this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
926 points (98.5% liked)

World News

46090 readers
2972 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

The transatlantic slave trade, horrible as it was, took hundreds of years to make its victims, and was not a campaign of targeted extermination. There was little to no care for the slaves' lives, but their murder wasn't the goal.

The Holocaust only lasted from 41 to 45. 6 million jews were murdered in a span of only 4 years. In a period of just 100 days 1,47 million jews were systematically targeted and exterminated. That's nearly double the rate of the Rwandan genocide. It's the same amount of people who died on board of the slave ships spanning from the 16th to the 19th century. No genocide in history has a higher death rate than that. 90+% of Polish jews were murdered, a near total extinction.

That's what people refer to when they talk about the largest industrial genocide. No other genocide in our history has come close. The numbers do not lie, and calling the memory of the Holocaust "zionist propaganda" is pretty sickening. It's not just zionists that claim this you know, reputable historians around the world do.

[–] seeigel@feddit.org 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

there has not in human history been a larger industrially organized murder of a people.

In a period of just 100 days 1,47 million jews were systematically targeted and exterminated. That’s nearly double the rate of the Rwandan genocide.

If you put it like that Rwanda's manual genocide sounds evilly impressive.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 10 points 1 week ago

Oh yes the Rwandan genocide really was incredibly brutal. If there had been a strong state apparatus I have little doubt that they could have matched the Holocaust rate. The intention was certainly there.

[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today -3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Dying wasn't the goal, for the concentration camps, either, generally. It was creation of a slave labor race. Generally, the ones who were exterminated right out where the ones incapable of work (In the German's eyes).

Kinda the same with slavery. Incapable of hard labor Black people were just put down.

And is murdering them via forced labor different if it only happens in select camps, versus in the cotton fields? Is time frame a difference, really? 6 years to die vs 20 years to die... Honestly, the former is likely more "humane"...

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You don't kill 1,47 million people in 100 days through working people to death. Those people were largely just exterminated, as Hitler also spoke of the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe".

I think you may also be confusing the concentration camps with the extermination camps. Read up on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Reinhard, millions were deported to one of six extermination camps the Nazis built. Or Aktion T4. There's plenty of sources that show the intent was to kill, any slave labor was just a nice benefit.

Slaves you keep alive on purpose, because they're no use of you dead. The Nazis did no such thing, because they preferred their victims dead.

[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today -4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, those 1.47 million were those deemed unfit for labor.

Nothing you said disagrees with what I said.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Plenty of those people could have worked. Slave labor was not the primary purpose of the camps.

[–] ubergeek@lemmy.today -2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I said they were deemed unfit. Like women and children, the elderly, etc. Of course, some women were kept for sex slaves, too. Others were kept for medical experimentation, etc etc.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 5 points 6 days ago

Again, that doesn't mean the camps were built for slave labor. In fact, camps like Birkenau didn't have slave labor when it was designed and built. It wasn't even built near any industrial capacity. Almost none of the camps did. Only once the war with the Soviets started stagnating did the Nazis facilitate slave labor at a greater scale.

Auschwitz III was a slave labor camp. Earlier camps like Auschwitz II was an extermination camp.

You don't build a slave labor camp with enough furnaces to burn half a million corpses per year, without facilities for the prisoners to do any labor.

[–] alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com -5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Did I say the slave trade was an industrial genocide?

You are cherry picking parameters to try and make the Holocaust some kind of unique tier of atrocity.

In the same time frame 20 million Slavs died.

On certain islands in the Caribbean, 100% of the native population was murdered and displaced, which is more than 90%.

Yes, there are certain aspects of the Holocaust that are unique, but it is not in a unique tier by itself. There are many metrics that make other atrocities worse.

[–] homoludens@feddit.org 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't know how else to say it, but: the unique aspects of the Holocaust are what makes the Holocaust unique.

Making up "tiers" of mass murder or genocide is dehumanizing. There is no point in trying to compare these atrocities - except of course if someone wants to say e.g. "Well, the holocaust wasn't that bad".

[–] alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com -4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

This whole discussion is in the context that, in Germany and the Western world, the Holocaust is positioned as the worst thing that ever happened. And the Nazi's as uniquely evil.

That's the propaganda we are arguing against.

[–] homoludens@feddit.org 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Even if that is "the propaganda" (which I have not seen in this thread btw): your counterproposition is not to dispose of the whole one-dimensional "which atrocity is worse" bullshit, but instead formalizing it by speaking of tiers and arguing that the holocaust wasn't that bad. That's dehumanizing, has no value at all (it's not like a "tier 2 genocide" it somehow more okay) and instead opens the doors for Nazi apologia and antisemtism and derails the discussion.

[–] alvvayson@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 6 days ago

I didn't say that Holocaust wasn't that bad, that's you being racist.

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Did I say the slave trade was an industrial genocide?

Yes you did. The comment you replied to said:

The holocaust is the name for this specific event and there has not in human history been a larger industrially organized murder of a people.

You then replied with:

Yes, there has been. Neonazi propaganda is bad, but so is Zionist propaganda. The transatlantic slave trade put 12 million people on ships from Africa to the Americas.