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 -
Of course what you and @SecureSignals do is focus very narrowly on minute details like this, and then stone-facedly insist that anyone who won't consider the possibility that it was 2 or 4 million instead of 6 million isn't to be taken seriously, while also insisting that if you do take it seriously you're a "denier."
@DoW's point was that 2, 4, or 6 million would still be genocide. A Holocaust. A deliberate campaign by the Nazis to murder as many Jews as they could. We're quibbling about just how successful they were and/or how many Jews there actually were to begin with.
You throw chaff like "There was a war in Europe. A lot of people died. The end." But while of course we are very unlikely to be able to get precise figures, even in an event as cataclysmic as World War II, no, literally millions of people do not just untraceably disappear like that.
So you focus hard on that 6 million number because it's so iconic and because if you can crack that, if you can get someone to admit that maybe it was actually 4 million... what, the whole narrative falls apart? It doesn't, but, you also know the reason why people don't really want to argue with you about how many millions it was. Because you don't actually care how many millions it was. Deniers aren't concerned with historical accuracy; they're concerned with The Narrative. The Narrative is that Jews were victims of a genocide, which is generally considered to be a bad thing and something they didn't deserve. Deniers, generally speaking, are in the "It didn't happen and if it did, the Jews had it coming" camp. If we uncovered rock-solid evidence tomorrow of the Holocaust happening and being a planned campaign by the Nazis to exterminate Jews, evidence of such nature that even deniers couldn't pretend it wasn't real (though honestly my imagination fails me when trying to conceive of evidence they wouldn't invent new narratives about, after reading "all the Nazis who admitted what they did were just tortured," "all the Jews who saw the murders are lying," "all the Allied soldiers who found the camps were just finding starving people in work camps and then the Jews lied about what happened to them," and "millions of people vanished into the Soviet hinterlands, the end"), it would not make a difference. Deniers are not, after all, historians in pursuit of correcting the historical record. They are ideologues who hate Jews.
Personally, I have marginally more respect for people who at least are very clear and open about their beliefs and their agendas and don't try to hide them. What Holocaust deniers do is the equivalent of white nationalists who won't openly admit to being white nationalists who think we should segregate into ethnostates, but instead just post endlessly about HBD pretending to be concerned with the shoddy state of biological research. Note that this is not a claim that HBD isn't real, just as I wouldn't be surprised if it was really 4 million Jews instead of 6 million. In a better world where we really are having good faith discussions about "the Truth," I would be a lot more interested in listening to someone talk about IQ differences, or how exactly we get Holocaust casualty figures.
In my comment to Stefferi, which you have obviously read, I give a very specific example where, in fact, millions of people seemingly just untraceably disappeared. The death counts can swing in the millions in specific instances, and sometimes dozens of millions over the course of the entire war, because the data is very inaccurate. Recognizing this fact instead of asserting certainty is a far cry from not caring about historical accuracy.
This is a very obvious truth that is easy to recognize.
As I went over in my comment to Stefferi, The Germans, post war, recognized this and used the most reliable data available. They had two things: A limited number of certified dead, and a rough population based estimate. The rough estimate said 2.2 million. The certified dead said 500k. So 500k it is. This isn't seen as denial, this isn't seen as some psychological ailment fueled by ideology and hate. It's just the most accurate data available.
The historical Holocaust narrative has a problem. The most reliable data available isn't super reliable. It's often based on eyewitness testimony and a lot of the alleged incriminating physical evidence is alleged to have been destroyed, lost in time, or not properly captured. So annoying guys called 'holocaust deniers' start poking holes in specific elements of the story. Those discussions are technical and beyond the scope of most people. So the fallback is generally: Well, then "where did the jews go"?
Well, they went the way of the 1.5 million missing Germans who disappeared post-war. They went the way of many a man who never existed despite being counted as alive and well when a demographer decided to assume a certain population growth when calculating a population size based on an estimate carried out sometime before he was even born.
To make it simple, you are presupposing things to be that are not in any way proven. The only reason you do this is because you already believe in the Holocaust. You already drink the Cool-Aid. In any other neutral situation, like with the ethnic cleansing of Germans from the eastern regions post-war, this isn't a topic of contention for anyone.
My position isn't complex. You don't need to be ideologically motivated to recognize the reasoning behind it because it's not presented as an ideological position. You can assert that motives invalidate reason, and I would respectfully disagree.
As for the rest of your post, both you and DoW seem incapable of understanding the scope of my comment. If you want to argue about something other than the specifics of the claims regarding the Holocaust, why reply to my comment here? It pertained very specifically to people who believe in the historical holocaust narrative. That narrative does not just say that jews were genocided. It makes very specific claims about how many, when, why and how. And the people who believe the historical holocaust narrative do so with great confidence.
I'm not here to tell people what to think beyond the fact that 6 million is, as it stands, highly implausible. And that people have an unexamined and undue confidence in the mainstream historical holocaust narrative.
I think it serves those who are ideologically motivated to inflate the holocaust, for whatever reason, to poison the well of justified skepticism exactly like you are doing now. With uncharitable and unfounded assertions of hate and whatever else.
Yes, I did read your claims.
I believe in the Holocaust in the same way I believe we landed on the moon and that JFK was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald and the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were hit by planes. I am aware that there are alternate theories claiming otherwise, and I admit I have not personally done the legwork, interviews, and archival records searches to verify each of them, nor done a deeper dive on those subjects that the average educated layman. But what I have seen is pretty convincing, and your arguments are no more credible than those of the people claiming NASA faked the moon landings or that the Pentagon was actually struck by a missile. (I find the latter claim particularly incredible because while I was not there, I personally know people who saw the plane. Just as I have met people who saw the camps.) Of course people pushing a conspiracy that requires ignoring all evidence except the very carefully curated bits they want to be considered always pull out that "you drank the Kool-aid" line.
Is my claim uncharitable and unfounded? You have frequently argued that Jews are a hostile, tribal people, inimical to all non-Jews, and that the Holocaust is essentially a memetic weapon in their ongoing war against gentiles. You have made your animosity to Jews pretty clear, so while you may consider your hate justified, I don't think you can plausibly deny that it exists or that I am being uncharitable in pointing it out, and that whenever a Holocaust denier posts here, the more overt anti-Jew stuff is sure to follow.
Then why say that millions of people do not just disappear when they do? Whatever.
I guess that's a difference between us then. I try to not hold strong opinions on things I don't know a lot about in general. If someone brings up an alternative hypothesis to something mainstream I'm not super animated that to the point of asserting that they are in fact a hateful person and then try to implicitly lump them in with low status people. That kind of a disposition would, in fact, indicate that I cared a lot despite admitting I don't know a lot. Which is stupid and arrogant.
Considering I just wrote an entire post describing why I consider 4 more plausible than 6, this is just asinine. So is the attempt at psychologizing me as a conspiracy theorist. Jewish eyewitnesses lying about gas chambers in Dachau is not a conspiracy.
Yes, extremely so. You misrepresent my positions as well as asserting that I "hate" when I don't.
You clearly have strong opinions about Jews. What are your credentials in that area?
What makes you think I don't know a lot about the Holocaust in general? What would qualify me as "knowing a lot"? I have read books (yes, actual full-length books) about it. I have watched documentaries and interviews. I have personally spoken to Holocaust survivors and WWII vets who were there. I have not personally traveled to Germany, I have not gone to any national archives to do independent research of my own, but on what basis do you claim to be more knowledgeable than me?
Always this rhetorical gimmick: "You have a consistent position you express frequently: wow, why do you care so much? You're super animated!"
I could as easily ask the same: why are you "so animated" about Jews that you have to comment every time Jews or the Holocaust are mentioned? (And you do.) Yet when I observe this and conclude that you clearly feel some animus towards Jews, that's being "uncharitable."
As for low status, if your goal is for anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers not to be viewed as low status... well, sorry, you can fight history, but I'm on history's side here.
You use lots of insulting, derogatory language, with insults unconnected to what you are replying to. I am much more civil to you, yet if I use even mild sarcasm, you complain about my words and then report me for "antagonism." So to address the specific claim here: no, it is not "asinine" for me to dismiss your "Kool-aid" sneer just because you made an argument for 4 million dead Jews instead of 6 million. If I am unconvinced by your argument that the 6 million figure is wrong, that is not "drinking Kool-aid," metaphorically speaking. And I have in fact already admitted that I don't find it implausible that the 6 million figure is not entirely accurate - I think it was in the millions, and if I were really "super animated" about it, maybe I'd care enough to do the research and see if I agree with you that it was really 4 million. But for reasons we have already discussed, I don't think that's really an important distinction, because while you may think knocking down the 6 million figure would unravel the entire "Holocaust narrative," I don't.
So how would you describe your feeling towards Jews? Contempt? Dislike? Fear? Someone always talking about how Jews are inimical and an existential threat to one's race and culture denying that he feels any "hate" towards them sounds like the white nationalists who insist they don't dislike black people even though they think we should put them in Bantustans. I mean sure, they probably don't personally hate every black person they meet and have an utopian ideal of blacks and whites living peacefully in segregated ethnostates, but (a) I strongly suspect that's just a mask for most of them, and (b) even for the sincere ones, assuming some level of animosity is a motivator is not unreasonable. You want to go on and on about Jews but complain that I am being uncharitable in accusing you of hating Jews. So fine, I'll ask you directly to explain your position and your sentiments clearly, then, if you would like to disabuse me of my misapprehensions, but I suspect that like @SecureSignals, you will dodge the question.
I have read books (yes, actual full-length books) about it. I have watched documentaries and interviews. I've lived under jewish cultural norms and experienced personally how they influence discourse and national politics where I live. I've also read reports where jewish eyewitnesses directly lied about jews being murdered in a concentration camp.
The fact you said you believed in it the same way you belief in the JFK assassination, the moon landings and 9/11. I concluded you didn't know much about any of these events but just generally believed in them with ambivalence towards details and alternative narratives. I thought that because that's how I feel about those events. And the fact your disagreement with me included little but thinly veiled insults.
I called you animated because you were asserting ridiculous things about me and lumping me in with low status groups rather than just engaging with what I actually wrote. Yes, when you do that and assert someone is 'hateful' you are clearly super animated by something.
To answer this and the question you ask at the end: I often get animated about jews when I see they are exerting influence in a way that harms me and those I care about. I feel animus towards those jews in specific and the people that support those jews and help uphold societal norms that allow them to exert influence in such a way.
I don't have a 'feeling' towards jews. They represent themselves as an outgroup against me and I feel like I am defending myself. I really do wish they would just leave me alone and stop trying to socially engineer every society to better suit their needs at the expense of others.
The most clear and illustrative example of this would be Boasian Anthropology.
Calling someone hateful whilst trying to lump them in with low status groups and calling them conspiracy theorists is antagonistic. Please follow the rules. I've not said anything that would equally impugn your motives beyond what your opening post said about 'deniers'.
I agree. But the way you disagreed was only possible because you already believed in the Holocaust. Which was one of the problems I mentioned in my first post. That's why I said you had drunk the Kool-Aid. On top of that, you did not engage with the argument I made, you just tried to associate holocaust critique with conspiracy theories.
Well then you have as much knowledge ("knowledge") as I do. We've both read things. We've both observed things. We've both watched films and heard eyewitness accounts. We've both drawn conclusions - different ones. Obviously, one or both of us can be wrong, but until you show me your independent research, your basis for believing what you do is no stronger or more credible than mine. You might be more well-read than me specifically about the Holocaust, and Jews (I'm sure @SecureSignals is), but you know that in itself is not a rhetorical trump.
If I say I "believe" that we landed on the moon, do you understand me to be saying that I have read history and watched footage and concluded it was real, or do you understand me to be saying that someone just told me people landed on the moon and I accepted it as an article of faith? Do you think I believe the Holocaust happened because some Jews told me it did and I never bothered to look at any evidence, even when I first became aware that there are revisionist historians who claim it's a hoax?
If you think I am not following the rules, report me (again). Yes, for all your disclaimers that you don't "feel" anything towards Jews, your... animation on the topic (every. single. thread) sure looks like some kind of feeling, and while you may not personally hate every Jew you meet or wish them harm, I think claiming that as an ethnic group, they are your enemies but you don't hate them is just redefining hate as something else. Like, you'd actually have to be trying to murder someone to hate them?
Okay, how would I disagree with you in a way that isn't "drinking the Kool-aid"? Am I supposed to pretend that my priors are not already heavily weighted towards "the Holocaust happened"?
Only half true. I did engage with your argument, but yes, I consider Holocaust critique akin to other conspiracy theories like faked moon landings and a missile hitting the Pentagon and JFK being killed by the CIA, etc. You may find that unfair and offensive because you think the Holocaust is different from those other conspiracies. Why should I view it differently beyond the fact that that's the one conspiracy you think is real (and therefore not a "conspiracy")? You don't get to privilege your personal beliefs as worthy of greater respect and consideration. If someone came here arguing for a flat Earth, they'd be allowed to do so, and personal insults would not be allowed, but other posters would not be required to pretend they don't think it's a stupid theory. Hey, maybe they'd have a really good argument that would convince someone! Maybe you can persuade me that I've been drinking Kool-aid and the Holocaust didn't happen. But until you achieve that, I am required to let you say your piece and not call you names, I am not required to "not associate your beliefs with low status."
I don't think you conclude anything about that which was never in contention in your mind in the first place. Nor do I believe you have ever been in a position to draw any conclusions about any of the topics you brought up given you say you don't engage much with the opposite view. It's very obviously hard to give anything which is presented as being true a fair critical shake.
I've reported you once, ever, I think? And when I do you bring it up and try to leverage it as some sort of thing? Seems like rather poor form. I mean, I can't see who reports me, right?
Why ask me for my view when you just ignore it and lie about it? I can scroll up and see exactly what I wrote. I did not write a "disclaimer". You asked me about my point of view.
My animation "looks" like some kind of feeling? Well it isn't. I just told you exactly what it was.
I specifically said the exact opposite of this. Why do you lie like this? What point is there for me to engage with someone who lies about a thing I wrote about just one reply ago?
You are supposed to engage with the argument. You didn't touch it. Even now you are doing exactly what I noted in my first post. Instead of looking at specific events and the evidence for those, you just rely on the whole thing existing as sum, and because the sum is true, no discrepancies of what makes up the sum can be changed. I am saying, don't look at the sum and assume it's holy, look at the parts.
I mean, that's just confirmation of everything I said about your position.
You don't care enough to evaluate the argument on its own merits and instead just throw everything under the same umbrella of 'bad'. There's no reasoning with someone like that since that person is not applying any reason to what's being said.
You don't mention anything specific about my argument, you just act out that if someone says that X amount of people less died in the holocaust than claimed, whatever the reason they might have, that they are like some low brow conspiracy thing.
I asked for the basic minimum of you actually engaging with the argument made and not lying about me and calling me hateful.
I give more than that when I comment here and I expect something similar in return. I'll adjust my priors with regards to you going forward.
In that spirit I can say that if I wanted to look at people say 'that thing is just like creationism' about things they don't like I could just go on /r/skeptic.
This is incorrect. Although I may not "engage with the opposite view" to your satisfaction, I told you I've read books, I've watched documentaries and interviews (including with deniers).
Observing that your words do not match your posting history is not a lie. It may be an incorrect conclusion, but I'm not lying about what you said, I'm saying what you say is not congruent with your behavior.
Again, no lie. Repeatedly saying "liar liar" because you don't like my conclusions is not the effective weapon you think it is.
I see. You want me to specifically debate the total number of Jews killed, how many were killed at Auschwitz, whether or not Nazi testimony is credible or whether it was extracted under torture, whether we can take Hitler and Goering's statements about wanting to remove all the Jews at face value, all those things? And if I don't play that game, debating each and every denier talking point, but say "I think the Holocaust happened," I am not "engaging with the argument"? The problem here is that there are many arguments here which you try to bundle as one argument. The argument is "Did the Holocaust happen?" The fine details might be relevant for someone genuinely interested in historical details, but I am saying "The weight of the evidence is that the Holocaust happened?" and you are saying "You are not engaging with the argument because somethingsomething overestimates at Auschwitz."
Only if you are claiming I believe those things without evidence. Which you can assert, but again, my stating I believe things to be true is not a statement about how I came to that belief.
I am applying reasoning to what's being said. I'm not indulging in your rhetorical diversions.
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
I do get the impression sometimes that the Holocaust denial argument seems to be premised on the idea that if they can successfully quibble some detail of 'the narrative', this will explode the entire concept of the Holocaust.
Let's retreat to the motte a bit. When I say 'the Holocaust', what I mean is that, between the years of 1939 and 1945, the German state deliberately attempted to kill all the Jews in Europe.
Specific details about how can be quibbled! The exact number of casualties is quibbleable. As noted below, intentionalism versus functionalism is a real debate in mainstream Holocaust studies, and that's an argument about where the initiative came from. Any one location can be quibbled. But none of that contradicts the Holocaust as a whole. The base claim is simple. The German state tried to kill all the Jews.
And that claim specifically seems pretty darn robust.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link