Discredited Irving plans comeback tour | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited I was wondering a few months ago why he was so quiet. At least he's advanced to the "Jews were exterminated, but they deserved it." position. So much more... honest, on his part.
Kittens are not an illusion. If one thinks that they are then one will be neck deep in little illusions before a short time has turned about. I think that cats hate mice so much because they feel that they should have been the namesake in the phrase, "Breeds fast as mice". It was only after that slight that they became entirely bent on the destruction of every mouse that has ever procreated, ever been procreated, or even thought of procreating.
Not like denying the moon, Grace, no. More like denying the moon-landing and claiming that it was entirely faked, with the added benefit of exploiting existing stereotypes and hatred. With Irving, the standing theory is that he became sympathetic to the Nazis during his studies of the period, and is something of a Nazi himself now.
irate: Noboby was surprised were they? Except maybe that they expected it to be a croc. I find the denial of the moon landing very fasinating, simply because "if" it was faked there would be a lot of people involved who are surprising good at keeping secrets.
The main flaw, for me, in the fake Moon landing scenario is that the Russians would have been all over it. They'd have done anything at the time to discredit the Americans and would definitely had their spies involved in the US space program and would have been the first to know, and tell everyone, if there was any trickery going on.
Actually, it was surprising. For one, despite appearances to the contrary, Irwin really did know animals. He'd been working with dangerous animals for most of his life. His father, who took the same risks, lived to be a quite old man (and may still be alive, for all Ba knows). For another, stingrays are one of the least lethal animals one could find. Prior to 1995 (the most recent information Ba has available), there had been 17 recorded deaths attributed to stingrays. Total. Ever. The majority of those involved allergic reactions to the venom. Irwin was more likely to die from falling off a ladder while replacing a lightbulb than from a stingray.
I meant that the Holocaust is something so vast, evident and undeniable that to deny it is bizarre to the point of being nonsensical. I wasn't actually trying to compare Lord Irving's version of history with an attempt to deny the moon. The comparison to the moon landing is a nice one, but it implies that Lord IRving is operating at an ordinary level of stupidity and ignorance rather than one so far removed from reality that it becomes ludicrous. So you're both missing my point and being a little more charitable to Lord Irving than I am! Regarding Nazi sympathies, I think a key mistake that many people make is denying that the Nazi Party had any good impact on pre-WWII Germany at all. Like it or not, Hitler did manage to do some good in Germany, and denying that fuels the fire of pro-Nazi idiots.
You may be right about the comparison, though it wasn't stupidity that I see in Irving, more like malicious intent. As for Nazis being good for Germany in some way, yes, they were. I tend to look at the methods (re-distributing jobs and wealth by removing part of the population from the "True Citizens", war industry by starting a great big war, slave labor) though. And in terms of the end result, the Nazis destroyed Germany, in their endless war, inability to admit defeat when the war was obviously lost, and extermination of part of the German populace by their own hands.
Absolutely. It's a clear mistake to recognise only the good the Nazi Party did - as though that were the defining feature! And one can argue that what good was achieved was inherently tainted anyway, for the reasons you give.
Indeed. Saving money by killing off the ill and elderly, medical advancements via ghastly experiments on people... The list is endless. The Nazis made their achievements at the cost of human sacrifice. And in the end, the short-term benefits of the war destroyed everything.
It shouldn't be forgotten, though, that a second war was almost inevitable, given the draconic terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Others were responsible for creating a Germany that could allow the rise of the Nazi party.
Many do say so. I think quite a few things came together back then. Those draconic terms were, bit by bit, being moderated already, and that was partly due to the diplomacy of the democratic government the Nazis replaced, partly due to a learning process by the allies, realizing they couldn't afford a poor country in the middle of Europe at the time. What the nazi regime later harvested was at least in parts the fruits of the work of their democratic predecessors. (The treatment of (Western) Germany after WWII was a result of the learning processes of the recent history.) The working program based on the building of the Autobahnen, by the way, was also initiated by the government of the Republic of Weimar - it just hadn't caught on yet in 1933. Recently, a conservative television journalist stated in an interview that she thought "the Nazi regime did at least treat mothers better". She was fired soon after. My first question was "Which families? Certainly not Jewish ones, or those with handicapped relatives, or different views..." Later, all families of course suffered in some way from the destruction of the country, and loosing in some ways relatives to the war. But even without the war it would have been a questionable view, as the "better" treatment was expressed in terms of propaganda - you got an order after your fourth child, hurray- ; mothers were massively taken out of all kinds of working contexts (not always to the benefit of the family, after all an income is an income), and in the end, treating "families better" meant "including women with an ancestry that is deemed Arian enough in a kind of breeding program for pure Germans and additional canon fodder". If that is deemed "good" treatment instead of degradation... Many people though, at least in anonymous ways the internet offers, agreed with Eva Hermann. I think, though, that this is also partly due to the collective agreement, that the present sucks, and back in the times, everything was better and families still held together, and women still were respected (for knowing their place, mainly). Sorry if this was partly repeating what you two said in previous statements. :smile: I guess it is. By the way, I think there's an arrest warrant on Mr Irvings head in Germany. Going on EU tour might not be a good idea.
As Hsing said, the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were being moderated, and if memory serves it was especially apparent in the matter of war reparations, which were first reduced then cancelled altogether. In terms of industry, it was actually better than before the war in the iron and coal industries. Germany's industry after the war was, only several years after the war, stronger than that of the victors. The truly strong effect of the Treaty of Versailles was psychological. Pride was lost, and those who promised to wipe away the stain of humiliation won the day. War was not inevitable, though France certainly did its best to humiliate the defeated Germany.
I don't think it was purely psychological. Yes, the Weimar Republic did plenty to smooth relations with the other European powers, but the reparations France was demanding from Germany were still punitive - and the invasion of the Ruhr Valley, which sparked the hyperinflation crisis in 1929, could hardly be said to be purely psychological, yet it was the terms of the Treaty of Versailles that allowed France to do this. The American and British governments had done much to tone down France's hostile attitude in putting together the treaty, so it's no surprise that they continued to try and mitigate its effects over the following years, but I think the damage was done. To call someone a criminal, punish them more severely than they can handle, then offer them condescending but insufficient help in meeting the demands you make of them is a recipe for bad attitude generation, in my opinion - and I think the same is true for countries. Whether or not war was inevitable is an issue that could be argued round and round to no avail, but the terms of the Treaty of Versailles - especially when combined with the inconsistent way they were enforced as the years went on - created an environment in which Nazism could flourish. People never turn to extremist politics unless they feel they have nothing to lose by it.
I don't know. I see people turning to extremist views because they know they are extreme - as a way to shock their parents, as a way to say "FY!" to a society they despise or feel despised by, as a way to express spite, or hatred they don't have to express alone anymore, but that makes them a part of some kind of group experience... I guess there are as many reasons to turn to extremist views as there are extremists... banal as it may sound.
Some of the reasons you brought may work for the first few Nazis, and certainly for what later became the core of the Nazi Party, but what of the large chunk of the German population that voted them in? The mainstream people, the average German?
I guess I was more talking from today's point of view, with the extremist right gaining sympathies in many European countries again - and not only there. From the point on where the extremist view is in charge of a country, things start shifting, I suppose.
The Nazi Party was not voted in by a large portion of the population, if I recall my history correctly, but only by enough to give them a footing in the coalition government of the time. By forming an alliance with another party, Hitler was able to gain a cabinet position - Chancellor, I believe - because the other likely candidates presented problems to President Hindenberg, and the Nazis were seen as being on the fringe of the power struggle. It was after the Reichstag fire that Hitler used the peculiar powers of his position to bring in the Enabling Act that allowed him eventually to take over the government and make Germany a totalitarian state. This did not involve voting him in or giving any kind of permission. So it's a mistake or at least a misrepresentation to suggest that large numbers of average Germans voted for Hitler. The people who voted Nazis in were not necessarily average Germans, nor a large group. That said, average people want stability and comfort. In 1920s-30s Germany, these were not being provided. If they were, average people would have avoided extreme political outlooks for fear of losing what they had. And the early Nazi Party was certainly seen as extremist. Nevertheless, they attracted a lot of sympathy and support. People who are happy with life have no reason to seek out a scapegoat - that so many people were so willing to scapegoat anyone they could, notably but not exclusively Jews, indicates the high level of general unhappiness. If people feel they have something to lose, they will not support extremism. They will support a group when they feel they stand to gain. This is basic and obvious human psychology. People will only accept that extreme views are not extreme if they have no functional norm. It's convenient to believe that extremists are merely stupid or misguided rather than living in extreme conditions that promote extreme beliefs, since it helps us avoid looking at whether we ought to be changing our norms so as to remedy the situation. But people will only want to say "Fuck you!" to society, as Hsing puts it, if their own lives are - for whatever reason - desperate. If this happens on a grand enough scale, it becomes a widespread phenomenon - either among the powerless, such as teenagers in all their stereotypical rebelliousness, or among the enfranchised voters of an unhappy society. Blaming average Germans for purportedly failing to notice what the Nazi Party represented fails to see the very real problems that created the situation. Either these factors genuinely existed or there is something fundamentally wrong with Germans - a fallacious argument just as useless as suggesting that people become criminals because they were born as evil babies.
Grace, while you bring many good points, you err when you make it a choice between key factors and inherent flaws. Firstly, German society is no monolithic beast that only reacts to external stimuli: it is made up of individuals, and individuals make their choices and mistakes. It is more complex than external stimuli, as what matters is what values people were raised on, what events shaped their lives... I think Hsing mentioned a perchant to authoritarianism in another thread when discussing children and discipline. As for key factors, the Great Depression gave the Nazis their chance. Until then, German economy was strong enough, and all you had was France being an ass. The Great Depression (and Germany's mistakes during it) brought it to a state of widespread unemployment and business failures. The Nazis had someone to blame for that. And thus the National Socialist Party became the second-largest party in Germany. Later Hitler ran for President, failed, and yet scored over 30% of the vote. At the same time, the Nazis were a main factor in the growing warfare in the streets, and yet Hitler played the Law & Order card. In the next elections, the Nazis won nearly 40% of the vote, and became the largest party. When Hitler was Chancellor, the Nazis got nearly 45%. That's a lot of people, Grace. Nearly half of Germany's voters in the end.
Another thing, in terms of what shaped peoples' minds in that period, is that anti-Semitism was fairly common and even acceptable back then. It had, for over a millenia, become a part of public discourse. Blaming the Jew (and the Jewish Communist conspiracy) worked because blaming Jews for nearly anything had worked for generations. The Nazis targeted the one group that many had already hated, had already filed away as money-grubbers, traitors, inherently evil. The Nazis didn't have to invent anything here, they just used what they had in front of them, what they themselves believed...
You make some pretty good points, Roman. I agree that it's a mistake to ignore internal factors, but I think it's an equal or greater mistake to ignore external factors, for this reason: ignoring external factors means handily ignoring the bits that we could have changed. I think it's critical, when examining undesirable events of any kind, to analyse what caused them, being self-honest in the process, in order to more effectively avoid them happening again. If the French and British refused to acknowledge their role in the rise of Nazism, the cycle would (or at least could) have been repeated. In Britain, we have a government that has been behaving worryingly like a 1930s European government, and what have we seen as a result? A rise in extremist and radical groups. I recognise your point here, but remember that the events that shape people's lives include those caused by external factors. The Great Depression (an external factor) affected everybody in Europe, not just Germany - but Germany was far worse off than the Allied powers of WWI because she had no contingency resources. Yes, industry and employment figures had been improving in Germany, but remember that virtually all the money was still being sent overseas to foreign powers in reparation payments that kept the country shackled in debt. In Britain, we had wide-scale unemployment and increased hardship. In Germany, they had hyperinflation that left most people destitute (including the middle classes), plummeting employment figures and limited ability to import food. People were starving. What triggered the hyperinflation? The French invasion of the Ruhr Valley and their poor and selfish management of the industrial activity there. I think 'and all you had was France being an ass' is too ready a dismissal of a significant factor in creating the cultural climate that allowed people to turn to the Nazis. The German economy was not strong enough - if it had been, hyperinflation would not have happened. The German economy was very brittle, propped up by American loans and little else. The Nazis could have blamed a lot of people for the state Germany found itself in at the beginning of the 1930s (Kaiser Wilhelm and Bismarck might have been most accurate). As you say, blaming the Jews was nothing new. So I think it's significant that a group seen as extremist by German society throughout the 1920s, spouting an age-old theory, suddenly started gaining support. That shows that something changed. If the voting figures you give are correct - and I assume you have a good source for them - I think that indicates that something was changing. Before 1929, German people were hard-up but still had prospects. After 1929, they were a desperate people. Almost all but the upper classes had had everything stripped away, hope included. I reiterate, people only turn to extremism when they have nothing (or little) left to lose. Ask Vetinari! Germans would not have been blaming the Jews for their circumstances if there was nothing going wrong to blame anyone for. Also, bear in mind that German culture of that time was not so radically different from the culture of other European countries, including Britain. We had plenty of anti-Semites here, too. The vote for the Nazi Party started growing once they were already established in government. Once the tide starts turning, people tend to start moving together. The zeitgeist changed after 1929, as I said - until then, the Nazis were not getting significant support, but afterwards it started growing. When Hitler was Chancellor, he was effectively already in power, and no wonder he got a high vote, because by then he was able to engage in all kinds of tactics to improve support for his party, without fear of reprisal. As you say, the Nazis engaged in devious tactics such as creating trouble, then promising to deal with it! By the time the Nazis got a 45% vote, they were the promise for the future - the people who looked like they might actually get Germany out of the shit. It helped that they looked unfavourably on the payment of war reparations and that they wanted the French out of Germany. If I was an ordinary German at that time, I might have voted for them, not realising that the old 'Jews are to blame' crap was going to overtake the 'let's get Germany back on her feet' thinking, or, indeed, failing to realise exactly how they planned to get Germany back on her feet. I remember reading many primary sources in which Germans at the time said they disagreed with or disliked many of the Nazis' attitudes and policies (anti-Semitism being a prime example), but felt they were the country's best bet for the future. As I say, you make some good points, Roman, but I am slightly disturbed by any argument that inherently suggests Nazism was a phenomenon purely to do with the nature of the German people and nothing to do with the actions of others towards them. By the time it became clear what horrors the Nazi Party was capable of, it was far too late for the average German to do anything about it.
I don't think the "internal" reasons equal "the nature of the Germans". Partly due to external reasons (the "Humiliation of Versailles") and partly due to internal reasons -a total lack of respect for the moderate democratic forces and the system they represented- there was absolutely no identification with the democratic system and its values. It hadn't been achieved, it had come along with a time of losses and trouble. Just adding: Bismarck left when Kaiser Wilhelm's IInd politics became irrational. He died 1898, and even though he was a firm anti democrat who persecuted the Socialists he would not have made Hindenburgs mistakes. What, in hindsight, you can blame it for -except for being an anti democrat- is that he imprinted his negative view on the people who later tried to build a democracy in a land without democratic tradition whatsoever. The conservative elites had made out to be those moderate forces, in particular the Social Democrats, traitors and criminals for half a century prior. No one except their own followers paid them much respect. For quite some time, it didn't matter that the Nazi party gained only percentages between 20 and 30 %, because in a state where countless splinter parties made it into the parliament, that was still enough to gain influence; they became a potential partner for a coalition, even if only because of their numbers. This is still the reason why a party has to gain more than five percent to make it into parliament in today's Germany. The whole system suffered from the fact that it was an extremely democratic system inhabited by people who hated democracy - be it Nazis or Communists (not saying they are equal here, but those were two examples who opposed to the system as a whole, and still made use of it.)
My source for the figures I brought is a history book I had lying around in the base library. Grace, I am not arguing that Nazism was inherently German, far from it. What I am arguing is that this is more than just external forces, because I find the focus on external matters a dangerous affair - it's a way of saying that the German population had no blame for what transpired because the German population merely reacted like machines to certain conditions. This is the same as a murderer absolving his own actions and blaming the society that created him. There is always personal responsibility on the society level. You blame French actions for the German economy's collapse. I say German economic mismanagement (especially when it came to playing around with the currency) was the major factor. In the the time period that you speak of, Germany's war debts were already gone. And, Grace, the old "it's the Jews' fault" argument wasn't viewed as silly back then, many already believed to some extent. But Nazism could have risen in other European countries, yes. That it didn't is because there wasn't an organized group of people to build such a party there. Germany had such people who chose to form such a party. As for Britian... The groups were already there. For decades. Various Islamist groups have exploited Britian for a long time as a European center. The Afghani Mujahideen had a large presence in Britian, as did various PLO members, Hizb au-Tahrir, and many others. The Saudi preachers were there, and so were some of the most fanatical people of countries such as Egypt, who managed to get asylum in Britian by claiming that they were merely persecuted on political grounds. Grace, not everything is a matter of external stimuli. And nor is the argument that people focused on one part of the Nazi manifest while ignoring the other a good one. It doesn't absolve them, merely makes them stupid. The Nazis have shown time and time again what they had in mind, in their first revolt attempt, their riots, their open declarations... Stupidity makes them guilty nontheless, guilty of self-delusion. There is always something left to lose, and German society ended up losing its morality. The Nazis reshaped it, perverted it, and people mostly accepted it.
And somewhere, a lonely zoo-keeper nails up a sign saying "please don't feed the troll, or it will follow you home and eat all your garden gnomes".
Sorry, in a moment of intense boredom I dared to open up this thread again and remembered why I hadn't looked at it for a while. Basically, my reaction to the first post was "ye gods, if anyone answers Roman, this is going to turn in to a 6 page rant, even if everyone who answers agrees with him in the first place." But hey, I'll go elsewhere and let you guys carry on, sorry.
Um... I can't judge wether Grace felt ranted on, but to me it seemed the general opinions weren't even that incredibly far from each other to start with. Correct me, I felt somewhat in the middle between Buzzfloyd and Roman, and didn't feel I was ranted on by anybody. Just speaking for me. That sort of ping-pong discussion isn't everybody's thing, to others it is entertaining or at least interesting.
I am argumentative, that much is true, but I resent the implication you brought, Katcal, be it that I'm trollish in nature or simply that it's impossible to discuss matters with me.
Sorry again, as I said, I posted that when particularly bored and also pissed off for reasons that have nothing to do with this so yes, I admit it was stupid to post anything at all, especially as I have no interest in the post whatsoever. As I said, I realise that it's purely a matter of taste, but there are some subjects that turn in to long, long discussions with you Roman, and it does somehow defeat my poor little brain how people can debate on the fine points of something as complex as a war that took place before they were born and of which they each have a vision that is limited to what their country's history has taught them. But yes, posting to say that one is not interested in the thread is stupid, as is posting when annoyed, and I apologise to anyone who took offense from it.
No problem, Katcal. You have to realize, though, that not everyone is limited by what we were taught at school. I personally went beyond that. Grace and Hsing probably did the same.
I actually spent my last eight years discussing complex things that happened before my birth - don't tell my it was for naught. I once planned to make my living from it. :sad: *sniffs* Also, there are very different debate stiles around here, some of them even based on cultural difference, added to those who are grounded in personal taste. I don't know... It's not for nothing that in German, we call it "controversy culture" ("Streikultur"), and not "debate culture", and the term does not at all have a negative overtone. It means having endless discussions on matters like history, politics, religion, whatever, to the point when some participants get somewhat louder or even agitated - and than leave each other looking forward to the next round. It's not about hurting other people's feelings, or treading on their toes, it is more a verbal sparring culture. I've had more of these discussions with my parents -particularly my dad- and my friends -that is what I have got some of them for - than I can count. And at the same time I wouldn't dream of having that lengthy quarrels about personal matters. I'm only adding that because I've often met people -and a few of them were from abroad, well from my perspective that is* - that got kind of worried when they followed such a discussion and actually thought they got caught up in an actual argument. "Peace, people!" - "What? We hardly started the first round!" (Maybe the language difference added to these impression, I don't know.) *the occasional exchange student, for example.
This sparring culture that Hsing mentions is also fairly evident among Jews. The Talmudic scholars argued endlessly on the tiniest matters, if they were considered to be part of an important issue. The Talmud is basically a great big collection of arguments and debates.
Sorry to bump a really old thread - and don't worry, I'm not going to continue the discussion - but I wanted to add that I thought this kind of verbal sparring (I'd call it simply discussion) was common to all cultures. It's true that when I got into the thread, I knew Roman would have to have the last word, whether or not I agreed with him - but that's Roman for you. Bloomin' CyberJews.
