Senate Time Heals All Wounds

So, um. We still on the Holocaust denial thing ASR?

 

But it is. And has been recognized as such for ten years now. In fact, it was the last thing that all countries in the world agreed on, and the only thing in that past seventy years.
Interestingly, the previous additional protocol to be added to the Geneva conventions (in 1977) related to the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts. That one was not ratified by all countries in the world: Turkey, Israel, and Iraq did not sign.

 

When's the last time this guy posted here?

 

Count me in as someone who is confused about this thread being upped.

 

Deniers will claim one or a combination of the following: A. Those were fabricated as part of a hoax, B. There was a deliberate killing policy, but the number of victims was "only" something like 100,000, C. Those who died did so solely due to disease or malnutrition.

 

In thirty years time, the drumbeat of deniers could be a lot more. With no one left and few buildings in existence few will know or want to know. Its Ironic but the American genocide of the native Americans will still be around as long as the reservations are still there. It will be a testament to what we did as Americans to build our Great Nation and the mistakes we made along the way.

 

I was hoping back whenever that this thread would be more than about Holocaust denial, but blame the OP for that. What I was really interested in was "why does history repeat itself?" If in fact it does. The pat answer is because human nature never changes. But for me the more interesting question is what happens after all the people who experienced a terrible event are dead? How long does institutional memory about the pressing need to Not Do That last?

Aside from genocide and economic crashes, what about nuclear warfare? In a quarter century there will be no one left alive who remembers world war 2 and how the war with Japan ended.

Per my previous signature: this year marks the 70th anniversary of the last time nuclear weapons were used in warfare. Or as I like to put it: 70 consecutive years of non nuclear warfare.

 

But that glass is half empty as well. I always say that a reasonable policy for Israel and Palestine will finally be developed once the last survivor of WWII has died.

What I do find worrying is the current anti-immigration and anti-anti-immigration protests in Germany. That's really like the 1930s.

 

ya that's a good point. There's no doubt the Israelis have done the most to institutionalize a post-Holocaust memory, to the point of setting up their own concentration camps. Maybe that's too strong. More like they've created their own Warsaw ghettos.

 

Don't forget that Seiknam genocide, that featured a Jewish engineer building concentration camps before the 20th century.

 

I personally enjoy certain Serbs on the internet who insist they were doing nothing wrong and NATO attacked them out of nowhere.

 

Social media accounts of Israeli youth can pretty easily refute that naively optimistic theory.

 

Yeah, I'd wager that the average age of the illegal settlers is somewhere south of 40-45 as an average age...

 

I mostly meant the people in our countries and governments, with the unconditional support.

 

Really? ugh

 

I doubt that. Political/economic/military support for Israel is locked in to the political and economic systems.

The interests of arms dealers and manufacturers will always come first. There's also the issue of the convolution of nationality, race, ethnicity and religion to get past, it's not easy for anyone, especially a leading politician, to criticise Israel or sympathise with Palestine (or vice versa) without being labelled a bigot by someone. In US/UK politics, anti-Semitism allegations are career killers. The way the Israel/Palestine situation is framed in politics and the media is not conducive to a peaceful outcome....

 

As I said after the last election, the biggest change was that Congress went from being very pro-Israel to extremely pro-Israel.

On the topic of Holocaust denial, a lot of people seem to deny the Holocaust specifically because they want to delegitimize the state of Israel (Ahmedinejad and some Palestinians come to mind).

 

In the U.S., it's much more about the delusional dream of re-legitimizing the status that anti-semitism enjoyed in American culture before the war.

 

It wasn't a genocide. Don't use words you don't understand.

I know Serbs IRL who maintain this view. It's terrifying, and they're idiots.

 

David Irving.

 

I think I prefer the "World War 2 was completely a hoax" to just the holocaust was a hoax.

 

I studied the Holocaust and Genocide around 2000, and whilst it's stuck with me and is harrowing I think the growth of the interwubz has meant information is more readily accessible and Holocaust denial struggles to maintain traction in this environment. Plus we care about that suffering; it's the Armenians we don't give a damn about.