Trivializing the WW2 Holocaust

[Pengwuino]

Let's get some people's opinions here:

Let's start naming some events in modern western history that are on par with the Holocaust executed by the Nazi's in World War II. What do you personally think is COMPARABLE to the Holocaust. Not possibly comparable... not "maybe"... but something you could walk up to a Holocaust surviver and say "this is comparable to what you went through".

Here is a quick rundown of the Holocaust and a URL for people who aren't very familiar with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust


* 5.1–6.0 million Jews, including 3.0–3.5 million Polish Jews[8]
* 1.8 –1.9 million Gentile Poles [9]
* 200,000–800,000 Roma & Sinti
* 200,000–300,000 people with disabilities
* 10,000–25,000 gay men
* 2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses


The reason I ask is because (of course i have to throw in the disclaimer that it is everyones right to say whatever they want blah blah blah) I'm getting a little sick of people comparing every single small incident to Nazism and the Holocaust. A cop is forced to kill an african american suspect... out comes the Nazi comparisons when in reality, if these people were actually nazis... they would have leveled their entire neighborhood and systematically killed them off. You have dumb teenagers "protesting" their schools administration because oh, they said you can't make out during class and out comes the Nazi remarks. I also tend to hear it a lot here....

So how bout it, since it seems like holocaust scale attrocities are happening all the time supposedly, what example can you think of?

[rachmaninoff]

You're confusing topics - the Holocaust and Nazism are not synonyms. Obviously nothing in recent history rivals the Holocaust in horror (except possibly Stalin's purges); that doesn't mean certain people don't have views and ideas similar to Nazis. For example, the Neo-Nazis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazi). Those punks are not in any position of power, and certainly aren't perpetrating a Holocaust, but they are Nazis. Likewise, the fact that Kim Jong-il is a far smaller man than Stalin, doesn't mean he's not a Stalinist (he is). You see the point? I'm not saying that most accusations of Nazism aren't baseless slander and shock-politics, because for the most part thats what they are.

[Pengwuino]

You see the point? I'm not saying that most accusations of Nazism aren't baseless slander and shock-politics, because for the most part thats what they are.

There, you stumbled upon the rare instances where calling someone a Nazi IS actually rational (neo-nazis). I want some peoples opinions on what else they feel would be rational.

[rachmaninoff]

The main problem with the term "Nazi" is that it refers to a specific ideology, not a general concept of tyrant/police state as it is often misused as (with sometimes absurd consequences, when the Communists and the Nazis get mixed up - the ideologies behind them are polar opposites [and yet the results are the same! Makes you think]).

For example, take the claim, "Vladimir Putin is a Nazi". Putin's ideology is not national socialism*; but the fact that he's a power-hungry KGB despot with a personality cult, who closes down journalists who oppose him, sometimes get him that title. The term "fascism" has a similar problem; it specifically applies to some right-wing ideologies, yet you hear the Chinese and DPRK referred to as "fascists". Both have fascist qualities. Likewise the current Russian administration.

*itself a misnomer AFAIK; the Nazis were definitely not Socialists, and indeed generally derided and hated socialists (domestically for example) - Molotov-Ribbentrop cooperation notwithstanding

[Pengwuino]

I knew I should have just left it at the Holocaust :|

[rachmaninoff]

Then it would have been mostly irrelevant, as there are very few comparisons of current events to the Holocaust.

[Pengwuino]

Then it would have been mostly irrelevant, as there are very few comparisons of current events to the Holocaust.

Shhh its a test :P

[X-43D]

Nazism is not just state terrorism, it's an ideology. There were other genocides. In the past century, sprees of deliberate large-scale killings of entire groups of people have occurred in what is now Ottoman Empire, Namibia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Soviet Union for example Stalin's forced starvation of Ukrainian farmers, Mao's murder of 20 to 60 million Chinese, Cambodia, Rwanda and Sudan.

[Tarheel]

Nazism is not just state terrorism, it's an ideology.

Exactly, Like the Soup Nazi. He didn't kill anyone, he was just a ****.

[wasteofo2]

There's Stalin's purges/gulag labor.

There's the systematic wiping out of Native Americans throughout American History, though that's hardly modern.

The way the Japanese Imperial Army sporadically treated Chinese and other asian mainland civilians seems to have been about as bad as concentration camps, though less systematic. Seeing women having rifles shoved up their vaginas and then fired is kinda beyond description.

[X-43D]

There were/are many other crimes committed by state governments. In Brazil for example the corrupt elites still treat native indians as slaves.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3908271.stm

[Smurf]

There are several instances that I would suggest are comparable to the holocaust on the individual level, possibly surpassing it, such as Rwanda, Cambodia, or East Timor.

[X-43D]

The congo free state was perhaps the biggest genocide ever committed by man.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/genocong.htm