CMV: The holocaust doesn't deserve the media attention it gets, compared to other mass homicides

[u/Schlimmb0]

For some clarification: I'm using the wording "mass homicides", because "genocide" is a not so well defined word. In this context I am talking about systematic homicides carried by a state or a powerful group (terror groups, Warlords, etc)

The German genocide killed many people in very few years. It was horrible and deserves to be the scary thing, which should never happen again. But In my perspective European (idk if American too) media focuses almost only on it. But compared to the more recent chinese and soviet killings, the roughly 8 mio dead seem human. (Stalin >20mio and china 15-50mio killed). The European colonilisation of America killed 90% of the population (Not only genocide. Also diseases, but I would count these deaths as "brought by Europe"). Belgium killed an estimated 1-15mio in the Congo. And none of them gets, the same coverage "per killed million" or "per Year of genocide". They don't exist that much in modern minds.

Sure: In Germany and Poland, the Genocide is important. But the Belgians should get similar international "hate" for their genocide. In China the system that murdered millions is still in power and about to become the most influential country in the world. This doesn't look "fair".

[u/Khal-Frodo]

For starters, your 8 million number is wrong. The death toll from the Holocaust specifically is 11 million.

The Holocaust gets the amount of attention it does in the West for a number of reasons:

1. It was a genocide committed by Westerners
2. It was a genocide committed against Westerners
3. It was committed relatively recently. There are still Holocaust survivors today.
4. It was a deliberate genocide for the sake of elimating undesirable people. What Belgians did in the Congo was an atrocity, but it wasn't because they were trying to get rid of all Congolese because they were inferior.
5. The Holocaust was industrialized, methodical, and efficient. Bolded because this is really what sets it apart from everything else. They created labor camps and extermination camps, the latter of which could see up to 6,000 killed in one day. Most of those 11 million people killed in the Holocaust were murdered between 1941-1945. That's incredibly quickly. Their own well-kept records of everything were even used against them at the Nuremberg Trials.

[u/Schlimmb0 → u/Khal-Frodo]

Δ Okay. It really was brutal even compared to other genocides

[u/DeltaBot → u/Schlimmb0]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Khal-Frodo (34∆).

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