this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2024
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It is extremely dangerous and part of both the new Nazis and Zionist playbook to designate the Holocaust as a "singular event", implying that there was no genocide of similar scope before, or there could be after it.
Looking for example how Britain systematically stared more than 10 million people to death in India, the Holocaust isn't even the worst genocide in terms of absolute numbers.
In particular in Germany this "singularity" trope is heavily used as propaganda, of how Germany has learned from its history, when it didn't. New authoritarian measures? Cannot be compared because how dare you compare it to the rise of fascism, that lead to the one and only Holocaust?! Deliberate ramping up of racist rethoric accompanied by more violent hate crime? It is not the Holocaust so why are you saying it feels like the late 20s again?!
And of course subsequently: How dare you say Gaza is a concentration camp?! How can you imply any similarity between Israel and the Nazis?! You evil antisemite! Oh you are a renowned Jewish scholar that studied the Holocaust? Your parents have barely survived the concentration camps? Well you are against Israel so you are "alledgedly Jewish" or how about "self hating Jew"?
This is the actual discourse in Germany. Jews not aligned with Zionism are heavily targeted by Politicians and state bureaucrats in a heavily antisemitic manner. And this "Holocaust is singular" argumentation is part of it.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats
Yes, the Holocaust was one of many genocides. Still it is the only holocaust. You can compare it to other genocides without equalizing it (a differentiation that works much less in German).
True, but so is the opposite. I tried to frame my first comment not in that propagandistic way. That narrative goes like: Germany is the country of thinkers and poets, we had Luther, Goethe and Einstein, than something bad happened but all my relatives were in the resistance and after 1945 there aren't any nazis anymore anywhere now. And it can't repeat anyway so why bother.
That's not how I framed it. I deliberately said it's one of many singular events and it "rhymes" with others (including present day events)
If the holocaust wasn't singular at all, it wasn't that bad. Shit happens. The Nazis weren't that bad either. Other states do similar things. We don't have to learn from our past when it repeats anyway.
There are many lines to draw here but please have the intellectual integrity not to draw one at the usage of a single word. Take the second to look how it is used.
And there are differences between the holocaust and colonialist genocides ("the enemy within"), as there are commonalities. Each is singular and thereby they are all connected.
Yes, it is, as where the gulags and the US had concentration camps for Japanese people during the Second War to End War (George Takei, the actor of Sulu in Star Trek, lived in one as a kid).
Is Israel an apartheid state? To a degree, as is the US with the illegalized immigrants and former prisoners aren't allowed to vote (and who's more likely to be imprisoned?) Even if the law applies to everyone the same way, to quote Anatole France: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread." (I've got this quote from Worshiping Power by Peter Gelderloos)
I'm an anarchist. In my view, all states are bad. I'm not singling out Israel even though it is a good (as in evil) example. There is a lot to criticize and for much of it, you find similar things in other states also worth criticizing. While all states are and have been bad and did bad stuff, only one made the holocaust happen. Still, others did similar things. Denying this can be used for both sides.
And I still don't know what the meme is referring to. To October 9th or the genocide in Gaza? Or to Sudan? Why is no one talking about Sudan? (Me included, I know something is going there but don't ask me what)
If you're a German, you make me sick to be another left-wing German.
Gaza is a lot closer to the Nazi KZs than the Japanese internment camps ever even got close to, the only difference is that the space in Gaza is bigger, and they managed to smuggle stuff in. Israel kept them on a strict water ration (having destroyed the entire native infrastructure decades ago) only "turning on the taps" a few days out of the week, keeping the population on hunger rations, in an open effort to starve the population out, a plan proudly proclaimed as being a moral good by a member of the Israeli government.
No, it isn't, and you obviously don't know jack shit by the rest of that paragraph. Israel is a full on apartheid state, Arab-Israelis are literally not even citizens, many laws specifically single out and directly target said minorities, they are not allowed to use the vast majority of large road networks, they are not allowed to own land in "Jewish areas", they aren't allowed into "Jewish areas" unless they have specific reason to be there. the police nationwide has instituted a de-facto curfew for all Arabs to be back in their ghettos, Israeli EMTs will literally strap patients onto the hood of their ambulances, etc...
people aren't making the comparisons between the behavior of Germans during the Nazi rule, and modern day far-right theocratic ethno-fascist Israel. We see the same dehumanization, the same hate, the same disregard and disgust of the "other", we see the same actions, the same propaganda (multiple members of the Israeli government have literally used the 14 words), the same Lebensraum, and You, and people like you are so fucking up your own ass about how big strong and bad Germany was (another point many current neo-Nazis will agree on, because if only Germany is capable of this type of evil, it is because they must somehow b a superior "race"), that you will actively repeat Nazi shit, as long as the framing is right. you are proof that the German education system has failed you in regard to learning about the horrors of the Nazi regime, because you are more focused on the picture of the mustache man than what they did.
things aren't bad because the Nazis did them, the Nazis were bad because of what they did, and if Israel is committing the same atrocities, they are deservedly compared to nazis.
tho, you do get one thing correct, you have no fucking clue about anything that goes on in that region.
P.S. please don't call yourself an anarchist, you're just another "Anti-D"
Way to go shitting all over someone trying to give a nuanced take. You completely lost it here, and for what? For your right (or pleasure) to equate Israelis to Nazis? Well done.
nuanced take? please, there wasn't a scrap of nuance in that entire post of theirs, it was literally the same holocaust denying shit you see on every conservative news outlet.
In what way do see him denying the holocaust? He does confirm it was a singular event
it wasn't even considered a singular event until the 70s, where everyone started to forget the other victims, you had the Jewish holocaust, the Romani holocaust, the Slavic holocaust etc... but ironically since most of the world still saw is as fine to be racist to these people, we gladly forgot about these groups. Hence, we are left with the holocaust of the only people to have a larger representative community in the allied powers as being the victims of the holocaust in everyone's collective minds.
And to be fair, it does sort of piss me off when people go around spreading the myth of the singular holocaust, something that is in its very essence holocaust denial, because you deny many of the differing victims of Nazi brutality and murder, to deny a modern day holocaust.
Then again, try explaining to people that the genocide the Germans perpetrated didn't start with millions dead, or that it mostly took place outside the camps (misconceptions Nazis also still use to this day, if you ever heard the "cookies" or "pizza" analogy from the far right).
Antisemitism, the Holocaust, genocide…these terms are often used as a political, argumentative weapon. I am pretty sure you‘d say the same thing. But, I think according to your definition of the Holocaust it, you’d like to use it as a weapon, too. Because your historical reference is not only wrong, it is upside down.
It wasn‘t that easy to find the historical evolution of the term, but I think the Oxford dictionary explains it best:
This is pretty much what I read elsewhere. In Germany nobody talked about The Holocaust at all till the late 60s. Only slowly society allowed to speak about German atrocities. Since then the term is mostly, in Germany exclusively, used to describe the killing of Jews by the Nazi regime.
And then, only in the 90s the Sinti and Roma, Slavic and homosexual victims were recognised, too.
This chronology disproves the point you want to make: That the Holocaust is a propaganda trope only useful to the Israeli government.
In the end you hijack the term holocaust denier and label Jews with it. You should think that through again.
I love how you totally ignore what I said and selectively read my comment the way it fits your prejudices. What makes me Anti-D? That I want other states to fall, too? I mean there are anti-D anarchists who want Israel to fall last. I explicitly said that Israel is an especially bad state implying that I want it to fall sooner than later. But what do I know.
To quote Gelderloos again, in case you accept him as an anarchist: "the category of citizen, from the beginning, was intended to be exclusionary, not inclusionary." Talking about the French revolution, where the bourgeoisie introduced the social contract theory to exclude the lower social strata. Does that make them an apartheid state? No. Are all states apartheid states? No. Is South Africa right to accuse Israel of being one? Yes. Did I generalize to provoke people into realizing that all states are bad? Maybe.
Where did I say that you can't compare them?
Did you know that the Lebensraum ideology was inspired by Manifest Destiny, the colonial expansion of the US? But sure, Nazi Germany and Israel are the only states that committed any kind of genocide in history. There are people arguing the US didn't commit genocide against the indigenous population. I say it's an ongoing genocide, it never stopped.
I was repeating a word they use and pointed out that I used it differently and that disagreeing with this word is also used by Nazis so maybe it matters how we use words.