Holocaust and others

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!	magz wrote:
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If I read a true story about millions of people being killed in recent history, there would only be a slight chance it was about the Jews.

This is one weirdly constructed sentence.

Do you mind translating this post into human language so that we of Earth can decipher your point?

Maybe you are just completely missing the background information. Here's a small sample:
Atlantic Slave Trade - 12,000,000 Africans
Taiping Rebellion - 40,000,000 Chinese
Stalinist Regime - 30,000,000 Russians
Maoist Regime - 15,000,000 Chinese
WW II - 15,000,000 Russians
WW II - 10,000,000 Chinese
WW II - 3,500,000 Polish people
Korean War - 3,500,000 More Koreans, after WW II
Vietnam Wars - 3,000,000 Vietnamese
Khmer Rouge - 1,500,000 Cambodians
1994 - ~ 650,000 Rwandan Tutsis

You could also research millions of American Indians, Iraqis, Mexicans, and East Indians, and hundreds of thousands of Afghanis, Gypsies, Tamils, Ethiopians, Palestinians, Algerians, Serbs and Croats, Sudanese, Kurds, and dozens more.

"The" Holocaust was quite average in numbers killed and percentage of a population. It is unusual in being perpetrated by fanatical record keepers upon other fanatical record keepers, and unique in being used to excuse subsequent crimes.

I suspect you've been accidentally posting in the wrong thread, Dear_one.

Also not for general discussion of genocide, please.

First off - As Tough diamond said - this is the wrong thread to post about this axe you're grinding- whatever it is.

Second off- you're coming off as being antisemitic.

Third off- I am all too aware of all the stats you're posting. And I am also all too aware of how irrelevant they are.

Fourth off- Hitler murdered one third of world Jewry, and one half of European Jewry, in only four years. relative to the population size of the target group, and relative to the speed at which it was carried out the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews was not "average".

And even if it were "average" it was still an unspeakable crime.

Fifth off... Despite being long familar with every stat you quoted- I still cant make head or tales out what you're trying say in that badly constructed sentence.

Why dont you recast your sentence so that... it makes sense to we of Earth.

Most of these events were not a deliberate attempt to wipe out an entire race/ethnic group.

The communist atrocities were a deliberate attempt to kill all political opponents so it comes closest to the holocaust.

The goal in wars were at most to capture another country not kill all people in said country.

Similar with American Indians

The goal of the African slave trade was to obtain slaves not kill all Africans.

Some of the incidents were ethnic cleansing which overlaps genocide but is not the same.


Two thirds of European Jewry were wiped out probably a higher percentage then most of the other incidents on the list.

In most of the incidents mentioned even if there was not an attempt to wipe out an entire group there was a callous disregard for life to put it mildly. Why people became a victim does not lessen the horror for them, but this is a thread about comparisons.

I think some of the things Stalin did can fairly be described as genocide. I'll happily count Holodomor as one, for example. Yeltsin recognised the forced deportations of Tartars, Chechnyans, and Ingush as genocides. Similarly, aspects of the Cultural Revolution were ethnic - Tibetans, for example, were targeted.

What isn't really in dispute is that the Holocaust is either the largest or second largest genocide, along with Holodomor.

"Excuse subsequent crimes" is

This is one of the strangest threads I've ever seen. It might make more sense if we knew what post or thread the OP thought he was replying to when he originally posted it in what seems to have been the wrong shop.

My conjecture is that it somebody on another thread said the Jews are the biggest victim of slaughter in the history of the world, as he seems to be arguing that they aren't. But I don't understand why anybody would want to determine the answer to a question such as that. Once you get to the kind of body counts shown in the OP's figures, what's the point in trying to compare different groups of victims? More information about the context of the OP's post might make it clearer, but I don't see any sign of that coming our way.

The whole thread reminds me of another one in this forum about some book whose authors seemed to be trying to demonstrate that communism is the worst thing ever by citing figures about massacres by various governments. The OP there just posted a link to a web page about the book, gave no explanation about why they did that or what they personally thought of it, and asked no question about it. Apart from the fact that this here thread seems to have been caused by an accident, I see a striking similarity. Is there something I don't get that everybody else gets?

Yeah, I’m gonna have to echo what some have said—this thread is weird, first of all.

Second, if you consider the Vietnam War, yeah, Vietnamese we’re killed because, Y’know, it was the VIETNAM WAR. The Vietnamese weren’t being targeted because they were Vietnamese. The southern government was corrupt, and they had the strength of VC sympathizing with the north working against them. The US were only supposed to be sending aid and training to the south but ended up trying to fight their war for them. They fought using unreasonable rules of engagement that lead to a protracted war the west couldn’t possibly win. Yes, millions died, because that’s what happens in wars like that. But it’s a mistake to say that the Vietnamese were being targeted for being Vietnamese. They were being targeted for being Communist.

The Jews, OTOH, WERE being specifically targeted for being Jews. I could go on and on at length about the NAZI rationale for it. Doesn’t make it right. Much of the rationale has to do with Jews having a certain place within society (especially the finance sector) that they only had because already-rampant anti-semitism pushed them to the fringe of society. I’m guessing something to do with how Christians weren’t supposed to make loans to each other but wouldn’t allow Jews to render goods and services Christians provided. Jews COULD make loans with interest to Gentiles, however, and managed to corner the banking market. The “final solution,” therefore, was a way to solve the “Jewish Question” that had been directly caused by anti-semitism in the first place. [I’m well aware that the reality of the holocaust is much more nuanced than this.] For that and other supposed reasons, the Jews were specifically targeted for extermination.

I mean—if you really wanna go through there, why not point to the genocide of southern whites back in the 1800’s during the American War of Northern Agression? And how about all those white people that got killed in so many European conflicts between 1400-1919? Indeed, this thread is strangez

This right here, while not complete denial, is minimalizing. Looks like someone is holding a racist grudge.

If you are asking "why is holocaust important", that question is plain weird. I can answer this question with the question. Why is discussing its lack of importance, is important? If others are wasting time when they talk about holocaust, aren't you also wasting time when you are talking about them talking about the holocaust?

However, I can think of much better questions to ask. Such as

--- Why should holocaust be important enough to affect today's politics?

--- Is it true that 6 million Jews died?

Both of those questions are really good ones. And by the way, they are not asking "why is X important". They are asking something of a substance.

These two questions shouldn't be lumped together either:

1) One can argue that yes, 6 million did die, but it is still unfair how it plays major role in today's politics given that vast majority of people living today have nothing to do with it (regardless of their ethnic background)

2) One can argue that only 1 million died instead of 6 million, but 1 million is still a huge number, especially in conjunction with all the other persecution Jews faced throughout the millenia, such as pogroms, spanish inquisition, etc. plus the fact sending them to the work camps is in and off itself bad, regardless of how many of them were killed. And all those things put together would justify pro-Jewish politics of today even without agreeing with 6 million number.

I am not saying I hold any of those opinions by the way. Just trying to show that different questions shouldn't be lumped together.

So, back to the topic. Instead of asking "why is something important", ask something of a substance. As they say, posing the right question is the first step in getting the answer.