This is Part 1. Part 2 here:
UPDATED with commentary, above, from Haaretz of Jerusalem’s senior columnist Chemi Shalev
And yes, it’s relevant because I’ve been warning about the correlation between climate denial, racism, and fascism for years.
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“Don’t call them Deniers” was the conventional wisdom when I started this video series and blog.
“People will take it like “Holocaust Denier” – and that’s too much. It’s over the top. It allows them to play the victim.”
Well, that last part is true, Climate deniers are nothing if not drama queens.
But the idea that comparing Climate Deniers to Holocaust Deniers is somehow a bridge too far, if it ever held any credibility, has surely been put down by this current crop of Climate-Deniers-that-also-Deny-the-Holocaust now occupying the White House.
Facing growing criticism for failing to mention Jews in a statement marking the Holocaust, the Trump administration on Sunday doubled down on the controversial decision.
In a statement on Friday, President Trump broke with the bipartisan practice of past presidents by failing to include any mention of the anti-Semitic views that fueled the Holocaust and left 6 million Jews and millions of others dead.
“I don’t regret the words,” said White House chief of staff Reince Priebus when asked to defend the statement on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“Everyone’s suffering [in] the Holocaust including obviously all of the Jewish people affected and miserable genocide that occurs— it’s something that we consider to be extraordinarily sad,” Priebus added.
Trump’s 117-word statement was issued on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Trump remembered “the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust” without specifically mentioning the attempted extermination of Jewish people.
Conservative commentator John Podhoretz slammed the White House’s defense of its actions in a column on Saturday, noting that Nazi ideology rested on the aim of exterminating Jewish people from the face of earth.
“The Nazis killed an astonishing number of people in monstrous ways and targeted certain groups—Gypsies, the mentally challenged, and open homosexuals, among others,” Podhoretz wrote. “But the Final Solution was aimed solely at the Jews. The Holocaust was about the Jews.
UPDATE:
Political statements like these are meant as a “dog whistle”, going over the heads of most listeners, but picked up by the targeted Neo-nazi groups, both in the US, and around the world. (most of which are supported by Vladimir Putin, as a means of destabilizing democracies).
America’s most punchable Neo Nazi, Richard Spencer definitely got the signal.
For Richard Spencer, the leading ideologue of the so-called “alt-right,” Donald Trump’s Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that failed to mention Jews or anti-Semitism was an important, perhaps revolutionary, step.
Spencer dubbed it the “de-Judaification” of the Holocaust.Jewish activists, Spencer wrote in a short post for his new website Altright.com, have long insisted on making the Holocaust “all about their meta-narrative of suffering” and a way to “undergird their peculiar position in American society.”
The Holocaust, in Spencer’s eyes, has become a sort of moral bludgeon — used against white nationalists like himself.
“We can’t limit immigration, because Hitler. We can’t can’t be proud of ourselves as a Europeans, because Holocaust. White people can be Christian, but not too Christian, because Auschwitz,” he wrote.In speaking about Hitler and the Holocaust, Spencer has also elided Jewish suffering, telling the Daily Caller that “terrible things were done to many different people during that terrible war.”
He also does not outright condemn Hitler, calling him a “historical figure.” “He’s done things that I think are despicable,” Spencer told the Daily Caller, but did not go into details. “I’m not going to play this game.”
In Spencer’s eyes, the “de-Judification” of the Holocaust is a quintessentially “Trumpian” statement. Spencer championed Trump through the presidential campaign — and though he has been critical of the president at times, seems to have come around to Trump.
“Trump is a white nationalist, so to speak, he is alt-right whether he likes it or not,” Spencer in a recent interview on “The David Pakman Show.”
I’ve known this connection for years. Some of my earliest trolls were obviously Neo-nazis.
Warning: Hate speech Thumbnail.
Has the Trump team gone daft? You need to make friends in politics as many as you can. Of course there are no apologies for this.
They haven’t gone anywhere. Still where they always were.
What the Western media has of late systematically omitted to mention is that Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army alone.
Here’s the Russia and Putin Booster again, earning her whore’s dollar. Who the F**K cares who liberated what Nazi death camp first or whether they did it “alone”? But VERA never misses a chance to make some half-assed and inane point, does she?
If VERA was smart enough to be able to read a map, maybe she could figure out that Auschwitz was in Poland and not far from Russia—-the Germans abandoned Poland rather quickly because they were concentrating troops closer to home (especially in the West against the US and other allies). So the Soviets strolled into Auschwitz?—-BFD!
If VERA really wanted to “boost” Russia, she’d stay away from the holocaust—-Stalin DID after all, have his own “holocaust” in Russia with a number of groups, and did have a Gulag that was an Auschwitz without ovens. Putin is doing the same on a smaller scale in the Caucasus and Ukraine (to say nothing of killing off dissidents and journalists).
Shooting off more toes, VERA. Stupid STUPID fucking woman!
BAD FORM!!! Knock off the vitriol… it is not called for.
What’s “bad form” and “not called for” is you making such a comment when you obviously have not been following VERA’s depredations on Crock.
If you had been paying attention, you would know that she is one of the worst trolls ever to appear on Crock, and is certainly #1 when it comes to vitriol, vulgarity, and mindlessly parroting of anti-American and pro-Russian BS.
Then you could at least try to keep your vitriol short. Dont feed the troll, you know? Or, don’t overreact to every provocation. You are both getting a boring nuisance.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/27/newsid_3520000/3520986.stm?first=8
ve-rot-chick
The Red Army would have been steam rolled by the Nazi war machine if many of my countrymen had not braved Arctic conditions and being bombed or torpedoed into the Arctic water on those convoys that you so readily overlook.
And what else did the Red Army do when they rolled over Eastern Europe?
Stop adopting that nonsense with me around.
Oh! And another message for you, I got the bruises when knocked off my feet whilst serving on a carrier in the Eastern Med’ when a Russian SAM Kotlin played stupid chicken and got run down.
Once again don’t you dare lecture here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/27/newsid_3520000/3520986.stm?first=8
https://umairhaque.com/the-line-3bf6d924eec3#.86yiw2nlq
Umair has been writing several articles on authoritarianism. This one is “where is the line”. Hitler was never stopped and the line was never reached. Surely he would not do more. The world had to stop Hitler with a very bloody war. Even Neville Chamberlin thought he would stop with the Munich Agreement. Hitler did not stop.
I fear Donald Trump is like a vaccuum cleaner for power. We have to make him stop.
We are being tested and more than likely he will expand his power even when he fails. He will gain.
If we don’t resist, he takes and takes and takes.
I was just a little kid when WW2 ended, but I DO vaguely remember when the first photos and movies of the Nazi death camps came out. Seeing the B&W pics of piles of bodies and near-dead prisoners didn’t impact me too much—-I was too young to fully understand—-but I do remember how upsetting they were to people my parent’s age—-the members of the “greatest generation”. As I grew older and studied the Holocaust in school, it was always about the Nazis wanting to exterminate the Jews, period, with “and others” tacked on as an afterthought. How can Trump NOT acknowledge that?
The statement by President Pussy Grabber and the followup by Priebus proves your point that “Climate-Deniers-that-also-Deny-the-Holocaust now occupy the White House” (Except that you might have preceded that with “Misogynistic-Xenophobic-Racist-Corporate Oligarchic-Plutocratic-Fascistic-” to cover all bases). Only a moron would issue a statement about the Holocaust and not mention the Jews. (And I wonder if Netanyahu is rethinking his relationship with his new buddy Trump?)
A few years ago I watch Oliver Stone’s “The Untold History of the United States”… it put the war in a very different prospective.. he covered facts that failed to be included in our history books.
I remember the series vaguely—didn’t watch much of it, but my impression was that most of the “facts” were not “untold”, but were common knowledge and had appeared in various places. Stone just assembled them into his “History”, and has been accused of parroting Soviet propaganda and bias. He put it all into book form, and if I find time, I’m going to check it out.
Can you remember any examples of “facts that failed to be included in our history books” and gave the war a “different perspective”?
(And you never did tell us how you managed to get your hands on a white Ferrari Testarossa single mirror).
I could suggest investigating that Spanish-American War – started on the false pretext of ‘Remember the Maine’, especially the hunting with dogs in the Philippines.
All countries, UK included (see ‘The Scramble for Africa’), have done bad things often in the name of religion – which is one reason why that should be handled with care, but that does not mean we should carry on and repeat.
‘IBM and the Holocaust’, is another interesting, disturbing, read.
What shocked me was that even the excuse did not come close to passing muster. The addition of a few words such as “The attempted genocide of the Jews Roma and Slavs with the other mass murders …” would have noted the diverse nature of the slaughter and the specific intent to wipe out whole races of people hence not offending a huge number of peoples.
Problem; Bannon is a
neoNazi who has always denied the holocaust. You wonder how much will be done to mark “Black History Month”A lot of inmates of Auschwitz were removed just before before the Russians got there and they were forced on a death march to Dachau. When the Americans approached Dachau, the Germans loaded up a train with prisoners and took them away from Dachau. The train was stopped by a unit of black soldiers which the first time that many of the people on the train had ever seen a black person. There has been controversy about the presence of black soldiers at the liberation of Dachau, however, I had a business partner who was on that train.
It has never been over the top to compare climate deniers to Holocaust deniers. Climate change will lead to the extermination of man millions, possibly billions, of people in the very near future. That’s just a fact, not an alt-fact. Climate change deniers and the people that support them are guilty of promoting genocide (and frankly should be treated as such)
Exactly. And they seem to be subconsciously aware of it. But it can not be. This monstrous crime is an impossible thing.
I’m from Germany and grew up with Auschwitz debate with my no-nazi Grandpa’s old buddies. Some of them were in the SS, one at Dachau. And heck, the psycho forces of denial seem so similar, even patterns of argumentation.
https://florifulgurator.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/luege_80.jpg
You people really really really need to get mental health treatment, You are simply delusional. The white house statement is none of the things you claim. You are simply foaming at the mouth in rage as you do not like the president. Get a grip, present your case, we have mid term and another election in four years. Keep up with this nonsense and you will lose the whole country.
see update. Neo Nazis very clear on meaning of WH statement.
You are nuts, if Trump & co’ keep up with their nonsense there will not be a country worth keeping. Maybe we Brits should ditch our PM and invade the US, grabbing Oregon back for starters. A kinda William of Orange type take over, collecting support from those still sane in the US.
Just kidding to demonstrate master’s idiocy.
I agree with the general point that the press statement should have mentioned the Jewish people specifically. I blame it more on incompetence rather than malice, but perhaps this could be a pattern.
It needs to be said that a lot of people died during WW2 and not just the Jewish people. I particularly recommend Timothy Snyder’s book “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin” which makes the point that the general disregard for human life applied to many people during that time, not just the Jews. Among the most striking data points is that Jews in Nazi Germany had a relatively high survival rate compared to Jews in Poland; Snyder made the point that dissolution of a state allowed such savagery to take place. Interesting read, but also absolutely horrifying.
“It needs to be said that a lot of people died during WW2 and not just the Jewish people. ”
Not on Holocaust Day does it need to be said. Get it?
You beat me to it—–I had similar thoughts re: talking about “other stuff” on a day specifically devoted to commemorating the Holocaust, which was by definition a genocide directed virtually exclusively against the Jews.
And “general disregard for human life applied to many people during that time” is not a point that makes much sense. It was a freakin’ WAR, and during war life becomes very cheap everywhere. “Our” side fire-bombed cities and slaughtered civilians just because they were German, and the joke about “kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” is not a joke to some. We justified that by saying “they started it”, but there can be no justification for the Holocaust.
IMO, The Trump camp’s fumble on this one is definitely due to the incompetence that they continue to display, but it is also a “malice” to add to the growing pile of evidence.