Hatred makes strange bedfellows: Ahmadinejad and David Duke

Look...I wasn't there. Thankfully. But how do you ignore testimony of countless people who were affected by this? Survivors of the camps who have told what went on there?

Is there no documented evidence from the Nazis?

I watched a horribly sad movie called "The Grey Zone" this past weekend. The dehumanization of people in those camps was hell. Literal hell.

 

Don't you know they are all a bunch of evil, lying Jews! They can't be trusted, obviously, when you are an anti-semite.

PS - the even better position is that the Holocaust didn't really happen (only a few died) but even if it did it is all the Jews' fault because there is something in their culture that creates it. This literally was some expert's testimony in one of these trials from a few years back.

 

I think the time is now to drop the big one on Tehran....get 'em all in one fell swoop.

 

how do people get like that?

 

I watched that movie also. pretty good.

 

While its obviously horribly insensitive (and stupid) to say that the holocaust didn't happen, I think its ridiculous that in Europe you can't even question any aspects of it. Isn't it the job of historians to find out the truth? And if the truth were to say (I'm not saying it does because I don't know personally) that ten times fewer people died in gas chambers than is currently accepted, why should it be a crime to say so?

 

This is a conference on blind hatred. The distortions that hate can create are frightening. Many survivors are still alive, there are thousands of witnesses, photos, video, documents, etc. Wasn't there a "Jesus Conference" a few years ago attended by so-called Christian theologians and scholars that concluded that Jesus never existed?! Jesus is mentioned in the literature written by His enemies, strong testimony in a court of law. Unfortunately, "facts" are the first casualty of hatred. I understand Hitler is a hero among many Islamic extremists and Nazi symbols are popular. Is history repeating itself?

 

What has happened is that since WWII significant numbers of people who have sympathies with the Nazi goals have continually found new ways to attack the idea of the holocaust. These people do not care about the truth. Their only goal is to create a false sense that the holocaust is made up in order to create animosity for Jews from the sympathy that the Holocaust created.

If it were a legitimate impartial academic debate, then there might be a greater respect for intellectual integrity. But since the vast majority of people who question the holocaust do so knowing that they are misrepresenting the truth, it has been determined that the danger that they pose to society in terms of promoting proven antisocial ideas to open minds outweighs the value of any legitimate debate on the truth of the holocaust, as 99.9% of legitimate historians who are interested in the truth above all else don’t question anything but the most inconsequential details about events.

In effect the ban is like the teacher telling the kid who asks to go to the bathroom every five minutes every day of class to shut up and stop asking to go to the bathroom. The teacher isn’t stifling legitimate questions in class, but rather keeping the student who wants to screw off from disrupting the entire class.

 

Never Forget

 

amen. and i fear we let similar things, even if on a lesser scale, happen again today.

 

I think everyone can agree that Holocaust denial is intellectually weak, politically driven and morally repugnant so pardon me for taking this discussion in a couple of tangents.

Tangent 1:
I heard on NPR the other day a historian who had conducted in research into Arabs who saved Jews during WWII. What was really surprising was that many of the descendents of those Arabs when told of that information were embarrassed by it, didn't want it known, or in some cases denied it. One family when presented with incontrovertible proof their ancestor helped save Jews from Nazis denied it and instead claimed that he had saved escaped German POW's. I find it really sad that there are people these days who can't even acknowledge the a couragous moral act that their family had did due to present day hatreds. I've heard that historically Jews have been treated better by Muslims than Christians and that during the Inquisition many Jews took shelter in in Moorish lands. Its too bad that all of that good will has been washed out in the last 60 years.

Tangent 2:
While Holocaust denial is correctly decried by the World community there are many Holocausts though that are denied, forgotten or diminished. Compared to the Holocaust in Europe the Rape of Nanking is little known and as shown even on debates here on Clutchfans those who would deny, or even celebrate, such attrocity are defended. The Armenian Genocide is very well known and its official policy in Turkey to deny it. Its likely that within a few years the Rwandan genocide and the genocide in Darfur will be largely forgotten. So while its important to remember the Jewish Holocaust and stand up to deniers there are also many Holocaust that history has let slip by.

 

"Jewish Holocaust"?... What about the other 4-5 million people that were killed during the Holocaust that weren't Jewish?

 

Can you believe David Duke almost became the Republican governor of Louisiana? The only thing that stopped him from winning was losing 100% of the minority vote. He got 60% of the white vote.

 

While I think Ahmedinijad is a bona fide a-hole, that's precisely why he said he's doing this 'conference'. He's pissed off about the caricatures of the prophet and what he perceives as Europe's "holier than thou" condemnation of Muslim 'intolerance' and 'taboos' in light of the response to it. To prove that the Europeans are equally 'touchy' and hypocritical when it comes to 'their' taboos. He picked the one thing the Europeans are most 'sensitive' about, and that was the Holocaust, which he also thought he could use as a way to continue to question Israel and the very foundation of its existence through his rhetoric. Childish and distasteful, but that's Ahmedinijad for ya.

Basically, in his mind, this is the best way to 'get back' at those cocky Euros.

 

I don't think I'll be the only one here who reads between the lines and detect a sense of approval for Ahmedinijad's methods. And I doubt you will affirm that suspicion, furthermore to save time, yes I am accussing you of giving a very very measured and meek approval of the conference.

 

Has anybody here ever really claimed that the Rape of Nanking didn't happen or has anybody said it did happen and was a good thing? I think there are alot of people who aren't familiar with it or don't quite grasp it's bredth, but I don't remember anybody giving aproval, though I could be mistaken.

 

Play 'detective' all you want, good luck with that...

 

lets not forget the native americans. perhaps a larger holocaust than any of those listed.