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The baseline assumption for belief, for people who don't know a lot about Holocaust history, is that there is a coherent narrative that makes sense, the historians have consistently agreed on, and the historical evidence has consistently supported.
The problems with this mode of thinking are multiple, but the relevant one here arises when people are asked to evaluate specific parts of the narrative. It becomes a self reinforcing circle. Looking something like: Given that X happened it seems very likely that Y also happened.
Take 3 big Holocaust events that definitely happened. 1, 2, 3. Take one Holocaust event that definitely didn't happen. 4. Say that events 2 and 4 are equally evidenced. Except in the case of 4 there was, by chance, completely exculpatory evidence discovered. Can you still take event 2 as undeniably true?
Both events were equally evidenced. Eyewitness testimony by the hundreds. Both camps were liberated mostly intact. Memoirs written of the horrifying events that unfolded when hundreds of people were crammed into a small chamber to be executed. Infant children trampled under the panicking mass of soon to be slaughtered jews as their mothers wailed in absolute horror. Clawing at the walls, begging for mercy... Except in one case we know for 100% fact that it was all lies conjured up by some guy. Literally just made it all up. Not just that, hundreds of eye witnesses testified jews were being gassed to American investigators. Every single one of them lying.
I have a problem with this. For me, 2 now seems a lot less likely to be true. If 4 was false, but is otherwise exactly the same, the entire catalog of evidence for 2 should now be under serious scrutiny. Eyewitness testimony is no longer enough. You need hard physical evidence because it has been discovered that the bar for evidence that has been set can be met with nothing but lies.
But for people who believe in the narrative, not evidence, they can't do that. 1 happened, 3 happened... What are the odds 2 didn't happen? All the historians agree. All the mainstream. Not even Alex Jones would deny the Holocaust... 2 obviously happened or the Holocaust historians wouldn't say it happened.
I don't know how to better express it. As soon as you find 2 to be within the scope of scrutiny due to the similarity to the standard of evidence used to prove 4, you are a denier. It's no longer 6 million, which it never was. It's no longer 5.2-5.8 million. It's now around 4 million. Congrats. You are a denier. Have fun reasoning with people who, through a reality defying congruence of evidence manage to piece together that every single data point relating to jews from 1900's onwards reinforces the fact that German Nazis killed 6 million of them for ideological reasons between 1939-1945.
It's honestly not worth the effort. You start seeing things. Becoming crazy. Arguing about nothing with people who never looked at any evidence in the first place. The notion never entered their mind. To them it's just a feeling. A self reinforcing circle of things that had to happen.
I find arguing about the holocaust to be strange as it's ultimately quibbling over details that don't really matter in any practical sense.
6 million, 5 million, 4 million, are all the same number and that number is "a lot".
And they are correct, that narrative is that during the second world war the German government deliberately killed a lot of jews on the basis of their ethnicity. This is supported by such a weight of evidence supporting this that it's accepted by pretty much all reasonable people who don't have ulterior motives for trying to weaken said narrative.
Frankly I don't think anyone is surprised that the party who incessantly harped on about the evil of jews, blamed them for pretty much all that they believed was wrong in the world and systematically eroded their rights then went on to go kill large numbers of jews when they got the chance. It's on par with a rapper releasing a song rapping about how they really hate someone and want to murder them, before going out and murdering them.
If the number is not 6 million but 4 million then the Holocaust narrative isn't correct and people would not be correct in believing in it. If you don't believe those kinds of details to be important then your perspective isn't very relevant to a discussion on the Holocaust. Especially not as I defined it in my post.
This is broadening the scope of the topic to a point where any act of war is now proof of a holocaust. Germans deliberately killed Russians as part of the war. Russians deliberately killed Germans as part of the war. If this is your view of the narrative it is just irrelevant to the critiques being made against the historical holocaust narrative.
If your point is that Germans killed jews because they didn't like them, and that's the only important part of the story, then I have to say that you don't have much to stand on when it comes to the complaints Russians have. The Germans sure did kill a lot more of them.
Yes, people dying in WW2 is supported by a lot of evidence. Other than that your sentence is such a shitball I can't believe you wrote it. "pretty much all reasonable people who don't have ulterior motives"? Really?
No one is claiming no jews died. No one is claiming Germans liked jews. But to what end Germans pursued the killing of jews, the actual scope of said killings and the deliberation behind it are all important parts of the historical narrative. Questioning those parts is valid and the truth stands on its own no matter what motives you feel are behind it.
On that point it would be something if all that rhetoric you spout could be turned back at you. Say, for instance, if a jew like Simon Wiesenthal admitted to deliberately lying about how many people died in the Holocaust to make the thing seem more believable to non-jews. I mean, would jews really do that? Just lie to support a narrative like the Holocaust? Would jews really lie about being put into gas chambers? I mean, being the center of victimary discourse in the west sure has its perks. So there's a motive. Can I just paint you as another Simon Wiesenthal or a Dachau jew who lied about gas chambers? After all, we all know that most reasonable people who investigate the evidence for the holocaust come away feeling very skeptical about it! ;)
Seems like your rhetoric fits rather snugly on the other foot. I would say that just as much as some have motive to question the narrative, others have a motive to uphold it. Recognizing that is one thing, but pretending only one side is doing it? Now there's some motivated reasoning.
Both sides certainly killed large numbers of each others soldiers and there were extensive civilian casualties involved with bombing campaigns, starvation and so on throughout the war. But your example doesn’t really make sense. It’s more like the US going to war with, say, Iraq, and the regular civilian casualty rate being 2% of the population but somehow 40% of Iraqi Kurds mysteriously die over the course of 5 years. This would indeed imply a particular targeting of that group on an ethnic basis. Of course, there are other potential explanations, but now imagine that the US had spent a decade demonizing Kurds as part of state ideology and a central pillar of its political program. Again, suspicions mount.
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