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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.
Perhaps if you outlaid it in a way that gave reassurance and pointed to what you agree with. Maybe occasionally allude to the tragedy and antisemitism. It's always presented in a way that it feels like Part 1 of a series where ultimately I'm going to be led to believe nobody was gassed at all. Start with your conclusion and present evidence and counter-evidence.
The construction is too heavily in your favour currently, as if I'm being given a tour of a communist country by the regime. Go left here, point to this building on the right, talk to this baker, ...
This feels a little like the Eric Turkheimer argument against HBD. Where the actual truth value of HBD doesn't really matter because of the potential consequences of belief in it could be negative. The peculiarity of that view is that it pays no heed to whatever problems the anti-HBD narrative causes for whites.
I kind of care that Germans are painted as remorseless monsters that murder for sport in mainstream Holocaust propaganda. I find it kind of gross to see a people dehumanized in such a way. When the 'Bear Jew' is depicted as smashing a German soldiers skull in, and his actions are seen as righteous and jovial, I kind of get sick in my stomach.
To what end do I owe the mainstream reassurance, and of what?
A lot (probably the majority) of mainstream ‘Holocaust fiction’ (Schindler’s List, The Boy In Striped Pyjamas etc) ‘humanizes’ German characters as a relatively central part of the plot.
Tarantino’s performative leftism (also seen in e.g., Django) as a distraction from his love of the n-word and his weird foot fetish isn’t a central illustration of writing about the Holocaust/WW2 dehumanizing Germans. Tarantino isn’t even Jewish.
Inbetween German children playing, they have a crazed German soldier screaming Valhalla as he shoots into a bonfire filled with dead jews. This shit is surreal, not humanizing. It perverts the image of a normal German as being just a goosestep away from maniacal slaughter. The individual humanized German characters are the exception in every piece of media I remember consuming about the topic, not the norm.
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