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On August 26 2024 06:31 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 06:03 BlackJack wrote:On August 26 2024 05:51 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas. Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway. In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide. People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. The example of a serial killer is actually pretty apt. Maybe not perfectly the same, but very useful nonetheless. If you and I were to argue about this, and say I take the stance that two deaths make a serial killer and you argue that three or more deaths are required, we'd be arguing about a 33% difference. In my case the serial killer is two thirds there and your objection would be "yes, but what about the final third?" You might see why this doesn't exactly counter my argument in essence, it really only changes the question of scale. If Israel had killed two hundred thousand Palestinians, would that amount to genocide? The answer according to law is: no. Are you surprised yet? My answer is: by that point people would have to be out of their minds to keep denying it. We're at 40 000 deaths. 40k / 2 million. Ok we are at 2% genocide assuming Palestinians in West Bank/Israel and abroad don’t count And 2% is far more than sufficient - purely number wise - to declare genocide. My point is that, if the number was 200 000, people would no longer be objecting to the accusation. So why are they objecting to 40 000 being genocide? It's a completely arbitrary line. There is not a meaningful difference in terms of how atrocious Israel's actions are, the only difference is the specificity of the term that's being used. The people who are objecting to the term "genocide" are using very flimsy reasoning. Basically they're making a difference between mass murder and worse mass murder and arguing that one is "killing" and the other is "murder".
It’s not completely arbitrary. There is a meaningful difference between killing 200k people and 40k people in terms of atrociousness. It’s approximately 160k dead people different.
When the term you’re defining is meant to mean the annihilation of a people then there does need to be some threshold crossed to use that term. If you take your argument to its logical conclusion then you can insist that 1 person being killed is a genocide. If someone says more than 1 person needs to be killed you can still insist they are drawing “completely arbitrary lines.”
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United States42663 Posts
On August 26 2024 06:41 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 06:27 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 05:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. + Show Spoiler +Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas.
Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway.
In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. + Show Spoiler +Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide.
People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. They tried moving them first. The Haavara agreement was part of one of the "solutions" before the "final solution". The rhetoric about no one else wanting the Palestinians mimics what Nazis said about Jewish people in the years leading up to them finding their "final solution". Israel is, in part, a Nazi creation intended to solve the "problem" of Jewish people in Germany, that was supported for a time by the West as an alternative to taking in Jewish people themselves. Hitler wrote a book in which he explained that the various races of the world were in a Darwinistic contest and that the master race would win by destroying the others. I don't understand why you're engaging in Nazi revisionism and pretending that they were at one point moderates who turned evil. They were very clear on their ideology. You're either unclear on the facts or are trying to make a parallel in really bad taste. He also drew a lot of inspiration from the US. Show nested quote +Some Americans, including ones as prominent as Henry Ford, Helen Keller, and Alexander Graham Bell, began championing eugenics — a pseudoscientific ideology arguing that genetically "inferior" people should be sterilized to prevent offspring with undesirable traits.
The documentary quoted a writing from roughly 1914 attributed to former President Theodore Roosevelt: "I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them."
Many states also passed sterilization laws. Historians said the eugenics preached in the US gave Nazis a blueprint of sorts. www.businessinsider.com
This is a really weird "whatabout". You claimed that the Nazis didn't start off as extremists but were actually moderates akin to Israel today and therefore Israel today are basically Nazis. I pointed out that no, actually the Nazis were bad from day 1, that they had a big book of bad things they wanted to do and that they published it ahead of time. You're now arguing what exactly? That the US has some sins in its history? Who was arguing against that? Why is that relevant? What the fuck are you talking about GH? Is it really just "USA bad"? Who was that for?
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On August 24 2024 15:51 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2024 10:06 Sermokala wrote:On August 24 2024 02:41 oBlade wrote:On August 22 2024 21:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Clinton had a few good jabs at Trump too, like how Trump actually thought Hannibal Lecter was a good guy and… literally a *real* person. Yikes. This is fine people hoax level Tiktok gossip. But it wouldn't be the DNC without a lie or two from good old Hillary. On August 22 2024 21:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Kamala Harris, to Brett Kavanaugh: “Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the *male* body?” BK: “I can’t think of any.” Kamala not understanding that men can get pregnant and Kavanaugh not knowing about the Selective Service Act isn't a great look on either of them. On August 22 2024 21:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
“Never underestimate a public school teacher.” Fuck yeah. He led Minnesota to dropping below the national average in education, below national average in elementary school reading assessments. He closed schools and paintballed moms on their porches. On August 22 2024 21:55 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
“While other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours.” Double fuck yeah. When Walz talked about his family and fertility treatments, the camera cut to his kids… his daughter is trying not to cry, and his son is standing and clapping and crying and you can see him saying “That’s my dad”. Literally the proudest kid in the entire world. That was raw, incredibly emotional. There’s such a stark contrast between Walz and Vance, almost as big as the contrast between Harris and Trump.
Think we've amply proven Vance a fan of fertility already. Drumpf, the proof is in the pudding. We've seen Trump go on bizarre tangents about how he likes Hannibal lecter. Its never been explained why but its very weird behavior that's very much trumps brand. That was explained, by me, here, and it's not that he likes Hannibal Lecter, he said other countries take their Hannibal Lecters and send them to America. It's enough to say he's 100% wrong if you think so, we don't have to stoop to pretending not to understand such an incredibly simple point. Also, many people do like Hannibal Lecter. Especially after Mads Mikkelsen turned him into a charismatic sex symbol. Drumpf, however, from his generation, was probably referring to the Silence of the Lambs era although every iteration of the character has the same underlying psychopathy that makes the point work rhetorically. Tiring in a not very mature way that any time he says something different to the thoughts people want him to have, is an unhinged "tangent," and any time he directly responds to a question he's asked, or to what his opponent says or does, is an unhinged "meltdown." Show nested quote +On August 24 2024 10:06 Sermokala wrote:
She wasn't talking about men getting pregnant or the draft I don't know why you would jump to those things from that context. We've seen that conservatives are more than happy to get gender-affirming care for men or allow vasectomies for men its just an issue when it comes to a womens body. You don't see the connection? Let me try and make it even more obvious. The question put to Kavanaugh was whether he knew any laws affecting the male body. His negative answer, suggesting that there are no such laws, combined with Kamala's default position of assuming there are no such laws when she asked the question, might lead us to conclude therefore that there are no such laws if these two towering intellects of honesty couldn't think of one in 20 seconds. Here are the two flaws. The question presupposes that abortion laws do not affect men's bodies as Kamala either wrongly believes men cannot get pregnant, or forgot about that to try to get a quick political jab in. Extremely problematic. Also, mandatory registration by men of a certain age for the draft very explicitly is a hundred year old law about kidnapping a man and his body (one who has broken no law and therefore not lost any of the rights that make going to prison not kidnapping), force him to use it in certain ways or risk punishment, and also possibly have it blown up when an incompetent administration tries to abandon a country with a history of war from a civilian airfield, despite stable and secure military operations there at the time, and a terrorist blows up you and 12 of your colleagues, that qualifies as a law that affects a man's body. Laws about IVF also affect a man's ability to reproduce. Restrictions on abortion prevent the abortion of male babies. Show nested quote +On August 24 2024 10:06 Sermokala wrote:
The paintball thing was just a odd hoax that no conservative seemed to think about for more than a few seconds. He enforced lockdowns and curfews, closed schools, called up the national guard, and there is video of them paintballing people. Show nested quote +On August 24 2024 10:06 Sermokala wrote:
No serious person puts stock in standardized tests for judging education standards. No child left behind broke schools in a race to the bottom and trying to justify it is just sad. He closed schools during the plauge because kids are the most contagious vectors for disease. No Child Left Behind has been gone since 2015. Also, No Child Left Behind was a federal law, so it affected every state in the union, so even if it was in the timeframe we were talking about, which it isn't, using it to explain why one state fell to shit compared to its peers doesn't seem to make sense, you'd have to explain why it had such a disproportionate detriment on Minnesota and didn't ruin other states' education. Standardized tests are objective measures (the SAT predicts college success), especially when you compare them to themselves, for example, before Walz entered office, and after, which is pure apples to apples. Show nested quote +On August 24 2024 10:06 Sermokala wrote:
I don't know if this is a crass attempt to bash the walz's on their fertility issue but the Republicans have refused to protect the IVF family of fertility treatments, through which their children were conceived. Instead of encouraging people to have children by expanding their options to have them, which would be consistent with being pro life, vance seems more than happy to attack women who can't have kids and deny their ability to have them. We know Vance can't have a happy family moment like that, because he wrote a book about how much he hates his family and everyone he grew up with. Nobody is bashing the conception and rearing of children. 1) Walz used intrauterine insemination, not IVF. 2) Have you read Vance's book? 3) Vance is a married father.
Hes called him "the late great Hannibal lecter repeatedly" this isn't some racist pivot to immigration to try and paint anyone coming into the nation as a hardened cannibal. Hes done it a lot.
Its a tangent when he clearly goes off his teleprompter and starts saying weird shit that makes no sense as he attempts to riff to the audience like when he talks about how his people tell him to keep talking about policy when he wants to get personal. He melts down when he starts ranting about off topic things no one cares about like Biden when hes not running against him.
Kamala wasn't talking about abortion laws, She was asking a very simple question. You don't get to lump in a whole bunch of context that isn't there. She asked "do you know of any laws that involve a mans body". I get you have an argument that the draft could be considered a law mandating a mans body and you would be right, If the draft was something that you didn't need to sign up for now. You have to reigster for the Selective Service Act, so your entire line there is moot.
There is a video of them paintballing people, he did save lives during the plague just like other governors Republicans and Democrats. Walz didn't direct people to get paintballed, the National Guard did that to get people off the street, the same they did in other states in response to the riots. You trying to paint it like they targeted moms specifically is just werid when anyone who thinks about it for a second would question the whole premise immediately. You can't bash him for not calling out the National Guard sooner than act shocked when the National Guard does what its expected to do when it gets called out. Its layered bad faith that makes no sense.
No Child Left Behind inspired standardized testing as a matter of measuring success. You can't say "oh that law isn't a thing anymore so it doesn't matter" and then treat the thing it used as a measuring stick as your truth in the argument. It went down because we don't give as much of a shit about it than other states, because its bad, its bad because no child left behind was repealed. NCLB being repealed is the proof that standardized testing is bad. If you would think about your arguments rationally for a moment you would see the traps you lay for yourself.
Semantics about what kind of IVF like treatment isn't convincing anyone. Yes I have read parts of his book, he says a lot of horrid shit about the people he grew up with. He made a bunch of money off the back of saying shit about his hometown and then took a network tv job so he could bash those same people to a liberal coastal audience who loved bashing rural midwestern people. I'm glad you're aware of his marital status, Its werid that you're unaware that he was born with a mother and father the same way he had a kid with a wife. MAGA people are bashing the conception and rearing of children. Politicians are doing that by banning IVF treatments from states and refusing to guarantee access to it on the federal level.
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On August 26 2024 07:12 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 06:41 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 06:27 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 05:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. + Show Spoiler +Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas.
Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway.
In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. + Show Spoiler +Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide.
People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. They tried moving them first. The Haavara agreement was part of one of the "solutions" before the "final solution". The rhetoric about no one else wanting the Palestinians mimics what Nazis said about Jewish people in the years leading up to them finding their "final solution". Israel is, in part, a Nazi creation intended to solve the "problem" of Jewish people in Germany, that was supported for a time by the West as an alternative to taking in Jewish people themselves. Hitler wrote a book in which he explained that the various races of the world were in a Darwinistic contest and that the master race would win by destroying the others. I don't understand why you're engaging in Nazi revisionism and pretending that they were at one point moderates who turned evil. They were very clear on their ideology. You're either unclear on the facts or are trying to make a parallel in really bad taste. He also drew a lot of inspiration from the US. Some Americans, including ones as prominent as Henry Ford, Helen Keller, and Alexander Graham Bell, began championing eugenics — a pseudoscientific ideology arguing that genetically "inferior" people should be sterilized to prevent offspring with undesirable traits.
The documentary quoted a writing from roughly 1914 attributed to former President Theodore Roosevelt: "I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them."
Many states also passed sterilization laws. Historians said the eugenics preached in the US gave Nazis a blueprint of sorts. www.businessinsider.com This is a really weird "whatabout". You claimed that the Nazis didn't start off as extremists but were actually moderates akin to Israel today and therefore Israel today are basically Nazis. I pointed out that no, actually the Nazis were bad from day 1, that they had a big book of bad things they wanted to do and that they published it ahead of time. You're now arguing what exactly? That the US has some sins in its history? Who was arguing against that? Why is that relevant? What the fuck are you talking about GH? Is it really just "USA bad"? Who was that for?
You misunderstood my pointing out that Nazis also tried rhetoric and policy to expel Jewish people before they were "forced" to genocide them as a "final solution", for arguing it wasn't just the early steps of premeditated genocide. I was pointing out the opposite.
I've also pointed out that sometimes the fascist far-right in Israel just call themselves Nazis.
The response was also pointing out that eugenics wasn't where the US and Nazis really disagreed. In fact, Nazis based much of their implementation of Hitler's vision on the US. While certainly heinous, Nazi Germany into the early 1930's, in an ostensibly (but not really) good-faith search for a solution to their "problem" (while actively/unabashedly trying to ethnically cleanse Jewish people from Germany), wasn't considered outside of the Overton window of polite politics in the US. Much like defending Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign as undesirable but unavoidable is today.
Besides the names already mentioned, there are plenty of still heavily lauded people/institutions from the time that advocated eugenics and even specifically funded Nazi eugenics projects.
The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.
+ Show Spoiler +Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:
You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought ... I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.[126]
Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws.[127] In 1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany (scheduled on the anniversary of the 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty), to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on the "science of racial cleansing". Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterward, he proudly shared the award with his colleagues, remarking that he felt that it symbolized the "common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics."[128]
en.wikipedia.org
And I think everyone knows at this point that fellow eugenicist, rabid anti-Semite and American icon, Henry Ford was awarded the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle" by Nazi Germany in 1938 but less are probably aware that
In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters".[87] Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.[88] Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk.[89][84] Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany"
en.wikipedia.org
None of that is to say Nazis weren't extremists, but to demonstrate this isn't the first time the US has danced this dance. "Bad" was the status quo then and it is now too.
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United States42663 Posts
Again GH, what in the actual fuck are you talking about. Trying to insinuate that the US were in someway supportive of the Nazis because of Henry Ford is somehow missing out on that time that the US demanded and then achieved the absolute destruction of the Nazi state.
On the one hand we have Henry Ford getting a medal. On the other we have the hundreds of thousands of Nazis that were killed by the US government as a matter of state policy. And you're zooming in on the medal. There is exactly zero ambiguity in how the US felt about Nazis, setting fire to the air in German cities is the kind of context clue that really can't be misinterpreted.
You're fucking weird man. Not in a Donald Trump wanting to fuck his own daughter way but at the very least in a RFK Jr brain worms way. I think if you asked a thousand people whether the US was pro or anti Nazi then approximately a thousand of them would get it right.
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On August 26 2024 08:24 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 08:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 07:12 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 06:41 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 06:27 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 05:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. + Show Spoiler +Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas.
Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway.
In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. + Show Spoiler +Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide.
People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. They tried moving them first. The Haavara agreement was part of one of the "solutions" before the "final solution". The rhetoric about no one else wanting the Palestinians mimics what Nazis said about Jewish people in the years leading up to them finding their "final solution". Israel is, in part, a Nazi creation intended to solve the "problem" of Jewish people in Germany, that was supported for a time by the West as an alternative to taking in Jewish people themselves. Hitler wrote a book in which he explained that the various races of the world were in a Darwinistic contest and that the master race would win by destroying the others. I don't understand why you're engaging in Nazi revisionism and pretending that they were at one point moderates who turned evil. They were very clear on their ideology. You're either unclear on the facts or are trying to make a parallel in really bad taste. He also drew a lot of inspiration from the US. Some Americans, including ones as prominent as Henry Ford, Helen Keller, and Alexander Graham Bell, began championing eugenics — a pseudoscientific ideology arguing that genetically "inferior" people should be sterilized to prevent offspring with undesirable traits.
The documentary quoted a writing from roughly 1914 attributed to former President Theodore Roosevelt: "I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them."
Many states also passed sterilization laws. Historians said the eugenics preached in the US gave Nazis a blueprint of sorts. www.businessinsider.com This is a really weird "whatabout". You claimed that the Nazis didn't start off as extremists but were actually moderates akin to Israel today and therefore Israel today are basically Nazis. I pointed out that no, actually the Nazis were bad from day 1, that they had a big book of bad things they wanted to do and that they published it ahead of time. You're now arguing what exactly? That the US has some sins in its history? Who was arguing against that? Why is that relevant? What the fuck are you talking about GH? Is it really just "USA bad"? Who was that for? You misunderstood my pointing out that Nazis also tried rhetoric and policy to expel Jewish people before they were "forced" to genocide them as a "final solution", for arguing it wasn't just the early steps of premeditated genocide. I was pointing out the opposite. I've also pointed out that sometimes the fascist far-right in Israel just call themselves Nazis. The response was also pointing out that eugenics wasn't where the US and Nazis really disagreed. In fact, Nazis based much of their implementation of Hitler's vision on the US. While certainly heinous, Nazi Germany into the early 1930's, in an ostensibly (but not really) good-faith search for a solution to their "problem" (while actively/unabashedly trying to ethnically cleanse Jewish people from Germany), wasn't considered outside of the Overton window of polite politics in the US. Much like defending Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign as undesirable but unavoidable is today. Besides the names already mentioned, there are plenty of still heavily lauded people/institutions from the time that advocated eugenics and even specifically funded Nazi eugenics projects. The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz. + Show Spoiler +Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:
You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought ... I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.[126]
Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws.[127] In 1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany (scheduled on the anniversary of the 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty), to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on the "science of racial cleansing". Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterward, he proudly shared the award with his colleagues, remarking that he felt that it symbolized the "common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics."[128] And I think everyone knows at this point that fellow eugenicist, rabid anti-Semite and American icon, Henry Ford was awarded the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle" by Nazi Germany in 1938 but less are probably aware that In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters".[87] Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.[88] Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk.[89][84] Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany" en.wikipedia.orgNone of that is to say Nazis weren't extremists, but to demonstrate this isn't the first time the US has danced this dance. "Bad" was the status quo then and it is now too. Again GH, what in the actual fuck are you talking about. Trying to insinuate that the US were in someway supportive of the Nazis because of Henry Ford is somehow missing out on that time that the US demanded and then achieved the absolute destruction of the Nazi state. On the one hand we have Henry Ford getting a medal. On the other we have the hundreds of thousands of Nazis that were killed by the US government as a matter of state policy. And you're zooming in on the medal. There is exactly zero ambiguity in how the US felt about Nazis, setting fire to the air in German cities is the kind of context clue that really can't be misinterpreted. You're fucking weird man. Not in a Donald Trump wanting to fuck his own daughter way but at the very least in a RFK Jr brain worms way. Ford was one of several people mentioned in a non-exhaustive list, but okay.
Most people remember that it took the attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941 to finally get the US into the Nazi killing business officially. You'll notice I preemptively specifically mentioned Nazi Germany in the 20's and early 30's to distinguish it from the point at which US policy shifted to going to war with Nazis that you're talking about.
The connection is that US-Israel relations aren't that dissimilar to US-Nazi relations in the 20's and early 30's. Nor is Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in service of genocide that is openly advocated for by their right-wing politicians and prominent figures that dissimilar to Nazis circa the Haavara agreement. So much so, that sometimes they even refer to themselves as Nazis.
But the original point was simply that Nazis also tried the "how about they just go somewhere else" thing too (with premeditated genocide in the notso fine print), and they also used the same "Geeze, no one wants them, what does that say about Jews. What options do we have left!??!?" that we've seen posted here regarding Palestinians and no other countries wanting to take them in.
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United States42663 Posts
On August 26 2024 08:56 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 08:24 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 08:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 07:12 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 06:41 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 06:27 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 05:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. + Show Spoiler +Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas.
Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway.
In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. + Show Spoiler +Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide.
People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. They tried moving them first. The Haavara agreement was part of one of the "solutions" before the "final solution". The rhetoric about no one else wanting the Palestinians mimics what Nazis said about Jewish people in the years leading up to them finding their "final solution". Israel is, in part, a Nazi creation intended to solve the "problem" of Jewish people in Germany, that was supported for a time by the West as an alternative to taking in Jewish people themselves. Hitler wrote a book in which he explained that the various races of the world were in a Darwinistic contest and that the master race would win by destroying the others. I don't understand why you're engaging in Nazi revisionism and pretending that they were at one point moderates who turned evil. They were very clear on their ideology. You're either unclear on the facts or are trying to make a parallel in really bad taste. He also drew a lot of inspiration from the US. Some Americans, including ones as prominent as Henry Ford, Helen Keller, and Alexander Graham Bell, began championing eugenics — a pseudoscientific ideology arguing that genetically "inferior" people should be sterilized to prevent offspring with undesirable traits.
The documentary quoted a writing from roughly 1914 attributed to former President Theodore Roosevelt: "I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them."
Many states also passed sterilization laws. Historians said the eugenics preached in the US gave Nazis a blueprint of sorts. www.businessinsider.com This is a really weird "whatabout". You claimed that the Nazis didn't start off as extremists but were actually moderates akin to Israel today and therefore Israel today are basically Nazis. I pointed out that no, actually the Nazis were bad from day 1, that they had a big book of bad things they wanted to do and that they published it ahead of time. You're now arguing what exactly? That the US has some sins in its history? Who was arguing against that? Why is that relevant? What the fuck are you talking about GH? Is it really just "USA bad"? Who was that for? You misunderstood my pointing out that Nazis also tried rhetoric and policy to expel Jewish people before they were "forced" to genocide them as a "final solution", for arguing it wasn't just the early steps of premeditated genocide. I was pointing out the opposite. I've also pointed out that sometimes the fascist far-right in Israel just call themselves Nazis. The response was also pointing out that eugenics wasn't where the US and Nazis really disagreed. In fact, Nazis based much of their implementation of Hitler's vision on the US. While certainly heinous, Nazi Germany into the early 1930's, in an ostensibly (but not really) good-faith search for a solution to their "problem" (while actively/unabashedly trying to ethnically cleanse Jewish people from Germany), wasn't considered outside of the Overton window of polite politics in the US. Much like defending Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign as undesirable but unavoidable is today. Besides the names already mentioned, there are plenty of still heavily lauded people/institutions from the time that advocated eugenics and even specifically funded Nazi eugenics projects. The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz. + Show Spoiler +Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:
You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought ... I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.[126]
Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws.[127] In 1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany (scheduled on the anniversary of the 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty), to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on the "science of racial cleansing". Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterward, he proudly shared the award with his colleagues, remarking that he felt that it symbolized the "common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics."[128] And I think everyone knows at this point that fellow eugenicist, rabid anti-Semite and American icon, Henry Ford was awarded the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle" by Nazi Germany in 1938 but less are probably aware that In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters".[87] Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.[88] Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk.[89][84] Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany" en.wikipedia.orgNone of that is to say Nazis weren't extremists, but to demonstrate this isn't the first time the US has danced this dance. "Bad" was the status quo then and it is now too. Again GH, what in the actual fuck are you talking about. Trying to insinuate that the US were in someway supportive of the Nazis because of Henry Ford is somehow missing out on that time that the US demanded and then achieved the absolute destruction of the Nazi state. On the one hand we have Henry Ford getting a medal. On the other we have the hundreds of thousands of Nazis that were killed by the US government as a matter of state policy. And you're zooming in on the medal. There is exactly zero ambiguity in how the US felt about Nazis, setting fire to the air in German cities is the kind of context clue that really can't be misinterpreted. You're fucking weird man. Not in a Donald Trump wanting to fuck his own daughter way but at the very least in a RFK Jr brain worms way. Ford was one of several people mentioned in a non-exhaustive list, but okay. Most people remember that it took the attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941 to finally get the US into the Nazi killing business officially. You'll notice I preemptively specifically mentioned Nazi Germany in the 20's and early 30's to distinguish it from the point at which US policy shifted to going to war with Nazis that you're talking about. The connection is that US-Israel relations aren't that dissimilar to US-Nazi relations in the 20's and early 30's. Nor is Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in service of genocide that is openly advocated for by their right-wing politicians and prominent figures that dissimilar to Nazis circa the Haavara agreement. So much so, that sometimes they even refer to themselves as Nazis. But the original point was simply that Nazis also tried the "how about they just go somewhere else" thing too (with premeditated genocide in the notso fine print), and they also used the same "Geeze, no one wants them, what does that say about Jews. What options do we have left!??!?" that we've seen posted here regarding Palestinians and no other countries wanting to take them in.
Nazi Germany in the 20s? When you have these moments where it becomes incredibly apparent that you have literally no knowledge of a subject does it ever cause you to slow down? Or do you just power through them?
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On August 26 2024 06:54 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 06:31 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 06:03 BlackJack wrote:On August 26 2024 05:51 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas. Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway. In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide. People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. The example of a serial killer is actually pretty apt. Maybe not perfectly the same, but very useful nonetheless. If you and I were to argue about this, and say I take the stance that two deaths make a serial killer and you argue that three or more deaths are required, we'd be arguing about a 33% difference. In my case the serial killer is two thirds there and your objection would be "yes, but what about the final third?" You might see why this doesn't exactly counter my argument in essence, it really only changes the question of scale. If Israel had killed two hundred thousand Palestinians, would that amount to genocide? The answer according to law is: no. Are you surprised yet? My answer is: by that point people would have to be out of their minds to keep denying it. We're at 40 000 deaths. 40k / 2 million. Ok we are at 2% genocide assuming Palestinians in West Bank/Israel and abroad don’t count And 2% is far more than sufficient - purely number wise - to declare genocide. My point is that, if the number was 200 000, people would no longer be objecting to the accusation. So why are they objecting to 40 000 being genocide? It's a completely arbitrary line. There is not a meaningful difference in terms of how atrocious Israel's actions are, the only difference is the specificity of the term that's being used. The people who are objecting to the term "genocide" are using very flimsy reasoning. Basically they're making a difference between mass murder and worse mass murder and arguing that one is "killing" and the other is "murder". It’s not completely arbitrary. There is a meaningful difference between killing 200k people and 40k people in terms of atrociousness. It’s approximately 160k dead people different. When the term you’re defining is meant to mean the annihilation of a people then there does need to be some threshold crossed to use that term. If you take your argument to its logical conclusion then you can insist that 1 person being killed is a genocide. If someone says more than 1 person needs to be killed you can still insist they are drawing “completely arbitrary lines.”
Genocide doesn't strictly mean the eradication of all of a people. The definition includes the eradication of some of a people. I thought you were aware of this, that's why I didn't bother to explain it.
Furthermore, I personally see literally no difference between the murder of 40 000 people and of 200 000 people. In fact I've previously made clear that in my book the murder of a single person is equivalent to the murder of a million people.
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On August 26 2024 08:59 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 08:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 08:24 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 08:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 07:12 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 06:41 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 06:27 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 05:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:
[quote]
Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war.
I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent.
As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons.
I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence?
If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. + Show Spoiler +Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas.
Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway.
In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. + Show Spoiler +Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide.
People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. They tried moving them first. The Haavara agreement was part of one of the "solutions" before the "final solution". The rhetoric about no one else wanting the Palestinians mimics what Nazis said about Jewish people in the years leading up to them finding their "final solution". Israel is, in part, a Nazi creation intended to solve the "problem" of Jewish people in Germany, that was supported for a time by the West as an alternative to taking in Jewish people themselves. Hitler wrote a book in which he explained that the various races of the world were in a Darwinistic contest and that the master race would win by destroying the others. I don't understand why you're engaging in Nazi revisionism and pretending that they were at one point moderates who turned evil. They were very clear on their ideology. You're either unclear on the facts or are trying to make a parallel in really bad taste. He also drew a lot of inspiration from the US. Some Americans, including ones as prominent as Henry Ford, Helen Keller, and Alexander Graham Bell, began championing eugenics — a pseudoscientific ideology arguing that genetically "inferior" people should be sterilized to prevent offspring with undesirable traits.
The documentary quoted a writing from roughly 1914 attributed to former President Theodore Roosevelt: "I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them."
Many states also passed sterilization laws. Historians said the eugenics preached in the US gave Nazis a blueprint of sorts. www.businessinsider.com This is a really weird "whatabout". You claimed that the Nazis didn't start off as extremists but were actually moderates akin to Israel today and therefore Israel today are basically Nazis. I pointed out that no, actually the Nazis were bad from day 1, that they had a big book of bad things they wanted to do and that they published it ahead of time. You're now arguing what exactly? That the US has some sins in its history? Who was arguing against that? Why is that relevant? What the fuck are you talking about GH? Is it really just "USA bad"? Who was that for? You misunderstood my pointing out that Nazis also tried rhetoric and policy to expel Jewish people before they were "forced" to genocide them as a "final solution", for arguing it wasn't just the early steps of premeditated genocide. I was pointing out the opposite. I've also pointed out that sometimes the fascist far-right in Israel just call themselves Nazis. The response was also pointing out that eugenics wasn't where the US and Nazis really disagreed. In fact, Nazis based much of their implementation of Hitler's vision on the US. While certainly heinous, Nazi Germany into the early 1930's, in an ostensibly (but not really) good-faith search for a solution to their "problem" (while actively/unabashedly trying to ethnically cleanse Jewish people from Germany), wasn't considered outside of the Overton window of polite politics in the US. Much like defending Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign as undesirable but unavoidable is today. Besides the names already mentioned, there are plenty of still heavily lauded people/institutions from the time that advocated eugenics and even specifically funded Nazi eugenics projects. The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz. + Show Spoiler +Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:
You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought ... I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.[126]
Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws.[127] In 1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany (scheduled on the anniversary of the 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty), to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on the "science of racial cleansing". Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterward, he proudly shared the award with his colleagues, remarking that he felt that it symbolized the "common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics."[128] And I think everyone knows at this point that fellow eugenicist, rabid anti-Semite and American icon, Henry Ford was awarded the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle" by Nazi Germany in 1938 but less are probably aware that In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters".[87] Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.[88] Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk.[89][84] Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany" en.wikipedia.orgNone of that is to say Nazis weren't extremists, but to demonstrate this isn't the first time the US has danced this dance. "Bad" was the status quo then and it is now too. Again GH, what in the actual fuck are you talking about. Trying to insinuate that the US were in someway supportive of the Nazis because of Henry Ford is somehow missing out on that time that the US demanded and then achieved the absolute destruction of the Nazi state. On the one hand we have Henry Ford getting a medal. On the other we have the hundreds of thousands of Nazis that were killed by the US government as a matter of state policy. And you're zooming in on the medal. There is exactly zero ambiguity in how the US felt about Nazis, setting fire to the air in German cities is the kind of context clue that really can't be misinterpreted. You're fucking weird man. Not in a Donald Trump wanting to fuck his own daughter way but at the very least in a RFK Jr brain worms way. Ford was one of several people mentioned in a non-exhaustive list, but okay. Most people remember that it took the attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941 to finally get the US into the Nazi killing business officially. You'll notice I preemptively specifically mentioned Nazi Germany in the 20's and early 30's to distinguish it from the point at which US policy shifted to going to war with Nazis that you're talking about. The connection is that US-Israel relations aren't that dissimilar to US-Nazi relations in the 20's and early 30's. Nor is Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in service of genocide that is openly advocated for by their right-wing politicians and prominent figures that dissimilar to Nazis circa the Haavara agreement. So much so, that sometimes they even refer to themselves as Nazis. But the original point was simply that Nazis also tried the "how about they just go somewhere else" thing too (with premeditated genocide in the notso fine print), and they also used the same "Geeze, no one wants them, what does that say about Jews. What options do we have left!??!?" that we've seen posted here regarding Palestinians and no other countries wanting to take them in. Nazi Germany in the 20s?
Nazis in* Germany in the 20's. I'm glad this is over. I'm obviously aware of when Hitler came to power and as I've noted the Hindenburg disaster should refer to making Hitler Chancellor. Which is not entirely dissimilar to how Democrats would hand Trump the nuclear football if he won, likely leading to comparably catastrophic results.
But no, disingenuous shitposts don't really phase me.
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Northern Ireland25260 Posts
It’s a parallel with just as many differences as similarities.
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United States42663 Posts
On August 26 2024 09:04 Magic Powers wrote:
In fact I've previously made clear that in my book the murder of a single person is equivalent to the murder of a million people.
Are you just really bad at maths? A million people is approximately a million times worse. I can show you the working on how I came up with that if you need.
Edit: I'm actually curious about this particular virtue signaling comment you made. So, assuming I understand correctly, the badness is based on the innate quality of the crime committed, not the scale. That would imply that if person A killed a million people and person B killed one person and also did some littering then person B would get the maximum number of bad points for each of the two crimes and therefore be worse than person A. Is that how it works?
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United States42663 Posts
On August 26 2024 09:05 GreenHorizons wrote:
I'm obviously aware of when Hitler came to power
I don't believe this for a second.
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On August 26 2024 09:06 WombaT wrote:
It’s a parallel with just as many differences as similarities.
Well my point regarding your position was simply
On August 26 2024 05:57 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. + Show Spoiler +Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas.
Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway.
In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. + Show Spoiler +Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide.
People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. They tried moving them first. The Haavara agreement was part of one of the "solutions" before the "final solution". The rhetoric about no one else wanting the Palestinians mimics what Nazis said about Jewish people in the years leading up to them finding their "final solution". Israel is, in part, a Nazi creation intended to solve the "problem" of Jewish people in Germany, that was supported for a time by the West as an alternative to taking in Jewish people themselves.
So the idea that either Israel or Germany would be content to just shove them next door is wrong. After Palestinians, Israel has plenty of Arabs it wants to subjugate/eliminate beyond their borders and a West that is keen to support them in that endeavor.
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On August 26 2024 09:04 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 06:54 BlackJack wrote:On August 26 2024 06:31 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 06:03 BlackJack wrote:On August 26 2024 05:51 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas. Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway. In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide. People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. The example of a serial killer is actually pretty apt. Maybe not perfectly the same, but very useful nonetheless. If you and I were to argue about this, and say I take the stance that two deaths make a serial killer and you argue that three or more deaths are required, we'd be arguing about a 33% difference. In my case the serial killer is two thirds there and your objection would be "yes, but what about the final third?" You might see why this doesn't exactly counter my argument in essence, it really only changes the question of scale. If Israel had killed two hundred thousand Palestinians, would that amount to genocide? The answer according to law is: no. Are you surprised yet? My answer is: by that point people would have to be out of their minds to keep denying it. We're at 40 000 deaths. 40k / 2 million. Ok we are at 2% genocide assuming Palestinians in West Bank/Israel and abroad don’t count And 2% is far more than sufficient - purely number wise - to declare genocide. My point is that, if the number was 200 000, people would no longer be objecting to the accusation. So why are they objecting to 40 000 being genocide? It's a completely arbitrary line. There is not a meaningful difference in terms of how atrocious Israel's actions are, the only difference is the specificity of the term that's being used. The people who are objecting to the term "genocide" are using very flimsy reasoning. Basically they're making a difference between mass murder and worse mass murder and arguing that one is "killing" and the other is "murder". It’s not completely arbitrary. There is a meaningful difference between killing 200k people and 40k people in terms of atrociousness. It’s approximately 160k dead people different. When the term you’re defining is meant to mean the annihilation of a people then there does need to be some threshold crossed to use that term. If you take your argument to its logical conclusion then you can insist that 1 person being killed is a genocide. If someone says more than 1 person needs to be killed you can still insist they are drawing “completely arbitrary lines.” Genocide doesn't strictly mean the eradication of all of a people. The definition includes the eradication of some of a people. I thought you were aware of this, that's why I didn't bother to explain it. Furthermore, I personally see literally no difference between the murder of 40 000 people and of 200 000 people. In fact I've previously made clear that in my book the murder of a single person is equivalent to the murder of a million people.
Oh... well okay then. Not much I can say to that.
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On August 26 2024 09:12 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 09:04 Magic Powers wrote:
In fact I've previously made clear that in my book the murder of a single person is equivalent to the murder of a million people. Are you just really bad at maths? A million people is approximately a million times worse. I can show you the working on how I came up with that if you need. Edit: I'm actually curious about this particular virtue signaling comment you made. So, assuming I understand correctly, the badness is based on the innate quality of the crime committed, not the scale. That would imply that if person A killed a million people and person B killed one person and also did some littering then person B would get the maximum number of bad points for each of the two crimes and therefore be worse than person A. Is that how it works?
The late great Hannibal Lecter would never illegally dump a corpse. He consumes every part of the meat.
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On August 26 2024 08:56 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 08:24 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 08:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 07:12 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 06:41 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 06:27 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 05:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. + Show Spoiler +Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas.
Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway.
In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. + Show Spoiler +Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide.
People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. They tried moving them first. The Haavara agreement was part of one of the "solutions" before the "final solution". The rhetoric about no one else wanting the Palestinians mimics what Nazis said about Jewish people in the years leading up to them finding their "final solution". Israel is, in part, a Nazi creation intended to solve the "problem" of Jewish people in Germany, that was supported for a time by the West as an alternative to taking in Jewish people themselves. Hitler wrote a book in which he explained that the various races of the world were in a Darwinistic contest and that the master race would win by destroying the others. I don't understand why you're engaging in Nazi revisionism and pretending that they were at one point moderates who turned evil. They were very clear on their ideology. You're either unclear on the facts or are trying to make a parallel in really bad taste. He also drew a lot of inspiration from the US. Some Americans, including ones as prominent as Henry Ford, Helen Keller, and Alexander Graham Bell, began championing eugenics — a pseudoscientific ideology arguing that genetically "inferior" people should be sterilized to prevent offspring with undesirable traits.
The documentary quoted a writing from roughly 1914 attributed to former President Theodore Roosevelt: "I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them."
Many states also passed sterilization laws. Historians said the eugenics preached in the US gave Nazis a blueprint of sorts. www.businessinsider.com This is a really weird "whatabout". You claimed that the Nazis didn't start off as extremists but were actually moderates akin to Israel today and therefore Israel today are basically Nazis. I pointed out that no, actually the Nazis were bad from day 1, that they had a big book of bad things they wanted to do and that they published it ahead of time. You're now arguing what exactly? That the US has some sins in its history? Who was arguing against that? Why is that relevant? What the fuck are you talking about GH? Is it really just "USA bad"? Who was that for? You misunderstood my pointing out that Nazis also tried rhetoric and policy to expel Jewish people before they were "forced" to genocide them as a "final solution", for arguing it wasn't just the early steps of premeditated genocide. I was pointing out the opposite. I've also pointed out that sometimes the fascist far-right in Israel just call themselves Nazis. The response was also pointing out that eugenics wasn't where the US and Nazis really disagreed. In fact, Nazis based much of their implementation of Hitler's vision on the US. While certainly heinous, Nazi Germany into the early 1930's, in an ostensibly (but not really) good-faith search for a solution to their "problem" (while actively/unabashedly trying to ethnically cleanse Jewish people from Germany), wasn't considered outside of the Overton window of polite politics in the US. Much like defending Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign as undesirable but unavoidable is today. Besides the names already mentioned, there are plenty of still heavily lauded people/institutions from the time that advocated eugenics and even specifically funded Nazi eugenics projects. The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz. + Show Spoiler +Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:
You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought ... I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.[126]
Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws.[127] In 1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany (scheduled on the anniversary of the 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty), to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on the "science of racial cleansing". Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterward, he proudly shared the award with his colleagues, remarking that he felt that it symbolized the "common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics."[128] And I think everyone knows at this point that fellow eugenicist, rabid anti-Semite and American icon, Henry Ford was awarded the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle" by Nazi Germany in 1938 but less are probably aware that In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters".[87] Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.[88] Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk.[89][84] Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany" en.wikipedia.orgNone of that is to say Nazis weren't extremists, but to demonstrate this isn't the first time the US has danced this dance. "Bad" was the status quo then and it is now too. Again GH, what in the actual fuck are you talking about. Trying to insinuate that the US were in someway supportive of the Nazis because of Henry Ford is somehow missing out on that time that the US demanded and then achieved the absolute destruction of the Nazi state. On the one hand we have Henry Ford getting a medal. On the other we have the hundreds of thousands of Nazis that were killed by the US government as a matter of state policy. And you're zooming in on the medal. There is exactly zero ambiguity in how the US felt about Nazis, setting fire to the air in German cities is the kind of context clue that really can't be misinterpreted. You're fucking weird man. Not in a Donald Trump wanting to fuck his own daughter way but at the very least in a RFK Jr brain worms way. Ford was one of several people mentioned in a non-exhaustive list, but okay. Most people remember that it took the attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941 to finally get the US into the Nazi killing business officially. You'll notice I preemptively specifically mentioned Nazi Germany in the 20's and early 30's to distinguish it from the point at which US policy shifted to going to war with Nazis that you're talking about. The connection is that US-Israel relations aren't that dissimilar to US-Nazi relations in the 20's and early 30's. Nor is Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in service of genocide that is openly advocated for by their right-wing politicians and prominent figures that dissimilar to Nazis circa the Haavara agreement. So much so, that sometimes they even refer to themselves as Nazis. But the original point was simply that Nazis also tried the "how about they just go somewhere else" thing too (with premeditated genocide in the notso fine print), and they also used the same "Geeze, no one wants them, what does that say about Jews. What options do we have left!??!?" that we've seen posted here regarding Palestinians and no other countries wanting to take them in.
If we run with your incredibly flawed premise that would also mean that once Israel "gets to the 40's" the US will crush them like an empty can.
Which to be fair is probably what would happen if they started setting up concentation camps.
But it will never happen because in our actual reality the people of Israel don't want to genocide the Palestinians and the country is still a democracy.
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On August 26 2024 14:46 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 08:56 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 08:24 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 08:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 07:12 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 06:41 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 06:27 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 05:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:
[quote]
Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war.
I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent.
As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons.
I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence?
If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. + Show Spoiler +Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas.
Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway.
In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. + Show Spoiler +Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide.
People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. They tried moving them first. The Haavara agreement was part of one of the "solutions" before the "final solution". The rhetoric about no one else wanting the Palestinians mimics what Nazis said about Jewish people in the years leading up to them finding their "final solution". Israel is, in part, a Nazi creation intended to solve the "problem" of Jewish people in Germany, that was supported for a time by the West as an alternative to taking in Jewish people themselves. Hitler wrote a book in which he explained that the various races of the world were in a Darwinistic contest and that the master race would win by destroying the others. I don't understand why you're engaging in Nazi revisionism and pretending that they were at one point moderates who turned evil. They were very clear on their ideology. You're either unclear on the facts or are trying to make a parallel in really bad taste. He also drew a lot of inspiration from the US. Some Americans, including ones as prominent as Henry Ford, Helen Keller, and Alexander Graham Bell, began championing eugenics — a pseudoscientific ideology arguing that genetically "inferior" people should be sterilized to prevent offspring with undesirable traits.
The documentary quoted a writing from roughly 1914 attributed to former President Theodore Roosevelt: "I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized and feeble-minded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them."
Many states also passed sterilization laws. Historians said the eugenics preached in the US gave Nazis a blueprint of sorts. www.businessinsider.com This is a really weird "whatabout". You claimed that the Nazis didn't start off as extremists but were actually moderates akin to Israel today and therefore Israel today are basically Nazis. I pointed out that no, actually the Nazis were bad from day 1, that they had a big book of bad things they wanted to do and that they published it ahead of time. You're now arguing what exactly? That the US has some sins in its history? Who was arguing against that? Why is that relevant? What the fuck are you talking about GH? Is it really just "USA bad"? Who was that for? You misunderstood my pointing out that Nazis also tried rhetoric and policy to expel Jewish people before they were "forced" to genocide them as a "final solution", for arguing it wasn't just the early steps of premeditated genocide. I was pointing out the opposite. I've also pointed out that sometimes the fascist far-right in Israel just call themselves Nazis. The response was also pointing out that eugenics wasn't where the US and Nazis really disagreed. In fact, Nazis based much of their implementation of Hitler's vision on the US. While certainly heinous, Nazi Germany into the early 1930's, in an ostensibly (but not really) good-faith search for a solution to their "problem" (while actively/unabashedly trying to ethnically cleanse Jewish people from Germany), wasn't considered outside of the Overton window of polite politics in the US. Much like defending Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign as undesirable but unavoidable is today. Besides the names already mentioned, there are plenty of still heavily lauded people/institutions from the time that advocated eugenics and even specifically funded Nazi eugenics projects. The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs, including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz. + Show Spoiler +Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a colleague:
You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought ... I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.[126]
Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been implemented in the 1935 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws.[127] In 1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany (scheduled on the anniversary of the 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty), to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on the "science of racial cleansing". Due to financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterward, he proudly shared the award with his colleagues, remarking that he felt that it symbolized the "common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics."[128] And I think everyone knows at this point that fellow eugenicist, rabid anti-Semite and American icon, Henry Ford was awarded the "Grand Cross of the German Eagle" by Nazi Germany in 1938 but less are probably aware that In a letter written in 1924, Heinrich Himmler described Ford as "one of our most valuable, important, and witty fighters".[87] Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf.[88] Adolf Hitler wrote, "only a single great man, Ford, [who], to [the Jews'] fury, still maintains full independence ... [from] the controlling masters of the producers in a nation of one hundred and twenty millions." Speaking in 1931 to a Detroit News reporter, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," explaining his reason for keeping a life-size portrait of Ford behind his desk.[89][84] Steven Watts wrote that Hitler "revered" Ford, proclaiming that "I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany" en.wikipedia.orgNone of that is to say Nazis weren't extremists, but to demonstrate this isn't the first time the US has danced this dance. "Bad" was the status quo then and it is now too. Again GH, what in the actual fuck are you talking about. Trying to insinuate that the US were in someway supportive of the Nazis because of Henry Ford is somehow missing out on that time that the US demanded and then achieved the absolute destruction of the Nazi state. On the one hand we have Henry Ford getting a medal. On the other we have the hundreds of thousands of Nazis that were killed by the US government as a matter of state policy. And you're zooming in on the medal. There is exactly zero ambiguity in how the US felt about Nazis, setting fire to the air in German cities is the kind of context clue that really can't be misinterpreted. You're fucking weird man. Not in a Donald Trump wanting to fuck his own daughter way but at the very least in a RFK Jr brain worms way. Ford was one of several people mentioned in a non-exhaustive list, but okay. Most people remember that it took the attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of 1941 to finally get the US into the Nazi killing business officially. You'll notice I preemptively specifically mentioned Nazi Germany in the 20's and early 30's to distinguish it from the point at which US policy shifted to going to war with Nazis that you're talking about. The connection is that US-Israel relations aren't that dissimilar to US-Nazi relations in the 20's and early 30's. Nor is Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in service of genocide that is openly advocated for by their right-wing politicians and prominent figures that dissimilar to Nazis circa the Haavara agreement. So much so, that sometimes they even refer to themselves as Nazis. But the original point was simply that Nazis also tried the "how about they just go somewhere else" thing too (with premeditated genocide in the notso fine print), and they also used the same "Geeze, no one wants them, what does that say about Jews. What options do we have left!??!?" that we've seen posted here regarding Palestinians and no other countries wanting to take them in. If we run with your incredibly flawed premise that would also mean that once Israel "gets to the 40's" the US will crush them like an empty can. Which to be fair is probably what would happen if they started setting up concentation camps. But it will never happen because in our actual reality the people of Israel don't want to genocide the Palestinians and the country is still a democracy.
The existence of concentration camps wasn't what prompted the US to join the war. It wasn't even what prompted D-Day (at which point the existence of concentration camps could no longer be argued to still be secret). Concentration camps were a total non-factor in any decision making regarding policy toward Nazi Germany. And that is where GH's point is probably at its most cogent. Nobody really gave a fuck about what Germany did with its Jews. Germany became a problem because it invaded all of its neighbors.
But I disagree with GH that this is a good analogy. There's far too many differences between Israeli fascism and German Nazis, for the kernel of "look, America didn't give a fuck then and they aren't giving a fuck now" to be clarified by that analogy. Nor is Israeli policy similar enough to Nazi doctrine from the 30s to be enlightened by that analogy. Clearly the Israeli fascists are segregating and destroying Palestinian people and their culture. But the Nazis weren't the first to do that, and if you want a comparison with the US, the treatment of Native Americans while expanding westwards is a better fit than Nazi Germany, as is any other colonizing force: there's people living on the lands they want to colonize, and those pesky people won't just roll over and give their land away. Native Americans were genocided, as GH himself likes to point out repeatedly. There's no reason to bring Nazism into the equation: colonialism fits better and had all the bad things happening in Palestina. No need for Hitler comparisons when Daniel Boone will do.
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Northern Ireland25260 Posts
On August 26 2024 09:16 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 09:06 WombaT wrote:
It’s a parallel with just as many differences as similarities.
Well my point regarding your position was simply Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 05:57 GreenHorizons wrote:On August 26 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:On August 26 2024 05:07 Magic Powers wrote:On August 26 2024 03:19 BlackJack wrote:
Yeah, literally any war could be called genocide if thousands of innocent civilians dying is your standard Civilians dying is certainly not the sole factor. Israel is engaging in activities such as ethnic cleansing and starvation that push the envelope much further towards genocide. You can argue the degree of genocide, you can argue we're only (in quotation marks) 70% there, but no more than that. If you look at all the factors as a whole instead of singling out one or two factors (war, civilian deaths) while ignoring others (ethnic cleansing, starvation), the picture changes very dramatically from a regular war. I personally don't care about the difference between 70% genocide and 100% genocide. It is effectively the same to me because both accomplishes the same thing, the only difference is the scale and the admission of intent. As Simberto correctly points out, intent is hard to prove and Israel doesn't openly admit to the intent of genocide (why would they?) That doesn't mean they're not engaging in it, as Nebuchad and others have proven time and time again there is a widespread extremist element in the Israeli government that is asking for the eradication of Palestinians. We also have the open declaration by Netanyahu himself that he foresees no future in which there exists a Palestinian state. We have Israel's consistent refusal to be independently investigated. We have Israel's intent to destroy the UNRWA, which is an essential humanitarian organization in the region. We have many examples of Israel engaging in war crimes in Gaza, in the West bank, and in Israeli prisons. I put two and two together. I look at the facts and I ask myself a simple question: if I was eager to prove that I am not engaging in genocide, would I act the way the Israeli government does or would I make a greater effort to prove my innocence? If you don't come to the same conclusion I come to, at least you have to admit the evidence is damning. + Show Spoiler +Israel would much rather the Palestinians just fuck off and go elsewhere and expand wholesale into the vacated areas.
Which, obviously is hardly a noble egalitarian pursuit, and one that many absolutely oppose including myself. But genocide it ain’t, for many people anyway.
In common parlance (rather than technical designations) the term has certain connotations to most folks. The Nazis weren’t merely content to shove the Jews next door, they’d have preferred if they just didn’t exist, and pursued policies broadly in alignment with that. + Show Spoiler +Which is the kind of association genpopTM make with the term genocide.
People hear the term ‘serial killer’ and their mind goes to some kind of Hannibal Lecter kind of cat. It’s the equivalent of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to convince someone that some bloke who killed 2 people in cold blood is a serial killer. Maybe it’s an argument you win, maybe not. Alternatively, one could zone in on the ‘killing 2 people in cold blood is bad’ part without trying to invoke a particular term, and it’s much harder to dispute that statement. They tried moving them first. The Haavara agreement was part of one of the "solutions" before the "final solution". The rhetoric about no one else wanting the Palestinians mimics what Nazis said about Jewish people in the years leading up to them finding their "final solution". Israel is, in part, a Nazi creation intended to solve the "problem" of Jewish people in Germany, that was supported for a time by the West as an alternative to taking in Jewish people themselves. So the idea that either Israel or Germany would be content to just shove them next door is wrong. After Palestinians, Israel has plenty of Arabs it wants to subjugate/eliminate beyond their borders and a West that is keen to support them in that endeavor.
In some ways yes, in many ways no.
Disregarding for a second the inherent ethnoreligious justification for the state, Israel is just pursuing absolute bog standard, run-of-the-mill nationalism, with all the inherent problems that brings. We value our people more and hey, maybe we’ll seize some lands while we’re at it.
As somebody I can’t recall phrased it quite starkly, the Nazis didn’t start by killing Jews, they started by killing Germans. Many a proud, patriotic German. Many indeed fought for, and perhaps sustained crippling injuries in service of their country. They just happened to be Jewish too.
Which doesn’t suddenly make ye olde colonialism particularly palatable, but it is quite a markedly different thing to do that, versus dealing with peoples who do view themselves as having a distinctly other identity, and indeed have many who are actively hostile towards your identity.
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On August 26 2024 12:56 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2024 09:12 KwarK wrote:On August 26 2024 09:04 Magic Powers wrote:
In fact I've previously made clear that in my book the murder of a single person is equivalent to the murder of a million people. Are you just really bad at maths? A million people is approximately a million times worse. I can show you the working on how I came up with that if you need. Edit: I'm actually curious about this particular virtue signaling comment you made. So, assuming I understand correctly, the badness is based on the innate quality of the crime committed, not the scale. That would imply that if person A killed a million people and person B killed one person and also did some littering then person B would get the maximum number of bad points for each of the two crimes and therefore be worse than person A. Is that how it works? The late great Hannibal Lecter would never illegally dump a corpse. He consumes every part of the meat.
This is a complete misunderstanding of his Greatness. The Great Hannibal Lecter would only consume a symbolic part of his victim in an overly intricate recipe cooked to perfection, then display the rest of the corpse in a gory yet artistic fashion.
I do not know if the display of the corpse should be considered littering, or if a cannibal that properly consumes the whole corpse and dumps the remains in the correct bin would get a reduced sentence. Would probably depend on the lawyers involved.
Unsure about the impact on the current US politics though.
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The fark is going in here? Came to read some opinions about the upcoming election and it’s a debate about Israel and Nazis?! 
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EPT
