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The Forum > Article Comments > Auschwitz and the wisdom of crowds > Comments

Auschwitz and the wisdom of crowds : Comments

By Mal Fletcher, published 30/1/2015

Marking the liberation of Auschwitz forces us to remember that the general principles undergirding this forlorn place were supported by popular sentiment among some very learned people.

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Thanks for that Joe, coming from you that's a great compliment.

Rhian, whenever something becomes a social norm it is inevitable that some anti-norm will arise to challenge it. That's human nature and it is a Good Thing, because it is what allows us to change. However, it is also inevitable that it will lead to discomfort in those who are most uncomfortable with challenging ideas, as the Loudmouthed Joe demonstrates so ...erm...ably...

Jay, I think you're simply barking up the wrong tree.
Posted by Craig Minns, Friday, 30 January 2015 6:11:41 PM
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Craig

I don’t think I’m closed to new ideas or paradigm challenges, just annoyed by blatant falsehoods driven by malign ideology. Whether or not the holocaust happened is not a question of interpretation or opinion; or even, as its more slippery deniers insinuate, a matter of degree or overstatement.

How about we debate the content of the article, rather than JOM’s malodorous red herring?
Posted by Rhian, Friday, 30 January 2015 6:47:36 PM
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Hi Rhian,

Of course, JoM's position raises issues of freedom of expression. I unreservedly support his/her right to the expression of their vile opinions, since what would be the point of his/her thinking and believing rubbish without the chance to express it, and to let the world know what sort of misconceptions are still out there ?

It would be interesting to know how many bigots like JoM have ever been actually physically attacked for such opinions, versus how many people - even in this past month - have been attacked, killed, beheaded or stoned for expressing opinions which criticise neo-fascist ideology cloaked as religion.

Craig, you're welcome any time to come down from your molehill-mountain and join us :)

Joe
Posted by Loudmouth, Friday, 30 January 2015 7:08:29 PM
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Hi Joe

I agree, but JoM has successfully diverted almost every poster here from addressing the actual content of the article (me included!).

I suppose JoM is indirectly demonstrating the validity of Mal’s hypothesis that the poisonous ideas that gave rise to the holocaust have not disappeared, but can and do resurface.
Posted by Rhian, Friday, 30 January 2015 7:44:29 PM
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Rhian,
So "Holocaust Denial" gave rise to 'The Holocaust", that's an interesting position.
Joe,
People claim a connection to the Holocaust for all sorts of reasons, financial motives are often foremost in people's minds:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070592/Germany-agrees-pay-pensions-thousands-Holocaust-victims.html
Former Holocaust Claims Conference Director Sentenced to Eight Years in Prison for $57.3 Million Fraud on Organization That Makes Reparations to Victims of Nazi Persecution
http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2013/former-holocaust-claims-conference-director-sentenced-to-eight-years-in-prison-for-57.3-million-fraud-on-organization-that-makes-reparations-to-victims-of-nazi-persecution
The way that fraud ring operated was to doctor identity documents to show Holocaust connections and make bogus claims for the standard $3500 compensation payment, what's $57 million divided by $3500, about 16 thousand.

The problem with the Holocaust narrative is that the evidence as it stands is so hopelessly tainted by fraud, financial corruption, allegations of torture and false confessions that even if some claims are true they are swamped by the overwhelming number of dishonest "witnesses" and claimants. Few "survivors" seem to be able to get their stories straight and the death toll keeps growing and growing in media reports and being revised downwards and downwards by Holocaust scholars at the same time.
Professor Raul Hilberg, the acknowledged foremost authority on the orthodox Holocaust narrative put the death toll at 5.1 million, why is it now,only eight years after his death said to be 12 million?

By the way even the definition of a Holocaust survivor is also a topic of debate;
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/who-counts-as-a-holocaust-survivor-1.119868
"Both demographers relied on the same standard in terms of defining a Holocaust survivor: Any Jew who lived for any period of time in a country that was ruled by the Nazis or their allies is called a Holocaust survivor (by DellaPergola) or a Nazi victim (by Ukeles)"

"The two researchers reached radically different conclusions. On Ukeles' count, there are 687,900 Holocaust survivors in the world today. DellaPergola's estimate is much larger: 1,092,000 survivors."
Posted by Jay Of Melbourne, Friday, 30 January 2015 8:26:32 PM
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Rhian

‘Mal’s article raises a couple of interesting points: that the racial theories than underpinned the holocaust were relatively respectable before WW2 …’

Yes, they were indeed. However, I view the author’s premise that the Holocaust was one giant eugenics experiment as just another version of what you call ‘blatant falsehoods driven by malign ideology’.

Mass exterminations and massacres are primarily driven by economic and imperial motives and almost always take place within the context of war and imperial conquest. The constant portrayal of genocides and large massacres as some kind of occult event that comes out of nowhere and is driven purely by ethnic and racial tensions, while deliberately ignoring the economic and imperial wars in which they occur, is in my view no better or worse than questioning the official Holocaust narrative.

‘and that in milder forms they still are …’

Yes. Only today, racial and ethnic purity theories have morphed into contemporary ‘respectable’ equivalents, e.g. the war on terror, the portrayal of Islam as an ‘inherently violent religion’, humanitarian bombings (R2P) and drone assassinations on dark-skinned populations, social-Darwinian notions of ‘intergenerational welfare’ and ‘lifters and leaners’, and as Louisa pointed out, the dark side of Third World tourism by affluent First Worlders
Posted by Killarney, Friday, 30 January 2015 8:32:12 PM
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