/lit/ - Literature

One more thing, didn't fit:

- What is the state of the debate on "Holocaust as any other historical event?" Finkelstein mentions how it has become simultaneously the biggest event in history, but also the only one you're not allowed to study critically. I know postmodern types usually have to pay homage to it as the single thing they're not allowed to say is pure narrative (Hayden White did this, e.g.).

>>7480265
>Is anyone here knowledgeable

nope

>>7480265
>Where has the debate gone since the Historikerstreit?
The same place free speech is going. Holocaust revision is a crime in most of Western Europe now, so there is no space for debate anymore.

Yep, it's a /pol/ thread.

The people best equipped with the specialized knowledge to answer your questions concentrate there. That doesn't mean you can't ask here, but you're only chance at getting something useful is if some cross board surfer sails in.

One way or another it's likely to quickly move off the board's focus in order to evoke serious in-depth discussion.

Can't blame the mods for that.

>>7480287
I'm actually surprised at how Nolte has remained mainstream despite the controversy. I mean, it's Germany.

Also I feel like it should be said that Hilberg was for free speech for revisionists. He's a really cool guy from what I can tell.

Are you a Jew or German?

Power structures are not absolute, they are opportunistic.

Studying the history of the Holocaust, its build up and post-war retelling and interpretation is studying the opportunism of state power and control.

More than double the people died in the Great Leap Forward, but I don't see Chinese people bemoaning that fact or anybody denying it.

I find it very questionable as to why the field attracts your interest at all. It is a heated topic, demagogued by empty idealogues.

There is a false dichotomy at play. The best attack to an opponent is to simply mirror his position in the contrary, a rhetoric used to erode foundation without addressing structure or raising valid criticism.

If you find yourself falling prey to taking sides please understand there are no sides.

The last bastion of these great duels, people versus the state, is provably false; as a representative democracy functions mostly by ignoring its constituents.

You have to understand, what is often presented to you through this paradigm is simply a stalling tactic, used to distract from actually important issues, political reformation.

God vs Atheism, is it really a debate? Will humans suddenly in 2015 figure out if there is a God or not? Or is it a power play between the set of established organised religions and a new one labelled secular humanism.

Man Made Climate Change, is it really a debate? Doesn't it seem logical with the rise of global industry and mechanization, growing levels of pollution lead to adverse changes in climate? Could it be that propaganda lobbying bodies for the interests in maintaining current growth rates of production are simply being contrarian to manipulate public opinion on consumption?

East vs West, are they really in an economic war? When East props up the debt cycle and West props up an artificially accelerated level of production?

Freedom vs Terrorism, is this really a debate? Are you less free in the world because of threat of terrorist attack? Or has state power used this opportunity to expand control over methods of travel and communication?

I could never really understand political ideology, it's obviously transparent rhetoric designed to manipulated an uninformed decision. No politician campaigns for you the individual to be given more power, they are not offering you anything but promises in the form of words and force of personality. An actor could probably do a more convincing job...

>>7480265
Just googel "nazis verifying holocaust" or something similar. There are tons of statements from prisoncamp guards who were charged in germany and verified the "holocaust hoax" themselves.
In 2015 there was some guy in court in germany who managed the goods flowing in and out of some camp or something like that. That guy said "dening the holocaust is fucking stupid" himself
>>>/pol/

>>7480403
Hearsay is the highest form of evidence. Remember the 6 trillion like a good goy.

>>7480392
I'm neither. Honestly I'm an historian who is interested in debates of historicity and methodology. I'm definitely not interested in "whether it really happened" in the sense of vindicating the Germans or whatever. Just the debate over historicity.

But I do agree with you. Holocaust denial as some kind of cultural activity is clearly a red herring to create little dichotomous arguments that have no upward potential to affect the state. I always wondered why the /pol/fags don't realise how obvious it is that progressives / "the left" / whatever WANT them to deny the Holocaust, because it's the equivalent of getting a swastika forehead tattoo and wearing jackboots. It instantly ostracises you. Same thing they do to any other fringe people, like that Kevin MacDonald guy. He had some credibility because of academic position and tenure, so they poked and prodded him until he said "fine, I'm a Nazi! Are you happy now?!" Yep, they are. Not that I fall one on side or the other.

>>7480403
This is one of the stronger pieces of evidence, in a sense. The mass collective "admission" by so many people that it happened. But there are major things about it that bother me.

First is the fact that the eyewitnesses are so often proved to be outright frauds. It has happened. Some major ones too. But the revisionist material is fucking convincing about pointing out bullshitting by more mainstream eyewitnesses, or those too minor to question in a big attention-getting way, like Rajzman. Rajzman is clearly either addled, from what I've seen, or being induced to say sensational stuff. Yet he is cited in Hilberg, even from sources where he says WILDLY inaccurate things, which Hilberg of course does not cite.

Second is the fact that it's such a Big Thing that it gains inertia in the collective unconscious, and delusion can latch on to it. The "Truman Show delusion" didn't become a thing until after the Truman Show was released. In the years following the war there was a big underground rage in Israel and among Jews for weird Nazi torture porn (Nazis torturing Jews, not the other way around). Take this for example:
>Israel Gutman is a director of Yad Vashem and a Holocaust lecturer at Hebrew University. He is also a former inmate of Auschwitz. According to Gutman, "it's not that important" whether Fragments is a fraud. "Wilkomirski has written a story which he has experienced deeply; that's for sure.... He is not a fake. He is someone who lives this story very deeply in his soul. The pain is authentic." So it doesn't matter whether he spent the war in a concentration camp or a Swiss chalet; Wilkomirski is not a fake if his "pain is authentic": thus speaks an Auschwitz survivor turned Holocaust expert. The others deserve contempt; Gutman, just pity.
Not only do we have Wilkomirski perversely inventing his story (for profit, or out of insanity?), but Gutman, an ACTUAL VICTIM, saying he forgives him. Something is wrong here.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0266355406070334
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20081298
https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shofar/v023/23.1lerner.html
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/hologen6&id=435
T. Lawson, Debates on the Holocaust (2010)
D. Engel, Historians of the Jews and the Holocaust (2010)
D. Stone, Histories of the Holocaust (2010)
P. Bartrop and S. L. Jacobs, Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (2010)
Y. Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union (2009)
M. Howell, WITNESSES TO THE HOLOCAUST.
10.1080/03087298.1999.10443338
10.1111/j.1468-0483.2011.01551.x
10.1080/13501674.2015.968827
Waxman, Testimonies as Sacred Texts: The Sanctification of Holocaust Writing.

>>7481077
THANK YOU ANON

>>7480392

>>7480265
I won't read your thread but I give you this image :^)

>>7480422
>because it's the equivalent of getting a swastika forehead tattoo and wearing jackboots.

because it's a handy way of telling everyone in a less than subtle way "im an edgy dude, look i can repeat lolocaust meemz", internet culture has been a godsend for right-wingers because they can use memes openly and act like it's a special little club at the same time, hence all the modified language about racial stuff.

It's more of a wink wink, one of us type thing more than anything, that's where they get the enjoyment from. Legit holocaust deniers are even a complete joke within right wing circles.