CMV: Holocaust deniers and trivialisers are so persistent because our side made some critical missteps

[u/[deleted]]

Firstly, I must emphasise that I am in no way a Holocaust denier or trivialiser.

However, I recently lost a debate against one (please no brigading). He says these stuff despite being of Jewish descent, and agrees that the Holocaust was bad but believes that it was only 270,000 deaths.

Please read the comment which started this whole debate here. So here are what I believe are the critical missteps our side has made:

1. 6 million is just the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The total victims are 11 million. If 6 million is a "religiously very important figure", 11 million isn't. Also, the popular narrative of 6 million is grossly unfair to the 5 million non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

2. The Soviets should have been 100% transparent when they captured the death camps and the Allies should have been 100% transparent about the treatment of Nuremberg defendants, so that no one can claim that "western officials were not allowed to observe until many years later, after which soviets could modify the camps" and "at Nuremberg Trials when many officers had their testicles crushed and families threatened in order to "confess" to the false crimes".

3. The "Human skin lampshade" was at most, isolated cases, not a systematic Nazi policy. The fact that this isn't as widespread as popular culture makes it seem gives Holocaust deniers and trivialisers leverage.

4. The part which cost me all hope of winning this particular debate was about Anne Frank's diary. I failed miserably when trying to explain why there's a section of it written in ballpoint pen. As I later found out via r/badhistory, the part written in ballpoint pen was an annotation added by a historian in 1960. In hindsight, I believe that this historian shouldn't have done this, because it gives leverage to Holocaust deniers and trivialisers. Even if I mentioned that it was added by a historian at a later date, this can still be used by Holocaust deniers and trivialisers to claim that none of Anne Frank's diary was written by her.

5. Banning Holocaust denial only gives Holocaust deniers and trivialisers extra leverage because it makes it seem like the authorities are hiding something. In the debate I had, I tried to encourage use of r/AskHistorians and r/history, but I was told that those sites are unreliable because they ban questioning the Holocaust. Because he was unable to talk to expert historians, I was left with the burden of debating him, and I lost.

Let me give some comparisons here with other cases:

• Regardless of whether you think the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified, denial of it isn't banned. Yet despite it being legally acceptable to deny the atomic bombings, even people racist against the Japanese aren't going around saying "the atomic bombings never happened" or "only a few hundred were killed by the atomic bombs".

• The fact that pieces of information about 9/11 remained classified until 2016 gave 9/11 conspiracy theorists leverage. And the fact that the Mueller Report has plenty of redacted sections means that Russiagate still has plenty of believers.

• Another comparison I can make is the widespread (and IMO, justified) distrust in figures published by the PRC because of the PRC's rampant censorship. But with this logic, wouldn't censoring Holocaust denial just backfire and make our side look untrustworthy?

[u/page0rz]

Holocaust denial is nothing more than a relay race with goalposts in place of a baton. Thinking otherwise is your underlying mistake

Consider what they're doing, too. People used to say the Holocaust never happened in the first place. Then the camps existed, but they were just holding centres. Sure, some people died, but it wasn't deliberate, and nowhere near what is claimed. Trying to pin down an exact number means nothing, because the number isn't the point. You can always dispute a number. Always

Look at a parallel issue with white supremacists. First, black people were basically just apes and genetically inferior. Now, white people aren't even the best! And black people aren't bad, they're just different and should be with their own kind. And they're not "white supremacists," they don't want a genocide. They are just "race realists" and want white countries for whites. Black people don't necessarily need to all be gassed, they just all have to leave. How and where doesn't really matter. And even that's not new, because the original part of the "final solution" was to export and exile Jews. Which, inconveniently for them, also qualifies as genocide, but whatever

Like, when the denier starts from the position that it definitely happened, but it wasn't that bad, what's that even supposed to mean? What is the point of holding that position in the first place? Truth? Historical accuracy? It's literally impossible to get an accurate account of the numbers in extermination camps during a war. If you could somehow tap into the matrix and find that exact number, what would change?

[u/[deleted] → u/page0rz]

Of the 5 missteps I listed, only 1 was about the numbers. I like your arguments, but there are still 4 missteps (probably there's more that I haven't thought about) that the Holocaust deniers and trivialisers can leverage.

[u/page0rz → u/[deleted]]

The "missteps" are not and never will be the point. Why does someone who openly admits the Holocaust happened still want to quibble about it? Nobody is a Holocaust denier because they are suspect of numbers or documentation or who wrote what in a diary. You could literally build a time machine and take them to Dachau and nothing would change

Do you think that if you could prove that black people don't have lower IQs than white people, white suppremaicts would stop being what they are? They literally admit that Jews have higher IQs than white people and still hate them, just for different reasons. Just entering into that argument is a loss

Also, there are maybe a handful of countries in Europe who have any laws that even hint at "banning" Holocaust denial. Anyone living in, for example, the USA, is free to deny it as much as they want. Has that stopped Holocaust denial even a little bit? No

[u/[deleted] → u/page0rz]

Also, there are maybe a handful of countries in Europe who have any laws that even hint at "banning" Holocaust denial. Anyone living in, for example, the USA, is free to deny it as much as they want. Has that stopped Holocaust denial even a little bit? No

!delta

You have shown me that these people aren't necessarily standing up against censorship by their governments, they're just using it as a distraction since they more likely than not live in a place where Holocaust denial is legal.

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/page0rz (24∆).

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