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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5683 thread views

Quality Contributions Report for December 2022

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).

As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.

A few comments from the editor: first, sorry this is a little late, but you know--holidays and all. Furthermore, the number of quality contribution nominations seems to have grown a fair bit since moving to the new site. In fact, as I write this on January 5, there are already 37 distinct nominations in the hopper for January 2023. While we do occasionally get obviously insincere or "super upvote" nominations, the clear majority of these are all plausible AAQCs, and often quite a lot of text to sift through.

Second, this month we have special AAQC recognition for @drmanhattan16. This readthrough of Paul Gottfried’s Fascism: Career of a Concept began in the Old Country, and has continued to garner AAQC nominations here. It is a great example of the kind of effort and thoughtfulness we like to see. Also judging by reports and upvotes, a great many of us are junkies for good book reviews. The final analysis was actually posted in January, but it contains links to all the previous entries as well, so that's what I'll put here:

Now: on with the show!

Quality Contributions Outside the CW Thread

@Tollund_Man4:

@naraburns:

@Bernd:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@RandomRanger:

@Iconochasm:

Contributions for the week of December 5, 2022

@zeke5123:

@ymeskhout:

@FiveHourMarathon:

@gattsuru:

@Southkraut:

@Bernd:

@problem_redditor:

@FCfromSSC:

@urquan:

@gemmaem:

Sexulation

@RococoBasilica:

@problem_redditor:

Holocaustianity

@johnfabian:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

@SecureSignals:

Coloniazism

@gaygroyper100pct:

@screye:

@urquan:

@georgioz:

Contributions for the week of December 12, 2022

@SecureSignals:

@Titus_1_16:

@Dean:

@cjet79:

@JarJarJedi:

@gattsuru:

@YE_GUILTY:

@aqouta:

@HlynkaCG:

Contributions for the week of December 19, 2022

@MathiasTRex:

@To_Mandalay:

Robophobia

@gattsuru:

@IGI-111:

@NexusGlow:

Contributions for the week of December 26, 2022

@FCfromSSC:

@gattsuru:

@LacklustreFriend:

@DaseindustriesLtd:

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But at this very moment, whether Stalin's atrocities were real or exagerrated has a very high importance vis-a-vis Western foreign policy, and it indeed has had for years, considering that West has focused in very concrete ways in opposing Russia, with comparisons of current Russian Federation to Soviet Union and Putin personally to Stalin playing a very large role in the said narrative. The vast intensification of the Ukrainian war of course contributes to it greatly, since it has given new visibility to the Holodomor - a subject that has seen great historical controversy throughout the years, with an obvious connection to the accusation that the Russians are committing genocide in Ukraine, like (in the current Western narrative, at least) the Soviets did in the 30s.

Now, I personally think it's good that the West opposes Russia and think that Furr etc. are gravely wrong in their diminution of Stalin's atrocities, but I can't help but notice that (Holocaust) revisionists still continue to hyperfocus on Holocaust, not on this other subject where their methodologies, supposing they are valid and workable, might also be applied to. Of course it's not exactly hard to figure out why that might be (ie. the connection of Holocaust revisionism to antisemitism, and also because antisemites have also liked to counterpose the "Judeo-Bolshevik slaughter of Christians in Russia" to their own subject of revision.)

Of course it's not exactly hard to figure out why that might be

And if there were a lot of overlap, it would not be hard to figure out its because the revisionists are far-rightists and so obviously carry water for Putin.

That is a stretch, there is simply no comparison between the Soviet Atrocities and the Holocaust in the influence on American Culture and foreign policy. So far in this discussion I've touched on many bestselling and hugely influential Holocaust memoirs, academy-award winning films directed by Steven Spielberg, instances of Jews in our government invoking the Holocaust to manipulate the American public into supporting war in the Middle East with fabricated atrocity propaganda, Holocaust education in public schools, the Memorial Museums with hundreds of millions in funding, the weight of the "Nazi" epithet...

There simply is no similar cultural force that is based on the authenticity of Stalin's crimes or "Judeo-Bolshevism." I am not even aware of what the atrocity claims are beyond questions over the extent to which famine was planned versus unplanned. I don't think those questions have nearly the same saliency to Western culture and politics as questions surrounding the Holocaust.

Let's say the Holodomar was unplanned and not an intentional genocide. How much would that theoretical revelation impact the American public versus the revelation of the Holocaust- the extermination camps and gas chambers, not being real?

The former would somewhat weaken tired conservative talking points against socialism. I don't think it would at all change the American foreign policy apparatus posture against Russia. The latter would inspire a lot of controversy, introspection, and ideally scrutiny over our political, academic, and cultural institutions that aggressively perpetuated the falsehoods for so long.

That is a stretch, there is simply no comparison between the Soviet Atrocities and the Holocaust in the influence on American Culture and foreign policy.

This isn't just an American forum, though, and Holocaust revisionism is not just an American subject. I would argue Soviet atrocities loom larger than the Holocaust in Finnish consciousness, for instance. I am not quite sure whether the Holocaust has just the importance accorded to it by Holocaust revisionists in American consciousness, either, the explanations of American support for Israel that are just based on presumed Holocaust debt of guilt have always felt a little pat to me. Of course, not being an American, I can't feel this in my bones in the same way as an American presumably would.

Even beyond that, though, I'm not asking why Holocaust revisionists don't exert the exact same energy on Soviet crimes. I'm asking why they take it as given that (roughly) the mainstream narrative, or one more strident than the mainstream narrative, about the Soviet crimes is though even though they apply a vastly higher standard of skepticism on the mainstream narrative on the Holocaust, even though much of the popular understanding on Soviet crimes is similarly based on personal narratives and memoirs, Solzhenitzyn - still arguably one of the main sources on the Gulag camps, and Soviet crimes generally, on many - being an example of this.

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