This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
... he writes, after implying that the total death toll was fewer than a million.
I'm going to echo @2rafa's thoughts here: of course this amounts to Holocaust denial. But I'd like to point out something else in this kind of argumentation. You say that claiming only a few hundred thousand Jews dying would not amount to "denying Hitler's genocidal ambitions", but if this claim was actually accepted, or merely allowed to exist as a hypothetical, am I to believe that this would not then change? 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. That would be particularly rhetorically useful to a prospective Holocaust denier: to equivocate between the slaughter of Jews and the killings of Germans, or even to suggest that while the Jews did suffer, Germans were disproportionately and unequally punished for this (which was generally speaking the prevailing public opinion in immediate post-war West Germany). Hell, given the rough-and-tumble nature of total war it would be natural then to suggest the Holocaust wasn't deliberate, but an unfortunate, regrettable, violent episode in a war full of them.
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. There's been a lot of this kind of bullshit this past few weeks, and I hope it's not a sign themotte.org is turning into the internet's #1 haven for witches.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm mostly with the other incredulous people here, but alright. Let's say your username isn't trolly nonsense and you're deeper down the spectrum than I am, or the median mottizen is.
Put plainly, people really really really hate their enemies. Today's world is a little fraught, and people disagree on who this should be, but in any Western nation you'll find (at least) two groups that everyone really hates: nazis and pedophiles.
Nobody likes nazis. Depending on where you are you'll get taught more or less of who they were and what they were like, but everyone knows the big outlines. Swastikas, toothbrush stache man, holocaust, invading Poland, huzzah. To a median Westerner, the nazis wete evil losers, neo-nazis are evil losers, and they aren't interested in debating this. They have better stuff to do.
There are then two kinds of people who will go and doubt the dominant narrative about the Nazis anyway. The first are - obviously - their ideological descendants, who want to look good. The second kind of person is the sorts you'll readily find in here: the sorts who never got over being the smart kid in class. Reflexive contrarians who have never held a conventional opinion in life, because those are the normies' opinions and ohmygod they're so dumb.
A normal person, or even a smart one, isn't really going to notice or care for the distinction. They rightly know the Nazis killed millions of innocents. They rightly know national-socialist ideology is an evil one that has only brought misery to all those involved. They know this, they know their friends know this, they know their loved ones know this, they know every good person they agree with knows this. Every single one.
The people who loudly profess to disagree or question this are all, at the least, Nazi sympathisers. There's a lot of reflexive contrarians, but most of us have still the modicum of shame and social regard needed not to delve into holocaust denialism as the cause to espouse. Holocaust denier club isn't fifty truth-seekers with a couple Nazis around, it's fifty Nazis with a couple autistic kids who genuinely ought to seek their intellectual masturbation elsewhere.
The result is that the average person, or even a smart one like Prager, doesn't care to ponder just why someone might question the Holocaust. Not even the staunchly leftist atheists Prager hates like or will defend Nazis. No normal person will. But he knows that holocaust deniers fall into three rough groups: Nazis, smart people who should know better, and idiots who ought to listen to smarter sorts.
Does that help? Or are things still unclear to you?
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.
Communists are excepted not because of history, not quite, but because of the present.
Nazis are people nobody really personally knows. Insofar these are people you do know, they're skinhead degenerates and terrible people altogether - again, evil losers. Everything I said applies to Nazis because that's just who they are.
Communists aren't so rare. They appear in your library, you went to school with some, your child goes through a stupid phase, what have you. These people are, mostly, losers.. But not that evil about it. It's tough to be so viscerally hateful of communists when the median commie isn't a skinhead hooligan, but more of a weirdo who thinks society would be great if we'd just, like, learn to share, man.
Crucially, the people most likely to hate and revile communists as much as they do Nazis don't meet any in their regular lives - rural Americans. The median communist is irredeemably evil to them, because nobody close to them would ever think of adhering to such an evil ideology, much as with Nazis and anyone else.
You make a very good point, and I hate this because it should be a cause for people to recognize their own hypocrisy.
Why? They're not even really wrong. There are communists who are basically decent people. Nazis, not so much. A normal person might let a seventeen-year-old communist babysit their kids - a Nazi? Not a chance.
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.
Communism attracting people who aren't as evil and hateful is exactly why you should trust them more. Not to run the country sure, but to paint your fence or mind your pets? Not a big deal.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link