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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.
I don't believe you based on your inability to entertain a simple argument made by me.
What I said is congruent with my behavior. But it's not congruent with what you need me to be to justify your actions, so you make stuff up.
When your conclusions are the exact opposite of what I wrote, they can't be drawn from believing what I said. So why ask me to explain myself if you already have a view of me that you wont change?
No. I just wanted you to engage with what I said, given you replied to me.
If you bother replying to each and every denier argument, but never address any of the arguments specifically, but always just assert that you think the holocaust happened, and that holocaust denial is like low brow conspiracy theories, then your replies are not serious and instead just exemplifying the typical attitude I described in my first comment.
I did no such thing. I made a single argument relating to the holocaust in specific based on the problem of Dachau and eyewitness testimony.
That's not the argument I made. But you would need that to be the case for your position to make any sense, so you just make this stuff up. I know you are saying that, in total, the holocaust happened. And I'm saying, I don't care what you believe in total. It's not relevant at all to the argument I made. I already mentioned that most people don't evaluate the evidence, but instead just accept the entire narrative and then reinforce their belief based on the idea that all of it must be true. You obviously do that, you obviously don't look at individual pieces of evidence, instead relying on the historical narrative as a narrative rather than an investigation into reality. I think that's very obviously uncritical and faulty reasoning but whatever.
I find that your position is based on not engaging with specific pieces of evidence but instead on believing that the narrative is true. If you can point me to any part of your comments in this chain which doesn't do that, feel free. You can certainly say you believe in the thing because this and that, but in practice and word you have not done it here.
After maintaining you have engaged with the argument, you now admit you have not.
Somehow, in your mind, insinuating that eyewitness testimony is not a great piece of evidence, supported by an instance where a lot of people in a concentration camp lied about intentional killings after being liberated, is just a rhetorical diversion. But maintaining that, actually, the argument was all along whether or not the entire holocaust happened is "the argument" is not a rhetorical diversion...
This looks like transparent projection. Your frame for this topic always needs to be the entire holocaust, the sum. Because your principle for belief is that it's already all true. If you can't point to it all being true to support your belief you have nothing.
This is typical of your argumentation, taking one statement in response to one thing ("I'm not indulging in your rhetorical diversions") and trying to misapply it ("Hah! See! You just admitted you don't even engage with my arguments!")
Basically, most of your posts, when I bother to respond to you, are a bunch of "Nuh uhs!" and "No yous" and projection. Hell, you even throw "projection" at me after engaging in massive projection - which is par for the course. You're verbose enough to write like you're making cold hard arguments, but it's all "Nuh uh" and "No you." Not impressive for someone who objects to his views being treated as low-status.
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