What is it with fanatics comparing everything to the holocaust?

OK, so PETA compares treatment of animals to the holocaust. The Pope and the other nutcase anti choicers calls abortion a holocaust.

Guess what, neither compare to the extermination of millions of men, women, and children, based on nothing more than their religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and whatever other reasons Hitler used to justify MURDER.

I find the humanity of these people (religious fanatics and PETA types) twisted. I understand you may not feel abortion is right. I also understand that animals can and should be treated better than they are (I'm certainly not in favor of cruelty toward animals and I think there are problems with factory farming, etc), but to compare any of this to murdering millions of people disgusts me.

reasons women feel they have to seek abortion in the first place,


BUT to compare such things to THE Holocaust, almost seems like an attempt to demean the Holocaust. Maybe the increasing number of years that have passed since WWII have made the horrors of the Holocaust seem less massive than they actually were.


Remember there always Holocaust deniers out there.

Condemning the Pope and anti-choicers...there's just no other word for it!!! :P

I'd be Hitler...

After all, remember Kerry was a "Baby Killer".

a doo ditt ditt a dabba dabda

The holocaust is a card that is way way way way way over played.
Get fuckin' real. We live in an age of horror.

perpetrated by Nazis seem to set it as a measure that cannot be surpassed. How is it possible to talk about any kind of suffering without being stiffled by those saying that something or other isn't as bad as what happened to the Jews?

I define the Holocaust as the systematic murder of an ethnic group, sparing none, with the purpose of eliminating that ethnicity once and for all.

Nazis? Genocide. Systematically tried to kill all the Jews.

Bosnia? Genocide. Systematically tried to kill all the Muslims, right? (I was nine or so at the time, I don't know much about it, I wasn't following the news at that age.)

Darfur: Massacres, atrocities, ethnic cleansing. Not quite systematic from what I've heard, but the goal is to rid Sudan of an ethnic group.

Native Americans: Massacres, ethnic cleansing, localized events of genocide (like when the government handed out blankets used by smallpox patients.)

Jenin: Atrocity. Not genocide because they weren't trying to kill all Palestinians, but they showed utter calousness to human rights.

Gaza incursion (when they were hunting Qassams): Localized incident of ethnic cleansing. Not genocide because not trying to kill all Palestinians. Not complete ethnic cleansing because they weren't trying to kick Palestinians out of area, and they had a military objective. (The problem with Israel is that they always have a somewhat legitimate purpose, they just show an utter lack of thought for the Palestinians' rights.)

Anti-gay measures in the U.S.: Denial of civil rights.

Abortion and animal cruelty: No.

That's the way I see it. Feel free to make changes to standard. I'd be interested in seeing them.

Actually, the only atrocity in Jenin was the reporting. Here is an account of what happened, with sources:

MYTH


“Israel perpetrated a massacre in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002.”


FACT


Secretary of State Colin Powell concisely refuted Palestinian claims that Israel was guilty of atrocities in Jenin. “I see no evidence that would support a massacre took place.”62 Powell's view was subsequently confirmed by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and an investigation by the European Union.63


The Palestinians repeatedly claimed that a massacre had been committed in the days immediately following the battle. Spokesman Saeb Erekat, for example, told CNN on April 17 that at least 500 people were massacred and 1,600 people, including women and children, were missing. The Palestinians quickly backpedaled when it became clear they could not produce any evidence to support the scurrilous charge, and their own review committee reported a death toll of 56, of whom 34 were combatants. No women or children were reported missing.64


Israel did not arbitrarily choose to raid the refugee camp in Jenin. It had little choice after a series of suicide bombings had terrorized Israeli civilians for the preceding 18 months. To defend itself and bring about hope for peace, Israeli forces went into Jenin to root out one of the principal terrorist bases.


The Palestinian Authority's own documents call Jenin the "suiciders capital." The camp has a long history as a base for extremists, and no less than 28 suicide attacks were launched from this terror nest during the wave of violence that preceded Israel's action. These terrorists violated the cease-fire agreed to by Israel and undermined Israeli efforts to resume political negotiations toward a final peace agreement.


Palestinian snipers targeted soldiers from a girls' school, a mosque, and a UNRWA building, and, in returning fire and pursuing terrorists, some noncombatants were hit. Any civilian casualty is a tragedy, but some were unavoidable because Palestinian terrorists used civilians as shields. The majority of casualties were gunmen.


Israel also kept the hospital running in Jenin. Lt. Col. Fuad Halhal, the Druze commander of the district coordinating body for the IDF, personally delivered a generator to the hospital under fire during the military operation.65


While Israel could have chosen to bomb the entire camp, the strategy employed by the U.S. in Afghanistan, the IDF deliberately chose a riskier path to reduce the likelihood of endangering civilians. Soldiers went house to house and 23 were killed in bitter combat with Palestinian terrorists using bombs, grenades, booby-traps and machine guns to turn the camp into a war zone.


Television pictures gave a distorted perspective of the damage in the camp as well. Jenin was not destroyed. The Israeli operation was conducted in a limited area of the refugee camp, which itself comprises a small fraction of the city. The destruction that did occur in the camp was largely caused by Palestinian bombs.


Palestinians have learned from fabricating atrocity stories in the past that a false claim against Israel will get immediate media attention and attract sympathy for their cause. The corrections that inevitably follow these specious charges are rarely seen, read, or noticed.

62Jerusalem Post, (April 25, 2002).
63Jerusalem Post, (April 28, 2002); Forward, (June 28, 2002); MSNBC, (July 31, 2002).
64New York Post, (May 3, 2002).
65Jerusalem Report, (December 30, 2002).

(These sources reference the relevant documents and statements by officials such as Powell, etc.)

I've always been a bit embarassed about Jenin (I'm Jewish, left-labor or right Meretz.)

There was an account from one Israeli soldier on Gush Shalom (NOT a balanced source, I admit) talking about bulldozing the houses. I'm not quite sure what they could have done- they were apparetly just trying to save their soldiers- but it still seems callous. Anyway, I'm glad the death toll's not as bad as I'd heard.

had someone saying that the Jews should have been given part of Germany after WWII - instead of part of Palestine.

This makes sense to me, too.

There is the Biblical attachment to Israel - but that doesn't mean that it makes sense politically.

I don't think we should be or should have been supporting it.

Also, Ashkenazi domination in Israel is still a problem and used to be atrociously worse, but it would probably be worse if Israel was in Germany.

6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. How many died in WWII - maybe 30-50 million. To some extent I can see how 6 million trumps 40 million because it is more calculated and cold-blooded but was Nagasaki calculated? Was Dresden?

On the other hand, how many cows, pigs, and chickens are slaughtered every year? Not to mention the deer and fish and whales. This death and gore may be what keeps the human race alive, but it is a very inefficient way to supply protein and calories. In ways it is not possible to mention, I think this blood-lust and slaughter make a negative impact on our world and our society. I have sympathy and respect for PETA in this matter even though I love the cheese.

On the other hand, if you believe, as the fundies do, that a fetus, or even a blastocyst, is another human life, then the sheer numbers of abortions definitely dwarf the Holocaust. There were between 1.5 and two million abortions every year since Roe v. Wade. So 60 million dead babies (to them) is not worse than 6 million dead? I think they are wrong to equate a fetus with a baby with and adult just as PETA is wrong to equate an animal with a human, but I agree with both of them that I would like to see less animal slaughter and fewer unwanted conceptions.

are obviously debatable as to whether they were justified or not (it is definetely difficult to justify them as military targets), but what makes the Holocaust (Jewish, gypsy, gays, handicapped, etc) is that they were SPECIFICALLY targetted because of those qualitities they had. Hitler wanted them absolutely eliminated.

I find equating humans with animals and blastocyctes/embryos/fetuses insulting. All of this demeans human LIFE IMO. I think those that compare abortions and the killing of animals to the holocaust to be foolish. I understand WHY these fanatics do as they do. By comparing anything or anyone to Nazis, Hitler, or the holocaust, it gets peoples' attention. IMO it's a cheap trick though. Keep in mind, I'm not dismissing parallels with WWII. The modern conception of genocide stems from WWII so it is definetely fair to compare that with Hitler's rampage. Likewise, I feel it is fair to compare certain policies in this administration with that of Hitler, though they don't quite match up.

But the difference is, we're talking about human beings. I myself rarely eat meat. It's partly moral, but I don't look at animals as humans...

he murdered way more people than Hitler did.

I know part of the problem is that truthfully Russians haven't psychically conquered the speaking about their own holocaust.

I'm not at all offended by the comparison with the torturous conditions animals live in, like Jeremy Bentham said "the question is not, can they think, or can they reason, but can they suffer?"

Yes, they can suffer, regardless of what our bigotry or bias is toward the relevance of their pain.

But why are we also bigoted toward the the victims of Stalin. Hitler is more popular, no doubt. I think it is very telling of our own limitations as people that we find it easy to talk about Hitler because he murdered supposed "others" and otherness we can understand.

Stalin murdered millions who were at one time part of the 'we'. Common mythology says people justified their neighbors being "repressed", despite all evidence to the contrary, by telling themselves "well, they must have done SOMETHING to deserve it." When there is not outward physical characteristic of difference we attribute it to the basic bad nature of the person which we apparently did not previously know about. This is actually why comparisons with non-human animals don't offend me, because it just shows that we are not all that damn evolved.

that Stalin's body count likely is higher than Hitlers (total), but his reign of terror was simply so psychotic that in some ways it's more difficult to make sense of it.

I think most people point to Hitler's killings for the simple reason was it was so targetted. I know Stalin also targetted certain people for their ethnicity (Ukrainians for example), but another aspect of Hitler's killings was the mechanization of it (gas chambers, ovens, etc).

Still this doesn't make those that died at the hands of Stalin any less victims. Undortunately, we've seen several such monsters since (Pol Pot and Mao come to mind).

where many were worked to death, there is the same kind of mechanization there.

I think Stalin is credited with around 30 million deaths.

they haven't been conditioned to. After all, we were all supposed to hate them up until fairly recently. Can't have people sympathizing with Eurasia.

The same thinking has Fox News drones saying "homicide bomber" these days instead of the more accurate (and meaningful) "suicide bomber".

talk about it yet. And German psychoanalyst Alice Miller says that her work regarding traditional brutal treatment of children in German history is met with icy silence in Germany (as she relates it to the child-rearing methods popular at the time of Hitler and how easy it was for that generation to accept the brutality of what was going on because they grew up in it), whereas elsewhere her work has recieved great attention and vigorousness of reception and debate. It just isn't to speak of there.

I have to laugh at the redundancy of "homocide bomber". Only in a country as desensitized to war as this could one actually require more than just the word "bomber".

about the reactions of the German people compared to Russians regarding Hitler and Stalin. If I'm not mistaken, you have said it's easier for the German people to speak of their past, compared to Russians right?

This is probably partly cultural, but partly I think it's because the Russian people suffered so much during WWII and Stalin was given so much credit (justly or not) in defeating the Nazis.

Maybe the effects of communism also have more of a bearing on the Russian society all these years later. The Germans have built a strong democracy and have been thriving economically. This may make it easier to talk about the past, almost making what happened fifty years ago seem like ancient history. Meanwhile, Russia still faces many challenges, economically and politically, as well as socially.

jdj said:

"I'm not at all offended by the comparison with the torturous conditions animals live in, like Jeremy Bentham said "the question is not, can they think, or can they reason, but can they suffer?"

Yes, they can suffer, regardless of what our bigotry or bias is toward the relevance of their pain."

If a creature is incapable of reason or thinking, then how can it be said to suffer? Obviously any vertebrate can feel pain, but integral to suffering is the self-awareness and emotional capacity required to realize not only one's condition but that that condition is capable of being changed. I've seen no evidence that animals have such self-awareness or emotions. To compare animals to humans in such a fashion is completely over the top.