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Re: Is Bob Only Exaggerating?
Bob Whitaker (bwhit@conterra.com)
Tue, 21 Jan 1997 13:31:15 -0500
Eugene Holman wrote:
>
> In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.970119164606.28684G-100000@explorer2.clark.net>,
> <frank@clark.net> wrote:
>
> >
> > Less exaggeratedly: There were other mass killings than those of the
> > Nazis, such as those undertaken when Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot were
> > in power. But liberal opinion regards Hitler as far worse because of his
> > racial ideas. Is this the case?
> >
> > I invite, of course, others to respond.
>
What is below is the most perfect short statement of Politically
Correct orthodoxy with relation to Hilter and Stalin I have ever seen.
Beautiful job, Eugene!
> Ethnic cleansings, genocides, and systematic campaigns by colonizers to
> destroy indigenous cultures are, unfortunately, inseparable parts of human
> history. As horrible and inexcusable as the millions of deaths which
> resulted from attempts to implement communism were, they are still, in
> terms of purpose and scope, not much different from what the U.S. Cavalry
> and American government did to the Indian population between 1830 and
> 1890, what the Australian settlers did to the population of Tasmania
> during the first decades of the 19th century, or what the French
> revolutionaries were doing to those of their compatriots suspected of
> treason during the Reign of Terror. The technological innovations of the
> twentieth century have only meant a *quantitative* increase, by a few
> orders of magnitude, in the number of people that could be killed within
> the framework of a specific campaign. The horrors of ex-Yugslavia and
> Ruanda appear to be further examples of how efficient twentieth century
> killing technology can be when a specific segment of the population is
> singled out for destruction within the framework of a campaign run
> implemented in essentially military fashion.
>
> The Holocaust, in contrast to the above lamentable chapters in human
> history, represented a *qualitative* leap in the destruction of a segment
> of the population. Never before in human history has a network of centers
> working according to an industrial rather than a military regime been
> systematically designed, constructed, and equipped with the specific
> purpose of collecting, humiliating, and then destroying millions of
> people, no matter what their age, sex, education, or social status solely
> on the basis of the fact that the people in charge did not like them.
> Never before did a nation make such a concerted and deliberate effort to
> rid itself, its neighbors, and it hoped, the entire world of people on the
> basis of the psychopathic hate felt by of a handful of its leaders. It is
> these qualities which set the Holocaust off from other instances of mass
> murder as a qualitatively unique crime.
>
> The Holocaust reveals such a depth of human evil that it is understandable
> that many people would prefer to forget it or even deny that such a thing
> could ever take place in the 'Land der Dichter und Denker'. There are far
> too many documents and Holocaust survivers, some of whom are still in
> their 50s, as well as far too much physical evidence of a systematic
> campaign aimed at the massive and total destruction of certain groups of
> people in Nazi Germany and the areas it controlled for any but the most
> irresponsible and uncritical to deny its existence.
>
> - Eugene Holman
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