Harry’s Place

I don’t know Bunglawala so I could be way out here, but I get the feeling that his main motivation for wanting Srebrenica to be regarded the same way as Auschwitz is because by making the Holocaust less unique, it makes it less important.

Herman, that Bungle had to tack on a gratutious “It has got to be worthwhile teaching all our children to beware of the deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities.” suggests that your hypothesis is likely to be correct.

Well the Turkish campaign of genocide against the Armenians and Assyrians preceded Treblinka and Auschwitz, and there were other ethnic and religiously inspired slaughters going back into history. Recognising that they happened does not, in any way, reduce the horror of the shoah. I think it is necessary for children to be taught how easily the human race turns on its own kind. But that means that no group gets its own history whitewashed. I can’t imagine Bungle being quite so pleased if the children were learning about the moghul conquest of India, or the adventures of Turkish troops with bayonets.

““It has got to be worthwhile teaching all our children to beware of the deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities.”

Could somebody tell the rightwhinge press that before they run yet another spurious/made up/exaggerated/extrapolated piece about SCARY MUSLIMS!

Ok, I admit, I watched the Peter Obourne Prog on Ch4 and was actually very shocked at the content and impressed with Obourne.

Why not learn about some of the massacres committed in the name of Islam ? After all it was muslims who inspired Hitler to think that you can get away genocide.

Neil W, you are Simon Jenkins and I claim my £5.

The story of Srebrenica should be on our national curriculum.

I think its worth pointing out here again that after the age of 14 no history at all is on our national curriculum.

I really don’t agree with the concept of the “national curriculum” at all, and above all not down to a micromanaged level that seems to be implied in DT’s final paragraph.

Tony Benn, in the debate on Bosnia following Srebrenica, made perhaps the sickest and most infantile speech I’ve ever heard.

Arguing for cuts in military spending Benn comes out with some remarkable stuff. even for him. Heres some lowlights.

we cannot afford the present level of weapons. I have had the national defence budget divided by the population to help me to understand the matter, and it appears that every family of four is spending £40 a week on weapons. The Government should knock on any door and ask whether the occupants feel more threatened by an attack from the Bosnian Serbs or by the possibility that they might fall ill without medical treatment being available.

We have gone in to provide humanitarian aid, and I support that. I have said time and again in the House, and I shall say it again, that all that we can do in a civil war is provide an embargo of weapons, humanitarian aid and a peace table. It is a civil war in Bosnia, and we must not pretend that the war is an act of international aggression. Instead of providing an embargo, aid and a peace table, we have taken part in the most murderous assault by NATO, with which the Minister is proud to associate himself. That assault brought the Bosnian Serbs to the peace table. But if the Bosnian Government are not satisfied, they may say that unless NATO continues the bombing, they will not come to the table. NATO has become an instrument of the Bosnian Government.

I believe that the story will be different in the end. I think that Croatia will take over Bosnia, and that the Bosnian Serbs will probably move in with Serbia. We are seeing a partition of Yugoslavia between Croatia and Serbia, and the pretence that we are there to defend Bosnia’s Muslim multi- cultural Government is quite untrue.

Utter prick.

Utter prick.

Agreed. Behind stopperdon is a lurking extreme isolationism.

‘it was muslims who inspired Hitler to think that you can get away genocide’ - As was the example of Robespierre, Cromwell and the secular CUP, your point being?

I think “utter prick” is an understatement. “Out-of-touch, ignorant, buffoon” would be putting it gently, too. (Note how he appears to sympathize with the acts of Tuđman and his henchmen as well as with those of “Republika Srpksa”)

As for the post, agreed with David entirely. The manner in which extremists seek to make an identity a primary factor in society and then resort to violence to ‘balance the equation’ is a constant danger

Now of course, it is all forgotten and forgiven.

Tony Benn is a great lambaster of Western hypocrisy and supporter of Muslims worldwide: a man to be cheered at any STWC meeting.

Benns analysis of the Cold War in that speech is hysterical.

But enormous sums of money were spent on building up resistance to the Soviet Union. The real reason for that was very simple; if we pretended that we were about to be invaded by the Soviet Union, anyone who criticised the Government could be described as an agent of the KGB or of the Kremlin. It was a political campaign.

“Bright is correct. It has got to be worthwhile teaching all our children to beware of the deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities.”

Wrong. Only individuals ever really die, not communities.

“Srebrenica also underlined the brutality of authoritarian and gangester regimes at their worst, and the importance of self determination of national and regional minorities.”

Like the IRA for example? Again, only individuals ever die.

“Nevertheless, I do think that the Srebrenica massacre should form part of the national curriculum. That curriculum should challenge the Islamist narrative, and consider very closely the reasons for, and consequences of, Europe’s inertia.”

Why? It was appalling and Europe’s “inertia” can never be the issue unless you confront why Europe really couldn’t give a flying one ’bout it. If you want the Nat Curricuulm to call the cunts in Brussels the cunts they are (and they are cuntologically cunts) then fine but… I’d be happier without a Nat C to start with. Except David T that’s not what you want at all. Is it? You want the kinda indoctrination which is is exactly how this sort of collectivist insanity starts in the first place.

You are so fucking up your own Gary that you just don’t get that in all recorded history that it never mattered that a group was persecuted. Oh, they were (and they were persecuted because of their definable attributes) but that isn’t what really matters. What matters is that individuals, real people, not abstract collectives have suffered. By viewing them as members of the collective and not as individuals you are carrying out the same sin that the mass-murderers of Auschwitz did, the KGB did, the Khmer Rouge did, and what Zanu-PF are currently doing.

Still don’t get it do you?

You don’t fucking get it do you? You allow, nay encourage folks to put into people, individuals, into collectives and by that very act you enable their slaughter. They’re Jews or Commies or Republicans or Muslims or Croats or Serbs or whatever. You know, or ought to know David T, what they really are, they are people.

… deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities

On a recent Radio 4 programme, a witness to Kristallnacht described the day after. She said there was a deathly silence in public spaces, a sense of communal shame and shock. Some Germans actually apologised to Jewish neighbours and shopkeepers for the behaviour of the thugs. So, I find it hard to accept your thesis of communal hatred as the cause of the Holocaust - in contradistinction to, in particular, the Armenian Genocide, and some of the Jewish pogroms of Eastern Europe.

I don’t know enough of Srebrenica to say whether you are right or wrong about communal hatred (as opposed to dark plans of the leaders) being the primary driver. I think you need to be very careful about making such an analysis. That Bungle and his ilk should exploit this conflict is hardly surprising.

Are you sure of this “Tory” policy of an “equal killing field”? I seem to remember Hurd quoting Disraeli, who, faced with a similar Balkan issue, decided that we were well out of it. In the end, it was US muscle of a degree that Europe had neither the hardware nor the stomach for that settled the matter. But for the US, the rest of NATO could have got into a real quagmire, with more body bags than our media would tolerate, and serious questions about why our soldiers were involved in such a thankless operation.

That it should be taught, I agree with, provided (in agreement with Monty) that the Armenian Genocide (the model for the Holocaust), also be taught - in all its horror and religiously inspired hatred. The other ghastly horrors of 1400 years of jihad are probably a bit over the top for school, but the BBC should stop getting Terry Jones and Rageh Omaar to airbrush out this blight, and get a serious historian to cover it. I doubt Bungle would think much of that.

David

is this an appropriate place for me to be obsequious to you?

(in joke - the rest of you needne’t worry about)

Andy.
Are you supporting this?

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/23/extend-the-abortion-act-1967-to-northern-ireland/

I really don’t agree with the concept of the “national curriculum” at all, and above all not down to a micromanaged level that seems to be implied in DT’s final paragraph.

Well we did have a thread a while back where we pointed out how miniscule the amount of actual teaching of the holocaust could be in order to satisfy the requirement that it had been taught. I’m half tempted to suggest that at age 14 the last thing kids need is yet another pile of dead bodies in a far away place of which they know (next to) nothing and that a module on critical thinking about the “morality” of mass murder might be a better idea.

But I’m not sure.

Why stop with Srebenica? There’s a genocide in progress in Darfur. Kids should also be taught why the rest of the world is uninterested in stopping it.

Alcuin,

On a recent Radio 4 programme, a witness to Kristallnacht described the day after. She said there was a deathly silence in public spaces, a sense of communal shame and shock. Some Germans actually apologised to Jewish neighbours and shopkeepers for the behaviour of the thugs. So, I find it hard to accept your thesis of communal hatred as the cause of the Holocaust - in contradistinction to, in particular, the Armenian Genocide, and some of the Jewish pogroms of Eastern Europe.

Oh dear. You might as well have mentioned, as the usual suspects often do, that some Jews fought for Hitler (Hitler’s Jewish soldiers), that some Germans were philosemitic, or that Jews were well-integrated in German society.

Does this show that there wasn’t ‘communal hatred’, or, less euphemistically, virulent anti-semitism in pre-WWII Germany? Or that Hitler did what he did without the consent of most ordinary Germans? No.

Robert Gellately’s Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany shows quite nicely that Hitler’s anti-semitism was wildly popular; that ordinary Germans did not have to be coerced to participate in or support the atrocities; that ordinary Germans were happy to report Jews to the Gestapo; and that ordinary Germans were quite well-informed about what was going on.

Now fuck off.

Is anyone aware if anything that Inayat has written on the subject before? I say this because he’s being accused of bandwagon jumping a lot at CiF and I’m wondering if this is fair. I can’t find anything contemporary, but he must have had something to say about it in the 1990’s.

I presume Inayat learnt the lessons and supported an illegal Nato war in Kosovo?

Or that Hitler did what he did without the consent of most ordinary Germans?

That almost looks as though you’re saying that the Holocaust was carried out with the consent of most ordinary Germans. I haven’t lived under a totalitarian regime where dissent meant death, so I wouldn’t make so bold a claim and end it with a flourishing “now fuck off”. For one thing I’d be worried about looking really awful to the unbiased onlooker.

Gellately actually analyses 670 Gestapo case files from three different locations in Germany and comes to the not very new conclusion that the Gestapo terror depended on ordinary Germans denouncing Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and each other

Such a small samples runs the risk of seeing little difference between Gestapo officers, who tortured and killed people, and ordinary citizens living under paranoia in a totalitarian state and using the apparatus of repression to settle personal disagreements. He adds up the percentages and tosses us some generalisations (and this has been pointed out by other scholars.)

This is not to say that Gellately’s work is crap just that I personally would not use it as the one and only source to generalise that “ordinary Germans did not have to be coerced to participate in or support the atrocities”.

I should add of course that Gellately very much DOES NOT see antisemitism as the main reason for support for the Nazis.

this topic has been covered elsewhere, not only Gellately’s work but many, many others, see

What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany
by Johnson and Reuband

Surely the lesson of the Balkan conflicts and Srebrenica is that secular society is fragile? The fact that a mixed city like Sarajevo could collapse into war groups is enlightening yet horrifying. Bosnia flipped from a state where mixed marriages were commonplace to separate communities, then war and then genocide.

On one of the news programmes this week, the reporter interviewed people on the street in a Serbian city about the arrest of Karadzic. One of the interviewees was a man who denied that genocide was perpetrated in Bosnia. Unsurprisingly, the man was in his 30’s or 40’s (judged by voice), from the age group who would have been involved in the Balkan wars. Assuming that Serbia as a nation is trying to move on, “de-nazification” and acknowledgement of past crimes must be an imperative.

Is there a difference between, when asked to condemn outright a mass killing of Bosniaks or other Muslims, to start rabbiting on about 1,400 years of Jihad (as if Christians had been turning the other cheek for this period); and, when asked to condemn outright a mass killing of Israeli or other Jews, to start rabbiting on about the Nakba, or something?

Andy

This website is honoured by the grace of your presence.

Now all we need is Chris Bertram and Neil Clark to make a strangely appealing moral triumvirate of confusion, zaniness and surreality.

Let’s just create a slaughter index, showing the total number of people murdered during armed conflicts since, say, 1914, broken down by country/region/locale and giving information about suspected or proven perpetrator(s).

Then we can show our children the facts and they can make their own minds up about the unique horror of every single killing.

Neil Clark has ceased his Srebrenica revisionism by the way.
From writing about 2-4000 victims he’s now using the 8000 figure.

@Tim

Tim Judah denies the 8,000 figure in his book The Serbs in the notes at the back. He’s hardly a revisionist. Either way it is still a crime against humanity. It does not become any worse if inflated by another 1000 or reduced. The point is the intention and practice of trying to wipe out an entire ethnic group. Over on Clark’s blog I’ve tried in vain to make that clear.

To make it clearer…

‘It does not become any worse a crime if inflated or better as a crime if reduced’.

i.e it is still a crime. The logic that somehow a crime against humanity is diminished in proportion to each individual life is part of the nihilistic mentality. For if those who have the intention to wipe out as many as possible of another ethnic group kill a greater of lesser number of humans is dependent upon their efficiency and ability. It has nothing to do with the nature of the crime. That is shown by Stalin’s comment that one death was tragic but a million deaths was just a statistic.

I think that a study of Bungle should be part of the curriculum.

I am willing to bet that one of the themes of Holocaust Memorial will be the Srebenica massacres. That will completely pull Bungle’s rug (and Dr Bari’s, he! he!)

K Naylor.
Of course you are right. the exact figures do not alter the relevance and viciousness of the crime.
The point I was trying to make is that Clark has changed his position.
When Milosevic was alive, and in the Hague, Clark was going all out to defend him.
Quoting Herman as fact was part of that.And thus the revisionist stats.
Now of course Slobodan is dead, Neil has no dog in this fight.
Its an interesting shift for someone who will die arguing that Milosevic had no part in the murders in Bosnia.

Karl, re dispute over the eight thousand. I’m prepared to believe it was six thousand, say. Consider the standard six million figure for Jews in the Holocaust which, also, is a rounding up (by Eichman?). Deniers there will cast doubt on the whole validity by questioning this precise figure. Same with Srebrenica.

Stopperlogic

“A million dead in Iraq

900,000 corpses missing.

8,000 dead in Srebrenica.

Not until we find the corpses.”

David T

“For Inayat, and for many other young Muslims who were recruited to the Islamist cause around that time, the lesson of Srebrenica was that Muslims were subject to international and eternal discrimination and genocide, even in parts of Europe in which they’d been safe for generations, at the hands of Christians and Jews, and their collaborators.”

When did Inayat mention Jews in relation to Bosnia or any of this ? Are you so without ethics as to put words in people’s mouths they never said? What if I said “the lesson David T drew from 9/11 was that all Arabs should be locked up”

The lesson many Muslims took from Bosnia is the clear one -that Muslims will never be acepted in Europe however they act- here was the most secular Muslim population on earth, beer drinking pork eating intermarrying indigenous white Muslims many of whome were Muslims in name only. Yet Europe allowed them to be annihilated simply becase of their Muslim names. The proponents of assimiliation are unable to answer this fact.

And anyone who knows anything of the history of the Balkans knows that Bosnian and other Muslims since the decline of the Ottomans had had little safety and had been subject to ongoing ethnic cleansing and slaughter.

And dont zionists believe “Jews are subject to international and eternal discrimination and genocide”- there whole project is based on this

Alcuin

“That it should be taught, I agree with, provided (in agreement with Monty) that the Armenian Genocide (the model for the Holocaust), also be taught - in all its horror and religiously inspired hatred.”

Funny even far right Muslim hating loon like Pipes and Bernard Lewis deny its a genocide. And if youre going to teach it why not the religiously inspired extermination of the Muslim population of Armenia and other ex-Ottoman states as well? Or the religious motivations for the genocide of Bosnian Muslims

Oh i forgot you dont consider non-Muslims killing Muslims wrong or genocide

” The other ghastly horrors of 1400 years of jihad are probably a bit over the top for school, but the BBC should stop getting Terry Jones and Ragieh Omaar to airbrush out this blight, and get a serious historian to cover it. ”

like who ?
Baet Yor?
Radovan Karadic?

Why not as you do just take Nazi material on the Jews and substitute Muslims to explain to our dhimmi schoolchildren the true demonic nature of the Mohammedans they study with?

I remember asking my SWP uni rep what they were doing about the Bosnia war and he replied “why should we do anything, the Bosnia muslims supported the Nazis during the war so stuff them”. Nice

Herman

“I don’t know Bunglawala so I could be way out here, but I get the feeling that his main motivation for wanting Srebrenica to be regarded the same way as Auschwitz is because by making the Holocaust less unique, it makes it less important.”

Yeah you must be right- Jews want the holocaust remeber to remebering the suffering and annihilation of the Jewish people. Muslims, not being fully human, want Bosnia remember so they can get at the Jews not because they feel the pain of the annihilation of the Bosnian Muslims Europes oldest Muslim community and want that suffering to be remebered.

“Bright is correct. It has got to be worthwhile teaching all our children to beware of the deadly hatred that can be unleashed by the relentless vilification of entire communities. The story of Srebrenica should be on our national curriculum.”

Hilarious- what is Harrys Place except a laboratory for vilifying the Muslim community?

“The lesson of Bosnia - and the indifference of the West - was used by Islamists who, photographs of atrocities in hand, recruited thousands of British Muslims to jihad. Muslims would only be safe - so they were told - if they managed to revive a Caliphate which would fight for Muslims worldwide.”

So tell us David do you think the Muslims you denigrate, who fought to save the Bosnians from genocide are heros or, because they are Muslims, “terrorists”? What of the British troops who fought the Serbs for the same purpose? Apparently David T would have us believe the Muslims who went to lay down their lives for the Bosnians were just cynical people pushing a power grabbing agenda (because they were “Islamists”) rather than people genuinely concerned for their fellow Muslims and outraged as anyone would be at what was happening- by calling them “Islamists” he can demonise them as people devoid of human feelings or morality -unlike he who really is concerend for Muslims wellbeing!!!

Its as if someone said that zionists fought the Nazis in WWII or were involved in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising just so they seize power and influence in the Jewish community - not because they cared Jews were being annihilated.

“For me, the lesson of Srebrenica was very different”

Of course- any lesson that villification of Muslims you are a small part of will eventually lead to genocide needs to be kept from your mind- you do at least have that much unease and conscience.

In all of this I have not seen a single reference to one of the core issues. Srebrenica was, at the time, under the protection of the UN, and the UN, having first disarmed the inhabitants under the promise of providing protection, then stood aside and allowed the massacre to happen.

A central lesson to learn from this is - how worthless is the word of the so called ‘International Community’ and heaven help those depending on the good offices of the UN.

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@Alec/Tim

Yes.

@Ex-SWP.

The fault for that kind of mentality comes from those like Pilger, bits of whose books are bandied about as though infallible. For example in New Rulers of the World Pilger just resorts to windy rhetoric about the Serbs ‘epic resistance’ against the Nazis. He does not distinguish between the Chetniks and the Partisans nor does he seem to get it that to invoke that as though some proof of Serbian nationalist virtue bought directly into the propaganda being put out by the Serbs during the Third Balkan War.

It is that trope that was extended by those like Neil Clark who take it that the USA is the ‘new Third Reich’ and then juxtapose plucky Serbia as some heroic underdog deliberately maligned and ‘victimised’. Orwell refered to this kind of logic as ‘transferred nationalism’ but few bother to notice how Pilger’s reverse spin works. Ultimately, its all about him, his vanity and his media image.

In recent years I have grown increasingly annoyed by idiotic WW 2 analogies and transferred nationalism’. They are a common staple of spurious propaganda from Blair claiming Saddam was another Hitler to those claiming Milosevic was a true patriot in the partisan tradition. Whilst ‘neocons’ have a simplistic idea of the Allied scheme of history the hard left cling to it too, only they tend to think the Soviet Union was absolved of its crimes by just being anti-Nazi which is why the repugnant dolt Seumas Milne is so insensed by any comparisons between Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism.

This is the fascinating thing for me-how only the Nazis and their crimes have been elevated to some unique and sole total absolute of evil and how all those powers who fought against Hitler’s regime are somehow absolved of their crimes as well just because they fought against the Third Reich. By this I mean the crimes that were committed by the Soviet Union but also across Europe by nationalist guerillas, partisans and collaborators of all kinds.

One reason I have set up my blogsite ‘reverse spin’ is to counter these kinds of propaganda tropes that masquerade as though superior wisdom. There is so much polemic that is quite frankly utter bollocks and yet people buy into it in large numbers.

For increasingly large numbers of people want simplistic explanations and the comfort that comes with feeling ‘we’ are guilty for everything because only ‘we’ can change the world if ‘we’ break out of the sinister world of total mass media manipulation. They do not see that Pilger, Parenti and others with neurotic and somewhat unhinged worldviews are contributing towards obfuscation rather than clarity.

It hasn’t done their careers much harm, though, has it ?

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‘in all its horror and religiously inspired hatred’ - The Armenian Genocide cannot be reduced to a Muslim on Christian massacre, just as the Holocaust cannot be reduced to a Christian on Jewish one. The controllers of the genocide were secular, they regarded the sultanite/caliph rule as backwards and the cause of Turkey/The Empie’s decline. Gokalp was inspired more by Durkheim or Spencer than Mo. The Ittihadists were at root organic nationalists seeking to purge Turkey of a ‘malignant’ minority that would not or were never asked to buy into this new identity.

‘Hitler’s anti-semitism was wildly popular’ - or the Goldhagen fallacy. Strange then that in the years of electorial growth 1928-32, Goebbals played down the Jewish ‘threat’ outside of the party.

The issue is a lot simpler than the rights and wrongs of whatever happened in the former Yugoslavia, or anywhere else. It’s: are there universal rights that should be upheld in any circumstances? Do we want to see mass murder of any kind prosecuted? If so, how can this be done most effectively and with the maximum of justcie?

For a defence of the Human Rigths left see:http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/in-praise-of-the-human-rights-left/#comments

If Countingcats is correct, and he is, what does it say for the prospects that the “international community” will come to the aid of Israel against a, say, nuclear-armed Iran when the chips are down? The Israelies are under no illusions; it will be America or nobody. Period.

Charlieman is on target about the fragility of the secular community. The social process he is so worried about is much like the psychology of the prison. In prison, one rarely has the luxury of staying neutral or having friends in the various ethnic/racial “communities.” Rather, one is forced to choose sides under risk of death being seen either as a race traitor by one’s own kind, or as a weak sister and a man not to be trusted by the other groups. With the increasing import of Islam into the West and it’s almost total cultural incompatibility with the laws and customs of Western civilization, and the fact of obvious lack of assimilation–an assimilation made less likely which each passing day as the numbers increase–the future prospects for
stemming the sad rise and ultimate fruition in full flower within the West of the sort of dismal psycho-social maladies that beset the prison world is not good.

Orwell (via HP) If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

emmanuelgoldstein: Now fuck off.

Ben: You stupid cunt Alcuin. You piece of human filth.

Maximilien Robespierre: Pity is treason.

William Butler Yeats: The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

I have always believed that all British school children should be taught about the unique horror of the Srebrenica massacre in the same way that they are all taught about Auschwitz.

Martin bright is clearly an idiot.

To compare the islamist agitation characterising the Balkans in the 90s, the visits of Bin laden, the presence of Arab and Pakistani foreign fighters, combatants, many of whom were aided, abeted and protected by *civilian* fighters, such as the ones present at Srebrenica, to the fate of innocent civilians like Anne Frank or the events at Auschwitz is an obscenity.

What British school children should be taught is how The West’s cowardice, its cold-hearted indifference to the fate of Balkan Christians, to their suffering and to their slaughter IN THE MILLIONS CULMINATED to the Armenian genocide, which in turn DIRECTLYinspired The Holocaust.

Those centuries of craven Ottoman collaboration, and the present ( since the 70s) alliances with islamists is what will bring about the next holocaust.

Hmm ….8,000, and not only is the number disputed by reputable pundits, but also the combatant/non-combatant status of some of those killed, and with this we compare, we draw an eqivalence with, the 6 million Jews slaughtered WWII and with the twelve to fifteen million Christians slaughtered under the Ottomans.

Imagince the historical amnesia coupled with the moral bankruptcy and shrill anti-christian sentiments that would blindly drive bigoted individuals to believe that a violent, imperialistic and genocidal Balkan Islam is always “victim” and never “aggressor”.

It would seem that some are far more interested in avenging the last holocaust, than they are in preventing the next one.

EXAMPLE:
Just a few days ago here in Canada, a young Jewish gril was attacked and brutally beated by some Muslims.

The Canadian Jewish Congress, who’d have gone ballistic and who’d have demanded an inquiry had the attackers been white Christians, could hardly bring themsleves to admit the perps were Muslims.

They stuttered and stamered before finally fessing up to the truth in barely audible voices.

Yes Islam means peace and Serbs are demons.

And with yet more masturbation about Srebrenica, we place the noose about our necks.

Way to go JP that’s the most disgusting comment that I have ever seen on here (and I’ve seen a few.) Take back anything I said the other day about you being semi-redeemed by a sense of humour - you are as bad as Irving/Zundel or any of the other deniers.

civilian* fighters, such as the ones present at Srebrenica er?

In the words of Bill Clinton:

We remember this terrible crime because we dare not forget, because we must pay tribute to the innocent lives, many of them children who were snuffed out in what must be called genocidal madness

Maggot.

To compare the islamist agitation characterising the Balkans in the 90s, the visits of Bin laden, the presence of Arab and Pakistani foreign fighters, combatants, many of whom were aided, abeted and protected by *civilian* fighters, such as the ones present at Srebrenica, to the fate of innocent civilians like Anne Frank or the events at Auschwitz is an obscenity.

We are not comparing ‘islamist agitation characterising the Balkans’ with the Holocaust; we are talking about the massacre of Srebrenica. Perhaps you’d like to tell us of the ‘islamist agitation’ of Nurija Halilović, a civilian girl of the same age (to the month) as Anne Frank. Or perhaps you can tell us of the evil Muslim crimes of 5 year-old Naida Hodžić. Both were killed at Srebrenica. And the other 366 children killed at Srebrenica.

While the Holocaust is unique, to deny discussion of other genocides because of the magnitude of the Nazis’ crimes is to seek to belittle or deny those genocides.

I think you’ll find that there were ‘foreign fighters, combatants, many of whom were aided, abeted and protected by *civilian* fighters,’ present during World War II, as well. Many Jews fought back through their own partisan movements as well as in units attached to the British, Polish and Red armies.

…זוג נישט קײנמאל אז דו גײסט דעם לעצטן װעג

What British school children should be taught is how The West’s cowardice, its cold-hearted indifference to the fate of Balkan Christians, to their suffering and to their slaughter IN THE MILLIONS CULMINATED to the Armenian genocide, which in turn DIRECTLYinspired The Holocaust

Certainly we should avoid the slaughter of Albanians by Serbs in 1878-81, 1912-13, 1918-21 and 1945 and their mass deportation in the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1990s. We should also not talk about the ethnic cleansing of over a million Ottoman muslims between 1878 and 1912 from south-east Europe by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. We should certainly describe what happened to the Greeks of Smyrna as genocide while remaining silent about the Turks of Salonika and Drama.

Hmm ….8,000, and not only is the number disputed by reputable pundits, but also the combatant/non-combatant status of some of those killed,

One might wonder why there were so many Bosniaks of fighting age in Srebrenica at all. Might it be something to do with the fact that had been slaughtered and deported throughout the rest of Eastern Bosnia and this was all they had left?

We know have the names of over 8,000 people who were killed at Srebrenica. Their names have been published and those who were unknown were left off the list. If you dispute that those individuals were killed there, please account for them and explain why their families are missing them.

and with this we compare, we draw an eqivalence with, the 6 million Jews slaughtered WWII and with the twelve to fifteen million Christians slaughtered under the Ottomans.

Please account for these figures. And while you’re at it, can you tell us something about Muslims slaughtered under the Ottomans, too? If you think there aren’t any, you know even less about Ottoman history than I thought.

Imagince the historical amnesia coupled with the moral bankruptcy and shrill anti-christian sentiments that would blindly drive bigoted individuals to believe that a violent, imperialistic and genocidal Balkan Islam is always “victim” and never “aggressor”.

Imagine the historical amnesia coupled with the moral bankruptcy and shrill racist (Muslim is an ethnic tag in the Western Balkans) sentiments that would blindly drive bigoted individuals not only to believe that a violent, imperialistic Greater Serbia is always “victim” and never “aggressor” but also to cheer on the killers and their paymasters while insulting the injured and bereaved. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

It would seem that some are far more interested in avenging the last holocaust, than they are in preventing the next one.

Hence all this stuff about the Ottoman Empire and the Bosnian SS, as if they excused what Milošević, The Man With The Golden Dildo and their pals did.

Just a few days ago here in Canada, a young Jewish gril was attacked and brutally beated by some Muslims.

Bosnian Muslims, or will any old Muslim do?

Serbs are demons.

Most Serbs lead quiet, ordinary lives like most other folk; during the Bosnian war, over 80% of young men in Belgrade did not respond to their call-up papers.

Then there are the aspiring politicians, the crooks, wannabe intellectuals and religious maniacs who lead people to deport, rape and kill people in the name of ethnic purity. And those that defend them. Are they demons? If the cap fits, wear it.

And with yet more masturbation about Srebrenica

Now that is truly obscene.

I went to Auschwitz in 1989 (I was organising a conference in Krakow the week before the berlin Wall came down).

My big boss and many of her advisors were German (i.e. FDR) they all refused to come with the rest of us to Auschwitz.

They didn’t need to, you see, as they were all lefties they were not responsible for the Holocaust and they did not need guilt tripping by others who knew far less about these matters than, they a generation raised on Gunther Grass.

Except my bosses secret (and for anyone in Public Life it had to be closely guarded) was that she had escaped from the DDR.

She knew that she hadn’t learned of the holacaust in school (and really where else are people going to learn of these things) because as communist Germans they had not been responsible for the crimes of the Nazis.

So she went alone to Auschwitz not telling her friends (or me until later when i seriously worried for her health).

She broke down, and that which broke her and threatened her sanity was the maps and the diagrams, the telegrams and letters, in official beaurocratic German, the identical language that she used for the mass mobilisation of health campaigns.;

-The telegram from the Station cheif complaining of the human sounds coming from a locked train car that had been left for days in the sidings, that had disturbed the sleep of local residents, requesting its removal.

-the orders sent to various clothing manufacturers telling them that the sorting and admixture of human hair products for textile manufacture had now been centralised to one distributer in Nurenberg and that therefore manufacturers should no longer conduct individual negotiations and contracts with seperate human hair product producers (i.e. the camps themselves).

It was these things the detailed, precise markers of a massive and efficient system that described for her the scale of the holocaust industry dynamics and the level of involvment of ordinary Germans.

My boss’s view was that the Holocaust could not have been carried out on the scale it was, cutting acrosss all pre war German industries and institutions, without a very clear knowledge of what was happening by several hundred thousand functionaries and several million more must have had a pretty good idea of what was going on, had they cared to ask themselves a few simple questions (like what caused the human sounds from locked and abandoned train carriages?, where were they going, these mostly efficiently run services always locked always to the same destinations?).

Then of course she had the questions (that could no longer be asked, how much did my parents know? what did they really do? how much did they not want to know or refused to ask? what more could they have done?

I don’t know about curricula, but Graham is right the moral questions raised by genocide must be encouraged in its exigesis to school age young people (and beyond) genocide cannot be yet another teaching module of a set of ‘facts of killing’ which the morally depraved will always seek to relativise and rationalise, diminish and excuse.

John.P

You really are quite repulsive. I fail to see a shred of Christian morality in your comment on Srebinica.

Your frenzied hatred of an abstract and idealised Muslim murderous other leaves you morally corrupted, a swill of hatred that allows you to feel nothing for young children murdered in cold blood so that they may not grow up to ‘breed’ as Muslims.

Genocide for the love of God!

You claim the spiritual high ground of your purported faith’s greater compassion and kindness and its abscence of revenge, you vengeful, spite filled, hatred spewing barbarian.

May your God damn you for your cowardice and cruelty you ethically bankrupt primitive husk of a lie claiming to be a man of a superior faith.

There have been many posts on the various horrors of the 20th century, some are getting rather heated over who is the worst villain, citing detailed records, and experiences of victims - mettaculture’s was particularly poignant, though his comment on Christian morality - and subsequent puerile diatribe shows a curious irony.

After his Ascent of Man series, Dr Jacob Bronowski was on Parkinson. He had some personal history at Auschwitz, but when he went there, it was not the gas chambers, the cells, the depravity, the terror, that hit him - it was a room full of children’s tin piss pots. For every one there must have been a child, and a mother who was doing her best to care for a soul that would never grow up - love stamped out by callous mechanical bureaucracy.

On Saturday Live this morning (from 19 minutes in)), a Bosnian Muslim described his incarceration in a Bosnian concentration camp. The conditions were awful, but it was seeing people he knew as friends, turning into jailers. In particular his GP, who spoke to him in the camp as though little had changed between them. Surreal, banal and terrifying at the same time.

BBC4 recently showed a documentary by the late (and excellent) Charles Wheeler on the Sudeiten Germans of Czechoslovakia - jailers and tormentors in 1940, victims in 1945. Both events involved similar behaviour, but with the boot on the other foot. Both sides see themselves victims, both want their own crimes swept under the carpet.

We will never stop such things by blaming certain types of individual, because they are all different. We are into Milgram territory here - we could all get sucked into such conflicts. It’s about identity, and the flaw in us all that allows us to delineate other people as “not like us” and so not worthy of equal treatment. Apply some survival pressure, or take Law and Order away, and every last one of could fall. The process is quite well understood and involves 5 stages: Identification, Isolation, Ghettoization, Deportation, Murder. It is also true that genocide requires considerable cold-blooded logistical planning and preparation.

As for the Armenian Genocide not being a genocide, that is simply ahistorical. The word was not in use at the time, but its purpose was clear - clean Anatolia of non-Turks. Personally, I think it was the worst of all, because a large proportion of the population knew of and participated in it, and the diabolical methods that the perpetrators carefully researched to ensure the maximum suffering. No other of all the 20th century’s horrors was quite so appalling. It is absolutely imperative that Turkey owns up to this before it is let in to the EU.

Personally, I find the worst criminal of all, in terms of his malign influence on history, is Mohammad, because his teaching allows his followers to start at stage 2 (isolation), and jump straight to stage 5 (murder). Genocide for the love of God! - indeed. It is institutionalised in one particular culture, and it is called Jihad.

You really are quite repulsive. I fail to see a shred of Christian morality in your comment on Srebinica.

The ususal crap.

Mettaculture, when a society sits back passively, century after century, while atrocities are committed against a related culture and religion, in which millions are killed without without a peep of protest, does that society (western Europe) then have any right to condemn Srebrenica?

Because of your obscene cowardice lasting centuries and your studied indifference to the plight of your own co-relgionists, you’ve FORFEITED any right to make any MORAL JUDGEMENTS on the Balkans.

PERIOD.

You and you French cousins, outre-manche, collaborated for years with the Ottoman Empire, an entity just as bad as Nazi Germany, thereby aiding and abetting the merciless slaughter of millions of Balkan and Anatolian Christians.

Your murderous passivity makes you an accomplice to these genocides, to the murder of these MILLIONS, and so you now squeal with indignation at the massacre of 8,000 inidividuals, some of whom may have been combatants, in the hope those histrionic squeals will drown out your past collaborations AND MISERABLE MORAL FAILURES.

They won’t.

Nor will Britian and France’s current islamophile posture, that new wing at The Louvre included, let you off the hook.

What you experienced on 7/7 is but a small foretaste of what’s to come and of what Balkan Christians were forced to endure for centuries.

And oh! You haven’t a clue of what Christian morality is about, and appear to have gleaned what little you know from old episodes of The Flying Nun.

Well Sister Bertrill, it isn’t about sitting around, indifferent and impassive, while millions of your co-religonists are brutally murdered.

When the Turks briefly occupied Lepanto, they kidnapped the local Catholic bishop and sawed him in half while still alive

The Catholic Church, yes the same one I belong to and which I’m not afraid to criticise, had spent a great deal of time and energy, and had used every means possible to do in Orthodoxy after the rupture of 1054.

I can only hope that the Turk brandishing the saw had enough black wit and theological insight to look at the screaming bishop and to quip: “Just think of your impending bisection as the “Great Schism.”

Western Europe and The Catholic Church were called upon countless, countless times by Eastern Orthdoxy for aid, weapons and manpower, and yet EVERY LAST one of those calls went unheeded.

And now, to cover your tracts, to deny you sins and muderous Ottoman collaborations, you’ve embarked upon historical revisionism, quite reminiscent of that engaged in by neo-nazis, in an effort to turn the historical aggressors into the victims, and the historical victims into aggressors, as though the deaths of millions of indigenous Orthodox Christians at the hands of invading Muslims can just be swept under the rug.

@ To Hasan Prishtina:

You have your Kosovo, you have your ethnic cleansing, your Slick Willie Blvd AND your Greater Albania, so why don’t you leave England and go live in it?

we could all get sucked into such conflicts. It’s about identity, and the flaw in us all that allows us to delineate other people as “not like us” and so not worthy of equal treatment. Apply some survival pressure, or take Law and Order away, and every last one of could fall. The process is quite well understood and involves 5 stages: Identification, Isolation, Ghettoization, Deportation, Murder. It is also true that genocide requires considerable cold-blooded logistical planning and preparation.

Here, at least, you and I are in perfect agreement, though I would say that in such circumstances Law and Order is replaced by the genocidal authorities’ will to control and kill. It is not an easy matter to decide what to do in such circumstances and those that resisted the pressure, whether in RS or Nazi-occupied Europe, deserve our respect and admiration, for often they paid for their stance with their lives.

Alcuin, an excellent post. Earlier up thread, you posited the need for “serious” historians to handle such subjects as we are arguing
over here in the school systems. I, for one, despair of the possibility of such a state of affairs of ever coming to pass not only because of the miserably low level of expertise of most grammar and H.S. teachers, but because of the political splits so evident right here in this forum, i.e., everyone brings his own set of history books to the fray….

“Srebrenica was, at the time, under the protection of the UN, and the UN, having first disarmed the inhabitants under the promise of providing protection, then stood aside and allowed the massacre to happen.”

I support that point. We should, as a minimum, be teaching our children about the history, and shortcomings, of the UN, League of Nations, etc. For the population of Srebrenica, a running battle would have been better than reliance on the UN.

when a society sits back passively, century after century, while atrocities are committed against a related culture and religion, in which millions are killed without without a peep of protest

Two Austro-Turkish wars, war with France, Britain’s capture of Cyprus and Egypt, Italy’s of Libya, the outcry over Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia…

When the Turks briefly occupied Lepanto

1699-1829

countless times by Eastern Orthdoxy for aid, weapons and manpower, and yet EVERY LAST one of those calls went unheeded.

Western aid to uprisings in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria and Montenegro…

If you’re going to accuse others of historical revisionism, JP, you might try to get at least some facts straight.

to cover your tracts

Some might call this Freudian.

quite reminiscent of that engaged in by neo-nazis, in an effort to turn the historical aggressors into the victims, and the historical victims into aggressors

Just one thing, JP; can you explain to us why said neo-nazi sites take a near-identical stance to yours? And why, unlike just about anyone else on HP, you are unable to see that victimhood and aggression extends beyond just Orthodox Christians or just Muslims?

You have your Kosovo, you have your ethnic cleansing, your Slick Willie Blvd AND your Greater Albania, so why don’t you leave England and go live in it?

Why is this of any interest to you, never mind it being any of your business? Why are these three things important to you, despite the fact that only one of them (Bill Clinton Blvd.) has any basis in reality? Would you suggest to David T that he ‘leave England and go live’ in Israel?

You cannot teach the background to the holocaust of the Jews (let alone the ethnic hatreds of Yugoslavia) to 14 year olds in the two lessons available to do so in the modules on Nazi germany or Modern Europe. You certainly cannot turn round and teach that Goldhagen was right that Germans were mainly motivated by anti-semitism after teaching a module where you have indicated that Gellately is right that Germans were motivated mainly by a desire for law and order. Andrew Coaters is right on the money when he says the issue should be simplified and (if he will allow me to suggest) taught as part of criticial thinking using Andrew’s questions:

are there universal rights that should be upheld in any circumstances? Do we want to see mass murder of any kind prosecuted? If so, how can this be done most effectively and with the maximum of justcie?

The context of atrocities can be taught later to 15/16 year olds (although I still think making history compulsory for this age group would be a good idea.)

When the Turks briefly occupied Lepanto, they kidnapped the local Catholic bishop and sawed him in half while still alive

John P turns into Mick Hume and starts imitating the RCP?

I have to agree with “me’s” comment of 26 July at 1:04 a.m.: the lessons that Inayat learned from Srebrenica, and which you dismiss as “Islamist,” are the same lessons that the Zionist movement took from the Holocaust. Consider the following substitution:

For… many other young [Jews] who were recruited to the [Zionist] cause around that time, the lesson of Srebrenica was that [Jews] were subject to international and eternal discrimination and genocide, even in parts of Europe in which they’d been safe for generations, at the hands of [ultra-nationalist Europeans, namely Nazis], and their collaborators.

Yes, it does match perfectly. The Jews after World War 2 drew the lesson that their only salvation was self-help, and they were right.

Your lessons are closer to what many moderate anti-Zionists say now - the Holocaust is a lesson to all of us, we should all treat our minorities better and respond to persecution when it occurs, but it isn’t under any circumstances a justification for ethnic particularism or self-help. Of course you are also right to an extent. Those of us at a comfortable distance from genocides should take them as a lesson to humanity and work harder to mold our societies to Enlightenment ideals. But what are those directly targeted for genocide to do while the rest of us are still getting ourselves up to speed? Given the number of genocides that we of the West have failed to prevent, including at least one currently in progress, they can pretty much take it as read that we will tsk-tsk and do fuck-all to save their lives. Under the circumstances, I don’t think we can blame them for deciding that self-help is an option.

Genocide or its threat does not, of course, legitimize all methods of self-help, nor are the underlying ideologies of liberation movements immune from criticism. Many of the things done by the Israeli government (and by the governments of other genocide-haunted countries such as Armenia and Rwanda) have been indefensible, and I hold no brief for the truly Islamist parts of Inayat’s belief system. But to dismiss out of hand his reaction to Srebrenica is, I think, well off the mark.

Graham,

Gellately actually analyses 670 Gestapo case files from three different locations in Germany and comes to the not very new conclusion that the Gestapo terror depended on ordinary Germans denouncing Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and each other

Most Gestapo files were destroyed. A picture drawn from those that survived will probably downplay the extent of antisemitism, for at least two reasons: files detailing egregiously bad acts will have been destroyed, and (ii) many surviving files come from Franconia. Since it was historically less antisemitic than most other places in Germany, since the Nazis were much less popular there than elsewhere, since it was Catholic and Catholics were slightly less antisemitic than other religious, and since the Gestapo wasn’t well-organised there, Franconia should show less Judenhass than most other places in Germany. Gellately’s sample is relatively representative of those files that survive; it probably underestimates the extent of antisemitism.

Ian Kershaw’s Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich examined documents from much the same region - a bunch of Gellately’s files come from Lower Franconia, while Kershaw’s covers Bavaria. Kershaw found that most Bavarians were antisemitic and increasingly so, and that the main disagreement was with Nazi methods rather than aims. All of which corroborates Gellately; it follows that Gellately’s sample is robust.

Such a small samples runs the risk of seeing little difference between Gestapo officers, who tortured and killed people, and ordinary citizens living under paranoia in a totalitarian state and using the apparatus of repression to settle personal disagreements. He adds up the percentages and tosses us some generalisations (and this has been pointed out by other scholars.)

It’s unclear how Gellately’s sample incurs the risk you identify. Morally significant differences between Gestapo officers and German civilians aren’t directly relevant to the question whether there was mass German-civilian support for antisemitic measures against Jews. It’s unclear how, without engaging Gellately, you can determine what the motives and uses of denunciations were; doing so is just preemptive exculpation. In short, your para above was an irrelevance.

This is not to say that Gellately’s work is crap just that I personally would not use it as the one and only source to generalise that “ordinary Germans did not have to be coerced to participate in or support the atrocities”.

I haven’t suggested or implied that Gellately’s is the only source from which I drew that (true) generalisation. There’s a wealth of material; in addition to Gellately, I found Bankier’s The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism and Johnson and Reuband’s What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany very useful.

Otto Dov Kukla (”The German Population and the Jews: State of Research and New Perspectives” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism) unearths opinion polls showing that 20% of German civilians supported Hitler’s policy on the Jews, and another 19% supported them with reservations. This in October 1945 when they knew what had happened, and when they could no longer regard the Nazis with fear or hope. I’m confident those figures were higher in the earlier years. (Reuband and Johnson claim that between a third and a half of Germans knew of the Holocaust at the time.)

Alcuin,

As for the Armenian Genocide not being a genocide, that is simply ahistorical. The word was not in use at the time, but its purpose was clear - clean Anatolia of non-Turks. Personally, I think it was the worst of all, because a large proportion of the population knew of and participated in it, and the diabolical methods that the perpetrators carefully researched to ensure the maximum suffering. No other of all the 20th century’s horrors was quite so appalling. It is absolutely imperative that Turkey owns up to this before it is let in to the EU.

Earlier, you said that:

So, I find it hard to accept your thesis of communal hatred as the cause of the Holocaust - in contradistinction to, in particular, the Armenian Genocide, and some of the Jewish pogroms of Eastern Europe.

.

You claim that the Armenian genocide was the worst because (i) a large proportion of the population knew and participated in it, and (ii) diabolical methods were used. It follows that other, less bad, genocides lacked those properties. You’re committed to the claim that it is not the case that a large proportion of Germans knew of the Holocaust. The claim is a naked falsehood.

(a) As early as 1939, the implications of Hitler’s full and final solution were evident to reasonable observers. In January, Hitler publicly threatened the annihilation of Jews in a speech before the Reichstag. By February, the Socialist underground had managed to put two and two together: the 1938 pogroms and Hitler’s speech made it clear, they said, that genocide was Nazi policy. Their report made explicit comparisons with the Armenian genocide - the main difference, as they saw it, was that the German case was going to be prepared over a longer period. (Gellately 2001: 129).

(b) On any moderately reasonable standard of interpretation, Hitler made several speeches that were explicit and considered announcements of a plan to permanently destroy all Jews. The majority of German adults heard and approved those speeches. In January 1942, he gave a major speech during which he asserted that ‘the war can only end when either the Aryan peoples are exterminated or the Jews disappear from Europe’. The key passage in the speech was understood by those who listened to it to mean the complete removal of Jews from European soil. (cf. Gellately 2001: 148). Hitler’s 1942 announcement that ‘the Jews will stop laughing’ was widely understood to be the expression of a plan to destroy Jews wherever they lived. ‘The Jews will stop laughing’ became a popular catchprase (cf. The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust).

(c) From 1941 until very near the end of the war, there were public auctions of property stolen from Jews in Germany and Eastern Europe: in Hamburg, these happened almost daily. They were very popular and were very well-attended by ordinary people: by some estimates 100, 000 people bought stuff at these auctions. The probability that those who participated in these auctions did not know that the Jews had been murdered for their property is low.

(d) Germans knew of the effort to exterminate Jews in the East. The White Rose made specific mention of the mass murder Jews in Poland in leaflets distributed to the public. (Gellately 2001: 149). As the war wore on, there was widespread fear - sermons were preached about it - of what Germans could expect from in retaliation for the mass murder of Jews in Germany itself and in the East. These fears, and their public acknowledgement in sermons, constitute proof of wide public knowledge of the events: no one would have feared what Germans would have to suffer in retaliation for the mass murder of Jews (and others) if they didn’t already know of the mass murder of Jews. (cf. Chapter 9 of Ian Kershaw’s Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria)

(e) David Bankier shows “conclusive evidence that on the whole the population consented to attacks on the Jews as long as these neither damaged non-Jews nor harmed the interests of the country, particularly its reputation abroad.” ( cf. pp. 73-4 of The Germans and the Final Solution. Public Opinion under Nazism, and Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism). Otto Dov Kukla (”The German Population and the Jews: State of Research and New Perspectives” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism) unearths opinion polls showing that 20% of German civilians supported Hitler’s policy regarding the Jews, and another 19% supported them with reservations. This in October 1945 when they knew what had happened, and when they could no longer regard the Nazis with fear or hope. Reuband and Johnson (What We Knew) show that between a third and a half of Germans knew of the Holocaust at the time.

So much for your claim that Germans didn’t know what was going on.

(Incidentally, you gave no evidence whatever for your claim that there was no communal hatred, save your unbacked assertion that there were people who came up to Jews after a pogrom and apologised to them. Graham thinks Gellately thinks that Germans weren’t motivated by anti-semitism, so much as by order. These ignore the point that Jews had been defined by Nazi propaganda as a problem, which required a solution. Once the anti-semitic violence had been regularised by providing for it in law, most Germans approved. That Germans were motivated by order, and that they were willing to show a disdain for disorder, doesn’t show that Germans weren’t motivated by antisemitism; it shows that they preferred an orderly anti-semitism.)

John.P

I did nothing for centuries unless you believe in re-incarnation.

I was born in 1961 in Wales the son of a coalminer from a long line of free thinking Christian non-conformists.

I am unbaptised.

Everytime I am warmed by my reading of Mathew I think of myself encountering a spirtual splash or even a serious dunking….

… and then I meet a born again, or a primitivist like yourself blocking my path to Rome.

You make your faith as attractive as Yusuf Al-Qaradawi makes his.

No don’t respond just think of that. Its a missionary religion you ares supposed to be an attractive exemplar, you are supposed to bring into the fold not spit bile at passers by who for all you know might be pilgrims.

I am every bit as entitled to speak of your faith (and one to witch I am not naive enough not to realise I owe the greatest debt) as you are to speak of any other.

Or even your own. I am not an expert Christologist but I understand that you may not be the gatekeeper of a pilgrims progress.

It is not my place to judge or to offer forgiveness, but I am reliably informed that the usual position of someone of your creed who has expressed such a merciless hatred and desire for vengeance for an imagined human wrong, is a more penitent one.

I understand that praying for forgiveness and confessing one’s sins and conducting penitence both alerts your immanent and personal God to your contrition, and allows you the opportunity to pay for your ungodly hubris while soothing your spiritual but mortal woes.

Enjoy.

Some Germans must have known what was going on. They were running the trains.

They were running railways that were taking thousands of people into Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, and those same railways were not taking in a commensurate amount of food. Nothing like enough. Just a whole lot of people, hardly any food.

And they knew the people were not being transported further East because, after all, they were running the railways, despatching the goods, the people, the troops, the food, and the guns. They knew where the lines ended.

They knew. Some of them minded, very much. Most didn’t. We only know this because they lost the war.

You’re committed to the claim that it is not the case that a large proportion of Germans knew of the Holocaust. The claim is a naked falsehood.

LIAR. I claimed no such thing - even though you quote me directly, you seem unable to see though your own red mist. Your whole post is a strawman.

It is true that the initial shock and shame often give way to self-preservation - but that is not hatred.

Graham thinks Gellately thinks that Germans weren’t motivated by anti-semitism, so much as by order. These ignore the point that Jews had been defined by Nazi propaganda as a problem, which required a solution. Once the anti-semitic violence had been regularised by providing for it in law, most Germans approved. That Germans were motivated by order, and that they were willing to show a disdain for disorder, doesn’t show that Germans weren’t motivated by antisemitism; it shows that they preferred an orderly anti-semitism.)

It wasn’t meant to show this. My point was claerly that I would not use Gellately’s work as the one and only proof that ordinary Germans were motivated by anti semitism. Gelllately himself makes his own view quite clear on P4 of his book:

I am inclined to the view that monocausal explanations of the kind he (Goldhagen) employs do not hold up to scrutiny and that social agreement with or merely popular toleration of Hitler and the dictatorship was attained for many reasons, some of the most important of which had little or nothing to do with the persecution of the Jews”

Personally I am quite happy to go along with the idea that most Germans knew what was happening to the Jews to a greater or lesser extent and went along with it as part of a much wider project to “cleanse” German society of supposed “asocial elements”. I also suspect that many were driven by hatred of supposed “asocial elements” other than Jews (Gays, Communists, Socialists, mentally handicapped and ill people and “the workshy” for instance) but all in all I have to say I rather incline to the view that the majority of ordinary Germans were more motivated by what they (mistakenly) thought the nazi party could do in terms of making Germany a modern nation with an empire than by hatred of any individual group.

Yes, Graham, I myself have always hewed to the belief(gained more by osmosis than any detailed historical study of the pre-war period) that, while anti-semitic views were indeed held by a significant portion of the German populace, such feelings were not the sum total of the weltanschauung of the masses that allowed Hitler to come to power and gave him relatively free rein. Rather, as you say, the prospect of achieving the “greater glories” that a Third Reich promised was alone enough–the virulent anti-semitism of the Nazi party was simply icing on the cake. Killing two birds with one stone, as it were–taking care of the jews AND obliterating the shame of a lost war on the road to “true” greatness!

The study of German anti-semetism awaits its first great Historian

coming late to it, soc-rep, I thought Saul Friedländer does a good job of it in “Nazi Germany and the Jews.”

I did nothing for centuries unless you believe in re-incarnation.

You willfully miss the point, Mettaculture.

And the faded and fatigued irony of your words expressing all the typlical hatred of Christianity is to be expected.

Your sendup is less than brilliant, entirely predictable and lacking the wickedness or black humour such as is found in my reference to the great Schism or human bisections.

You’re impervious to the fact that I POKE FUN at The Church.

Surely your level of literacy allows you to do more than channel the tired, old, bigoted views of left-wing beatniks and balding hippies.

I,ll try again for what it’s worth.

The current craze to portray the adepts of a murderous, imperialist ideology ( islam/islamism) as victims and the victims of that murderous imperialist ideology as aggressors, and this merely for a few spurious and ephemeral geo-political goals, is the real immorality, the real danger, here.

It’s as though a few inmates at Auschwitz, in a desperate act of self defense, get their hands on some rifles, blew away a few Nazi camp guards and are then hauled to Nuremburg to face charges of crimes against humanity.

Britian and France, the current objects of Islam’s aggresssive intentions, did nothing for centuries while millions of Balkan Christians perished.

That obscene and cowardly inaction, that moral sloth, and the continued refusal to EVEN acknowledge what happened, means you’ve simply no right to make moral pronouncements on a region that you allowed to languish in misery for centuries.

“I was not alive” at the time” is no fucking excuse.

You are alive NOW, aren’t you?

Most Germans today weren’t alive during WWII, but they nonetheless acknowledge, even those born in 1961, what went on, admit to the atrocities that took place, and have engaged in gestures to make ammends.

Let me, just in the interest of historical accuracy, outline a few more clear cut cases of victimisation.

The indigense of North America DID NO ATTACK SPAIN.

Spain attacked the indigenes.

The Iroqouis of the St Lawrence Valley DID NOT ATTACK FRANCE.

The French attacked the Iroquois.

The Serbs did not attack The Islamic world

The Islamic world attacked the Serbs, just as they are now attacking you.

Protected from this madness, as you were, by seas, mountains and deserts, you’ve no idea just what your dealing with, but you’ll find out, and when you do, you’ll understand why The Serbs got off to such a quick and energetic start to quell the latest intance of Jihadism.

You are misinterpreting the latest installment of Jihad, of religious war, as just some old run-of-the-mill euro-style ethnic dust-up, and in doing so draw the wrong conclusions and misplace your sympathies.

And it should be said that the islamist, Wahabbist agitators operating in the Balkans in the 90s did a remarkable job, often with the help of Westerners themselves, of misrepresenting the facts. They appealed to your soft-prejudices, presenting you with a scenario tailor-made to tickle your late 20th century expectations, those of “ethnic stife”, in order to dissimulate and render palatable, what was in reality an old fashioned religious war. They framed a 12th century religious conflict in the secular vocabulary of 20th century sociology.

And like a little, lefty lamb of god, you lamely took the bait.

Baah!

Some recent baaahkground.

The region kicked off the 20 century with a genocide against Armenians.

That was followed up by massive expulsions of Greeks ( and other Orthodox Christians) from Contsantinople and Smyrna between the wars.

Millions expelled.

After the war, in the 50s, the last groups of Greeks were brutally cleansed from Turkey and Turkey, apart from a few 1000 non-Turks, became *pure*.

But Hey! Turks are Turks!

IN 1974, less than 20 years later, Turkey invades Cyprus, killing 1000s of Greeks, and brutally occupying 50% the island, including ALL of the best agricultural land, even though Turks made up less than 10% of the population. Before the invasion both Turk and Greek enjoyed equivalent levels of wealth. The average annual salarly on the Greek side, the side with the fewest natural resources, is now 6 times that of the Turkish side.

The economic disparity is no doubt due to Greek islamophobia.

In the early 1980s, only a few years later and with Tito’s corpse still warm, the first attacks by Balkan Muslims and Albanians against Serbs began.

In a few years time, and before the 100th aniversary of Attaturk’s reforms, Turkey will once again be an Islamic republic dominated by a hate-filled mindset, little different from that prevailing in Iran.

They’ll no doubt demand more acreage…..as compensation for Christian ‘aggressions’

And remember Mettaculture, beatnik says “islam means peace”.

And so the lessons of Srebrenica would have us believe, those towers of skulls notwithstanding.

Thinking on it, Bosnia and the Armenians are quite a complimentary pair of case studies, sharing certain ‘universal’ aspects and differing particulars.

Both are more complex than a religious divide and both take place in a supra-national construct moving towards a nation state. Both were elite lead and revolved around organic nationalism and a minority increasingly ‘discovering’ its own national identity.

Mod - I shall have a look. I think Chris Browning provides a good frame work of ‘ideology’ and situationalist factors in Ordinary Men. Burleigh is on similar ground but i honestly dislike his writing style. In my head, it like being spoken to in sneers, off putting but probably my problem

ps. Nice to have Metta back

Your sendup is less than brilliant, entirely predictable and lacking the wickedness or black humour such as is found in my reference to the great Schism or human bisections.

JohnP is a very Nietzchean kind of “Christian” isn’t he?

pps. Mod - Kershaw model of ‘indifference’ is very good though highly contentious

Both are more complex than a religious divide and both take place in a supra-national construct moving towards a nation state. Both were elite lead and revolved around organic nationalism and a minority increasingly ‘discovering’ its own national identity.

What utter illiterate twadle.

Personally, I think it ( Armenain genocide) was the worst of all, because a large proportion of the population knew of and participated in it, and the diabolical methods that the perpetrators carefully researched to ensure the maximum suffering.

The Armenian genocide is just the last of a whole series of genocides commnitted against Orthodox Christians by Islam.

During some of those previous genocides, a goodly proportion of the muslim population actively participated because they stood to gain from the looted wealth and lands.

In some cases, Muslims killed their non-muslim neighbours, neighbours they’d lived beside for years, and then moved right into the newly ‘vacated’ homes.

No need for guilt or self-recrimination when the lord’s work involves murder, expropriation and theft.

Think of the Spanish conquistadors.

But then, at least they’re gone!

Personally, I think it was the worst of all, because a large proportion of the population knew of and participated in it, and the diabolical methods that the perpetrators carefully researched to ensure the maximum suffering.

You’re committed to the claim that it is not the case that a large proportion of Germans knew of the Holocaust. The claim is a naked falsehood.

LIAR. I claimed no such thing - even though you quote me directly, you seem unable to see though your own red mist. Your whole post is a strawman.

Once again, here’s what you said.

Personally, I think [the Armenian genocide] was the worst of all, because a large proportion of the population knew of and participated in it, and the diabolical methods that the perpetrators carefully researched to ensure the maximum suffering.

What makes the Armenian genocide the worst (by your reckoning)? That it possessed the following properties: a large proportion of the population knew, (ii) a large proportion of the population participated and (iii) the diabolical methods the perpetrators carefully researched to ensure the maximum suffering.

Any instance of genocide which is not the worst will lack one of those properties. Diabolical and carefully-researched methods were used to murder Jews. The proportion of Germans (and their allies) who participated - either directly or indirectly - in the Holocaust is almost certainly larger than the proportion of Ottomans who participated in the Armenian genocide. If it is true that a large proportion of Germans knew of the Holocaust, it is false - given your argument and some uncontroversial facts - that the Armenian genocide was the worst. You are committed to the claim that the Armenian genocide was the worst; consequently, you’re committed to the falsehood of what is expressed by the following proposition: a large proportion of Germans knew of the Holocaust.

JP - you are a fool and know very little. Everything comes from your cosy little ideological niche. You have nothing to say. You are a void, my friend.

The CUP was a secular movement, it was as moved by Islam as the Nazis were by Luther. But you can’t take that in, can you. That just wouldn’t compute. I’m guessing you’ll respond with more screaming, more self-serving vomit. Cos there is nowt new coming from you.