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 -
Many evacuated into the Soviet Union ahead of the German advance. Many were deported into Russia by the Soviet Union themselves and likely died there or assimilated. Many did die directly by the Germans or general wartime conditions, the mortality on Poland in general was extremely high, for Poles as well. Many want to Israel, or the United States.
But if you are saying they were all gassed in shower rooms at a precisely known location, then we can review the evidence for that claim and find the weight of the evidence does not remotely justify confidence in those sensational and extremely unusual claims.
But also, like I just said in my other comment the methodology of relying on sequences of census data to assert an indisputable level of mortality is fundamentally flawed in and of itself. Pre-war estimates were revised upwards post-hoc, and post-war estimates were revised downwards post-hoc, and the only estimate that has never been revised is the 1945 estimate. So every single post-hoc revision of those estimates has served to increase the theoretical mortality of that period, coincidentally.
The mortality in Poland was especially high but we would expect that to be more evenly distributed. The pre war population of Jews in Poland was 10%. The Postwar population was virtually none and the population of in Poland is nill now. This was not according to estimated numbers but the official Polish census So where did they go? All the Jews in Warsaw just packed up and moved to the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union is not a black box you can't just through millions of people there. They kept detailed records like the totalitarian state they were and also didn't really allow assimilation in the sense that everyone had their nationality listed on their identity cards and the Soviets viewed Judaism as a nationality. There were a many totally assimilated Soviet Jews but their ID cards still said Jewish. This is why there are now pork shops in Israel because these totally assimilated Jews were still able to prove their Jewishness. Now that might make your hypothesis seem correct except the Soviet Union is also short on Jews
Vilnius and Kiev and the entire pale also have missing Jews. Because the places historically had quite a lot The numbers for this are from the Russian census in 1897 of just Yiddish speakers. Again census not an estimation. Since the 1990s we have access to the full Soviet census records and these people are not there. Nor is there evidence of a huge influx from Poland and the Soviets did keep records of this. Even totally assimilated Jews who didn't practice and eat pork were still considered Jews because the Soviet viewed them as race/nationality. These records show all kinds of other Soviet atrocities based on nationality namely Stalin's deportations they aren't sanitized. The Soviet archives were hugely open during the 90s.
As well then we get to the issue of motive. Did you know that the Soviets intensely disliked the Western holocaust narrative because they though it focused to much on Jews? They thought it elevated Jews too much when the German invasion had caused great suffering and death for all the Soviet people's the holocaust as such as a singular action was not really taught in the Soviet Union. But rather integrated into the whole narrative of the great Patriotic War. Why would the Soviets go the effort to fabricate a narrative they hate.
You know this isn't the mainstream narrative right? Which hold that more than half of the Jews killed died from overwork or more likely massacred in a muddy field in Eastern Europe by the Einsatzgruppen. Even if you proved that Auschwitz was entirely a myth you'd still half to deal with the missing Jews and the state sanctioned death squads. Which how do you deal with them do you think the Einsatzgruppen were a real thing and if so what were there purpose?
I've already explained that differentiating census data across years is only a theoretical approximation of mortality due to measurement error. And in the case of estimates of Jewish population, it seems the errors were in opposite directions pre-war and post-war, which is highly convenient for the narrative they rely on for their global status.
Did you know that the 2020 census shows an 8.6% decline in White people between 2010 and 2020? I don't mean as a proportional representation, I mean those people simply disappeared. Where did they go? Were they lured into bagel shops in Brooklyn and murdered in the tunnels under Chabad?
The problem with using these estimates for mortality is that it precludes the existence of measurement error, in particular in the cases where measurement error is incentivized by wartime narratives which it is in this case.
Yes I do, it is claimed approximately 3 million Jews were killed inside gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. So the vaunted 6 million still has another 3 million to account for. The Einsatzgruppen were real, their purpose was anti-partisan measures.
The fundamental problem is, let's say I'm correct and the "Gas chambers disguised as shower rooms" never existed. So where did 6 million deaths come from? When did they die? Where? That's not a rhetorical question, if you remove the gas chamber story then trying to tally nearly that degree of mortality is simply impossible given existing evidence. Did millions die in the ghettos? No evidence. Did millions die by the Einsatzgruppen? No evidence. If you take away the gas chamber story, there is no alternative explanation for when, where, or how those Jews were supposed to have been killed. If you disagree, I challenge you to present an alterative theory to where 6 millions Jews were supposed to have died and when. That's why the gas chamber story is clung to so dearly, there is no alternative explanation for where those ~3 million theoretical Jews were supposed to have died, and the "six million" symbolic figure is inextricable with the gas chamber story.
So lets say everything you said is correct the gas chambers never existed the camps were just labor camps and the Soviets created the death camp narrative as a psyop. Would you describe the systematic murder of three million Jews as the holocaust not happening? I wouldn't and I don't think most people would. I think an argument following that would be something like the, "camp narrative" in incorrect and caused inflated number but the holocaust still happened it just involved Jews being rounded up and shot" That seems to follow from those beliefs a lot better.
This is very convenient given that the Germans considered all Jews in the Soviet Union to be partisans. So yes their purpose was anti-partisan measures which under German classifications of the time would include eliminating Jews as all Jews were considered partisans.
But the issue is there are no Jews left. There was a whole Yiddish speaking culture in the Pale that is just gone your quibbling about exact number but the point is how ever many there were and we have records outside of the census one showing a culture here for hundreds of years they aren't there anymore. If you say elsewhere in the Soviet Union Soviet records don't show that and you can go hunt in the former Soviet Union all you want you won't find them. And given Soviet official policy was to downplay the specific targeting of Jews there was no incentive to fake that anyway.
The Germans loudly and often declared the war in the East a racial war and one of ethnic cleansing and conflict. Given that such wars almost always involve genocide and mass killing. And given the Germans were willing to implement things like murder the Polish intelligentsia to destroy them as a nation, implement the hunger plan, suspend the laws of war in the Soviet Union and plan out stuff like general plan Ost. Which explicitly involved settlement and ethnic cleansing. Why would you expect them to spare the Jews especially because the Jews of the Pale just vanished after the Germans swept over them.
You misunderstand me. It is claimed ~3 million Jews were killed inside gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. But I am not acknowledging that 3 million Jews were killed by other means. I am simply saying that if you take away the Gas Chamber story, you are left with no alternative explanation for the mortality of 3 million Jews. Did they die in the Ghettos? Did they die at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen? Did they die in the concentration camps? The evidence affirmatively refutes any plausible alternative explanation for that level of mortality by German hands. This is why the gas chamber story is so important, and they can never dispense with it without giving up the narrative entirely. Without it, there is no explanation for how the Germans allegedly killed so many Jews.
So let's say I dispense with the extermination camp narrative, does that mean I acknowledge 3 million Jews died? No. I've already repeatedly described my position, without contention, that census differentials are not a reliable estimate of mortality, in the general case but especially in this cause. I agree with Ryan Faulk's suggestion:
I think this is closer to the truth, the global Jewish population estimate is today and always has been enigmatic and politically-loaded. It is not a reliable measurement of mortality, in particular given the pattern of measurement revisions that so happen to correlate with utility to the Holocaust narrative.
Yeah, that's actually kind of my point, that this whole fucking sensational story relies entirely on Soviet investigators and records. Do you think that's a reliable basis for confidence in this narrative of millions of Jews being gassed inside shower rooms?
There's a lot of claims here so I'll deal with them in turn:
Who was it that perpetrated the Katyn Massacre? When the Germans conquered this area of Poland and uncovered the alleged mass graves, what they did was excavate the mass graves and performed autopsies to determine cause of death and attempted to identify victims. They released American POWs to observe the investigation to report on its integrity, and they invited international observers from neutral nations. Essentially, they did everything the Soviets/Poles did not do when claiming that millions of Jews were gassed inside shower rooms.
And guess what?
The Soviet Prosecution still claimed that the Katyn Massacre was carried out by the Germans at Nuremberg, bundled with the accusation that they gassed millions of Jews inside shower rooms. I do not make this point to deny the Germans murdered Poles, but to deny that this war implies some prior likelihood for the Germans coming up with some scheme to engineer Death Factories in which they exterminated millions of Jews inside Shower Rooms. That was wartime atrocity propaganda. The Soviets were moreso intent on destroying Polish nationalism to a vastly greater extent than the Germans.
There was no hunger plan, what people call the "hunger plan" was an assessment that feeding the German army would leave insufficient food for conquered Slavs, which was accurate. It was not a plan, it was an accurate projection of the prevailing situation, that it was impossible to feed the German army and the occupied locals given wartime scarcity.
Also vastly overstated, no different than citing a random Israeli minister who talks about colonizing the Sinai. There were many variations of the post-war plan for the east, none of them were confirmed because the Germans lost the war, and the most salacious variations were viewed as unrealistic even at the time. The Germans were ethnically cleansed after the war, 12 to 14 million but some estimates to 16.5 million were ethnically cleansed. I don't say this to justify German colonization plans, but to point out that such plans do not lend credence to a scheme to gas millions of Jews inside gas chambers disguised as shower rooms..
Why would the Soviets fake something that goes against their own narrative? Anyway I think it's a reliable basis for arguing that the Germans killed a lot of Jews I don't personally claim to be able to prove the method but it seems extremely obvious they did. We are going a bit round and round do you think there were Jews in the Pale of settlement? Because the exact number doesn't matter. Why don't know the exact number of Dzungars before and after nor Armenians. but there were Jews there and now there aren't so where did they go? The pre-Soviet Imperial records show a large Jewish population the post Soviet Russian Federation census shows almost none, the same with pre and post Communist Poland. You need zero communist records to prove anything if you don't want. You keep talking about Soviet investigators we don't need investigators to know places like Warsaw and Kiev had huge Jewish populations and now don't
Again it's not just quibbling about numbers there were whole Jewish districts in these cities and now there aren't. There were whole Yiddish speaking farming villages of which zero exist today. The Germans created a special unit to fight partisans and then declared Jews partisans. It's not rocket science where they could have gone. There's plenty of witness testimony in Eastern Europe of their activities. Many of which incredibly problematic to Western narratives like the Baltic populations eagerly participating. You keep going on and on about shower rooms. I don't claim to be able to prove shower rooms (though I admit I do buy it) I'm confident the Germans killed the Jews and as you say without it, it creates a hole. But we should at least agree the Germans targeted Jews before we discuss method and I probably can't prove the gas chamber beyond a reasonable doubt for you. I think I can prove the Germans shot a lot of Jews in Eastern Europe. Notably because they created whole units to do it and we have a decent amount of evidence. Such as the Germans declaring all Jews partisans.
Yes the Soviet did Katyn the Germans did a bunch of their own massacres both the Germans and the Soviets wanted to elminate Poland that's what the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was about.
The Western Allies and the Germans fought the war in a much more civilized manner. Compare how German POWs were treated by the Western Allies versus the Soviets or how the Germans deliberately issued orders suspending the laws of war and conduct on the Eastern front. The Germans did not view the Western Allies as racially inferior people's to be colonized in the way they viewed Slavs. The conduct of both the Allies and Axis was extremely different on the Western versus Eastern fronts.
The Soviets jacketed exaggerated warcimes on the Germans to divert attention from their own war crimes. The chief Soviet prosecutor at Nuremberg was a prominent judge in the Stalinist show-trials, this was his speciality. But I agree it's not a sufficient story because the USSR was not really that interested in generating this persistent narrative of Jewish victimhood. The Jews in the United States took that football and accelerated the cultural impact of the Holocaust narrative starting in the 1960s. Really the whole thing is the conjugation of the efforts of Hollywood and the apparatus of Stalinist propaganda. Unlike most historical events that peak in the public consciousness in the immediate aftermath and fade over time, I wouldn't peg the peak of Holocaust consciousness until the 1990s at least. That wasn't caused by the USSR that was caused by Jews in the United States.
The firebombing of civilian population centers, the nuclear attacks on Japan, the rape of Berlin by Soviet troops. Do you know that the Germans fielded the largest foreign volunteer army in history consisting of Slavs desperate to fight against the Soviets? The notion that the Allies fought in a more "civilized manner" is entirely downstream from the Gas Chamber and Extermination Camp accusations. The Western Allies demanded unconditional surrender, a barbaric and murderous war aim that Hitler did not even aspire for. Your narrative fundamentally relies on the Holocaust, because without it the entire WW-II narrative you have in your head falls apart.
That's the exact reason I said the Western Allies, meaning America, England France and not "the Allies." My entire point was that the war in the West was fought largely based on civilized European norms and yes bombing cities is part of that. Everyone in World War II and World War I did it. The war in the East was a racial war of extermination between two totalitarians nightmare states. Both of which destroyed entire peoples. Yes the Germans were able to field huge number of locals desperate to fight against the Soviets. And they were welcomed in a lot places in the Western Soviet union. Until the locals realized the German plan was not to restore private property but keep them on their collective farms and starve them to feed their armies. A lot of groups made choices between the Nazis and the Soviets and most got squeezed and ground into paste no matter what side they chose.
No I don't need the Holocaust for a World War II narrative. Germany and Japan both declared war on America after having started half a dozen wars of naked aggression and conquest between them. Fighting them would be totally justified without the Holocaust why wouldn't it be？ Germany and Japan were aggressive expansionist enemies of America and the West. Indeed the entire war was fought without the Holocaust being a central aspect of war propaganda because the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor. Your verging on being one of those Tankies who lifts up Stalin because he fought the Nazis. The Nazis fought the Soviets sure but they were also a totalitarian expansionist state and they only fought the Soviets after subjugating all of Western Europe and invading many neutral countries. They also didn't fight the Soviets for altruistic reasons but to steal and settle their land and alienated a huge number of the Soviet population with their brutality.
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