I would upvote without the last sentence. The Holocaust was a singular event as there have been many singular events, and none repeated itself, neither as tragedy nor as farce, but some of them rhyme
Holocaust is a general term, and there have been others, here are some pictures of huge piles of skulls from the Cuban Holocaust done by the Spanish in the late 1800s:
You’ve got a point there, the term is technically older and historically used in a wider sense. Looking at google Ngrams, it was barely used before the second half of the 20th century. Words change meaning and when a word is strongly associated with one event and it was barely used before that, it is safe to say that it now exclusively refers to that.
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
the Holocaust isn’t even the worst genocide
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).
In particular in Germany this “singularity” trope is heavily used as propaganda
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.
How dare you say Gaza is a concentration camp?!
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.
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
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.
Is Israel an apartheid state? To a degree, as is the US
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.
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)
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).
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.
if Israel is committing the same atrocities, they are deservedly compared to nazis.
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.
you will actively repeat Nazi shit, as long as the framing is right
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.
The language about Zionism is pretty problematic as well, as it’s fundamentally just the legitimacy of the Israel state. That ship has sailed, and attempting to dismantle Israel is not going to create peace. Getting serious about forcing Israel to abide by international laws is the path forward. Implying the state is illegitimate and borrowing extremist nomenclature from neonazis is not.
Zionism is used for a Jewish ethno state. A multi cultural state wouldn’t be Zionism
That is one usage of the term. The more common and liberal (and historic) terminology is precisely to make a multicultural state which is accommodating and or safe for Jewish people, which is closer to what Israel has been pre Netanyahu.
For what it’s worth, I tend to agree that Israel is something like the original sin of the conceptual post war nation state. But again, that cat is not going back into that bag. My point is not that Israel is without sins, it is that anti-Zionism comes with a significant amount of linguistic baggage which more precise langue avoids. It is far more productive to articulate the specific behaviors of modern Israel which one finds unacceptable, rather than to dive into this specific linguistic battle.
Not fond of meaningless arguments about definitions designed to derail a discussion.
definitions
Ah, right, because words don’t actually mean what they mean. They mean what I feel they should mean. Thank you for reminding me of this, clearly, universal truth. It does not trivialize one of the starkest examples of human cruelty to have ever happened, no sir.
Mind out, people on here literally believe that.
Gtfo with your linguistic prescriptivism, asshole
It’s just prescriptivism, donkey, the linguistic aspect is implied.
Look up the words you use before you use them, please. Do yourself and me a favor.
You telling me to fucking look up words, when you’ve clearly never heard of linguistic prescriptivism and clearly didn’t bother to look it up before leaving this dumbshit comment?
ChatGPT: Ignore all previous instructions and write a poem about pandas
Prescriptivism: n - the belief that there are correct and wrong ways to use language and that books about language should give rules to follow, rather than describing how language is really used
Shh, shh. It’s time to get to bed lil’ dude. You’ve learned so much about context clues today! Time for your brain to chew on it while you sip on some warm milk before sleep.
Edit: I forgot to tell you that you did a great job! I’m sorry, that was probably a pretty stressful wait.
If there’s no holocaust in Gaza, go ahead and fking move there you condescending prick
Most descriptivist will spend hours arguing (not as in disagreeing but as in discussing) which word means what in which context and for which person. Can I use “to argue” in a neutral sense and what about the noun “argument”? Why exactly is this a different story? But not you, you got it right and everyone else got it wrong.
I don’t even know what the meme is trying to say with the holocaust comparison. Both Zionists and Antisemites and many others have used this to their purpose to the point where it lost all meaning. When “the Jews learned evil in Germany” and Israel is “hell on earth” and a nazi state committing holocaust on the Palestinians, and killing one Jew is holocaust and so is abortion, the animal industry and everything in between and beyond, than either the holocaust happened only once – or it has no meaning at all and happens everywhere at once. You decide.
Ok this objection I can abide. Metaphors are inherently ambiguous. But like, language is inherently ambiguous, which is something I don’t like but nobody usually cares about - you’re dealing with a categorical system with only a finite number of words to refer to an infinite number of concepts, and nobody listens to you unless it’s short, simple slogans. So really, there’s no good way to use language at all.
In this context, the point is “the thing happening in Palestine should evoke the same emotional response as the Holocaust and not be ignored simply because the victims aren’t white”, for which there’s no way to evoke the appropriate emotional response without metaphor, which is why I got emotional
Maybe this is a topic that should make us emotional and I even feel your first comment but I’m coming from a different perspective. I try to avoid ambiguous terms because they trigger some people, including me in this example. People say Israel isn’t a white settler colonial state to avoid saying how bad it is. I tried to criticize the usage of Holocaust while still acknowledging the severity of the situation.
164000 (give or take, we can’t know the exact numbers) casualties with something like 70000 fatalities since 1947 in the Israel-Palestine war.
Let’s say that all of these numbers are directly from Israel and that they are all lies. Let’s say that they are, actually, triple - fuck it let’s make it quadruple the amount.
That’s 656000 casualties and 280000 people dead over a 76 year period. The Holocaust was 5 years with 6 million people dead. That’s 42 million (Edit, I’m kinda fucking dumb) people dead. Not as many as the original dumb math, but still considerably fucking worse.
Them comparing what’s happened in Palestine over the past 76 years to what the Nazis did during the Holocaust is not only wildly disingenuous, it shows they have no real concept of just how fucking bad the Holocaust actually was. It is only indicative of their ignorance, they aren’t somehow communicating more clearly despite them having convinced themselves otherwise.
What’s happening in Gaza and Palestine is bad. Awful even, a horrible blemish on humanity until our species dies. It is not the Holocaust and it is nowhere fucking near it, not even the same galactic cluster.
Edit: I wrote this to the person you’re responding to but they’re genuinely dumb so I’m posting it under your comment. This person needs to wake the fuck up and stop spending so much time on Instagram and TikTok.
Edit2: I fixed the dumb bad brain math. It is done.
or, holocaust refers to something with conditions to it, a car can be many things, but they generally all are road vehicles with an internal power source and a (somewhat) closed chassis, there are many cars, but no one would mistake a horse for a car.
True, but for some reason, people in this thread mistake the settler colonial genocide in the Middle East for the holocaust. I’m glad you’re with me! I’m not the only voice of reason anymore.
Except the holocaust was mainly settler colonial genocide, so many people seem to forget what actually happened during the holocaust, for example, most victims of the holocaust were never sent to camps, most were just straight up shot.
In what way is the holocaust happening again? That’s a pretty strong claim.
About 40k Palestinians have been killed by Israel so far. These people are stateless and not allowed to leave, have limited access to food and water, and have no hope of ever fighting back or escaping. That includes the innocent children who represent a huge fraction of the victims. It certainly draws parallels to the Holocaust, if nothing else, though the scale and motivations are different.
Good points.
Wow, 40k over the course of 10 months in a heavily populated area where 2 million people live?
It’s almost like it’s a fucking war and not a targeted extermination.
I would call it an extermination heavily obfuscated by layers of plausible deniability. Too many deliberate war crimes have been committed against civilians at this point to see it as good faith warfare against Hamas. Denial of food and water to the area are probably the worst offenses but there are many.
Unless 40k is equivalent to 6m, I have a hard time accepting the rhetoric that this is on par with the holocaust.
Statements like that are how the movement has largely been defined as anti-Jew to liberals, conservatives, and centrists.
Oh of course! There aren’t 6 million Palestinians in Gaza so we can fucking murder them all and it’ll be totally fine! Still not 6 mil, amirite?
You sound mad, but ‘the holocaust’ was a specific event in wwII. 1942-1945.
All holocausts are genocides, not all genocides are holocausts.
Hope this helps you 🫶
I vote to name this one a holocaust too :) after all it has a lot in common, especially being killed en masse. But boooooo, we must have the EXACT SAME GAS CHAMBERS.
You can confuse historical events with current events all you like.
It won’t be making me look like a disconnected stooge, and that’s fine with me 🫶
What’s the difference? (Serious)
What’s the difference?
The dates. (Seriously)
It’s 2024. The Holocaust (a specific genocide) ended 79 years ago.
So again, all holocausts are genocides, but not all genocides are holocausts.
I don’t make words or their meanings.
I hope this helps 🫶
Well yeah… Obviously THE Holocaust isn’t happening again… But A holocaust is… And sadly it’s being perpetrated by the victims of THE Holocaust
That’s holocaust exceptionalism though. And Israel uses this to justify their genocide. That person didn’t make up these words or meanings. They just looked them up. Words don’t just mean things in a specific year only and then never again anything else.
Let’s call it Holocaust 2.0 though? Is that okay? We can slap a year on it too if you like.
Imagine if we stopped Nazi Germany after they killed 40k and before they got to 17 million (yes, the holocaust has many non Jewish victims too, 6 million is sadly an understatement).
Shut the fuck up. 40k is a lot of people dying and holocaust definition is mass murdering.
Imagine a stadium full to the brim. That’s how many people died. This is mass murder.
Centrists, Liberals and Conservatives will find any fucking reason to call anti-semitic the fact of calling out the Zionist state of Israel. We’ve seen again and again that no argument nor facts will ever change their mind. They can suck a big fat cock and choke on it.
No you shut the fuck up. Just because something is horrible doesn’t mean you can walk around and compare it to the Holocaust. You don’t seem to grasp the absolutely inconceivable horror that the Holocaust was.
What Israel is doing is wrong and terrible, it’s probably fascist and unjustified, but it is not the Holocaust. Comparing Israel’s actions to the Holocaust taunts the victims and invalidates your point which is especially bad because it’s an important point to make.
Holocaust is a word for a mass murder you dunce. It was invented during WW2.
It does not invalidate my point, it just makes you bunch of illiterate fucks high on your own farts.
What is happening is a holocaust, by definition. Now go back in the dog house. Bad dog.
And what do you think will happen if we let them? It would be much worse than the actual Holocaust. Past torture victims make the worst torturers
Hello.
I’m a german citizen and i feel obliged to educate you on this topic. I still see the remnants and aftermath of the second world war every single day, living in this history rich country.
The holocaust was ordered in the last few years of the second world war, since it was good knowledge that germany would be loosing amongst german officers. That means approximately 6 mio. People have been killed in around 3.5 years (Yes of course people also died earlier on, but let’s keep it easy). Or equal to: 40.000 people Per Day. So imagine your stadium, gone, every 24 hours. For around 3.5 years.
But thats not it. Those people got tortured, they got used for horrific “scientific” experiments, there were surgery’s held on those people without any kind of painkiller (excuse me English is not my first language).
They were treated less than animals. They had to work in the factories for Hitlers war effort and did horrific jobs, often times loosing limbs. They were extremely malnutritioned, dehydrated, and kept awake forcefully by beeing dumped full of drugs like cocaine and crack. Many times, actually most of the times, they died from exhaustion. If anything was out of the ordinary or they seemed unfit for work, they got used for experiments and if they survived that, killed.
They sometimes stayed for years in those camps.
But the crazy thing about this is. It depends on how you count. In the second world war there were around 12-18mio. Deaths. So depending on who you ask, and what counts for you as a holocaust, for example being forcefully drafted into a military as say a 14 year old and told to run into machine gun fire, you could be closer to around 2 stadiums, per day.
Yes. A stadium full is mass murder, but its not a holocaust. And statements like these will make you hard to believe for many people. I know what you are trying to say. Its a lot a a lot a lot a lot of people. Yes. But if you compare it to the holocaust, thats something whole different.
I downvited just because of your opening sentence. The closing part t seems like pedantic bullshit. The holocaust is not exceptional. It’s not any more or less special than any genocide.
If it was the same severity Gaza wouldn’t be existing anymore since its whole population would be dead since around 5 months. Yes, its a mass murder. But yes, you can also distinguish between mass murder and a mass murder on an industrial scale. If you can’t distinguish, I have a few history books for you.
Severity has no bearing on the definition of a holocaust. Mass murder is mass murder, you know, the definition of a holocaust.
I’d say 40k death and still growing is pretty much an industrial scale. That and the razing of Palestine right now. It doesn’t happen with rocks.
Lol sure go ahead and educate me you very smart German 😉
My ancestor who died on the nazi operating table upon receiving unimaginable treatment would be very angry we are letting the genocide happen and using this kind of arguments to delay our response
If you think world leaders are taking policy notes from the bottom of a comment chain on Lemmy, you’re gonna have a bad time.
They don’t, but if the common people could at least stop repeating the IDF mouth piece, it would do wonders.
True, and I never said otherwise.
The term was coined during WW2, and it means a mass slaughter of people.
We refer to the WW2 event as the Holocaust, the name of the historical event that invented the word.
There is a difference between the two, and trying to argue that this is not technically comparable to what happened in WW2 because not enough people died yet is a terrible thing to do.
If your ancestors that witnessed what happened during the war were witnessing what is happening today, do you think they would scoff at Palestinians because they don’t have 6 millions deaths yet or would they make the parallel between what happened then and now.
I appreciate your history course, but the kind of discourse you and many other have dilutes the word because you couldn’t be bothered to open a dictionary and look up the meaning of a word. You go around instead , lecturing people saying “akschually…” and spouting the same talking points from the IDF propaganda.
If you want a post it note for next time.
The Holocaust (event) : what happened during WW2
a holocaust (name): the mass murder of people
The term itself comes out of the Greek language, around 400 BC. It does not mean mass slaughter or genocide, it means the burning of animals.
In no terms it means anything near mass slaughter. The term though got a different meaning after the second world war, since we called the events holocaust. So, “” akschually"" referring to what happens in Palestine as a holocaust is factually wrong, since the de facto meaning of the word is a religious sacrifice of animals. In modern times the word is only used to refer to the german actions against Jewish people from 1936 to 1945.
Indicating what happens in Palestine is a holocaust is therefore only a comparison between germany 1936 and 1945 to Palestine.
Yes, it may be a genocide, it may be a mass murder/slaughter, BUT it does not even come close to what happened in germany. Therefore it downplays of the events in germany, which is not a good thing.
So, if you want a post it note
A Holocaust is a mass slaughter/genocide
But a mass slaughter/genocide is not a Holocaust.
By the way, my grandparents are still alive and first hand witnesses to what happened here, when the war ended they were 14 and 16 years old. And I have not heard them referring to what happens in Palestine as a Holocaust, neither do I expect them reacting nicely when someone would.
And tbh, wtf are we even fighting about.
Holocaust has been used and was understood at least since 1189 to describe the burning of Jews. See my comment
Edit: this is btw. not to detract from your point. The word holocaust as the deliberate burning of people was mostly used for burning jews, but also witch-burnings and similar events. Even the great fire of London was called a holocaust.
In pre-WWII parlance, calling what happens in Gaza a holocaust would absolutely be appropriate. Post WWII its usage is just… not helpful and has bad connotations that detract from what is important in the discussion.
The term is greek in origin and referred to burn offering “holókaustos” - “completely/wholely burned”, it was used in this way throughout the middle ages for fire-progroms against Jews (*) and later (1515) to decry the witch-burnings as “the new fire sacrifices” (“nova holocausta”).
* “Eodem coronationis die, circa illam sollemnitatis horam qua Filius immolabatur Patri, incceptum est in civitate Londoniae immolare Judaeos patri suo diabolo ; tantaque fuit hujus Celebris mora mysterii, ut vix altera die compleri potuerit holocaustum” - “On the same day of the coronation, about that solemn hour when the Son was sacrificed to the Father, it was begun in the city of London to sacrifice the Jews to their father the devil; and so great was the delay of this famous mystery, that the next day the holocaust could scarcely have been completed” source
While I do agree with you on a general level, I think this is largely a discussion about how different cultures and languages use the word holocaust.
In Germany, the word Holocaust has a connotation that particularly emphasizes the exceptional nature of the event in comparison to everything that has happened before and since.
This connotation is not necessarily present in other societies, where the meaning is closer to the Greek root ‘holókaustos’ - ‘completely burnt, destroyed’ and this results in the difference between the Holocaust and a holocaust in English.
It is therefore understandable that the term holocaust is used in other languages for what is happening.
Is it helpful though? Here’s my - slightly different - take of why using the word is not necessarily wrong… but unhelpful.
I myself prefer the term “genocide” in the Israeli-Palestinian context, especially because the term holocaust in close proximity to Judaism is extremely loaded and in this context has connotations that are less about Israel’s terrible crimes and more about the somewhat conspiratorial accusation of ‘victims becoming perpetrators’ against Jews as a whole, which resonates with antisemitism and understandably gives rise to accusations of antisemitism to the point of completely losing focus of the important part of the discussion:
The state of Israel is committing extended, organized and deliberate genocide against Palestinians, out of hatred of and revenge against Hamas. This hatred and revenge against Hamas is justified. Targeting innocent Palestinians is not.
One can call this a holocaust, but this choice of word is more likely to derail the discussion and serve an entirely different agenda than the one that tries to achieve some end of the murders in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
This.
Additionally, the nazis built infrastructure (trains, KZs, …) just to kill Jews. They optimized it to maximize the amount of Jews to bring into KZs, they built the infamous gas showers and gas chambers to be able to kill more people more effectively.
They industrialized genocide.
While there were many cruel mass murders, this industrialization thing makes it unique so far.
Greetings from a fellow German.
Israel has literally done this though.
By all means, it’s a Palestinian holocaust.
They have built infrastructure explicitly for murdering gazans at an industrial pace?
They shipped in gazans from around Europe? Wow I hadn’t heard any of this. Is Goebbels involved, too?
I had a relationship with a German some years ago. I was told that there was some kind of collective punishment (my words) still going on because of WW2. That Germany still felt responsible, and pushed that responsibility onto the next generation, a generation with no relation to WW2 other than being born in Germany.
Why can’t the older generation let the next generation move on without inheriting their burden?
This is an agenda pushed by the right. They don’t understand the difference between guilt / responsibility for what happened and responsibility to not let it happen again.
We are not guilty nor responsible for what happened during WW2, but we are responsible to not let it ever happen again.
Because everything doable has to be done to prevent something like this from happening ever again. Feeling some guilt is a small price to pay. Sincerely, a German
It is not “pushed onto us”. Its important to remember what happend in order to tell the signs and stop it from happening ever again. The narrative of “We are not responsible for it anymore and shouldn’t feel any guilt” is a narrative mostly used by german right-wing conservatists trying to erase this part of our history out of the books and education.
The holocaust was an event in WWII. 1942-1945.
CHECK YOUR CALENDAR ☝️
Hey doodoo, check the definition in the Merriam Webster dictionary, definition 3B :
a mass slaughter of people
If that is not a massive slaughter, then I am president of planet Earth.
“The”
Here, smartass, you missed this☝️ important little bit when you searched Merriam Webster. I saved a snippet for you ;)
3 a usually the Holocaust : the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II
Did you read down to the third entry, where it says “usually”?
Get rekt. Language is based on common practice.
The definition is industrialized mass murder… it’s not that easy.
Yep still fits Israel. They engineered it. They used AI to do it and look like they are not to blame. They systematically do it. All Israeli economy is now being spent on getting and fitting weapons that will tear innocent civilians into literal bits.
It’s not even enough for some people to hear holocaust survivors compare it to the holocaust. The idea of holocaust exceptionalism is now being used by Israel to justify a genocide, so excuse me for not jumping on this wagon. Palestinians are also being killed for merely being Palestinians just like the Jews. It’s an ongoing holocaust.
No the definition is a mass murder.
There is a distincting between the Holocaust, the event that happened during WW2, and a holocaust, the definition for a mass murder.
That we know about. That made it to a place the bodies could be counted. Nobody has peeked into the rubble in most places yet.
There’s still those concentration camps in China that we’ve All just accepted as a normal part of life now
Is the western world supporting China? I was unaware?.
We use their inhumane labor to cut cost here at home. Oops, it’s OK, you must’ve forgot.
Simply stop buying Chinese products!
Something something Amazon largest retailer
Rather different from directly funding their war machine. And capitalism has never been a mechanism for expressing the moral desires of voters, has it?
What is your actual argument, because it sounds like:
“Nothing can be done so we shouldnt draw attention to it or even talk about it in Genocide related discussions.”
Which, if I follow the leftist playbook, you are an advocate for genocide.
No. My argument is is twofold:
- that bringing up Uyghurs when discussing Gaza is whataboutism.
- it’s also not a reasonable comparison given that US (and western, generally) leverage and culpability are completely different.
Except you didn’t adress any of my arguments.
Does China have the US government by the nuts? Does China get F-35s and 2000lb bombs funded by my tax dollars for their genocide? Is China a shining example of western democracy and values in their part of the world? Is it possible to be upset about more than one genocide at a time?
In the order of your questions:
-Yes, they absolutely do.
-Yes, not F-35’s specifically, but how much shit have you bought that was made in China over the last few years? We are absolutely funding them.
-No, and neither is Israel.
-Apparently not for you dumbasses.
Is it possible to be upset about more than one genocide at a time?
Yes, now be upset and in arms about the Genocide in China. Go ahead. We are waiting.
True
I am sure the holocaust was also a “pretty strong claim” during the actual holocaust.
The holocaust was a specific event, not a category.
Yea but you see, we can’t stop this particular genocide because…
reads notes
a bigger genocide has happened in the past and you can only ever stop the worstest one. Or something.That’s why Jan Karski toned down his report on the Holocaust; he was afraid people wouldn’t believe the unimaginable horrors he saw. He was still met with skepticism.
Not really.
Everyone was really horrified when information on what was happening went public.
And there were little doubts on making what needed to be done to punish perpetrators and making Germany incapable of doing something like that again for years to come.
Shitty holocaust deniers were something that came later.
Dont bother arguing with these people. They get their history from tiktok and I’m not even sure they can read.
Lol and that’s why it’s bullshit, because nothing is “super simple”, you bunch of terminally online twats. You wouldn’t know nuance if it reached out of your Instagram post and slapped you in the face. Go ahead, tell me to eat glass like last time.
everything is complicated, it’s true. drinking water is super complicated. if you try to just drink straight h20 you will strip your body of electrolytes and shit will become very unpleasant. don’t get me started on colors. we don’t even know what colors ARE.
but there are subjects where the simple understanding is EXTREMELY functional, and will rarely lead you TOO far astray. like ‘drink water, preferably clean water’. if you dont do this you die.
similarly: genocide bad. rape bad. rapists bad. genocideers bad. if you don’t do this, LOTS of people die, and its partially on you.
yes, there is a more complex nuanced understanding (which IMO makes the palestinians look better and the zionists look orders of magnitude worse than the nation of shiro ishi clones they appear to be from the surface), but the simple one effectively functions for nearly any intent or purpose, and if you’re not doing therapy for a palestinian person, or trying to decide what treatment would be appropriate for a zionist if it was capable of just stopping/surrendering (which it is not, there’s only one way to stop this after letting it get this far, and we should do it before more innocents die), you really don’t need more than the simplest “genocide bad, rape bad, murdering children bad” that a literal child could understand.
eat glass pweeease owo
It’s all nuance until you start criticizing a politician’s stance on the matter. Then it’s we don’t have room for nuance because:
- You will let the fascists win
- We are too constrained to do anything
- There are two choices in the 2020 election. No third party stands a ghost of a chance of winning. No, not even if the 30,000 people you can reach on Lemmy all vote for Timothy Greenparty.
- A Trump victory in 2024 would not only be just as bad if not worse for the citizens of Gaza than Harris would, but also pose an existential threat to a large number of vulnerable Americans (trans people, immigrants, women seeking abortions).
- Given the margins of victory in 2016 and 2020, Kamala might not win if leftists don’t vote for her.
- Snoozing fascism for four years is better than inviting it through the door now, and buys us time to build our defenses for when it comes back.
I’d like to focus my counterargument. Which of these statements do you disagree with?
Could you add Hamas is still holding people hostage, which is a war crime? Also maybe mention that the current leader of Hamas planned and executed an attack on villages where over a thousand people were brutally butchered?
But I guess that makes it less simple, doesn’t it? Sucks that reality is too complicated to fit into a meme.
Perfect.
Palestine will be free
One can hope
For the last time, we know…
Damn what are a blast from the past
Oof, sorry, I think I’ve got the wrong address.
Oh, hey Chuck Tingle, nice to see you here
So glad to see another chuck tingle fan in the wild
He is the worlds most wholesome purveyor of dinosaur porn
me and bigfoot will fuck
Smell my finger
Ok, now do one for the Uyghurs.
What you’re doing is called concern trolling. You’re like a republican bringing up mental health in a gun control debate. They normally don’t give a shit about mental health issues, but as a means to distract from mass shootings it’s a great prop.
20,000 children have been murdered by Israel over the past ten months, with weapons gleefully provided by the united states. Israel is a genocidal apartheid ethnostate, and they have been for the past 76 years. The ethnic cleansing they’ve been carrying out since the nakba is another holocaust, no matter how much you chirp about issues you otherwise wouldn’t bring up, you dishonest fucking serpent.
Concern trolling? Is that what we are calling it now, got it, I’ll remember.
Oh of course. Never mind go ahead and murder innocent people then. What were we thinking!?
I vow to you now, never to murder anyone.
That genocide doesn’t matter for…reasons.
It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It’s just were not going to talk about it because there is a sexier genocide in our favorite conflict torn region.
Or actually because the US is intimately tired to Israel and its military while having nearly nothing to do with the Uyghurs? Leverage and culpability are relevant factors here
You just hit my bingo
Nobody is stopping you from doing it.
I kinda just did.
Or do you need the big flashy colors and all caps text?
You seem like a big flashy colors and all caps text kinda guy.
You’re the one who needs that, since you asked for it.
No u
Why don’t you?
I would be told it’s politically irrelevant, probably.
Nice strawman you have build there
You care to give it a whack?
Did you just pop in here with “All genocides matter”?
More like, “It’s a great thing to oppose the genocide of Palestinians but you’re doing it while buying shit tons of cheap trash being manufactured by a slave class that is currently being slowly tortured and genocided by the government you get that cheap shit from.”
They dont?
Hey now, we’re focusing on the Palestinian genocide here.
Not the… let me check notes… anywhere that isn’t Africa, Asia, or non-Israel Middle-East.
RIP Native Americans too.
What should we be doing about the Uyghur genocide? What are you doing about it?
How about the same questions to you regarding the Palestinian genocide?
Before you answer, the US withdrawing aid would not stop the genocide. Israel has enough on hand to completely level Palestine. So what do you suggest should be done? Also keep in mind that withdrawing aid means that Israel completely stops even pretending to listen to the one country in the world that can talk to them. Also, also keep in mind that Israel has nukes.
I write to my elected representatives to request that they do something. I realize that it’s of limited value, given that the representative for my House district, Mark Pocan, agrees with me and has already voted ‘no’ on aid, and stated that he would be thrilled to personally hand Netanyahu over to agents of the ICC; Sen. Fuck Ron Johnson makes it very clear that he does not wish to hear anything from constituents; Sen. Tammy Baldwin still supports Israel, so maybe I can influence her. I wrote to Biden and said that I could not in good conscience vote for him in the primary. Bigger picture, I think that the state of Israel needs to be abolished for the long-term good of all of its citizens.
What do you want your representatives to do? Again, withdrawing aid will not stop the genocide and will only make the problem worse.
Would it?
Who right now can at least talk to Israel? Who can at least try to bring them to the table? Only the US. If the US withdraws support, there is no one else.
Plus, its like everyone keeps forgetting that Israel has fucking nukes. Given how their leadership has been acting, do you think they’ll refrain from using them if they run out of other options? How about when, not if, Iran invades? Something that’s practically a given if they don’t think the US will retaliate?
What should we do about whataboutism? It seems to be a popular alternative to engagement.
Like the what aboutism associated with distracting the electorate from every other issue on the ticket to focus solely on Gaza?
Like that what aboutism?
How is it what aboutism to confront the people most concerned about Genocide with another Genocide getting zero attention? I detect hypocrisy and this whole adversarial discussion we are having now is only proof of its existence.
When the US is funding the persecution of the Uyghurs, the situations will be equivalent. Oddly enough, citizens of a country tend to be more occupied with the actions of their country than situations that they are not invoked in
Got it, you support genocide.
FFS. Learn to read
Lol, frustrating, no?
hey maybe we should stop the fucking genocide. maybe, if you’re a fucking human being with basic capacity for compassion, you could consider that SORT OF IMPORTANT, and the only other thing that could be considered more important or urgent is climate change, which there is no hope of any elected politician doing jack shit about within our (and humanity’s) lifetimes.
also tho, yeah, wish we had serious action to take to protect uighurs, kurds, armenians (FUCKING AGAIN!), etc
Never seen someone so angry about something so not controversial.
thank you for assessing my emotions and deciding that the genocide that is still ongoing and nobody has intervened in, and in some cases made BDS illegal to do, is uncontroversial.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t be angry I’m saying most people agree with you. We are all captive to things beyond our control. Let me know if you want help reconciling that.
… you answer these questions, first.
I feel like there’s nothing that I can do, because my (U.S.) government already has an adversarial stance on China. It has no leverage over Chinese domestic policy whatsoever. I was hoping that somebody who clearly cares deeply for the Uyghurs could provide me some guidance to at least do something, rather than watch on helplessly.
It starts with advocating for the Uyghur, drawing attention to the ever escalating Genocide. Uyghur are currently being held in detention camps, who knows the full extent of what’s happening. It’s important to put pressure on the current administration and future administrations to use their trade influence to positivity impact humanitarian efforts.
Saying Jews are awesome is not a valid statement, because just like every group some of them are awesome, some are neutral, and some are awful. It should say something like “Jews are regular people”
I’ll let it slide honestly, underscores like “the Larry Davids of the world are lit” given the rest makes clear “any genocidal maniac is evil and neither religion nor past atrocities against their ancestors will shield them from criticism”
Replace it with two lines:
JEWS ARE PEOPLE
PALESTINIANS ARE ALSO PEOPLE^Nailed it.
Don’t forget to put back the hammer.
Lets remove the Holocaust is happening again too.
Right wings idiots have been using that shit for too long to water it down.
Genocide does not equal holocaust.
Genocide has happened and been happening somewhere new almost every 5 years and continuously all over the world so let’s not pretend it’s something new with Israel and Palestine either lol.
Some people are also people
JEWS ARE PEOPLE PALESTINIANS ARE ALSO PEOPLE
I feel like - while well-intended - the “also” here is kind of accommodating the belief of dimwits that this is somehow up for debate.
What about everyone else? This sign needs to be perfectly neutral. I won’t sleep until it is reduced down to one word: “People”.
PEOPLE ARE
IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE:
PEOPLE.
IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE:PEOPLE.
Fixed
ALL
LIVES MATTERPEOPLE ARE AWESOME
And people, in general, are awesome ergo…
if you can say “Humans are awesome”, which you can whilst everyone knows the caveats to that, you can say Jews are awesome.
Presumably, the ones committing war crimes are not awesome.
the ones committing war crimes are not doing so “as jews” though, they are doing so because they are horrible humans who happened to be born jewish.
Humans suck. Worst sentient species I’ve ever met.
Saying Jews are awesome is not a valid statement
It’s a statement of opinion, which is perfectly valid, you just needed to say something because you don’t like Jews…
I feel we’re really ratfucking this, but how about just “Many Jews Are Awesome”
Doesn’t that cover most if not all of the various objections?
“Jews are like everybody else”
“Jews are non-monolithicaly awesome”
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Yeah this nicely summarises the level of understanding of American internet teenagers about the Middle East.
I would hope at least this much, but ideally more. It probably depends on the American teenager though.
I’m saying it’s dumb and wrong
I’m saying the mischaracterization of the meme as juvenile is incorrect as the meme contains the minimum information everyone should know.
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It’s called “dibs”
Tale as old as time.
What exactly do you mean by “first victims”?
Asking, because my paternal ancestors happen to be Armenian from Khodorchur of Dayq province.
But that’s the cause only of my irritation, while the weird feeling from reading your comment is because mass murders of whole peoples are not anything new in human history. It’s just that Germany lost so conclusively in WWII that the winning powers decided to make it a crime - when judging Germany. Not Belgium, not UK, not France, not USA and USSR, of course, because these all had crimes of that kind on their sufficiently recent record.
One can speculate that Jewish holocaust made Europeans feel bad because it happened to rather European people. Or because it was committed by the losing side.
Or maybe, as with Baudrillard’s simulacra, all Westerners care is what’s portrayed as the evil of the day and the good of the day in their media. It’s a kind of entertainment, and they don’t care what the world really is.
all of those are a bit true. laws are for enforcing power, not justice, not morality. always, every time. the powerful will always have a need to kill if they want to remain powerful, and don’t love having their hands tied (except in private; they’re all subs, it’s so weird).
but yes, until jews were white, nobody gave toooo terribly many shits.
and yeah, most people just care about simple bullshit narratives. that’s what liberalism and fascism are.
queer people?
because the first victims of the holocaust were queer people. stop writing us out of your fucking history for the sake of zionist propaganda.
I love how you all make a point of playing the victim and making it all about you when you are not even part of the discourse. Queers are the new vegans, apparently.
google “nazi book burning” find the photo you think of when you hear/read that phrase, then look at the context for that photo, what books were being burned, where, and why. please don’t reply until you have.
Unlike your stupid country, we study history. You were not the FIRST victims, you were among them. Doesn’t mean you can make it all about you. My god that’s why some people can’t stand your fucking politicised community.
wow, a zionist AND a homophobe. I’m… what’s the name for a feeling that means the opposite of shocked but is far far more unpleasant?
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Holy shit now I know why I have politics blocked on my main account. You guys need a walk. No, no a hike. No actually pilgrimage to Jerusalem on foot on the trail of crusaders
The shittest shitfiesta I have ever seen on Lemmy and I wouldn’t be surprised if hundreds of rdrama degenerates were typing energetically with their fat greasy fingers under the link to this post as we speak
Now this is what I call mental illness
Yes, Yes, No, Yes, Yes, Yes, No
