Sudan Massacre

[Bomb#20]

I apologize for being rude, but Holocaust denialism, even the selective variety, is a pretty sore point with me.

"rude". Interesting choice of thing to apologize for. Falsely accusing someone of Holocaust denialism is a lot of things you'd owe an apology for and "rude" doesn't really make the top ten. So you can quote him denying the Holocaust, can you?

If pood is a Holocaust denialist, I'm Lincoln's grandfather.

Yeah, well, Abraham Lincoln was my (checks notes) 5th great-grandmothers cousin by marriage, and as his cousin but also someone who reads, I can assure you that Lincoln was not the kind of man who hears terrible news and immediately starts brainstorming ways to obscure facts and hide his own complicity in whatever happened. He never had to contend with the Holocaust but he did live through another shameful period of history, and his response was to face the evils of his time head on, not construct fanciful false narratives that absolved his church or his countrymen from moral responsibility for slavery and insurrection. He died, in fact, of standing on principle.

Really. So you have evidence that Lincoln squarely took responsibility for the Sand Creek Massacre, have you?

The difference between you and me is that I feel no need to censor history just to push some version of it. I'd be more than willing to hold Lincoln accountable for his actions after Sand Creek. Are you?

Why do you keep trumping up baseless personal attacks on posters for disagreeing with you? I feel no need to censor history just to push some version of it; you made that up. Looks to me like you were whitewashing Lincoln; that's why I brought up Sand Creek. Not sure how we're supposed to go about holding anyone accountable for his actions 160 years after he died, but if you mean painting people "warts and all" when we teach about them, yes, of course I'm willing.

 

[Politesse]

I apologize for being rude, but Holocaust denialism, even the selective variety, is a pretty sore point with me.

"rude". Interesting choice of thing to apologize for. Falsely accusing someone of Holocaust denialism is a lot of things you'd owe an apology for and "rude" doesn't really make the top ten. So you can quote him denying the Holocaust, can you?

If pood is a Holocaust denialist, I'm Lincoln's grandfather.

Yeah, well, Abraham Lincoln was my (checks notes) 5th great-grandmothers cousin by marriage, and as his cousin but also someone who reads, I can assure you that Lincoln was not the kind of man who hears terrible news and immediately starts brainstorming ways to obscure facts and hide his own complicity in whatever happened. He never had to contend with the Holocaust but he did live through another shameful period of history, and his response was to face the evils of his time head on, not construct fanciful false narratives that absolved his church or his countrymen from moral responsibility for slavery and insurrection. He died, in fact, of standing on principle.

Really. So you have evidence that Lincoln squarely took responsibility for the Sand Creek Massacre, have you?

The difference between you and me is that I feel no need to censor history just to push some version of it. I'd be more than willing to hold Lincoln accountable for his actions after Sand Creek. Are you?

Why do you keep trumping up baseless personal attacks on posters for disagreeing with you? I feel no need to censor history just to push some version of it; you made that up. Looks to me like you were whitewashing Lincoln; that's why I brought up Sand Creek. Not sure how we're supposed to go about holding anyone accountable for his actions 160 years after he died, but if you mean painting people "warts and all" when we teach about them, yes, of course I'm willing.

Then stop pitching a fit about me correcting pood's misinformation about the Holocaust. Simple as dirt.

 

[southernhybrid]

I disagree. The real issue is religion. Islam is the problem

Two billion Muslims say Christianity is the problem. Who should I believe? I guess whoever wins the war was right, b’cuz neither of their gods ever fucks up.

Look around the world. Do you genuinely believe that current, modern day Christianity is *an equal threat* to Islam? That they both do the same amount of harm to non-adherents? That they're equally oppressive of women and homosexuals? That they're equally authoritarian and likely to seek installment of an authoritarian theocracy?

Uh, yeah, I kinda think there is a case to be made for just that. See almost anything that comes out of DJT’s blow hole.

Okay, go ahead and name a single nation that is currently a christian theocracy, or a current christian-dominant nation that classifies women as second-class or non-citizens and denies women the right to exist in public without male supervision, or a current christian dominant nation that punishes homosexuals with death? How about a current christian-dominated country that executes anyone who leaves christianity?

Again: Coming to a country near you. See Project 2025.

Now, maybe we'll get lucky and avoid all of that but it isn't because the US electorate has made good decisions recently.

I haven't kept up with this thread, which as usual seems unrelated to the OP. But, it also appears as if at least one poster doesn't realize that the extremist Republicans are trying to make the US into a Christian theocracy, so it's very important to vote Blue in the midterms to help stop Project 2025.

https://btlonline.org/project-2025-...uthoritarian-christian-nationalist-theocracy/

One central feature of Project 2025 that’s often overlooked is that this 900-page document is rooted in Christian nationalism — with the clear goal of replacing democracy with an extremist Christian theocracy that would enable people to use their faith to ignore many civil rights and replacing man’s law with “God’s law.”

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Andra Watkins, a New York Times best-selling author, who’s devoted many months researching and dissecting Project 2025 on her Substack online newsletter, “How Project 2025 Will Ruin Your Life.” Here Watkins, who was raised in a Christian fundamentalist home, attended a Christian nationalist school and a church that was one of the founding members of Jerry Falwell Sr.’s “Moral Majority,” talks about the threat posed by Project 2025, that despite recent denials, would serve as a blueprint for a second Trump presidency.

ANDRA WATKINS: Project 2025 starts with four promises to the American people and the first promise is that the family is the most important thing in American life. But their definition of the family is the traditional heterosexual one man married to one unrelated woman with as many children as God gives them.

Christian nationalism is steeped in the view that the Bible is infallible and inherent and it is God’s perfect law. So all of the people in our government who adhere to Christian nationalism believe that they are called by God to replace any law that violates their interpretation of the Bible or God’s law, with God’s law, which is a form of biblical law, sacred law, sharia law. However you want to define it.

They believe that they are ordained by God to do that. So we have seen red states, Republican states follow through with that in areas of abortion and IVF, with the ruling in Alabama. In Republican refusal to enshrine the right to contraception as federal law. In attacks on transgender people and same-sex marriage and no fault divorce. All of these are things they tie to their interpretation of the Bible and they believe that they are called by God to make all of us, whether we even believe the Bible or not, live by their interpretation of the Bible as enshrined in our laws at the federal and state level.

There are countless sources of information about this if you don't like my link. You don't have to read the entire 900 pages of Project 2025. Oddly enough these extreme Christain Nationalist don't even realize that the founders were mostly agnostics, atheists, deists or simply very skeptical of religion. These poorly informed people claim that the US was a Christian nation, when in fact, it is supposed to be secular nation that allows for freedom of religion, regardless of what that religion might be.

These people are already gaining ground as explained in the linked piece. If you don't realize this, you're not paying attention or you're listening to sources of disinformation. Wake the fuck up! Democracy is under attack by an insane criminal wh has been elected president. Trump is by far the worst, most dangerous president we've ever had. He has obvious signs of dementia and severe mental illness, malignant narcissism and sociopathy or worse yet psychopathy among them. Ok. Hopefully I've made my points.

 

[bilby]

Trump is by far the worst, most dangerous president we've ever had. He has obvious signs of dementia and severe mental illness, malignant narcissism and sociopathy or worse yet psychopathy among them.

Sure, but what about the price of eggs?

 

[Emily Lake]

The fact that for most employees, their job is their life.

Well that's a hell of a stretch. Do you have anything that even remotely resembles support for your asserrtion here? Because seriously, I love my career but it is absolutely not at all my life. I have an entire life outside of my job, and my job is the way I pay for that life. I think your assertion here is true for maybe 0.01% of people who are incredibly OCD or something. Certainly not for most people.

Bring fired is not just an economic transaction to most workers. Even quitting is not without psychologically devastating consequences.

What kind of weak minded people do you know that them quitting is psychologically devastating? I mean, seriously, this is absurd.

That you don't grasp that fact speaks poorly of your empathy. Or at the very least clearly identifies your nationality.

This is nothing but a baseless ad hominem and insult.

 

[Bomb#20]

I apologize for being rude, but Holocaust denialism, even the selective variety, is a pretty sore point with me.

"rude". Interesting choice of thing to apologize for. Falsely accusing someone of Holocaust denialism is a lot of things you'd owe an apology for and "rude" doesn't really make the top ten. So you can quote him denying the Holocaust, can you?

If pood is a Holocaust denialist, I'm Lincoln's grandfather.

Yeah, well, Abraham Lincoln was my (checks notes) 5th great-grandmothers cousin by marriage, and as his cousin but also someone who reads, I can assure you that Lincoln was not the kind of man who hears terrible news and immediately starts brainstorming ways to obscure facts and hide his own complicity in whatever happened. He never had to contend with the Holocaust but he did live through another shameful period of history, and his response was to face the evils of his time head on, not construct fanciful false narratives that absolved his church or his countrymen from moral responsibility for slavery and insurrection. He died, in fact, of standing on principle.

Really. So you have evidence that Lincoln squarely took responsibility for the Sand Creek Massacre, have you?

The difference between you and me is that I feel no need to censor history just to push some version of it. I'd be more than willing to hold Lincoln accountable for his actions after Sand Creek. Are you?

Why do you keep trumping up baseless personal attacks on posters for disagreeing with you? I feel no need to censor history just to push some version of it; you made that up. Looks to me like you were whitewashing Lincoln; that's why I brought up Sand Creek. Not sure how we're supposed to go about holding anyone accountable for his actions 160 years after he died, but if you mean painting people "warts and all" when we teach about them, yes, of course I'm willing.

Then stop pitching a fit about me correcting pood's misinformation about the Holocaust. Simple as dirt.

"correcting pood's misinformation" is not a fair-minded paraphrase of "Holocaust denialism". When you claim "correcting pood's misinformation" is what I pitched a fit about, you are, ironically, constructing a fanciful false narrative that absolves you from moral responsibility for libeling a fellow member.

 

[Bomb#20]

I apologize for being rude, but Holocaust denialism, even the selective variety, is a pretty sore point with me.

"rude". Interesting choice of thing to apologize for. Falsely accusing someone of Holocaust denialism is a lot of things you'd owe an apology for and "rude" doesn't really make the top ten. So you can quote him denying the Holocaust, can you?

Everyone wants to absolve themselves of responsibility for the Holocaust by denying its basic facts of it.

Not everyone -- that's really a collectivist thing. We individualists absolve ourselves of responsibility for the Holocaust by pointing out its basic facts -- it happened before we were old enough to participate, or born.

I am not accusing him of denying that the Holocaust happened at all, but I am saying that he is denying basic facts thereof in an effort to place all of blame for what happened on a elite "evil" minority rather than on the many powerful social institutions, the church included, that supported, justified, and executed persecution of Jews in Germany for centuries, with the full and enthusiastic support of Christians in Germany and around the world, culminating very directly in the Shoah.

And that's "absolving themselves", is it? You know pood isn't a Christian, don't you? And you know disagreeing about the details of who deserves how much blame isn't what "Holocaust denialism" means in common usage, don't you? Going by your Humpty-Dumpty usage you could use the same epithet on Hannah Arendt.

Pood is trying to deny the involvement of the church, and that's already a pretty fantastical historical lie given that more than 99% of the perpetrators of the genocide were Christian, and every Christian body in Germany either corroborated or became targets of the regime themselves.

You say that like "the church" is one thing, even though you admit that some churches didn't collaborate and became targets. From out here it looks like you and he agree that some Christians were involved up to their necks, some collaborated unwillingly out of fear, and some resisted at great personal risk. The heart of your disagreement appears to be a metaphysical point -- how you respectively draw conclusions from those same basic facts as to what is the right way to generalize from individual guilt to collective guilt. That sort of abstract philosophical interpretation is not what "fantastical historical lie" means. You appear to be trying to hold Christians collectively responsible and he doesn't. How do you propose that sort of question be resolved objectively? "I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people."

Germans, I note, don't do this ... "Yeah, but it wasn't MEEE" routine - they have a functioning education system there, and it does not stand for attempts to absolve the German people from moral responsibility.

Do tell. You never heard of the "Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht"? The German majority spent forty years after the war going along with the story that the war crimes were all SS. They only stopped when enough time passed to give them a better "it wasn't MEEE" routine.

Do you agree with pood that Christians were not responsible for the Holocaust?

Dude, you've lost your paraphrase privileges. If you want to ask me if I agree with pood about some opinion he expressed, quote him.

Erich Koch was a Christian and he shared responsibility for the Holocaust; I expect pood would agree with me about that. Miep Gies was a Christian and she did not share responsibility for the Holocaust; I expect pood would agree with me about that too. If you want to call that "Christians were responsible for the Holocaust.", you do you; as for me, I don't traffic in collective guilt.

 

[Politesse]

I apologize for being rude, but Holocaust denialism, even the selective variety, is a pretty sore point with me.

"rude". Interesting choice of thing to apologize for. Falsely accusing someone of Holocaust denialism is a lot of things you'd owe an apology for and "rude" doesn't really make the top ten. So you can quote him denying the Holocaust, can you?

Everyone wants to absolve themselves of responsibility for the Holocaust by denying its basic facts of it.

Not everyone -- that's really a collectivist thing. We individualists absolve ourselves of responsibility for the Holocaust by pointing out its basic facts -- it happened before we were old enough to participate, or born.

I am not accusing him of denying that the Holocaust happened at all, but I am saying that he is denying basic facts thereof in an effort to place all of blame for what happened on a elite "evil" minority rather than on the many powerful social institutions, the church included, that supported, justified, and executed persecution of Jews in Germany for centuries, with the full and enthusiastic support of Christians in Germany and around the world, culminating very directly in the Shoah.

And that's "absolving themselves", is it? You know pood isn't a Christian, don't you? And you know disagreeing about the details of who deserves how much blame isn't what "Holocaust denialism" means in common usage, don't you? Going by your Humpty-Dumpty usage you could use the same epithet on Hannah Arendt.

Pood is trying to deny the involvement of the church, and that's already a pretty fantastical historical lie given that more than 99% of the perpetrators of the genocide were Christian, and every Christian body in Germany either corroborated or became targets of the regime themselves.

You say that like "the church" is one thing, even though you admit that some churches didn't collaborate and became targets. From out here it looks like you and he agree that some Christians were involved up to their necks, some collaborated unwillingly out of fear, and some resisted at great personal risk. The heart of your disagreement appears to be a metaphysical point -- how you respectively draw conclusions from those same basic facts as to what is the right way to generalize from individual guilt to collective guilt. That sort of abstract philosophical interpretation is not what "fantastical historical lie" means. You appear to be trying to hold Christians collectively responsible and he doesn't. How do you propose that sort of question be resolved objectively? "I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people."

Germans, I note, don't do this ... "Yeah, but it wasn't MEEE" routine - they have a functioning education system there, and it does not stand for attempts to absolve the German people from moral responsibility.

Do tell. You never heard of the "Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht"? The German majority spent forty years after the war going along with the story that the war crimes were all SS. They only stopped when enough time passed to give them a better "it wasn't MEEE" routine.

Do you agree with pood that Christians were not responsible for the Holocaust?

Dude, you've lost your paraphrase privileges. If you want to ask me if I agree with pood about some opinion he expressed, quote him.

Erich Koch was a Christian and he shared responsibility for the Holocaust; I expect pood would agree with me about that. Miep Gies was a Christian and she did not share responsibility for the Holocaust; I expect pood would agree with me about that too. If you want to call that "Christians were responsible for the Holocaust.", you do you; as for me, I don't traffic in collective guilt.

I don't even know what you mean by "collectively guilty", let alone agree that this is my position. I am concerned with misrepresentation of history, not calling for modern day reparations or something. To say "most Christians did not support the Holocaust" or that "the Nazis werent Real True Christians(tm)" may be motivated by a guilty conscience or a desire to displace collective responsibility for society, but that isn't the main reason why its morally wrong to say those things. The main reason why it's wrong to say those things is because they are lies.

 

[Tigers!]

If I were to venture a guess, I would say that TSwizzle's overarching point is that while a whole lot of people put forth a whole lot of effort to protest the 'genocide' of palestinians in gaza at the hands of jewish military during a military conflict... nobody seems to give much of a fuck at all about the actual genocide of christians at the hands of muslims in an almost entirely civilian context.

But I could be wrong.

There is mass slaughter going on in Sudan at present with the RSF being the worst of a evil bunch. More have died there than in Gaza with genocide occurring in Dafur especially. Barely raises an eyebrow.
If Greta T wanted to do something useful
she could organise an aid convoy to there rather than getting arrested in London.

 

[Bomb#20]

Do you agree with pood that Christians were not responsible for the Holocaust?

Dude, you've lost your paraphrase privileges. If you want to ask me if I agree with pood about some opinion he expressed, quote him.

Erich Koch was a Christian and he shared responsibility for the Holocaust; I expect pood would agree with me about that. Miep Gies was a Christian and she did not share responsibility for the Holocaust; I expect pood would agree with me about that too. If you want to call that "Christians were responsible for the Holocaust.", you do you; as for me, I don't traffic in collective guilt.

I don't even know what you mean by "collectively guilty", let alone agree that this is my position.

Yeah, I know you don't. I was talking to a fish earlier; he didn't know what I meant by "water" either. You wrote:

...investing millions of dollars and extinguishing hundreds of thousands of lives executing the projects of the Christian church...
...an effort to place all of blame for what happened on a elite "evil" minority rather than on the many powerful social institutions, the church included...
... Pood is trying to deny the involvement of the church, and that's already a pretty fantastical historical lie given that more than 99% of the perpetrators of the genocide were Christian, and every Christian body in Germany either corroborated or became targets of the regime themselves. ...
... Germans, I note, don't do this <expletive deleted> "Yeah, but it wasn't MEEE" routine - they have a functioning education system there, and it does not stand for attempts to absolve the German people from moral responsibility. ...
...the Holocaust and the Christian Church's open and intentional complicity in it. ...
...he is not denying the Holocaust as a whole, only Christian culpability in the Holocaust. ...
...The Vatican endorsed the Nazi Party, as did the German Protestant authorities such as they were. But you want us to believe that Christians do not share in responsibility for what happened. ...
...that only one party must be at blame for all the evils of history. But there is a huge difference here between socialists, who never institutionally endorsed Nazism, and the church, which absolutely did. Well, churches. But the Vatican and the German churches all a accepted the Nazi mantle freely, barring a handful of moral dissidents like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and some brave minorities like the Adventists, all of whom were expelled or slaughtered by their fellow Christians. ...
​

"The German people" is not a moral agent. "The Vatican" is not a moral agent. "Christian" is not a moral agent. "The Christian church" isn't even one thing, let alone a moral agent. You keep assigning blame to things that aren't moral agents, to institutions and to collectives that you straight-up admit include non-culpable subsets. And you straight-up admit that non-collaborators became targets of the regime and were all expelled or slaughtered, and yet you insist the ones who did what one had to in order to not be targeted did it "freely". What you're posting is not moral reasoning; it's reification and hasty generalization fallacies. If you don't want to call it "collective guilt", please yourself, but it's sin-by-proxy every bit as much as blaming women for Eve offering Adam an apple.

If the Germans' functioning education system teaches a classful of pupils that the German people are morally responsible for the Holocaust, and one of the children pipes up "I'm not.", what does it do in the way of not standing for this attempt to absolve them? Does it punish the child for speaking truth to power?

I am concerned with misrepresentation of history, not calling for modern day reparations or something. To say "most Christians did not support the Holocaust" or that "the Nazis werent Real True Christians(tm)" may be motivated by a guilty conscience or a desire to displace collective responsibility for society,

or may be motivated by hardly any of the top leaders believing Jesus was the Son of God and died for our sins, let alone believing the meek will inherit the earth.

but that isn't the main reason why its morally wrong to say those things. The main reason why it's wrong to say those things is because they are lies.

You are quite fond of labeling sincerely held opinions "lies" merely because you think they're incorrect. Stop doing that -- it's childish.

If you think "the Nazis werent Real True Christians(tm)" is incorrect, go find some other forum to preach that in -- you disqualified yourself from preaching it here when you declared yourself not interested in what the leaders really believed, only in how they presented themselves to the public. (We're talking about the top Nazis here. Of course the majority of the common rank and file of the party were real true Christians -- nobody here has disputed that.)

If you think "most Christians did not support the Holocaust" is incorrect, show your work. As written it's absurd -- most Christians lived outside Nazi-controlled areas and if you think the average American or Filipino supported killing off the Jews you're delusional. So I'm guessing you meant most German Christians. If you mean they supported it with their taxes, well, sure, but they had no choice about that. If you mean most German Christians were in favor of it, show your work. Start by showing most German Christians even knew about it. Scholarly estimates I've read of how many Germans knew it was happening range from 30% to 50%.

 

[Politesse]

Do you agree with pood that Christians were not responsible for the Holocaust?

Dude, you've lost your paraphrase privileges. If you want to ask me if I agree with pood about some opinion he expressed, quote him.

Erich Koch was a Christian and he shared responsibility for the Holocaust; I expect pood would agree with me about that. Miep Gies was a Christian and she did not share responsibility for the Holocaust; I expect pood would agree with me about that too. If you want to call that "Christians were responsible for the Holocaust.", you do you; as for me, I don't traffic in collective guilt.

I don't even know what you mean by "collectively guilty", let alone agree that this is my position.

Yeah, I know you don't. I was talking to a fish earlier; he didn't know what I meant by "water" either. You wrote:

​

...investing millions of dollars and extinguishing hundreds of thousands of lives executing the projects of the Christian church...​

...an effort to place all of blame for what happened on a elite "evil" minority rather than on the many powerful social institutions, the church included...​

... Pood is trying to deny the involvement of the church, and that's already a pretty fantastical historical lie given that more than 99% of the perpetrators of the genocide were Christian, and every Christian body in Germany either corroborated or became targets of the regime themselves. ...​

... Germans, I note, don't do this <expletive deleted> "Yeah, but it wasn't MEEE" routine - they have a functioning education system there, and it does not stand for attempts to absolve the German people from moral responsibility. ...​

...the Holocaust and the Christian Church's open and intentional complicity in it. ...​

...he is not denying the Holocaust as a whole, only Christian culpability in the Holocaust. ...​

...The Vatican endorsed the Nazi Party, as did the German Protestant authorities such as they were. But you want us to believe that Christians do not share in responsibility for what happened. ...​

...that only one party must be at blame for all the evils of history. But there is a huge difference here between socialists, who never institutionally endorsed Nazism, and the church, which absolutely did. Well, churches. But the Vatican and the German churches all a accepted the Nazi mantle freely, barring a handful of moral dissidents like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and some brave minorities like the Adventists, all of whom were expelled or slaughtered by their fellow Christians. ...​

​

"The German people" is not a moral agent. "The Vatican" is not a moral agent. "Christian" is not a moral agent. "The Christian church" isn't even one thing, let alone a moral agent. You keep assigning blame to things that aren't moral agents, to institutions and to collectives that you straight-up admit include non-culpable subsets. And you straight-up admit that non-collaborators became targets of the regime and were all expelled or slaughtered, and yet you insist the ones who did what one had to in order to not be targeted did it "freely". What you're posting is not moral reasoning; it's reification and hasty generalization fallacies. If you don't want to call it "collective guilt", please yourself, but it's sin-by-proxy every bit as much as blaming women for Eve offering Adam an apple.

If the Germans' functioning education system teaches a classful of pupils that the German people are morally responsible for the Holocaust, and one of the children pipes up "I'm not.", what does it do in the way of not standing for this attempt to absolve them? Does it punish the child for speaking truth to power?

I am concerned with misrepresentation of history, not calling for modern day reparations or something. To say "most Christians did not support the Holocaust" or that "the Nazis werent Real True Christians(tm)" may be motivated by a guilty conscience or a desire to displace collective responsibility for society,

or may be motivated by hardly any of the top leaders believing Jesus was the Son of God and died for our sins, let alone believing the meek will inherit the earth.

but that isn't the main reason why its morally wrong to say those things. The main reason why it's wrong to say those things is because they are lies.

You are quite fond of labeling sincerely held opinions "lies" merely because you think they're incorrect. Stop doing that -- it's childish.

If you think "the Nazis werent Real True Christians(tm)" is incorrect, go find some other forum to preach that in -- you disqualified yourself from preaching it here when you declared yourself not interested in what the leaders really believed, only in how they presented themselves to the public. (We're talking about the top Nazis here. Of course the majority of the common rank and file of the party were real true Christians -- nobody here has disputed that.)

If you think "most Christians did not support the Holocaust" is incorrect, show your work. As written it's absurd -- most Christians lived outside Nazi-controlled areas and if you think the average American or Filipino supported killing off the Jews you're delusional. So I'm guessing you meant most German Christians. If you mean they supported it with their taxes, well, sure, but they had no choice about that. If you mean most German Christians were in favor of it, show your work. Start by showing most German Christians even knew about it. Scholarly estimates I've read of how many Germans knew it was happening range from 30% to 50%.

An institition is not an individual. And I don't care how personally guilty or innocent you feel, that has no bearing on what happened in history, except insofar as it seems to be your motivation for misrepresenting it.

 

[Bomb#20]

An institition is not an individual.

Yes, that's my point. You keep attributing properties of individuals to things that aren't individuals. It's a category error. The Holocaust was not one of "the projects of the Christian church." It was the project of a whole lot of individual Nazis, some Christian and some not.

And I don't care how personally guilty or innocent you feel, that has no bearing on what happened in history, except insofar as it seems to be your motivation for misrepresenting it.

You made that up. You have no evidence that I misrepresented history. Misrepresenting history is your department.

Where by "my link", you mean the official platform of the Nazi Party?

Are you admitting to being a history denialist?

Are you like clinically unable to interact with someone who disagrees with you without resulting to childish taunts, ad hominems, and misrepresentations?

HIstory is the systematic study of the past, primarily through written documents. If you deny that written documents are valid evidence concerning the past, you deny history.

Studying history is great. Written documents are great. But for them to have any actual utility, you need to understand both what happened, and why those things happened

What pood said was not "I disagree with your interpretation of the linked document, and here are the reasons why". What he said, all he said, was "I don’t really give a <expletive deleted> about your link." That's history denialism, not an informed alternative interpretation of history.

No, that is not history denialism; what you wrote is history denialism. What pood wrote is autobiography -- saying he doesn't care is not the same as saying it didn't happen. Your "all he said" assertion is claiming it didn't happen. pood's words that you took out of context were not all he said. His immediate next words that you snipped were "I have already acknowledged that Hitler tried to co-opt Christianity to his own ends." His implication, obviously, was that the Nazis having said they were Christian is not to be relied on, because the Nazis were liars. pood did not deny that the Nazis said the words written documents show they said. But you denied that pood said the words written documents show he said.

 

[Bomb#20]

Then you lack both historical education and reading comprehension. Hitler was the head of an explicitly theocratic state, that both created and endorsed a Christian denomination.

Nazism was an explicitly Christian movement.

Hitler was the head of an explicitly socialist state, that both created and endorsed a socialist denomination. Nazism was an explicitly socialist movement.

So do you agree that socialists were responsible for the Holocaust?

That was a question for Poli, ... "because its in their name"?!? That's what Poli's evidence is for the Nazis' planned future religion for the German people being Christian! They called it "Positive Christianity". ... What's in a name?

It's not a question with a simple answer, if you're asking me. The Nazi party knew there was a widespread popular demand for socialist ideals and wanted to capitalize on them, but feared and hated the direction of most nationalist worker's movements.

I'm guessing you meant to write internationalist workers' movements; at any rate your post would make more sense that way.

The brief rise and fall of the Frankfurt School and its association with the November Revolution and the unpopular governmemt that followed in its wake gave them the justification for many of their proposed reforms, and they used both elite scholarly work on socialist theory, and on the other end, more overt communist movements on the street, as "evidence" of Jewish conspiracy that needed to be expunged from a more correct, in their view, "national socialism". Did the Nazis identify as socialists? Yes. More so, in fact, than they identified as "Nazis". Were they "good socialists"? Not by the definition of most socialists today, that's certain. Should modern socialists study the rise of National Socialism and seriously consider where and when things went badly, badly wrong? Absolutely. Denying the complexity of history does not make its impact go away.

As for what's in a name, you ought to be asking yourself that question seriously, instead of asking it to others rhetorically. Your response here does not suggest that you possess a well-considered response to the question you pose. It isn't straightforward or obvious, how political factions name themselves or are named by others, it's an issue connected to some of the thorniest problems in modern political science.

My well-considered response is that the party platform you linked is one snapshot from very early in the 20-year-long evolution of the German Workers' Party into the Nazis we're familiar with, and the 1920 National Socialists who endorsed the platform were not the same kind of people as the 1940 National Socialists who decided to murder all the Jews they could get at. To a large extent they weren't the same individuals; and the ones who stayed involved through the whole twenty years continued to evolve their thinking as they went along. In 1920 they were nearly all socialists by any reasonable definition; in 1940 they were not. The leading Nazis who stayed socialist after the movement as a whole had turned away from socialism got murdered in the Night of the Long Knives. So no, socialists weren't responsible for the Holocaust, in any serious sense, except maybe for Hitler himself, if we assume he was already planning it in the early 20s when he still believed in socialism. We might argue that the bulk of the socialists who joined up in the early 20s should have foreseen that that's where Hitler would ultimately lead them, but they didn't foresee it.

Likewise the Christians. Arguing that 1940 Nazism was Christian because it was Christian in 1920 strikes me as just as unreasonable as arguing that 1940 Nazism was socialist because it was socialist in 1920.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don't even know what you mean by "collectively guilty", let alone agree that this is my position. I am concerned with misrepresentation of history, not calling for modern day reparations or something. To say "most Christians did not support the Holocaust" or that "the Nazis werent Real True Christians(tm)" may be motivated by a guilty conscience or a desire to displace collective responsibility for society, but that isn't the main reason why its morally wrong to say those things. The main reason why it's wrong to say those things is because they are lies.

Recasting the 3rd Reich as a christian theocracy movement is pretty straightforward misrepresentation of history; insinuating that pood is a holocaust denier for not swallowing your misrepresentation without question is gaslighting of history on steroids.

 

[laughing dog]

Recasting the 3rd Reich as a christian theocracy movement is pretty straightforward misrepresentation of history

I may be wrong, but I think it is a pretty straightforward misrepresentation of posting history that anyone claimed the 3rd Reich was a Christian theocracy movement.

 

[Emily Lake]

Recasting the 3rd Reich as a christian theocracy movement is pretty straightforward misrepresentation of history

I may be wrong, but I think it is a pretty straightforward misrepresentation of posting history that anyone claimed the 3rd Reich was a Christian theocracy movement.

Ahem...

Your perspective is unconnected to Hitler's actual public position on Christianity, and his policies concerning Christian vs non-Christian faiths. To wit, exile for Christian minorities, and violent eradication for Judaism. His staff advanced a Christian theological school of his own, positives Christentum, officially sponsored by the Party itself. Whatever he may have "felt", what he did was advance a violent, authoritarian, theocratic state. What Hitler felt is speculative. What he did is a choesive, undeniable collection of facts.

Now, is it also true that Hitler was obsessed with the idea a master race, and paranoid hatred of all Jews? Yes. Yes, he most certainly was. That is not in dispute.

Then you lack both historical education and reading comprehension. Hitler was the head of an explicitly theocratic state, that both created and endorsed a Christian denomination. If that is not "really" Christian, what would be? I really don't care what the aristocracy privately thinks, or says to friends, or writes about in their diaries. A fascist theocratic state functions exactly the same way whether its head of state "really believes" the doctrines it enforces on the populace or not. My general presumption is that no authoritarian leader is particularly religious - piety and egotism don't exactly sleep comfortably together - but that doesn't change the impact of their actions.

 

[Bomb#20]

If "despising" Christianity does not stop you from publically endorsing Christianity and declaring it a state religion, investing millions of dollars and extinguishing hundreds of thousands of lives executing the projects of the Christian church,

The Holocaust wasn't a project of the Christian church and they extinguished millions of lives in it. What projects they only extinguished hundreds of thousands of lives in are you claiming were projects of the Christian church?

ruthlessly persecuting all other faiths than Christianity...

Stuff and nonsense. They ruthlessly persecuted Judaism and a lot of varieties of Christianity. They had no issue with Islam -- there were even Muslim brigades in the SS -- or with non-Western faiths in general, except, curiously, Baha'i, which they certainly ruthlessly persecuted. Himmler was a big fan of Buddhism, and as for Hinduism, where do you think the Nazis got their swastikas?

If you don't want to be associated with Christianity, maybe don't go out of your way to violently and enduringly associate yourself with Christianity.

On what planet do you imagine pood or any of the rest of us anti-Nazis you've been arguing with give a rat's ass about catering to what the Nazis wanted? We'll associate them with whatever we damn well please, thank you very much.