Folding, spindeling, and mutilating lauguage for fun since Aug, 2004
Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Anne of Boker Tov, Boulder!  fame has dubbed this guy as a "liberal".

I skimmed it once, and then read it through again, and while he sounds sort of academic in tone, his structure is haphazard and muddled.  While he mouths some liberal-sounding platitudes, (Not all Germans should be demonized by Nazi behavior) his ultimate message appears to be a luke-warm justification for the right of people to deny the Holocaust.

 

While he seems to claim that people should not be demonized by race, he does blame most of the modern world's problems of Jews...although not directly.  No, he's careful to not come right out and say it.  Yet he tried to tie acceptance of Holocaust denial to the possibility of solving the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.  As though somehow, if we give legitimacy to the Holocaust deniers, it will free us from our preconceived notions about the root of the problems in the Middle East.  (In other words, he’s implying it’s all the Jews fault).

 

He also has some sort of weird notion that the primacy of the Holocaust in our minds as an example of evil run amok somehow minimizes the sufferings of other people who have suffered similar fates throughout history.  Claiming that there is more evidence and more legitimacy to these events, and that somehow, Jews have wrongfully diminished these events by making the Holocaust so important.  How twisted is that?

 

Like so many disingenuous right-wing revisionists, whether you are talking about the supposed "harms" of fluoridated water, the pleas for "honest debate" from the Intelligent Design crowd, or the assertion that the U.S. was founded as a "Christian Country"; he claims that all he wants is "open debate" of the controversy.

 

One give-away to his intellectual dishonesty is where he asks what's the harm in demanding evidence of gas chambers.  Implying that there is no evidence, without having the balls to actually claim it.  How much evidence do you need?  They found the vents for the gas in the ruins of Auschwitz (Thanks, Ben at EclecticsAnonymous for the link).  I have personally stood inside the "shower rooms" at Dachau, and saw it with my own eyes.  He says there are no photographs of the rooms.  I have some.  They are in my photo album.   Come on, only people who desperately need to deny the lessons of the Holocaust will believe this sort of thing.

 

He plays disingenuous word games with the numbers of people dead from the Holocaust, by claiming that they were not all executed, but died by other means...what, like starvation, disease, and neglect of basic human needs, and no opportunity to attempt to flee to areas where they could better meet their needs?  Really.  As soon as you wall people up and take control of their surroundings, and you control their access to everything they need to live, you become responsible for their lives, you schmuck.  It doesn’t matter if you shoot them, burn them, starve them, or just let them get sick and die while the doctors watch.  You killed them.

 

And like so many other topics, the debate has happened.  It's over.  There is a consensus, and your side lost, you wing-nut.  No matter how many of your lame-ass arguments we refute, you'll just keep recycling them with new terminology.  No matter how much evidence we bring to the table, you'll just make your bizarre conspiracy theories more wild and paranoid.

 

All these attempts to change the accepted facts surrounding the Holocaust, to make it "mean" this thing or that thing does nothing to shed any light on our current situation.  Too many people want to take a terrible, monstrous, injustice and warp it into something that supports their particular ideological view of the world.

 

But what I get out of it is this:  If you can view a group of people as not being human;  when you can see all members of a group being of a uniformly inferior quality; when you can blame them for (or somehow tie them to) everything that goes wrong in the world; when you can justify the necessity of their complete destruction (even if you don’t come out and say it in so many words); when you can split hairs about how many were killed due to this cause, and how many were killed due to that cause as if it absolves you of your responsibility; and when you can minimize and denigrate their suffering – there WILL be tragedy.

 

All the psudo-academic faux-logic and in the world can't worm it's way around that.

This guy is no more liberal than the Discovery Institute or any of the other wing-nut revisionists who share his tactics.

[Update:  A commenter at Boker Tov, Boulder said this:

    "In my experience, right wing lug-nuts deny the Holocaust ever happened, left wing nutzos are glad it happened. They can both go to hell. It's the middle of the roaders who scare me. One cannot be middle of the road about genocide..." 

 I asked her who was left if the left-right and center were her enemies, and she said it was decent people who stand up to bigots.

But I want to know...what on God's green earth possesses someone to believe that liberals are glad the Holocaust happened?  Seriously, can anyone think of a single solitary liberal who is glad the Holocaust happened?  Where do people get these bizzare ideas?]

Wednesday, January 31, 2007 1:02:54 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00) | Comments [10] |  | #
Thursday, February 01, 2007 6:41:22 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Maybe he should be locked up in a room with Mel Gibson and his dad.

We promise. No one will be executed. :-)

Kristi
Thursday, February 01, 2007 7:17:46 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
I'd agree, but I'm afraid that if we had them all locked up like that together, it would be too tempting. We don't want that. So let's just keep refuting their arguments and mocking their ideas until they die a natural death.

Unless they actually break a law that they can be nailed for. Then, throw the book at them.
Teresa
Thursday, February 01, 2007 10:34:36 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
I've had a thought that I don't think that good Americans are supposed to have. It goes something like this:

The Jews suffered horribly during the Holocaust. Now, they are in a position to unequivocally be seen as the victim and worthy of sympathy.

However, the Israeli state has taken advantage of that sympathy and turned around, abusing other fellow human beings, while many still maintain that the Israelis are the victims, still remembering the Holocaust.

I do not want to minimize the Holocaust. It was terrible. Millions died; not just Jews. However, what I do want to say is that surviving the Holocaust shouldn't be interpreted as giving the Israeli state carte blanche to do whatever they want to the Palestinians.

In my view, Jews and Palestinians both have the right to live in peace. However, the entrenched victim identity among many Jews, particularly those living in Israel, has led to a blindness towards the rights of others. There is so much hate and dehumanization built up between the Palestinians and the Israelis. I think that these problems could be solved if they could learn to see each other as people - if individuals would meet individuals. However, this seems to be a very unlikely scenario.

(I'd like to be on the record as saying that the oppression by the Israelis in no way justifies the suicide bombings of innocents on the part of the Palestinians. The Israelis likewise have no right to go kill innocent Palestinians.)
Friday, February 02, 2007 2:50:06 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Karen,

I think this is the thing that makes the Holocaust the ideological football that it has become.

All sorts of people messing with it it to justify unjustifiable behavior.
Teresa
Wednesday, February 07, 2007 9:45:56 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
I hope you don't think that all right leaning people think the Holocaust didn't happen! I am definitely a right thinker when it comes to politics and policies and I certainly don't have any doubt that the Holocaust was real. I think people that do are complete whack-jobs and don't deserve my attention on _anything_ else they might have to say.
Mark
Wednesday, February 07, 2007 2:55:35 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Mark,

No, I don't think all (or even most, or even many) conservatives think the Holocaust didn't happen. But those who do tend to be on the extreme right end of the spectrum. Not conservatives, but radical right-wing, such as the
Neo-nazis, the Christian reconstructionists, and those types. I definatly think they deserve their own catagory, but "liberal" they are not. They are as far away from "liberal" as you can get!

Sorry for the confusion, but I thought it sort of went without saying that the more modereate a person is, the less likely they are to deny the holocaust.

Just as I don't think that most conservatives think that you should teach Intelligent Design in science class...and yet it is a conservative position, not a liberal one.
Thursday, February 08, 2007 8:47:36 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Thanks. Just trying to get a feel for just how much of a "lefty" you are...
Mark
Thursday, February 08, 2007 12:11:27 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Mark,

"Thanks. Just trying to get a feel for just how much of a "lefty" you are..."

Good luck with that. Let me know what you find out.

Hint: I've been told that I "Hate America" am "probably an athiest or at least a Satanist", "Want the terrorists to win" and "will be surprised when the terrorists I love so much are chopping my head off", and "should have been aborted, like I was other babies to be".

Don't know if that helps or not.
Thursday, February 08, 2007 3:08:45 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
"Hate America" - hmmm: Definitelty a leftist thing.

"probably and athiest or at least a Satanist" - wow: So being a Satanist is better than being an athiest? Just from the "at least" comment you'd think that's what they meant. And what's wrong with being an athiest? Comments like that just get in the way of real conversation.

The comment the "terrorists you love" is just stupid. Bush loves terrorists becuase for all he (or we) knows, they are comming into this country in droves because of his open border policy. That always gets'em.

But no - these comments don't really help.
Mark
Friday, February 09, 2007 12:34:11 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Mark,

In that case, I have a hunch that, "leaning to the right" or not...you'll do just fine here.

Politness is a plus, but not essentially required as long as you are prepared to get as good as you give.

Once again, welcome to my blog.
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