POTM: Was:Re: RR Finally comes out

AC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: 

> On Tue, 2 Dec 2003 18:24:35 +0000 (UTC), 
> Roadrunner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 
>> "C. Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> David Iain Greig wrote:
>>> > Frank Reichenbacher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> >> Copied from the thread, "seen evidence of Holocaust in museums?"
>>> >> (Hasn't shown up in Google just yet)
>>> >> ___________________________________________
>>> >>
>>> >>>> What is the theory of evolution?
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Gee, you think I should evade this and go running away like you
>>> >>> do when asked direct questions about your position on the
>>> >>> Holocaust and the scientific method? If I answer this question,
>>> >>> does that mean you will finally attempt to answer the questions
>>> >>> I've been pestering you about:
>>> >> What
>>> >>> is the scientific method? Did the Holocaust occur as commonly
>>> >>> believed?
>>> >>
>>> >> See, you use the word 'believed'!
>>> >>
>>> >>>
>>> >>> No? I didn't think so. If you are anything, it is predictable.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Nevermind, I am not afraid to answer a direct question.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> The theory of evolution is the theory that all organisms
>>> >>> descended from
>>> >> one
>>> >>> or a few common ancestors. Usually the question is asked in
>>> >>> reference to Darwin's theory, which not only proposes common
>>> >>> descent, it offers a mechanism as well. So the theory of
>>> >>> evolution by means of natural
>>> >> selection
>>> >>> is the theory that evolution is accomplished by the action of
>>> >>> natural selection acting on random mutations of genomes in
>>> >>> populations of organisms.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> My position on the Holocaust is that the German Nazi rulers of
>>> >>> 1933-1945 developed a deliberate policy of genocide of Jews
>>> >>> throughout the occupied territories. By 1945 they had very
>>> >>> nearly carried it out through a program of murder and
>>> >>> starvation, resulting in approximately 6,000,000 dead Jews.
>>> >>
>>> >>> Your turn.
>>> >>
>>> >> Records are quite incomplete and not clear on the matter.  These
>>> >> numbers have been changing all the time quite radically.
>>> >
>>> > The numbers have been consistent in the millions since 1945.  I
>>> > don't think any historian would argue otherwise.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >> The propaganda on the
>>> >> matter is is of a gigantic proportion and deriving mostly from
>>> >> American(Jewish reports and sources (not German's that is).
>>> >
>>> > Most of the documentation used to develop the body counts is
>>> > German. The Germans themselves have the Institute for NS-Crimes
>>> > who research the Holocaust and agree with the work done by others.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >> 'Experts' at
>>> >> the Nürnberg trials testified they had 'evidence' that soap was
>>> >> produced from human bodies at the camps, as well as lampshades of
>>> >> their skin (both were physically presented on the tapes). Now,
>>> >> this is not accepted as being true anymore.  There were also
>>> >> rumours that human hair was used to fill upp pillows.
>>> >
>>> > Human hair was apparently collected and used for felt.  The hair
>>> > was washed and dried in the attics of the Crematoria.  The
>>> > Russians found huge amounts of human hair when they captured the
>>> > death camps. 
>>> >
>>> >> Ever heard of Russian concentration camps where German's were
>>> >> taken shortly after WWII, history books are in complete silence
>>> >> about that. Any idea how many died there and in what manner?
>>> >
>>> > A lot; a friend's father was in the Waffen-SS and captured at
>>> > Stalingrad. He was held in a camp in Siberia for a decade, only
>>> > released when it was thought he had terminal TB.  He doesn't talk
>>> > about it.  Almost nobody captured at Stalingrad came back.
>>> >
>>> > However, Soviet treatment of German prisoners (or, in the West,
>>> > Allied treatment of German prisoners) can not be used to somehow
>>> > make up for German crimes.   The Soviets killed millions in the
>>> > name of Communism; how does this justify killing 6 million Jews,
>>> > as well as millions of Poles and Russians?
>>> >
>>>
>>> It doesn't.
>>>
>>> Nor should we forget the treatment of Russian POW's by the Germans. 
>>> Both sides seem to have been particularly brutal to one another in
>>> the Ost. 
>>>
>>> There is a brief mention of Russian prisonsers in The Great Escape,
>>> and 
>> also
>>> Escape from Colditz.  In both cases they are described as horribly
>>> malnourished and mistreated.  The British officers who wrote the two
>>> books were quite happy they were in the British RAF POW camp.
>>>
>>> RR, I knew you were an idiot.  I didn't realize you were a Nazi
>> sympathizer
>>> too.  In your spare time, just reflect on the fact that a few
>>> million 
>> people
>>> got together not all that long ago, and walked all over Europe, just
>>> to 
>> kill
>>> these people you like so much.
>>>
>>> Go to hell.
>> 
>> You are there already..... It's the place where people wander in the
>> dark. You don't want to understand do you?
> 
> No RR.  We understand all too well.  Some of us have been on Usenet
> for several years.  We have seen Holocaust denial and revisionism in
> all its ugly forms.  People like Giwer have been attempting to erase
> history, to obliterate the truth that Nazi Germany murdered millions
> of people based solely on their ethnicity.  Have you ever asked
> yourself where all the Polish Jews went, when prior to the horrors of
> the 1930s and 1940s Poland had an enormous Jewish population (around 3
> million)? 
> 
> What is more, have you ever asked yourself what a Jewish person feels
> when someone like you, ignorant of the evidence and patting yourself
> on the back for your pseudo-skepticism, tries to minimalize what may
> very well be the most horrific and evil slaughter of human beings that
> our species has ever known?  Have you considered what monsters like
> Giwer and Zundel are really up to, what they're motives really are? 
> Have you put yourself in the shoes of the children, wives and husbands
> who survived the death camps? 
> 
> No one can make you think, RR.  But at least have a heart.  Show some
> empathy for those that suffered and survived the mad desires of Hitler
> to create some twisted master race.  More importantly, show some
> respect for the dead in their millions, who are revictimized every
> time a Holocaust denier opens his or her mouth.  They cannot defend
> themselves or tell their stories.
> 
> But just maybe their deaths are not completely without meaning, if we
> can remember what happened, and vow collectively as a species never
> again to allow the madness and evil of that darkest era of human
> history to come again.
> 
> That is what Holocaust denial threatens.  It threatens to expunge the
> memory of that greatest and most fundemental evil.  And what we
> forget, RR, we are doomed to repeat.  So while I actually think you
> may be just trying to be clever and buck the trend, what you're really
> doing is offering aid and comfort to men who would usher in new evils,
> 
> Is that the side of the fence you want to sit on?  Is that the group
> you wish to stand next to, to be counted as a member of?
> 

Daniel Harper said he would nominate this as potm if it was not off topic.

I think it is on topic, so I nominate it.

RR has shown himself to be totally immune to history less than a century 
old, and researched to an extent not comparable to many, if any, other 
events in human history.  People reading t.o. now, I am sure, were living 
witnesses to the Holocaust or its effects.  I know survivors of the 
Holocaust, and their children and grandchildren.  I know people whose 
parents did not survive the Holocaust. I would bet money that there is at 
least one person reading this who was in a camp somewhere in Germany, 
Poland, Czechoslovakia, or the Balkans.

What can we do with a person like RR?  The easy answer is the one that was 
used in World War II, with good, if not permanent, effect: plug the 
bastard.

Unfortunately, that didn't seem to work completely.  And if it had, we 
would have been almost as bad as the evil we eliminated.  

No, the answer (unless violence is implemented on _their_ side first) is 
patience, and education.  Never stop teaching _their_ kids how wrong their 
parents are.  That has 2 benefits: it stops the hate, and it really pisses 
them off :)

Now, why is this on topic?

Evolution is a historical science.  We look at things that happened long 
ago, and reconstruct them from the traces left behind.  There's no magic 
about history: everything that happens leaves something behind, pretty 
much, even it it is just CROATOAN.  We use exactly the same tools and 
principals whose existence or vailidty is denied by idiots- sometimes 
criminal idiots- like RR to study the Holocaust, and to study evolution.  
RR's evolution denial and his Holocaust denial are one and the same, 
really: a fear of confronting his past.

Note that the solution to the creation problem is exactly the same as the 
solution to the Nazi problem: patient education.

Thanks, AC, for a wonderful post.

Chris