1914-18 : The Great Slaughter - Challenging A Year Of Myth Making.

[Bakunin]

And infecting the brain, not just the sexual organs.

Phil, your posts may infect the brain but so does motor neurone disease and I don't look forward to encountering that either.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

infecting the brain.

So far I've proven resistant to the 'There Was No Armenian Genocide' strain of the illness.

 

[laptop]

ah pickmans, it appears to be your turn to get the dwyer treatment of 'everyone agrees with me other than you'.

which might be slightly more effective if he wasn't so blatantly obvious about it and it wasn't such an overused tactic.

I've just found this thread.

Does he have masses of PMs of support?

F O D.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Btw: Phil.

I think you can be, at times, annoying, abstruse, obstreperous, condescending and intransigent.

However, to compare you to one of the great plagues of the world [syphilis] is to attribute to you more weight and impact than you in fact possess.

I hope you don't mind my saying so.

 

[J Ed]

Many decent people with syphilis don't deny genocide, tbh I wonder if this Armenian genocide denial isn't a proxy for another kind of denialism

Either way it's shit and boring as fuck

 

[laptop]

BTW, have we discussed the Assyrian genocide yet?

 

[J Ed]

Guess we find out the not-so-reluctant neo-fascist view on that next

 

[white rabbit]

So far I've proven resistant to the 'There Was No Armenian Genocide' strain of the illness.

"Genocide" is one of those hyperbolic words that means something different to the way it's used. It means to kill a genus or an entire race of people. It more usually means to try to kill an entire race, or even more usually a great many of them. I guess because we don't have a word for killing a great many people, genocide is the word we use for that. But it isn't it. It annoys me in the same way that "unique" is used to mean rare. And so "very rare" becomes "very unique", which is nonsense. I guess actual genocide would be something like "total genocide", which is a tautology.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

"Genocide" is one of those hyperbolic words that means something different to the way it's used. It means to kill a genus or an entire race of people. It more usually means to try to kill an entire race, or even more usually a great many of them. I guess because we don't have a word for killing a great many people, genocide is the word we use for that. But it isn't it. It annoys me in the same way that "unique" is used to mean rare. And so "very rare" becomes "very unique", which is nonsense. I guess actual genocide would be something like "total genocide", which is a tautology.

Lots of people here don't believe that 'race' is a real thing.

By your definition, is attempting to kill off the Tutsi tribe, genocide?

 

[white rabbit]

Lots of people here don't believe that 'race' is a real thing.

By your definition, is attempting to kill off the Tutsi tribe, genocide?

No, you'd have to do more than just try. I wouldn't like to get into an argument about what a race is. Armenians and Tutsis works for me.

 

[phildwyer]

"Genocide" is one of those hyperbolic words that means something different to the way it's used. It means to kill a genus or an entire race of people. It more usually means to try to kill an entire race, or even more usually a great many of them. I guess because we don't have a word for killing a great many people, genocide is the word we use for that. But it isn't it. It annoys me in the same way that "unique" is used to mean rare. And so "very rare" becomes "very unique", which is nonsense. I guess actual genocide would be something like "total genocide", which is a tautology.

At last the voice of reason.

 

[phildwyer]

Does he have masses of PMs of support?

As a matter of fact I do.

But that's not relevant here. I haven't claimed victory, or anything like it. On the contrary, I have been pursuaded to modify my position to a significant degree. What I do claim, because it is true, is that every single poster who has contributed significantly to this thread has finally reached agreement.

And you must admit, in the Urban context, that's a remarkable achievement.

Once again in case you missed it. Our position is now that there were literally thousands of genocides throughout history, but only one Holocaust.

Unless any coherent dissenting voice is raised today, I think we can consider the matter closed.

 

[phildwyer]

Many decent people with syphilis don't deny genocide

Name one.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yes, they were worried about spies; but also that soldiers who had been in contact with western values - even in a prison camp - were 'infected'.

McCarthy's witch-hunts were terrible things; but not quite the same as taking returning soldiers, ex-POWs but citizens, into a field and machinegunning them.

The NKVD did this in Ukraine to civilians after the Germans were pushed back. basically, if you were alive, you hadn't resisted the occupiers strongly enough, and your punishment was a bullet in the head or, if you were really "lucky", the gulag.

 

[Pickman's model]

As a matter of fact I do.

But that's not relevant here. I haven't claimed victory, or anything like it. On the contrary, I have been pursuaded to modify my position to a significant degree. What I do claim, because it is true, is that every single poster who has contributed significantly to this thread has finally reached agreement.

And you must admit, in the Urban context, that's a remarkable achievement.

Once again in case you missed it. Our position is now that there were literally thousands of genocides throughout history, but only one Holocaust.

Unless any coherent dissenting voice is raised today, I think we can consider the matter closed.

so what you're saying is that you're sorry for denying the armenian genocide.

 

[DotCommunist]

given the famine, the war and the above ^^^ Ukraine must have been virtually depopulated ay one point

 

[ViolentPanda]

"Genocide" is one of those hyperbolic words that means something different to the way it's used. It means to kill a genus or an entire race of people. It more usually means to try to kill an entire race, or even more usually a great many of them. I guess because we don't have a word for killing a great many people, genocide is the word we use for that. But it isn't it. It annoys me in the same way that "unique" is used to mean rare. And so "very rare" becomes "very unique", which is nonsense. I guess actual genocide would be something like "total genocide", which is a tautology.

A "total" genocide would be a completed genocide. Most of what we call "genocides" were attempted genocides.

 

[laptop]

A "total" genocide would be a completed genocide. Most of what we call "genocides" were attempted genocides.

That's not the definition that Raphael Lemkin got adopted - based in significant part on the Ukrainan experience.

Genocide is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group … "

 

[ViolentPanda]

given the famine, the war and the above ^^^ Ukraine must have been virtually depopulated ay one point

Parts of the land (millions of acres) were left pretty much fallow for several years immediately after the war, which was "handy" for post-war reinforcement of the Russian minority (something the Russo-centric Kremlin tried to do everywhere AFAIK).

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

The NKVD did this in Ukraine to civilians after the Germans were pushed back. basically, if you were alive, you hadn't resisted the occupiers strongly enough, and your punishment was a bullet in the head or, if you were really "lucky", the gulag.

I didnt' know that.

Unfortunately, the Soviets were also killing Ukrainians before the war, as well.

 

[Bakunin]

Parts of the land (millions of acres) were left pretty much fallow for several years immediately after the war, which was "handy" for post-war reinforcement of the Russian minority (something the Russo-centric Kremlin tried to do everywhere AFAIK).

Large parts of former Russian Front battlefields, most notably Kursk, have also been left well alone because they're still thickly sown with unmapped minefields. What was then the 'Kursk Salient' still has around 100 square kilometres that are still in need of being cleared.

Which tends to make the annual ploughing an exciting experience.

 

[phildwyer]

That's not the definition that Raphael Lemkin got adopted - based in significant part on the Ukrainan experience.

Genocide is "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group … "

We've just spent half the thread dealing with this.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I didnt' know that.

Unfortunately, the Soviets were also killing Ukrainians before the war, as well.

I know. Guess where one side of my maternal family is from?
Half of them starved to death during the holodomor, most of the rest were killed by the einsatzgruppe that swept through the territory a decade later.

 

[toggle]

Lots of people here don't believe that 'race' is a real thing.

I think that's because race was defined on spurious biological differences. We can now look more at what the actual differences are through examining DNA, but from what I've seen, those are more useful for considering population migration patterns than any attempt to define one people as biologically different from another. The concept of race as a shortcut for describing a whole range of ethnocultural considerations might still be useful as long as the way in which the term is being used is understood, but the distinctions of what is and isn't a group are better described through something like imagined communities.

 

[Pickman's model]

out of curiosity has anyone investigated the war records of the forebears of prominent members of the coalition like one m. gove and i, duncan smith?

 

[RedDragon]

WW1 to us is the equivalent time distance as the napoleonic wars were to them - it's a bit presumptuous to try and get in their headspace.

 

[Pickman's model]

WW1 to us is the equivalent time distance as the napoleonic wars were to them - it's a bit presumptuous to try and get in their headspace.

gove's a non-starter anyway. not sure why you're bringing up the napoleonic wars tho.

 

[ViolentPanda]

out of curiosity has anyone investigated the war records of the forebears of prominent members of the coalition like one m. gove and i, duncan smith?

You mean you don't know about Dunked-in Shit's war hero fighter pilot dad Wilfred Duncan Smith, who dined out for decades on how he flew on the last fighter mission (IIRC from Malta over n.Africa) before the war ended?
Turns out that while his plane flew the mission, it was with someone else in the pilot's seat. A fact proven last year when the actual pilot's son found his late dad's logbook, which he generously gave to the IWM.

Looks like Dunked-in Shit's family has form for mendacity.

 

[ViolentPanda]

WW1 to us is the equivalent time distance as the napoleonic wars were to them - it's a bit presumptuous to try and get in their headspace.

Not really. A damn sight more changed between the early 19th and early 20th century in terms of military strategy, tactics and hardware, than between the early 20th and 21st centuries. The key differences are purely in man-portable weapons and sidearms. Everything else (planes, self-propelled artillery etc) is just "evolutionary".

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

. A damn sight more changed between the early 19th and early 20th century in terms of military strategy, tactics and hardware, than between the early 20th and 21st centuries.".

The differences between WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq/Afghanistan, militarily speaking, are marked.