-Caveat Lector-
>> Also, you have called china and russia the worst mass murderers of all
time.
>> Anybody can admit that China is easily a brutal regime, but how can
>> you say that they are the worst mass-murderer of all time? Did the
>> nazi holocaust fail to engage your attention at all?
>Check your history. Chairman Mao comes in an EASY first in the
>historical body count, with many MILLIONS more only speculated
>about. Stalin is next, and Hitler comes in a "weak" (as compared to
>the others, of course) third.
Synecdoche alert!
To compare Mao, Hitler and Stalin and to compare China, Germany, and the
USSR are quite different things. To compare the Chinese, the Germans and
the Soviets is a third. If we are going to blame the "historical" (sic)
body count on groups of people, the Christians win hands down. What the
Christians did to Africa and the New World, and to a lesser extent to
South Asia and South East Asia, has never been approached, let alone
duplicated. By comparison, the depredations of the great barbarian hordes
were a drop in the bucket and the Twentieth Century a pale shadow.
If we limit our count to the Twentieth Century it gets a little more
dicey. First and foremost, we must remember that there is no such thing
as a "historical" body count, except for that part of "the Holocaust"
which took place in the lager system, and even that leaves gaps in the
record. There is simply no way of knowing how many people died as a result
of orders given by Mao, Hitler, OR Stalin. The actual numbers are simply
not available. The available numbers are not reliable. First of all, an
accurate count was never taken, let alone recorded. Second, these are
among the most lied about numbers in history. Even rough approximations
are extremely difficult to sort out from the propaganda. WWII deaths alone
range in estimate from twenty to fifty million. That's a WIDE range, a
VERY wide range. It's also a matter of very biased opinion. As usual, the
correct opinion is my own, ie. one death was too many. Whether it happened
at Belsen or Sobibor, Stalingrad or Nanking, Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima,
Nagasaki or Tokyo matters little to the corpse. Dead is dead. Period.
What's more, it is as absurd to blame "the" Chinese, "the" Germans, and
"the" Soviets, as it is to blame Mao, Hitler and Stalin. While Mao, Hitler
and Stalin obviously didn't act alone, they in no way, shape or form acted
in concert with their entire nations. In each of their respective nations
were individuals who participated in the slaughter, both directly and
indirectly, as well as individuals who worked actively against it.
If we are going to blame individuals for the Holocaust (for example), we
must blame the firemen on Eichmann's trains and every lowly camp guard as
surely as we blame Hitler. They were ALL following orders, even Hitler.
But are we to also blame Kathe Kolwitz or the White Rose? Were they not
Germans too?
>It's just that The Holocaust has been discussed, written about,
>and dramatized (in movies, that is) in mainstream circles much
>more than the other two.
While this has, as <J_HOFFA> points out, been a factor in distorting the
Holocaust in the mind of the public at large, it in no way is the primary
source of distortion. That dubious honor falls to our very definition of
the word "Holocaust."
>Mao and Stalin's respective killing careers
>went on many more years than Hitler's, with, if I am not mistaken,
>Mao's being the longest running.
Career length indeed makes these men as difficult to compare as sports
figures. Is McGuire greater that Ruth? It's too soon to tell. Even after
McGuire retires how are we to compare? Home runs per season? Total career
home runs? What about RBIs?
Nevertheless, the real problem in evaluation of Mao's, Hitler's and
Stalin's careers as murderers lies in how we define murderer. A great many
of the deaths ordered by Stalin (for example) were of invading troops.
Stalin had a right, in fact a duty, to order their deaths by any means
necessary. I'd have done the exact same thing and odds are so would you.
This is not true of the (roughly) six million Ukrainians he had starved to
death in revenge for their support of Deniken, Petlura or Makhno during
the Russian Civil War.
As for Mao, it could be argued that a great many of the needless deaths
incurred at his command weren't murder at all, but manslaughter. Not all
his victims were victims of his malice and paranoia. His incredible
stupidity must never be discounted. Though the real numbers will never be
known, it is entirely possible that political repression failed to account
for even a simple majority of the deaths he brought about. Untold millions
died, not because he was trying to kill them but he was trying to make
their lives better. He just wasn't very good at it. While he did
unquestionably bring about ultimate changes for the better in the everyday
life of the majority if the Chinese people, he did so at the cost of
millions, probably tens of millions, perhaps scores of millions who simply
starved to death through the ineptitude of central planners and the
futility of central planning itself, of the well meant but hopelessly
misguided Great Leap "Forward." Surely we must count their deaths to Mao's
tally, but as murders? I think not. Besides, there is no need to inflate
the number of people murdered at Mao's orders. There's more than enough,
even by the roughest estimate.
>As a footnote, I would like to add that I am in no way denying the
>horror of The Holocaust or inferring that it should not be widely
>talked about and remembered.
<J_HOFFA> is clearly not a Holocaust denier. Nor am I. He is not even,
as judged by what I've read so far, a revisionist. I, however, AM a
Holocaust revisionist and you should be to. Here's why. The numbers
should be revised UPWARD. More people died in the Holocaust than are
normally considered to have done so. The numbers are too low, WAY too low.
The commonly quoted figure of "the" six million, is totally deceptive and
distortionist. First of all, even if we are to limit the definition of
"the Holocaust" to those who died in the lager system, we're looking at
roughly THIRTEEN million people.
For a variety of historical and socio-political reasons "the Holocaust" is
portrayed by our media and by our schools as something "the" Nazis did to
"the" Jews. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not to say
that Nazis didn't kill Jews. They did. This is not even to say that Jews
were not singled out for killing. They were. But Jews were not the only
people singled out for killing by the Nazis. They weren't the first people
singled out for killing by the Nazis. They weren't the most numerous
people singled out for killing by the Nazis. To portray them as such after
the fact, for purely selfish political gain, dishonors the name of every
Jew who died.
Leave aside the unsolvable argument of whether it was six million or (more
likely) four million Jews who died. ONE was too many. Let's for the sake
of argument accept the official estimate of six million Jews who died in
the camps. To call their SIX million deaths "the Holocaust," and ignore
the SEVEN million disabled, leftists, Roma, gays and POWs who ALSO died
in the camps, is an atrocity in itself. It is as surely a crime against
history as the murders themselves were a a crime against humanity. Do
their deaths mean less? Were their lives less dear?
But the real crime against history is to limit the definition of "the
Holocaust" to those who died in the camps. The REAL Nazi holocaust was not
against the Jews. That was just practice. So too were murders of the
disabled, the leftists, the Roma, the gays and the POWs. The mass murder
of Jews didn't even begin till ten years after the first "useless eaters"
died. The Nazi's first victims were fellow "Aryans."
But then REAL Nazi Holocaust was against the Slavs. The Nazis
intentionally and specifically set out to do to the Slavs what the
Christians had done to the Native Americans. Between twenty and fifty
million Slavs died at Nazi hands. We'll never know for sure how many.
Again, one was too many. But even the most conservative estimate dwarfs
the thirteen, to say nothing of the six million who died in the camps. To
portray "the Holocaust" as something that happened to "the" Jews, or even
as something that happened "in the camps" dishonors every one who died,
Jews not the least.
To even begin to understand what happened in the camps start by studying
the fate of the "useless eaters." They died first. It was with their
lives that the Nazi killing machine kicked into gear. I recommend you read
<By Trust Betrayed> by Hugh Gregory Gallagher, ISBN 0-8050-0749.
Gallagher, himself a "useless eater" by Nazi standards, did his homework
well. Without reading his work you will never understand the roots of the
Holocaust and how it was brought about in "the most civilized country on
earth." Physicians led the way. Gallagher shows how. Forget Lifton; he's
an appologist.
As long as you're at the library, take a little time dispel in your mind
the other great dishonoring of Hitler's Jewish victims. For a variety of
historical and socio-political reasons we have been taught that "the
Holocaust" was something that "happened" to "the" Jews, that "they" were
somehow PASSIVE victims. This is a truly hideous distortion. Some Jews
were in fact passive victims. A few even helped their persecutors. But the
modern notion of all Jews tramping willingly into the oven is an invention
of Orwellian proportion. Except for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, itself
largely only alluded to, the story of Jewish resistance to the Nazis has
gone down the Memory Hole.
In fact, Jewish partisans fought ferociously and with countless successes.
Even the inmates of Treblinka rebelled, killed their guards, burned the
camp to the ground and escaped. Why have our history teachers omitted this
incident from our education? Why, for that matter, has Hollywood never
made a movie of it? It would make an excellent movie, drenched with drama
and dripping with action, at it's heart the true love story of the couple
who led the rebellion. Even a fictionalized account of Jewish partisan
action like Primo Levi's <If Not Us, Who? If Not Now, When?> would sell
tickets and reap Oscars. His portagonist, Gedelah, is truly a hero's hero.
He'd look good on a screen. But no, Hollywood gives us the post war heroes
of <Exodus> and the goyish hero of <Schindler's List>. WHY?
We have to read between the lines and read deep to the find the things
like this in our past. TPTB don't WANT us to know too much about how
common people, little people, even Jews, arguably the most peace loving
people in history, can actively resist tyranny on their own, with their
own hands. TPTB want us to believe that the fate of all "little" people is
in their hands, not our own. This is a lie. Wise up.
For a good start read <The Ghetto Fighters> translated and edited by Meyer
Barkai, LCCCN 62-11331. It's an excellent collection of brief, two to
three page long, first hand accounts of the active resistance to the
Holocaust put up by Jews as ordinary as you or I all across the Eastern
Front, both on and behind the lines. As a gentile I am deeply embarrassed
that we gentiles have allowed their story to go untaught in our schools.
But as a human being I am equally inspired by the boundless depth of
courage and resourcefulness that even the most ordinary of people can
muster when necessary. Learn from these people; we may need their
inspiration sooner than we think.
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