the neoliberal vision of the future

[littlebabyjesus]

I think his position is clear.

Not only that, but the motivation is clear too. And disgusting.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It's a novel twist on holocaust denial, certainly. He feels the need to excuse the Nazis of certain of their crimes in order to lump us in with them.

The thing is, if you can excuse them, if you can say "this wasn't deliberate, it was all a horrible mistake that happened due to the momentum of war, not because 'the solution to the Jewish problem' was an obsession of Hitler and the early NSDAP", then you can minimise the despicability of Nazism per se, of totalitarianism per se.

Because, in the final analysis, that's what Onar's ilk, including his friends who wish to seize the military and the police, want - a totalitarian degree of control over the subjugated masses, and they'd prefer that you weren't able to equate their regime to those of Hitler or Stalin.

But to be a bit serious, it is holocaust denial. It really, really is. It exactly the kind of thing that led Primo Levi to despair. It's impossible to deny that Hitler had it in for the Jews, so instead you deny that it was systematic, or planned, or industrial in nature. Yet those that were its victims knew that it was all these things. He is spitting on their graves with this shit.

I don't think that's entirely the case.

I suspect that he's also so locked into a contrarian persona that he'll mouth any old shit, voice any opinion, however disgusting, in order to garner attention. He's like Ann Coulter, but without the tits, the lizard-quick wit and the personality.

 

[ymu]

Yes you are. A liar and a coward too.

I think it's rather more likely that he has an inflated sense of his own abilities as a researcher, little or no concept of what a reliable source is, and too little confidence in his own ideas to read anything that might conflict with them.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

I checked, and all he's specifically denying is any physical evidence for them. I don't see any denial of the tesimonial or documentary evidence.

He juxtaposes the evidence for forced migration with the supposed lack of evidence for extermination; even though he has been pointed towards Hitler's 1935 musings on the fate of the mentally ill and Himmler's appreciation of the final solution articulated at Posen.

Onar - I know that the Nazis had plans to rid Europe of Jewry, not totally unlike many Europeans today want to rid Europe of muslims -- by kicking them out. Many "endloesungs" were discussed by the Germans and as late as after the war had started the Nazis planned to ship the Jews to Madagascar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

However, I have never seen any evidence of concrete extermination plans.​

This is denial of the holocaust as a systematic response to the underlying racial philosophy of Nazism; a denial of a key characteristic of the holocaust - that of racial and social cleansing - captured in Onar's statements that:

I regard the death camps as incidental, and largely a product of WWII which was also incidental.​

Does it matter whether these Jews were killed in gas chambers or "just" died of starvation, disease or freezing? Not to me.​

He has to deny this substance of the holocaust so that he can hold onto to his social democracy equals fascism security blanket. As I said previously, his denial is all the more disgusting because of its small and selfish motivations.

Louis MacNeice

 

[Idris2002]

T He's like Ann Coulter, but without the tits, the lizard-quick wit and the personality.

Or the adam's apple.

 

[SpineyNorman]

No, I am not a gas chamber denier! Saying that there is insufficient evidence for a conviction in court is not the same as saying that it didn't happen. But when that is said I will come with one admission: I have read quite a bit about the Nazis and of the holocaust, but there are things that are mentioned in this thread that I was unaware of, with regards to physical evidence of the gas chambers. I will review this evidence and until then suspend any previous conclusions. As I mentioned earlier, I have all along operated on the assumption that it was incontroversial that there was no physical evidence for the gas chambers, only indirect evidence in the form of witnesses. Apparently this assumption is mistaken and since I am reality oriented and let the evidence dictate my views, I am more than willing to review my position on this matter. After all, I have absolutely no interest in defending the Nazis of anything whatsoever. I have zero ideological stake in Nazism, quite the contrary, as should be evidenced by what I have said about the Nazis throughout this thread and elsewhere.

If you're really "objective" and "reality orientated" what will this do to your attempts to draw an equivalence between social democrats etc. and Nazis, given that part of your argument was that there was no planned extermination? And can you please answer my question re: the other victims of Nazi industrial extermination - communists, socialists, the disabled, trade unionists and other religious minorities for example. Was this also evil? Or should we simply assume that since you are willing to excuse, if not approve of, Pinochet doing this to the same groups of people then you also have no problem with the Nazis doing it. Thanks awfully.

 

[invisibleplanet]

His ''career'' is finished. His career being ''negationism'': of climate change; of the planning involved in the Nazi orchestration of the Holocaust; [...]

(feel free to add to this list)

 

[SpineyNorman]

I wonder what his next blog post will be about.

Gazing into my crystal ball, I see him removing the link to this thread from his last one, but the nature of his next blog post remains unclear. Hope that helps.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Yep, agree with that, Louis.

Crispy, I think you've missed the point a bit here. By not mentioning those that bore witness, he is denying the proper weight to their voice. That he is also wrong about the physical evidence is another layer to his cuntitude, but ignoring eyewitnesses is denying them.

 

[butchersapron]

I can't stand Onar, he's an utter cunt, but he hasn't done that. He's denied that there is direct physical evidence, which is not the same as denying that it happened. Onar will need to clarify this but I think he does accept that they existed. He is, however, denying that it was planned, which is still fucking disgraceful.

I deny it was planned. From good grounds though. Not the mess we've been offered

 

[Idris2002]

Gazing into my crystal ball, I see him removing the link to this thread from his last one, but the nature of his next blog post remains unclear. Hope that helps.

Got any tips for the Grand National?

 

[invisibleplanet]

I think it's rather more likely that he has an inflated sense of his own abilities as a researcher, little or no concept of what a reliable source is, and too little confidence in his own ideas to read anything that might conflict with them.

Well he does seem to imply that a mainstream source is a newspaper published only in Canada with a circulation of only 350k

 

[SpineyNorman]

I think his position is clear.

It's a bit ambiguous now I think about it, you may be right. Thinking back he used the "fact" that there was no physical evidence of gas chambers to back up his assertion that the holocaust was not planned. I suppose it logically follows that in order for this argument to be of any use he'd have to have doubts about the chambers themselves, since their very existence proves that it must have been planned. Apologies - on reflection you were probably right.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I deny it was planned. From good grounds though. Not the mess we've been offered

It depends from when you mean. If you're saying that as people started to be deported to concentration camps, it hadn't yet been decided what to do with them, from what I know, I'm sure you're right. But then it was decided what to do with them, and then what happened was planned. Gas chambers don't get built by accident. From no later than 1941 onwards, the holocaust was planned.

 

[butchersapron]

He's prepared to look again. What other areas might you be equally in need of correction onar?

 

[Idris2002]

When he says it wasn't planned, I think he means that it wasn't the defining feature of Nazism. Whereas the argument that I think butchers is referring to there says that even though they didn't start in January 1933 with a clear conscious plan of genocide, it was already latent in the very core of their politics.

 

[butchersapron]

It depends from when you mean. If you're saying that as people started to be deported to concentration camps, it hadn't yet been decided what to do with them, from what I know, I'm sure you're right. But then it was decided what to do with them, and then what happened was planned. Gas chambers don't get built by accident.

So how?

 

[onarchy]

It's a novel twist on holocaust denial, certainly. He feels the need to excuse the Nazis of certain of their crimes in order to lump us in with them.

That is an interesting theory. I see how it may seem like I need to "humanize" the Nazis in order to "lump you in with them" as you say, but I really don't. My lumping you in the same fundamental category as the Nazis requires no apologies or "humanization" of Nazism. Even if there had been complete video documentation of every second of the gassing along with graves of millions of Jews filled with Zyklon B in their lungs, and detailed plans of doing so dating all the way back to 1933 or sooner, it still wouldn't make me "unlump" you. The reason is that you have massive evidence at your disposal (far, far, far more overwhelming than the evidence for the gassing of the Jews) that proves without a shred of doubt that socialism is destructive and lethal and that capitalism is life-saving and life-giving. The fact that you deliberately choose to deny this overwhelming evidence, thereby indirectly contributing to the deaths of thousands of people every single day, places you in the same category as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao and Pol Pot.

 

[invisibleplanet]

He's prepared to look again. What other areas might you be equally in need of correction onar?

Good question, butchers. I hope he comes back to you on this one.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

So how?

So how what?

 

[invisibleplanet]

It's hardly surprising Onar Åm, that some here found it offensive when you class Jewish socialists, communists, leftists and anarchists (''you'') as ''fascists'', in order to ''prove'' your pet political theories.

 

[SpineyNorman]

I deny it was planned. From good grounds though. Not the mess we've been offered

That is interesting. Could recommend any books that present the arguments behind your position? (genuine request, I'm not doubting your honesty, just interested). The difference is, however, that Onar claims that this was a result of Hitler's "socialism" rather than any other influence.

 

[Idris2002]

That is an interesting theory. I see how it may seem like I need to "humanize" the Nazis in order to "lump you in with them" as you say, but I really don't. My lumping you in the same fundamental category as the Nazis requires no apologies or "humanization" of Nazism. Even if there had been complete video documentation of every second of the gassing along with graves of millions of Jews filled with Zyklon B in their lungs, and detailed plans of doing so dating all the way back to 1933 or sooner, it still wouldn't make me "unlump" you. The reason is that you have massive evidence at your disposal (far, far, far more overwhelming than the evidence for the gassing of the Jews) that proves without a shred of doubt that socialism is destructive and lethal and that capitalism is life-saving and life-giving. The fact that you deliberately choose to deny this overwhelming evidence, thereby indirectly contributing to the deaths of thousands of people every single day, places you in the same category as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao and Pol Pot.

So do you approve of Hitler's murder of non-Jewish socialists, trade unionists, etc., as you approved of Pinochet?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

That is an interesting theory. I see how it may seem like I need to "humanize" the Nazis in order to "lump you in with them" as you say, but I really don't. My lumping you in the same fundamental category as the Nazis requires no apologies or "humanization" of Nazism. Even if there had been complete video documentation of every second of the gassing along with graves of millions of Jews filled with Zyklon B in their lungs, and detailed plans of doing so dating all the way back to 1933 or sooner, it still wouldn't make me "unlump" you. The reason is that you have massive evidence at your disposal (far, far, far more overwhelming than the evidence for the gassing of the Jews) that proves without a shred of doubt that socialism is destructive and lethal and that capitalism is life-saving and life-giving. The fact that you deliberately choose to deny this overwhelming evidence, thereby indirectly contributing to the deaths of thousands of people every single day, places you in the same category as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao and Pol Pot.

You do struggle with this 'evidence' thing, don't you?

 

[butchersapron]

When he says it wasn't planned, I think he means that it wasn't the defining feature of Nazism. Whereas the argument that I think butchers is referring to there says that even though they didn't start in January 1933 with a clear conscious plan of genocide, it was already latent in the very core of their politics.

I'm on about the intentionalists vs functionalists argument. If it was latent or produced I don't know.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip>The reason is that you have massive evidence at your disposal (far, far, far more overwhelming than the evidence for the gassing of the Jews) that proves without a shred of doubt that socialism is destructive and lethal and that capitalism is life-saving and life-giving. <snip>

Go on, I could use a laugh after all this depressing stuff. What evidence?

I haven't seen you produce any yet. The few times it looked like you were trying (remember the Chile discussion a few pages back) your argument fell to bits amid much hilarity before we even saw you produce sources.

 

[Blagsta]

It's a bit ambiguous now I think about it, you may be right. Thinking back he used the "fact" that there was no physical evidence of gas chambers to back up his assertion that the holocaust was not planned. I suppose it logically follows that in order for this argument to be of any use he'd have to have doubts about the chambers themselves, since their very existence proves that it must have been planned. Apologies - on reflection you were probably right.

No need to apologise, you're allowed a different opinion!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm on about the intentionalists vs functionalists argument. If it was latent or produced I don't know.

It doesn't really matter. Madagascar was one of the options considered for a while. In the end, industrial-scale gassing was the course of action chosen. Perhaps that course of action would not have been chosen in the same way had it not been for the war. Who knows, and who cares? Nazi racial theory justified the inhuman treatment of untermenschen, whether they be Jews, Slavs or Gypsies. That's the important point to me.

 

[butchersapron]

That is interesting. Could recommend any books that present the arguments behind your position? (genuine request, I'm not doubting your honesty, just interested). The difference is, however, that Onar claims that this was a result of Hitler's "socialism" rather than any other influence.

I'm on the phone now, tim Mason is who you need to look for. I put loads of his stuff online, probably on the libcom site now. He's the one.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

That is an interesting theory. I see how it may seem like I need to "humanize" the Nazis in order to "lump you in with them" as you say, but I really don't. My lumping you in the same fundamental category as the Nazis requires no apologies or "humanization" of Nazism. Even if there had been complete video documentation of every second of the gassing along with graves of millions of Jews filled with Zyklon B in their lungs, and detailed plans of doing so dating all the way back to 1933 or sooner, it still wouldn't make me "unlump" you. The reason is that you have massive evidence at your disposal (far, far, far more overwhelming than the evidence for the gassing of the Jews) that proves without a shred of doubt that socialism is destructive and lethal and that capitalism is life-saving and life-giving. The fact that you deliberately choose to deny this overwhelming evidence, thereby indirectly contributing to the deaths of thousands of people every single day, places you in the same category as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao and Pol Pot.

Hold that blanket tight, you've had a bit of a scare.

Louis MacNeice

p.s. nice example of your empathetic capacity in bold.