User banned (1 day): Ignoring repeated mod posts
I'm going to preface this with the warning that I am not a professional historian. I am in no way an academic. But I do consider History as one of my chief passions in life.
I feel that the attitude that the mods are taking in regards to comparisons to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust are embedded in historiography thought that's been out of date since the late 1970s.
Now, there is no doubt that the Holocaust was an especially evil event in human history that was in many ways unique in its methods, scale, and ferocity. But it is frankly dangerous to place it on such a high pedestal that ends up serving to quarantine it away from the rest of human history and its many other terrible atrocities.
In the immediate post WWII period it was the standard line in historical academia that the Holocaust, and the period of Nazi Germany as a whole, was a completely unique deviation in the overall development of human history. The reasons for why this belief was widely held is complicated and involves a myriad amount of reasons that I can't possibly do justice in explaining here. Suffice to say the rest of the world welcomed a way to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Germany after the two most destructive wars in history. Basically the general thought was that the early genesis of Nazi Germany and its level of violent antisemitism stemmed from a particular flaw in German culture and its history that could be traced all the way back to the Reformation. Within this framework it was taken for granted that there was a 'correct' linear course of civilization through the course of Early Modern Europe that the German peoples (as there was no actual nation of Germany until 1871) did not take. So while the other proto-nation states of Europe followed the ideals of the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment the Germans ended up following a unique path that, supposedly, led them to rejecting the ideals of Western philosophical thought such as humanism and devolving into a uniquely aggressive and chaotic course. Germany only becoming an actual nation in 1871 served to prove to historians that its development was late and stunted. So this all works to frame the evolution of Nazism, and its particular flavor of antisemitism, as a uniquely German problem. One that can be isolated, and shunned off to the side as something that needed a very specific set of historical circumstances to occur and that, if said exact circumstances were never to align together in the same way, could obviously never occur again. In regards to the Holocaust in particular it means that no other genocide in history can really be compared to it as no other genocide meets the necessary prerequisites to be allowed to be compared.
Since the 80s this line of historiography has been completely blown out of the water. The entire way of tracing the development of history has completely changed, obliterating the old notion that there was a predictable linear evolution across European civilization that a group either adhered to or didn't. The idea that the development of antisemitism in Germany was in any significant way more ingrained or violent than seen in the rest of Europe has been largely debunked. The modern historiography has opened up to the fact that Nazi Germany was not a comfortably unique period of human history that we, as civilized people, can just disregard as a fluke of history. The same can be said of the Holocaust, that it can no longer be viewed in the frame that it was so especially unique that its irresponsible to compare any other atrocity to it. It's actually now seen as dangerous to approach the Holocaust as unassailable, that it was only able to occur because of a unique flaw of a small group of humanity that only occurred due to a uniquely violent level of hatred toward a particular group of people (in this case the Jewish people). It's also vitally important to understand how the history of the Holocaust is now accepted to be one of "Incrementalism" rather than "Functionalism" and that end result of 6 million murdered Jews was not the result of some grand master plan but a gradual escalation of violence that directly followed the successes and difficulties that the Nazis found themselves experiencing during the course of World War II. That in of itself helps support the idea that the Holocaust cannot just be pigeon holed as completely unique from any number of other terrible atrocities found across human history.
Now, how that relates to the current subject at hand is that I find it wrong that the mods are so adamant at stomping out all comparisons between actions that the State of Israel is engaged in and actions that Nazi Germany once took. Because while The Holocaust used antisemitism as its primary motivator of hatred A Holocaust does not require it. And as seen over the disastrous 12 years of Nazi Germany the events that led to the Holocaust were not some inevitable course. It was a gradual build up of alienation, then oppression, and then extermination. Currently the State of Israel is engaged in actions against the Palestinian people that can only be seen as alienation and oppression. It is not some huge leap to see that, based on the attitudes expressed by Israeli leaders in their actions and rhetoric, that the next step may very well be coming.
Ban me if you want.
I feel that the attitude that the mods are taking in regards to comparisons to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust are embedded in historiography thought that's been out of date since the late 1970s.
Now, there is no doubt that the Holocaust was an especially evil event in human history that was in many ways unique in its methods, scale, and ferocity. But it is frankly dangerous to place it on such a high pedestal that ends up serving to quarantine it away from the rest of human history and its many other terrible atrocities.
In the immediate post WWII period it was the standard line in historical academia that the Holocaust, and the period of Nazi Germany as a whole, was a completely unique deviation in the overall development of human history. The reasons for why this belief was widely held is complicated and involves a myriad amount of reasons that I can't possibly do justice in explaining here. Suffice to say the rest of the world welcomed a way to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Germany after the two most destructive wars in history. Basically the general thought was that the early genesis of Nazi Germany and its level of violent antisemitism stemmed from a particular flaw in German culture and its history that could be traced all the way back to the Reformation. Within this framework it was taken for granted that there was a 'correct' linear course of civilization through the course of Early Modern Europe that the German peoples (as there was no actual nation of Germany until 1871) did not take. So while the other proto-nation states of Europe followed the ideals of the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment the Germans ended up following a unique path that, supposedly, led them to rejecting the ideals of Western philosophical thought such as humanism and devolving into a uniquely aggressive and chaotic course. Germany only becoming an actual nation in 1871 served to prove to historians that its development was late and stunted. So this all works to frame the evolution of Nazism, and its particular flavor of antisemitism, as a uniquely German problem. One that can be isolated, and shunned off to the side as something that needed a very specific set of historical circumstances to occur and that, if said exact circumstances were never to align together in the same way, could obviously never occur again. In regards to the Holocaust in particular it means that no other genocide in history can really be compared to it as no other genocide meets the necessary prerequisites to be allowed to be compared.
Since the 80s this line of historiography has been completely blown out of the water. The entire way of tracing the development of history has completely changed, obliterating the old notion that there was a predictable linear evolution across European civilization that a group either adhered to or didn't. The idea that the development of antisemitism in Germany was in any significant way more ingrained or violent than seen in the rest of Europe has been largely debunked. The modern historiography has opened up to the fact that Nazi Germany was not a comfortably unique period of human history that we, as civilized people, can just disregard as a fluke of history. The same can be said of the Holocaust, that it can no longer be viewed in the frame that it was so especially unique that its irresponsible to compare any other atrocity to it. It's actually now seen as dangerous to approach the Holocaust as unassailable, that it was only able to occur because of a unique flaw of a small group of humanity that only occurred due to a uniquely violent level of hatred toward a particular group of people (in this case the Jewish people). It's also vitally important to understand how the history of the Holocaust is now accepted to be one of "Incrementalism" rather than "Functionalism" and that end result of 6 million murdered Jews was not the result of some grand master plan but a gradual escalation of violence that directly followed the successes and difficulties that the Nazis found themselves experiencing during the course of World War II. That in of itself helps support the idea that the Holocaust cannot just be pigeon holed as completely unique from any number of other terrible atrocities found across human history.
Now, how that relates to the current subject at hand is that I find it wrong that the mods are so adamant at stomping out all comparisons between actions that the State of Israel is engaged in and actions that Nazi Germany once took. Because while The Holocaust used antisemitism as its primary motivator of hatred A Holocaust does not require it. And as seen over the disastrous 12 years of Nazi Germany the events that led to the Holocaust were not some inevitable course. It was a gradual build up of alienation, then oppression, and then extermination. Currently the State of Israel is engaged in actions against the Palestinian people that can only be seen as alienation and oppression. It is not some huge leap to see that, based on the attitudes expressed by Israeli leaders in their actions and rhetoric, that the next step may very well be coming.
Ban me if you want.
