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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   31548 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 22, 2023

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Given that we've already had our bit of Holocaust "revisionism" this early in the week, I thought I'd share some interesting, trivia, I guess that I recently learned of in that community.

I am given to understand that the most "mainstream" source of Holocaust revisionism is an organization called the Institute For Historical Review (IHR). They appear to be a pretty standard research organization in some ways, publishing papers and web articles and holding conferences and such. While they do not claim to be solely dedicated to the subject, they sure publish a good bit of material that's highly critical of Jews and their influence on the world, the history of the Holocaust, and apologetic towards the Nazi regime. I understand them to be the original source of many of the standard Holocaust denier talking points involving such things as "resettlement in the east".

It turns out that, way back in 2009, the director of the IHR, one Mark Weber, published an article titled "How Relevant is Holocaust Revisionism?" in which he basically admits that the mainstream historical view of the Holocaust is accurate. He hasn't really changed his mind that much - no indication of some cabal "getting to him" somehow. Rather, he now takes the position that while "Jewish-Zionist power is a palpable reality with harmful consequences for America, the Middle East, and the entire global community", the Holocaust basically happened the way it's described, but it's not really that important of a factor in "Jewish Power" and it's not a good use of their time to attack it. Here's a pull quote that I think is representative of the basic point he's making:

In short, the Holocaust assumed an important role in the social-cultural life of America and western Europe in keeping with, and as an expression of, a phenomenal increase in Jewish influence and power. The Holocaust “remembrance” campaign is not so much a source of Jewish-Zionist power as it is an expression of it. For that reason, debunking the Holocaust will not shatter that power.

Suppose The New York Times were to report tomorrow that Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum had announced that no more than one million Jews died during World War II, and that no Jews were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz. The impact on Jewish-Zionist power would surely be minimal.

There's also a 30 minute video interview with one Jim Rizoli, a considerably more enthusiastic Holocaust denier, in which he expresses basically the same view and goes on in more detail about a few points. IMO, he comes off as pretty calm and reasonable, while Rizoli comes off as rather unhinged and obsessed.

I think I agree with him in the sense that, if you wanna try and make a point about the role and influence of Jews in today's society, go ahead and make it, but quibbling over the details of exactly what happened to how many in the Holocaust is pointless.

My only real question with the Holocaust is why did it go from an over-arching term for Nazi genocide killing 11 million to a Jewish specific genocide term covering 6 million. All my childhood I remember hearing 11 million, 11 million.

I second this. I recall as a kid that the term Holocaust was thrown around to mean everyone killed in Nazi camps. A bit more than half of which were Jews.

It seems like something switched and now it is only referring to the Jews killed and not the other 5 million plus non-Jews killed.

I don't think you fully understand, the "5 million plus non-Jews killed in the Holocaust" was a propaganda hoax created by Jewish Holocaust influencers in order to manipulate gentile feelings towards the Holocaust.

Yehuda Bauer, an Israeli Holocaust scholar who chairs the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, said he warned his friend Wiesenthal, who died in 2005, about spreading the false notion that the Holocaust claimed 11 million victims – 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews.

“I said to him, ‘Simon, you are telling a lie,’” Bauer recalled in an interview Tuesday. “He said, ‘Sometimes you need to do that to get the results for things you think are essential.’”

Bauer and other historians who knew Wiesenthal said the Nazi hunter told them that he chose the 5 million number carefully: He wanted a number large enough to attract the attention of non-Jews who might not otherwise care about Jewish suffering, but not larger than the actual number of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust, 6 million.

It caught on: President Jimmy Carter, issuing the executive order that would establish the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, referred to the “11 million victims of the Holocaust.”

People don't understand how easy it is for whole-cloth lies to be embraced as truth by masses of people, or as the world's most famous anti-Semite put it in Mein Kampf:

All this was inspired by the principle – which is quite true within itself – that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

It's perfectly possible that Holocaust influencers invented the 5 million for their own reasons. However, they would have had no good reason to invent it. As johnfabian has pointed out elsewhere, about 3 million Soviet POWs, most non-Jewish, died in German captivity. The Nazis also killed something like 2 million non-Jewish Poles. Put that together and you already have 5 million without even needing to count German communists, gays, disabled people, Roma, and so on. Some might argue that those Soviet POW and non-Jewish Pole deaths are just what happens in wartime, but that would not explain why Soviet POWs died in German captivity at more than 10 times the rate of Western Allies POWs in German captivity, or why the Germans killed Polish civilians at a vastly higher rate than they killed, for example, French civilians. Pretty clearly the Poles and Soviets died in such huge numbers in part because of Nazi Germany's racial attitudes.

However, they would have had no good reason to invent it.

They did have a good reason to invent it, and the reason is described in the article. Wiesenthal wanted to psychologically manipulate gentiles into caring about Jewish suffering. That is the motive which was identified for the creation of the lie, it's not a mystery.

My point is that they did not need to invent it, they could have just used actual figures about Polish and Soviet deaths, that is at least assuming that those figures were known at the time.

If you include civilians/combatants who died in the war as Holocaust victims you would end up with more than 5 million in any case. The 5 million number was not based on the logic you are proposing, it was just a lie intended to manipulate people. It had no scholarly basis whatsoever.

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