AI is halucinating. I still believe it more than you. Get me a digital copy of the book that I can ctrl-f and we can settle it for sure.

Here's volume V, you can do a search yourself and there is no reference at all to approximately 3 millions Jews being murdered inside shower rooms.

Eh this is why the conversation with you reminds me of other generic conspiracy theorists. It all feels very wishy washy.

The mainstream theory is that there are no bodies at the extermination camps like Treblinka because they were all unburied over the course of 120 days and cremated on open-air pyres, despite no documentary or physical evidence for that claim, and despite no contemporary reports of a such an operation.

Why don't you ask Grok if it is possible that 800,000 corpses were exhumed at Treblinka and cremated on open-air pyres over the course of ~120 days? This is what the mainstream claims- this is "The Holocaust." It's completely impossible. Even OpenAI's model now admits this story is not feasible. But this is the Holocaust narrative.

skimming through the volumes I didn't find many references to concentration camps. (I did find one in volume 6 that was complaining the germans would starve if too much german land was given to poland, the comparison was with how terrible the conditions would be in a german concentration camp).

But I'm also realizing how much of a nothingburger this is. This was basically a dry administrative account of the war effort. The bombing of Dresden gets a single line. Hiroshima only gets mentioned 4 times. Only one of which is to dryly mention that it was nuked.

Even finding references to London being bombed was difficult.

One of the few times the nuremberg trials came up was in reference to a massacre of polish officers that was probably carried out by the Russians. The reason it was brought up is that it was causing frictions between Russia and Poland, and Churchill just wanted to smooth over those frictions.

This is the exact quality of evidence I'm talking about with the conspiracy theory thing. "Why did this news station say a thing on 9/11 and then never talk about it again? Must be because they were silenced!" Nevermind that they were confused and scared on the day it happened.

"Why doesn't churchill mention it in his super high level summary of the war effort?! Must be cuz it didn't really happen." Nevermind that he directly mentions it elsewhere in different works.

The reason it was brought up is that it was causing frictions between Russia and Poland, and Churchill just wanted to smooth over those frictions.

Yes, so the Katyn Massacre, i.e. the murder of 20,000 people was discussed because it was an important issue. But no mention whatsoever of 3 million people being tricked into walking inside death showers? Not a single direct reference to the allegation.

The Katyn Forest Massacre is also relevant because the Germans were falsely blamed for the massacre by the Soviets at the Nuremberg Trial. Whereas the massacre was actually carried out by the Soviets themselves. The Germans conducted an internationally-open investigation, even releasing American POWs to oversee the forensic investigation of the mass graves which included exhumations and autopsies in the presence of international observers. But they were still accused of the crime at Nuremberg, and the Soviets even provided witnesses claiming the Germans did it.

You can say it's a "nothingburger" but it's very strange that the Katyn Forest Massacre is discussed but not the so-called gas chambers. Revisionists claim that the Katyn Forest Massacre controversy was one of the main motivational factors for the gas chamber story in the first place. Soviet Crimes had to be upstaged by the Germans, so they leaned into the gas chamber shower room propaganda to overshadow those real crimes.

This is the exact quality of evidence I'm talking about with the conspiracy theory thing. "Why did this news station say a thing on 9/11 and then never talk about it again? Must be because they were silenced!" Nevermind that they were confused and scared on the day it happened.

The point I was responding to was the claim that Churchill and others immediately recognized the gravity of the Holocaust as such. But that isn't true. I pointed to the fact the gas chamber story was never even acknowledged in these works. Same with Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe and Charles de Gaulle's Memoirs. So they talk about the Katyn Forest Massacre but not the alleged gassing of millions of Jews inside shower rooms. It is a very strange omission.

The gas chamber story didn't gain prominence as part of WWII and Hitler mythos until decades later, largely thanks to the alchemy of Hollywood.

It was 20k captured soldiers that were killed including some 8k officers. Which has always been a huge deal for militaries everywhere. They care way more about how their soldiers are treated as POWs than they do about much else.

Elsewhere the volume also discusses French civilians being killed by allied operations, they estimate 80-100k deaths and their attitude is kind of "this is a bummer, but we are trying to kill Hitler so it's worth it."

Also as I said before Dresden's fire bombing is also barely mentioned, 25k dead. The nukes barely mentioned combined death toll of 200k.

Death tolls are rarely mentioned anywhere in the book. It is a dry accounting of a military campaign, and the Holocaust had minimal military impact.

The Germans had experience investigating mass killings, they knew how to cover their tracks, like a good murder investigator is better at getting away with murder. The Allies also announced in 1943 that German soldiers and officers would be returned to countries to face trial for any atrocities they committed, so they gave them an incentive to try and cover it up. But even with that there is still evidence, lidar and excavations have taken place at Treblinka have found the burned up human remains and cremation sites.

A few months ago someone explained to you how it's plausible and I don't recall you replying to it. And now you resort to "ask chatgpt".

I have explained in depth why it's not possible. On the face of it the fuel requirements to cremate that many people on open-air pyres defies all evidence and logical possibility. Even Grok and ChatGPT admit the Revisionist arguments are true. The claimed operation is not even remotely possible.

Historically it has only been extremely marginalized Holocaust Deniers that point out this glaring problem with the Holocaust story. But now AI takes their side on this massive problem with the mainstream theory.