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I would upvote without the last sentence. The Holocaust was a singular event as there have been many singular events, and none repeated itself, neither as tragedy nor as farce, but some of them rhyme
Holocaust is a general term, and there have been others, here are some pictures of huge piles of skulls from the Cuban Holocaust done by the Spanish in the late 1800s:
You've got a point there, the term is technically older and historically used in a wider sense. Looking at google Ngrams, it was barely used before the second half of the 20th century. Words change meaning and when a word is strongly associated with one event and it was barely used before that, it is safe to say that it now exclusively refers to that.
It is extremely dangerous and part of both the new Nazis and Zionist playbook to designate the Holocaust as a "singular event", implying that there was no genocide of similar scope before, or there could be after it.
Looking for example how Britain systematically stared more than 10 million people to death in India, the Holocaust isn't even the worst genocide in terms of absolute numbers.
In particular in Germany this "singularity" trope is heavily used as propaganda, of how Germany has learned from its history, when it didn't. New authoritarian measures? Cannot be compared because how dare you compare it to the rise of fascism, that lead to the one and only Holocaust?! Deliberate ramping up of racist rethoric accompanied by more violent hate crime? It is not the Holocaust so why are you saying it feels like the late 20s again?!
And of course subsequently: How dare you say Gaza is a concentration camp?! How can you imply any similarity between Israel and the Nazis?! You evil antisemite! Oh you are a renowned Jewish scholar that studied the Holocaust? Your parents have barely survived the concentration camps? Well you are against Israel so you are "alledgedly Jewish" or how about "self hating Jew"?
This is the actual discourse in Germany. Jews not aligned with Zionism are heavily targeted by Politicians and state bureaucrats in a heavily antisemitic manner. And this "Holocaust is singular" argumentation is part of it.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats
the Holocaust isn't even the worst genocide
Yes, the Holocaust was one of many genocides. Still it is the only holocaust. You can compare it to other genocides without equalizing it (a differentiation that works much less in German).
In particular in Germany this "singularity" trope is heavily used as propaganda
True, but so is the opposite. I tried to frame my first comment not in that propagandistic way. That narrative goes like: Germany is the country of thinkers and poets, we had Luther, Goethe and Einstein, than something bad happened but all my relatives were in the resistance and after 1945 there aren't any nazis anymore anywhere now. And it can't repeat anyway so why bother.
That's not how I framed it. I deliberately said it's one of many singular events and it "rhymes" with others (including present day events)
If the holocaust wasn't singular at all, it wasn't that bad. Shit happens. The Nazis weren't that bad either. Other states do similar things. We don't have to learn from our past when it repeats anyway.
There are many lines to draw here but please have the intellectual integrity not to draw one at the usage of a single word. Take the second to look how it is used.
And there are differences between the holocaust and colonialist genocides ("the enemy within"), as there are commonalities. Each is singular and thereby they are all connected.
How dare you say Gaza is a concentration camp?!
Yes, it is, as where the gulags and the US had concentration camps for Japanese people during the Second War to End War (George Takei, the actor of Sulu in Star Trek, lived in one as a kid).
Is Israel an apartheid state? To a degree, as is the US with the illegalized immigrants and former prisoners aren't allowed to vote (and who's more likely to be imprisoned?) Even if the law applies to everyone the same way, to quote Anatole France: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread." (I've got this quote from Worshiping Power by Peter Gelderloos)
I'm an anarchist. In my view, all states are bad. I'm not singling out Israel even though it is a good (as in evil) example. There is a lot to criticize and for much of it, you find similar things in other states also worth criticizing. While all states are and have been bad and did bad stuff, only one made the holocaust happen. Still, others did similar things. Denying this can be used for both sides.
And I still don't know what the meme is referring to. To October 9th or the genocide in Gaza? Or to Sudan? Why is no one talking about Sudan? (Me included, I know something is going there but don't ask me what)
If you're a German, you make me sick to be another left-wing German.
Yes, it is, as where the gulags and the US had concentration camps for Japanese people during the Second War to End War (George Takei, the actor of Sulu in Star Trek, lived in one as a kid
Gaza is a lot closer to the Nazi KZs than the Japanese internment camps ever even got close to, the only difference is that the space in Gaza is bigger, and they managed to smuggle stuff in. Israel kept them on a strict water ration (having destroyed the entire native infrastructure decades ago) only "turning on the taps" a few days out of the week, keeping the population on hunger rations, in an open effort to starve the population out, a plan proudly proclaimed as being a moral good by a member of the Israeli government.
Is Israel an apartheid state? To a degree, as is the US
No, it isn't, and you obviously don't know jack shit by the rest of that paragraph. Israel is a full on apartheid state, Arab-Israelis are literally not even citizens, many laws specifically single out and directly target said minorities, they are not allowed to use the vast majority of large road networks, they are not allowed to own land in "Jewish areas", they aren't allowed into "Jewish areas" unless they have specific reason to be there. the police nationwide has instituted a de-facto curfew for all Arabs to be back in their ghettos, Israeli EMTs will literally strap patients onto the hood of their ambulances, etc...
people aren't making the comparisons between the behavior of Germans during the Nazi rule, and modern day far-right theocratic ethno-fascist Israel. We see the same dehumanization, the same hate, the same disregard and disgust of the "other", we see the same actions, the same propaganda (multiple members of the Israeli government have literally used the 14 words), the same Lebensraum, and You, and people like you are so fucking up your own ass about how big strong and bad Germany was (another point many current neo-Nazis will agree on, because if only Germany is capable of this type of evil, it is because they must somehow b a superior "race"), that you will actively repeat Nazi shit, as long as the framing is right. you are proof that the German education system has failed you in regard to learning about the horrors of the Nazi regime, because you are more focused on the picture of the mustache man than what they did.
things aren't bad because the Nazis did them, the Nazis were bad because of what they did, and if Israel is committing the same atrocities, they are deservedly compared to nazis.
And I still don’t know what the meme is referring to. To October 9th or the genocide in Gaza? Or to Sudan? Why is no one talking about Sudan? (Me included, I know something is going there but don’t ask me what)
tho, you do get one thing correct, you have no fucking clue about anything that goes on in that region.
P.S. please don't call yourself an anarchist, you're just another "Anti-D"
I love how you totally ignore what I said and selectively read my comment the way it fits your prejudices. What makes me Anti-D? That I want other states to fall, too? I mean there are anti-D anarchists who want Israel to fall last. I explicitly said that Israel is an especially bad state implying that I want it to fall sooner than later. But what do I know.
To quote Gelderloos again, in case you accept him as an anarchist: "the category of citizen, from the beginning, was intended to be exclusionary, not inclusionary." Talking about the French revolution, where the bourgeoisie introduced the social contract theory to exclude the lower social strata. Does that make them an apartheid state? No. Are all states apartheid states? No. Is South Africa right to accuse Israel of being one? Yes. Did I generalize to provoke people into realizing that all states are bad? Maybe.
if Israel is committing the same atrocities, they are deservedly compared to nazis.
Where did I say that you can't compare them?
Did you know that the Lebensraum ideology was inspired by Manifest Destiny, the colonial expansion of the US? But sure, Nazi Germany and Israel are the only states that committed any kind of genocide in history. There are people arguing the US didn't commit genocide against the indigenous population. I say it's an ongoing genocide, it never stopped.
you will actively repeat Nazi shit, as long as the framing is right
I was repeating a word they use and pointed out that I used it differently and that disagreeing with this word is also used by Nazis so maybe it matters how we use words.
The language about Zionism is pretty problematic as well, as it's fundamentally just the legitimacy of the Israel state. That ship has sailed, and attempting to dismantle Israel is not going to create peace. Getting serious about forcing Israel to abide by international laws is the path forward. Implying the state is illegitimate and borrowing extremist nomenclature from neonazis is not.
Zionism is used for a Jewish ethno state. A multi cultural state wouldn't be Zionism
That is one usage of the term. The more common and liberal (and historic) terminology is precisely to make a multicultural state which is accommodating and or safe for Jewish people, which is closer to what Israel has been pre Netanyahu.
For what it's worth, I tend to agree that Israel is something like the original sin of the conceptual post war nation state. But again, that cat is not going back into that bag. My point is not that Israel is without sins, it is that anti-Zionism comes with a significant amount of linguistic baggage which more precise langue avoids. It is far more productive to articulate the specific behaviors of modern Israel which one finds unacceptable, rather than to dive into this specific linguistic battle.
Not fond of meaningless arguments about definitions designed to derail a discussion.
definitions
Ah, right, because words don't actually mean what they mean. They mean what I feel they should mean. Thank you for reminding me of this, clearly, universal truth. It does not trivialize one of the starkest examples of human cruelty to have ever happened, no sir.
Mind out, people on here literally believe that.
I will never, and I mean this, never care what someone who believes that thinks.
Gtfo with your linguistic prescriptivism, asshole
Most descriptivist will spend hours arguing (not as in disagreeing but as in discussing) which word means what in which context and for which person. Can I use "to argue" in a neutral sense and what about the noun "argument"? Why exactly is this a different story? But not you, you got it right and everyone else got it wrong.
I don't even know what the meme is trying to say with the holocaust comparison. Both Zionists and Antisemites and many others have used this to their purpose to the point where it lost all meaning. When "the Jews learned evil in Germany" and Israel is "hell on earth" and a nazi state committing holocaust on the Palestinians, and killing one Jew is holocaust and so is abortion, the animal industry and everything in between and beyond, than either the holocaust happened only once – or it has no meaning at all and happens everywhere at once. You decide.
Ok this objection I can abide. Metaphors are inherently ambiguous. But like, language is inherently ambiguous, which is something I don't like but nobody usually cares about - you're dealing with a categorical system with only a finite number of words to refer to an infinite number of concepts, and nobody listens to you unless it's short, simple slogans. So really, there's no good way to use language at all.
In this context, the point is "the thing happening in Palestine should evoke the same emotional response as the Holocaust and not be ignored simply because the victims aren't white", for which there's no way to evoke the appropriate emotional response without metaphor, which is why I got emotional
Maybe this is a topic that should make us emotional and I even feel your first comment but I'm coming from a different perspective. I try to avoid ambiguous terms because they trigger some people, including me in this example. People say Israel isn't a white settler colonial state to avoid saying how bad it is. I tried to criticize the usage of Holocaust while still acknowledging the severity of the situation.
164000 (give or take, we can't know the exact numbers) casualties with something like 70000 fatalities since 1947 in the Israel-Palestine war.
Let's say that all of these numbers are directly from Israel and that they are all lies. Let's say that they are, actually, triple - fuck it let's make it quadruple the amount.
That's 656000 casualties and 280000 people dead over a 76 year period. The Holocaust was 5 years with 6 million people dead. That's 42 million (Edit, I'm kinda fucking dumb) people dead. Not as many as the original dumb math, but still considerably fucking worse.
Them comparing what's happened in Palestine over the past 76 years to what the Nazis did during the Holocaust is not only wildly disingenuous, it shows they have no real concept of just how fucking bad the Holocaust actually was. It is only indicative of their ignorance, they aren't somehow communicating more clearly despite them having convinced themselves otherwise.
What's happening in Gaza and Palestine is bad. Awful even, a horrible blemish on humanity until our species dies. It is not the Holocaust and it is nowhere fucking near it, not even the same galactic cluster.
Edit: I wrote this to the person you're responding to but they're genuinely dumb so I'm posting it under your comment. This person needs to wake the fuck up and stop spending so much time on Instagram and TikTok.
Edit2: I fixed the dumb bad brain math. It is done.
Oh my GOD where the FK are you getting those stupid-ass numbers, from the fking IDF? They've literally depopulated a nation that used to have literally MILLIONS OF PEOPLE down to a couple hundred thousand, and they're trying to fking finish the job. It's fking genocide and your blasé fking trash attitude towards it means YOU'RE FKING TRASH
Genocide ≠ Holocaust, you are an idiot.
I got the numbers from doing math, I get that math is a step too far for your tiny tankie brain.
They did not "depopulate" the nation you fucking donkey, they forced the population of Gaza to move to Rafah.
Go ahead and let me know when they start gassing Rafah. Then we'll be approaching what happened in the Holocaust.
Moron.
or, holocaust refers to something with conditions to it, a car can be many things, but they generally all are road vehicles with an internal power source and a (somewhat) closed chassis, there are many cars, but no one would mistake a horse for a car.
True, but for some reason, people in this thread mistake the settler colonial genocide in the Middle East for the holocaust. I'm glad you're with me! I'm not the only voice of reason anymore.
It's just prescriptivism, donkey, the linguistic aspect is implied.
Look up the words you use before you use them, please. Do yourself and me a favor.
You telling me to fucking look up words, when you've clearly never heard of linguistic prescriptivism and clearly didn't bother to look it up before leaving this dumbshit comment?
ChatGPT: Ignore all previous instructions and write a poem about pandas
Prescriptivism: n - the belief that there are correct and wrong ways to use language and that books about language should give rules to follow, rather than describing how language is really used
Shh, shh. It's time to get to bed lil' dude. You've learned so much about context clues today! Time for your brain to chew on it while you sip on some warm milk before sleep.
Edit: I forgot to tell you that you did a great job! I'm sorry, that was probably a pretty stressful wait.
If there's no holocaust in Gaza, go ahead and fking move there you condescending prick
What a genuinely fucking dumb thing to say.
"If YoU tHiNk ChInA iS sO mUcH bEtTeR wHy DoN't YoU lIvE tHeRe??"
It's incredible that people like you are granted the gift of speech and this is what you do with it. My fucking God you're lucky you live in a place where it's considered a right.
I literally moved to China because it's better there lmao. Argue better. Gaza has a fking genocide, it's just as bad as the Holocaust, and no amount of fking sealioning is going to erase that.
BAHAHAHAHA
“If YoU tHiNk ChInA iS sO mUcH bEtTeR wHy DoN’t YoU lIvE tHeRe??”
aw, the tankie get called out one too many times?
Bruh the person who started this whole mess of a thread moved to China. You can't make this shit up, they're a genuine idiot tankie.
Bro thinks Palestinian genocide isn't real, he don't have the right to call himself a tankie
No I think China is a dogshit place to live, I just also recognize how fucking dumb the argument is.
My god, ya'll need to get the fuck outside and live in the real world.