Egypt is erupting again, while the state of Minnesota is shut down. Obama is proposing deeper budget cuts than the Republicans in debt ceiling talks. Bush only had two wars, while Obama has more than can be counted. Time for a Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor? Tea Party? This only can mean, an open thread.
RENEGADE EYE
129 comments:
We do live in interesting times. Of course, for a "Mass Party of Labour", wouldn't you require some "organizing principle" greater than "popular discontent"? At least the Tea Party has a viable vision (albeit an historical one) for the future. But the union/ labour vision of the Left was only suitable for the heavily industrialized 2nd wave economies of the last century. It hasn't a prayer in 3rd Millenium.
What happened in Minnesota is merely an example of what will happen to the entire nation if government officials continue to kick the budget can down the road with facing up to their unfunded political promises to state workers. Democratic (and some Republican) politicians either need to start PAYING for their promises, or STOP MAKING THEM!
SpeedyG: We do live in interesting times. Of course, for a "Mass Party of Labour", wouldn't you require some "organizing principle" greater than "popular discontent"? At least the Tea Party has a viable vision (albeit an historical one) for the future. But the union/ labour vision of the Left was only suitable for the heavily industrialized 2nd wave economies of the last century. It hasn't a prayer in 3rd Millenium.
I disagree.
Why do you visit this blog? I'll answer for you. Because you know what I'm for clearly.
Most of the left and the right lack vision. A labor party is a positive step. There are real world models as the old Minnesota Farmer Labor Party and the Canadian NDP. All of my political actions are based on a program.
People are debating what is the tea party. Factions sue factions, over the title.
What happened in Minnesota is merely an example of what will happen to the entire nation if government officials continue to kick the budget can down the road with facing up to their unfunded political promises to state workers. Democratic (and some Republican) politicians either need to start PAYING for their promises, or STOP MAKING THEM!
Conservatives keep saying government should live within their means, as families do. Truthfully families are in debt, and the economy would tank without credit.
I respect how the conservatives are sticking to their guns, while Democrats buckle.
Denmark has the population of Minnesota. Minnesota has more GDP. They have free schools and healthcare.
If I was Governor Dayton, I'd say as commander of the National Guard, I declare the budget impasse a security risk, and implement my program.
here are real world models as the old Minnesota Farmer Labor Party and the Canadian NDP
And what were the events lead to the formation of the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party?
from Wikipedia: "The first modern Farmer–Labor Party in the United States emerged in Minnesota in 1918. Economic dislocation caused by American entry into World War I put agricultural prices and workers' wages into imbalance with rapidly escalating retail prices during the war years, and farmers and workers sought to make common cause in the political sphere to redress their grievances."
Ahhhhh, yes. There's the source of the problem again. Government involvement in WWI leading to price increases... the government diverting the entire economy to support the "war effort". What had been a "stable" and "predictable" economy was disrupted by outside elements.
And the loosely organized farmers and machinists discovered that they need to organize in opposition to "organized" government shortages.
In peacetime, you needs unions like you need a hole in your head. It's only when some idiot put his "thumb" on the invisible hand's scales that one needs a "counterweight" to restore the balance.
Denmark has the population of Minnesota. Minnesota has more GDP. They have free schools and healthcare.
Lets examine that claim to "free" schools & health care...
from Wikipedia:
The large public sector (30% of the entire workforce on a full-time basis) is financed by the world's highest taxes. A value added tax of 25% is levied on the sale of most goods and services (including groceries). The income tax in Denmark ranges from 42.9%[17] to 63% progressively, levied on 4 out of 10 full-time employees. Such high rates mean that 1,010,000 Danes before the end of 2008 (44% of all full-time employees) will be paying a marginal income tax of 63% and a combined marginal tax of 70.9% resulting warnings from organisations such as the OECD.
and from 2005 to 2011, gross external debt as a percent of GDP has risen from 143% of gdp to 187% of gdp.
Let's hope it NEVER gets that bad for the state of Minnesota!
Why do you visit this blog?
I think it's pretty obvious that you need a little exposure to reality, as the counter-FACTS above have clearly demonstrated.
Conservatives keep saying government should live within their means, as families do. Truthfully families are in debt, and the economy would tank without credit.
And the "time" to go into debt is WAR time. If your country is going into debt in PEACE-TIME, you'll NEVER be able to work the debt off. There'll be no "TIME" for it.
If your country is going into debt in peace time its because you have a bunch of fucking politicians using tax dollars as political largesse.
SpeedyG: The Farmer Labor Party became powerful alongside the forming of the CIO. Labor leaders went back and forth to Farmer Labor or the Republicans. The Democrats were the third party. That is how it should be today.
It's a dog and pony show in Minnesota. Both parties looking bad.
The US Senate's budget office, says debt is caused by the military budget and Bush's tax cuts.
Pagan: We're not in peacetime.
Ren: Over at my blog I just posted a movie review for a film you should really check out, Danton, if you have the time. It's about the trial and execution of the French revolutionary hero Georges Danton. Accompanying it, I included some vintage Soviet footage from 1919 of officials unveiling a monument of Danton to the people.
Danton? High praise for an advocate for prosciption of the Girondists and one of the primary authors of "The Terror"? Yep, it suits you, wolfie and the old USSR. No compromise, kill all those who disagree with you. And yet you claim to not like Stalin....
*shakes head*
SpeedyG: Don't forget that the "White Terror" was worse. There was no trials, or pardons, as with the revolutionaries.
Ross: Alan has a good essay on the French Revolution.
Ooh - big bad Denmark, which has much higher wages, free healthcare for all, better housing, lower military spending than the vast majority of western nations, where being multilingual isn't a rarity outside immigrant communities, lower infant mortality than the US, higher rates of literacy, a small fraction of US incarceration rates, scores much higher than most (including the US) on the 'happiness index', and doesn't feel the need to bomb the shit out nations I can't even keep count of anymore.
Also it has a MUCH lower deficit than the soon-to-collapse-on-a-Soviet scale US.
As for 'peacetime' - does that just mean lower rates of white people being bombed? We have more wars raging now than I can recall in living memory.
I'd comment here more, but it seems a right-wing magnet for some weird reason. Is it because you're polite?
Don't forget that the "White Terror" was worse. There was no trials, or pardons, as with the revolutionaries.
lol! Then you must have HIGH PRAISE indeed for Torquemada and the Catholic priests of the Spanish Inquisition! Are you one of those justice = process fanatics?
Ooh - big bad Denmark, which has much higher wages, free healthcare
Wow. You obviously didn't read any of my posts. "Net" wages in Denmark are lower than the USA, as it turns out that the healthcare isn't nearly as "free" as the Left would make it out to be.
Also it has a MUCH lower deficit than the soon-to-collapse-on-a-Soviet scale US.
Not as a percent of gdp.
W Kaspar-
Why don't you go to Denmark, maybe in a few years you can go to the World Court and appeal to have all of us right-wing commenters arrested for hate speech, I'm sure the fucking traitor Dems here would be happy to extradite us, you fucking lefty troll lol
The genie may be out of the bottle in the Middle East. Egypt wants real change and not another U.S. approved puppet.
Trick is for a leader to emerge and there isn't one in sight.
big bad Denmark
Denmark is a monarchy that never had a revolution, and it has a right-wing prime minister.
United States is a republic created through a revolution and it has a leftist president.
I can understand how Pagan can defend United States out of a misguided sense of nationalism.
But how can leftists like Ren attack revolutionary United States ruled by Obama as right-wing, while defending a right-wing monarchy like Denmark as a shining example of socialism, is a bit confusing.
Ren, did you ever notice that the countries with the best free healthcare systems are all monarchies: Canada, Britain, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Norway, Sweden and Denmark ?
Monarchies? Or Momarchy's?
W. Kasper: Ren is often too polite. No meaningful conversations can be had with most of the right-wingers on this blog. I mean, I've read Adam Smith too, and he's great (the Adam Smith they read seems to be watered-down to the point where he's just another Mandeville, forgetting Smith's indebtedtedness, while critical, to Rousseau). And scarce any of them have read Jean-Baptiste Say (who Jefferson said was clearly superior to Smith) or Ricardo.
The few leftists that post here are Ren, myself, Larry Gambone, and apparently you.
Kaspar: Thank you for visiting again.
I match who I talk to. If who I talk to is on topic and serious, than I match it. The same is the opposite.
Sonia has the rightist blog, that leftists visit.
Ducky: I agree.
SpeedyG: I doubt I'm a justice equals process fanatics. Are you opposed to the French Revolution?
Sonia: My only point about Denmark, is that it has the population of Minnesota and less wealth, and runs better. Our state government has been shut down for several days.
Pagan: You were once banned on a rightist site.
Ross: Blogging lost readers when Facebook grew.
Are you opposed to the French Revolution
Before the radicals proscribed the Girondists, no. After, yes. Just call me a Thomas Paine supporter.
I match who I talk to. If who I talk to is on topic and serious, than I match it. The same is the opposite.
Ditto... unless the blogger in question is boring and buries his message in five syllable left-speak esoteria. Then he gets the ridicule he richly deserves.
...and I come here because I have found Renegade Eye to be "fair", which is not merely "politeness". He is not afraid to do what is "right" at his blog instead of what is "popular" with his friends/supporters. And he prefers to understand the grumblings of Thersites over likely misinterpretting the silent assent of Achates. In this regard, he is much like mr. ducky.
...and what Sonia hints at is what Ren completely misses.
Those states that he idolizes have avoided revolution, for revolution is something to be avoided.
America's revolution, not France's, should be the "world model". For once the King had been expelled and rendered "impotent", the people got together and actually worked out their problems without killing each other and massacring former allies.
It can be said of the American Revolution (but not the French), that:
As old age came on, he grew blind, deaf and dumb,
Tho' his sport ‘twere hard to keep from it,
Quite tired of life, bid adieu to his wife,
And blaz' d like the tail of a comit, my brave boys.
What country on earth, then did ever give birth,
To such a magnanimous saint?
His acts far excel all that history tell,
And language too feeble to paint, my brave boys.
Now to finish my song, a full flowing bowl;
I'll quaff' and sing the long day,
And with punch and wine paint my cheeks for my saint,
And hail ev'ry first of Sweet May, my brave boys."
St. Tammany, patron Saint of the American (and World) revolutionary cause.
...of course, some discontented idiots one day swept up St. Tammany's ashes from the banks of the Schuylkill and transported them to NY, where a wigwam and political club was established to further the "common" (as opposed to noble) cause of "universal suffrage". And from these noble roots, the vulgar concept of perpetual revolution via a political "Tammany machine" were born.
'F egalite! Liberte is ENOUGH!
Don't forget that the "White Terror" was worse.
I'd have to say that the initial Jacobin "stab in the back" of the Girondins was actually "worse"... unless you're a "process" fanatic concerning the nature of "justice".
Viva la France!
Most of the Founding Fathers who participated in the American Revolution were diehard supporters of the French Revolution, until Napoleon came on the scene. The radical Thomas Paine wrote a searing critique of Edmund Burke's conservative outlook on the French Revolution. Jefferson said that it would be better that the French annihilate half the world's population in its Terror than yield Justice and Liberty back to the hands of tyranny. In his letter to William Short, he stated:
"…and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, left free, it would be better than as it now is."
Jefferson was ten times more hardcore than he is remembered to be.
Oh yeah, and Ren, I followed up on the Hegel/Beethoven section over at my blog
Ross,
Jefferson said that it would be better that the French annihilate half the world's population in its Terror
And you approve ?
If you disapprove, you are not a leftist.
And if you approve, you must live with the consequences: from ethnic cleansing of Loyalists, forced to fled to Canada or face extermination, to the genocide of American Indians to Hiroshima to Vietnam to Abu Ghraib.
Those are direct consequences of your revolutionary ideals.
Denmark is a monarchy that never had a revolution
Ah but they did get their asses kicked out of England just like the US kicked the English ass out of America.
@Farmer "Net" wages in Denmark are lower than the USA
---------------
But how are they distributed. Is there a severe discrepancy as there is with income in the U.S.
Please post a standard deviation and stop pulling this simpleton Rush Limbaugh style crap, Farmer.
"An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." -Thomas Paine
On July 24, 1794 Thomas Paine was supposed to be guillotined...he wrote:
T]he manner in which I escaped that fate is curious, and has all the appearance of accident.
The room in which I was lodged was on the ground floor, and one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall; so that when it was open the inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut. I had three comrades, fellow-prisoners with me, Joseph Vanhuile, of Bruges, since president of the municipality of that town, Michael Robins, and Bastini, of Louvain.
When persons by scores and hundreds were to be taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the night, and those who performed that office had a private mark or signal by which they, knew what rooms to go to, and what number to take. We, as I have said, were four, and the door of our room was marked unobserved by us with that number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper word, that the mark was put on when the door was open and flat against the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night, and the destroying angel passed by it. A few days after this Robespierre fell, and the American ambassador arrived and reclaimed me and invited me to his house.
During the whole of my imprisonment, prior to the fall of Robespierre, there was no time when I could think my life worth twenty-four hours, and my mind was made up to meet its fate.
Paine opposed the execution of Louis XVI
But how are they distributed. Is there a severe discrepancy as there is with income in the U.S.
Please post a standard deviation and stop pulling this simpleton Rush Limbaugh style crap, Farmer.
lol!
As if income distribution and income inequality were in any way relevant when as you say, "everything's free in Denmark!"
But in case your interested, Americans are just as happy as Danes with their situations. But don't take my word for it. Read the data, yourself (and not just the summary). It's chock FULL of Std Deviations.
Of course my proxy measure of the "true" health of a nation has America WAY ahead of Denmark. It's called the "birth rate". ;)
If I had to live anywhere in Europe Denmark would be one of my first choices, the other being Norway. Yeah they have a good standard of living, but by and large a good lot of the reason for their relative prosperity is due to no military expenditures that amount to anything significant.
Let's take the US military out of the equation. Pull military bases out of all of Europe, stop funding NATO, and then let's see what happens.
A clue-if Europe is a basket case now, just imagine what it would be then.
I'm fighting a raw throat.
Farmer: Interesting point comparing the American Revolution, to the French. The American Revolution had a thermidor, not severe like France. I would say after Shay's Rebellion.
Ross: Gore Vidal doesn't seem to like Jefferson.
Tom Paine was a major figure, not given his due.
Ducky: You're talking to actual Tea Party members. Why the surprise?
Sonia: I'm a Marxist, not a true leftist. That is too broad a category.
Jefferson was being rhetorical.
Pagan: If you travel in Europe, Denmark is where you'd rest after being busy Paris or London. It's clean, quiet and friendly.
The real point is that the Americans had pre-planned their revolution and were prepared to "quench" the fires of revolution, the moment the "need" for it had passed. A few months after Shay's rebellion, the US Constitution was signed, ending the "crisis" engendered through the weakness of the federal union under the Articles of Confederation. And of course when Adams was elected to the presidency, he passed the Alien and Sedition Act to more "permanently" keep revolution under wraps. Of course, that didn't keep certain other Americans (like Aaron Burr) from attempting to spread the revolution "elsewhere". ;)
...and it's not like America didn't haved her "san coulottes" (the new Tammany). Fortunately, her "Cinncinnati" were used to "dealing" with them. They had control of "state" governments.
Sonia,
Give me liberty, or give me death.
Fuck the Loyalists. King George has no rightful claim to govern a free Republic in the Americas except for that of a stultifying monarchical tradition. And irrational traditions must be laid to rest before the tribunal of Reason, if nothing else.
Speedy,
Thomas Paine continued to support the French Revolution even after his near-fatal run-in with the Terror. After Monroe helped him get released, he immediately returned to his post at the Convention. He only lost faith in the Revolution when in 1795 the new Constitution denied the universal suffrage that they had hitherto been promised. Universal suffrage in France was much more radical than voting rights in the Americas at that time.
I'm glad he did survive, though, so that he could release his sublime work, The Age of Reason, in which Paine dismantled the sham of Christianity and all other "revealed" religions.
Also, before Bonaparte went on to declare himself Emperor, Paine openly advocated that the French Army invade England in 1797 and overthrow the British government, destroying the monarchy once and for all.
In 1798, when the reactionary John Adams held the presidency in America, Paine openly advocated the French Army conquering America and deposing its government in favor of one that would grant universal suffrage.
Paine's idea of suffrage was indeed universal, and his goal, admirable. What history proved unnecessary were the means he advocated for achieving it (invasion), as opposed to Tammany Hall gradualism, which eventually exceeded and surpassed it's stated political ends. In so doing, the Democratic Party's original raisson d'etre has now COMPLETELY expired, and the party has drafted a NEW socially transformational agenda.
And irrational traditions must be laid to rest before the tribunal of Reason, if nothing else.
You capitalize 'R'eason. lol!
So much for the claim of Atheists to opposing "religion". ;)
Euripides, "Hecuba" - I may be a slave and weak as well, but the gods are strong, and custom too which prevails o'er them, for by custom it is that we believe in them and set up bounds of right and wrong for our lives. Now if this principle, when referred to thee, is to be set at naught, and they are to escape punishment who murder guests or dare to plunder the temples of gods, then is all fairness in things human at an end.
Paine, much like myself, was a Deist.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
I do not worship "reason," even if I choose to capitalize it. Reason is simply something all rational creatures (humans) possess, or are potentially capable of possessing.
Now, though I admire greatly the transhistorical ideals (Liberty, Equality, Justice, Virtue, etc.) invoked by the thinkers of the Enlightenment, and those of the Greeks and Romans before them, I do not share their belief that these ideas are wholly outside of history, as "Natural" Rights. Arguments about Natural Rights were quite useful at the time as a heuristic device, especially because they were invoking humanity as it exists in a "state of nature" as opposed to the medieval religious conception of a "state of grace."
The ideals these great thinkers put forth arose under specific historical conditions, in a society that was objectively becoming more rational. Bourgeois society is more rational than feudal society, based on the abstract freedom of the individual subject, and not by the unfreedom inflicted by the permanent divisions of "estates."
But to be clear, just because I believe that these ideals are a product of history, it is not as if I believe that these ideals are wholly arbitrary, that these things could mean whatever we want them to. Rather, we are beholden to these laws as historically mediated, and as a Marxist I believe that I would only be fulfilling the promise that liberalism originally gave to society: liberty, equality, internationalism. These revolutionary ideals have created a society which has given us the historical opportunity to realize them, but only through the transformation of objective conditions.
Thomas Paine was far more radical than members of either of the major political parties in America today. He was more radical than any figure involved in the politics of any WORLD government active today.
The only rights we have, natural or otherwise, are those rights that we take by force of will or arms and are ready to fight for and defend. A great many of our elected leaders need to be reminded of that from time to time-the hard fucking way.
Reason is not One. So don't "capitalize" it.
the promise that liberalism originally gave to society: liberty, equality, internationalism.
And which of the three, "liberty," "equality," or "internationalism" is your "god"? What is the Reasonable "ratio" of your "rationalism" between them, 1/3,1/3 1/3?
For as Isaiah Berlin so aptly put it, "...some of the great goods (ie - liberty AND equality, for one) cannot live together. We are forced to choose and every choice may entail an irreparable loss." In short, it's what Michael Ignatieff summarized as "the tragic nature of choice".
Pascal's "Pensees" - The result of this confusion is that one affirms the essence of justice to be the authority of the legislator; another, the interest of the sovereign; another, present custom, and this is the most sure. Nothing, according to reason alone, is just in itself; all changes with time. CUSTOM CREATES THE WHOLE OF EQUITY, FOR THE SIMPLE REASON THAT IT IS ACCEPTED. IT IS THE MYSTICAL FOUNDATION OF ITS AUTHORITY; WHOEVER CARRIES IT BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES DESTROYS IT. NOTHING IS SO FAULTY AS THOSE LAWS WHICH CORRECT FAULTS. He who obeys them because they are just, obeys a justice which is imaginary, and not the essence of law; it is quite self-contained, it is law and nothing more. He who will examine its motive will find it so feeble and so trifling that if he be not accustomed to contemplate the wonders of human imagination, he will marvel that one century has gained for it so much pomp and reverence. The art of opposition and of revolution is to unsettle established customs, sounding them even to their source, to point out their want of authority and justice. We must, it is said, get back to the natural and fundamental laws of the State, which an unjust custom has abolished. It is a game certain to result in the loss of all; nothing will be just on the balance. Yet people readily lend their ear to such arguments. They shake off the yoke as soon as they recognise it; and the great profit by their ruin, and by that of these curious investigators of accepted customs. But from a contrary mistake men sometimes think they can justly do everything which is not without an example. THAT IS WHY THE WISEST OF LEGISLATORS SAID THAT IT WAS NECESSARY TO DECEIVE MEN FOR THEIR OWN GOOD; and another, a good politician, "Cum veritatem qua liberetur ignoret, expedit quod fallatur."
Else, you're just spinning Ixion's wheel.
And Pagan is right. Nietzsche, WtP: 1067 (1885) - ...This world is the will to power--and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power--and nothing besides!
858 (Nov. 1887-March 1888) - What determines your rank is the quantum of power you are: the rest is cowardice.
Reason is simply something all rational creatures (humans) possess, or are potentially capable of possessing.
...and we don't call most of them paranoiac critical for nothing. ;)
...for reason can be a VERY subjective and elusive thing.
Whatever man, by his reason, builds up, man, by his much deeper irrationality, must eventually destroy., Joseph de Maistre (1797), "Considerations on France"
Not invented here syndrome.
The only rights we have, natural or otherwise, are those rights that we take by force of will or arms and are ready to fight for and defend. A great many of our elected leaders need to be reminded of that from time to time-the hard fucking way.
This certainly explains the recent and massive loss of life in New York caused by the vote for same-sex marriage.
Hyperbole, it's just fun!
Wow, gays demonstrated no "force of will" in pushing through gay marriage? Whodathunkit!
Maybe they won't "push back" if this ever faces a court challenge... ;)
Happy Bastille Day, everyone!! Long live liberty! Long live equality! Long live international fraternity! DEATH TO TYRANTS!
Bob: Agreed.
Ross: Happy Bastille Day. In Minneapolis it's celebrated with rock bands etc. on the nearest Sunday.
Farmer: Ross mentions reason, and all those comments appear.
Ross gets attacked, for mentioning the ideas born out of the period, when capitalism was revolutionary.
I do remember you opposed expropriations, during the American Revolution.
Pagan: Correct.
Ross mentions reason, and all those comments appear.
Perhaps because as stated above, "Reason" isn't "singular" and the ratio's in "rational" aren't "fixed."
I do remember you opposed expropriations, during the American Revolution. Before the American Revolution, there were no democratic "means" for establishing legal avenues to redress grievances. Now there are. Besides, as part of the Treaty of Paris, loyalists were eligible to be compensated for their losses, and tories were given rights to return.
Gays don't have to "storm the bastille" to get their case heard.
when capitalism was revolutionary
...when "laissez-faire" capitalism freed itself from the "royal bondage" of state-merchantilist capitalism
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind." - Emerson ;)
Long live liberty! Long live equality!
liberty = equality
The "freedom" to be made to live exactly as everyone else is forced by the government to live.
Woo-Hoo! ...not.
DEATH to tyrants...
"Mistrust all in whom the urge to punish is strong!" - Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" (1892)
"Long live international fraternity!"
What were the last words of Cain spoken to Able.
Yes, I would like to say to Pagan that I unequivocally agree with him that
The only rights we have, natural or otherwise, are those rights that we take by force of will or arms and are ready to fight for and defend. A great many of our elected leaders need to be reminded of that from time to time-the hard fucking way.
Tyranny still looks for opportunities at every turn to deprive free men and women of their rights. The rights won by revolutionary bourgeois society under capitalism must be protected by force of arms, and the rights that bourgeois society has since impeded from being realized must be overturned, not by simple reformist legislation, but by force of arms as well.
Ross: Great.
Farmer: Read the short pamphlet by Marx, called Critique of the Gotha Programme. Some things people think are Marxism, are not. Marx vigorously fought against absolute equality.
not by simple reformist legislation, but by force of arms as well.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha! It's not enough to simply win, we've got kill somebody, too!
Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong. Nietzsche
...but now I repeat myself.
Ross the trouble with you is you're wanting to turn back the clock while imagining your moving it forward. Communism is nothing more nor less than feudalism for the Industrial Age, and now for the Technological Age.
Replace the Feudal Lords and Barons with General Secretary and Commissars and you've got it down pat, all that's left is to dole out the tenured farms and other lands and call them "Collectives".
Ren to start ranting about my "baseless comparison" in 3-2-1-
Pagan: Neither Ross or myself, are talking about anything, other than unleashing the already existing abundance.
The US has more $$$ for air conditioning for a dessert country as Iraq, as most state budgets.
Abundance? Abundance of what, abundance of debt? Let me explain something to you. When you spend more money than you take in, that's called deficit spending. The abundance you're talking about is an illusion. "Unleashing" it would be like arming the Yankees with Wiffle bats.
Ross must be channeling Shylock from "Merchant of Venice"... he thinks that "blood" is part of the bond to be forfeited through a rupture of the social contract... and meanwhile he cries for his pound of flesh.
*shakes head*
Odd that you should compare me to Shylock, seeing that I've mentioned more than once before that I'm Jewish. But such paltry anti-semitisms are par for the course with rightists.
Ross:
You have also mentioned more then once before that you are an ardent atheist too, so what gives? How are you now Jewish?
It doesn't take you but a second to pull the 'anti-Semite' card though does it?
Its prevalence is rendering the word superfluous - merely a device to be used in any disagreement as some sort of trump card to end debate.
Truly pathetic - and ultimately, extremely dangerous.
Evidently "Jewish" is a "race" when one wants to argue one way, and a "religion" when one wants to argue another.
But then the arguer violates Aristotle's first principle, and loses ALL credibility.
“It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect” (Metaph IV 3 1005b19–20).
It should be obvious to everyone that being a Jew has both religious and ethnic connotations. A secularized Jew is a Jew nonetheless. How many atheistic Jews did Hitler send to the ovens? Anti-semitism is never limited simply to anti-Judaism.
Ross:
So what you are saying is that race is not a 'social construct', like 'class' for instance, but a scientific reality - and that you idenitfy yourself racially to be 'Jewish.'
That is certainly the position of Israel. They take a very genetic line on who is Jewish, even down to using a Nazi definition (1936 Nuremberg laws.)
Christianity does not idenitfy itself racially, you either are a Christian or you are not a Christian.
The Nazi's did not persecute non-practising Jehovah's Witnesses, and gave practising Jehovah's Witnesses the option to renounce as it was opposed to military service.
You ask "many atheistic Jews did Hitler send to the ovens?" - but don't answer the question. How many was it?
Give us facts, not empty rhetoric.
Because there was not shortage of Jews serving in the military under the Nazi regime, many at the very top - to name a few: General Erhard Milch, General Johannes Zukertort, and General Helmut Wilberg.
Some other notable examples: Commander Paul Ascher, Iron Cross Awarded Horst Geitner and Wehrmacht soldier and future German federal chancellor, Helmut Schmidt.
Hitler's chauffer and SS Officer Emil Maurice was Jewish and Hitler personally intervened in his case to declare him an 'honorary Aryan.'
Indeed Reinhard Heydrich, the second in command of the Nazi security apparatus and Chair of the Wannsee Conference was most likely of Jewish descent - certainly the Nazis, all the way up to Hitler believed it to be so.
I would suggest you look into history properly first before making such glib statements, and also, again, you look into yourself before using such a device to attempt to end debate and obtain a false sense of high ground.
Also Hitler's mother's physician was a Jew and was considered under Hitler's protection, or so I've heard, even though Hitler's mother died years before he acquired power.
Sentinel:
Why is it that when I'm talking to you I get the feeling that I'm talking to a modern-day fascist? Just which little corner of Britain do they find Nazi apologists like you?
"Social constructs" have validity insofar as they have generalized social acceptance. It is variable, of course, but Judaism has long had both a tribal/ethnic component as well as a religious component, which often overlap, but not always. Was Sigmund Freud a Jew? Was Emile Durkheim a Jew? Was Theodor Adorno Jewish? The answer in all these cases is clearly "yes." Did any of these men believe in God? No.
Anti-semitism is never limited simply to anti-Judaism.
Genetically speaking, all Middle eastern people are "Semites", although Jews are much less "Semitic" than Arabs. ;)
So if I'm this much of a Semite hater whenever you open your mouth, you can only imagine how much an Arab speaking inflames my hatred of Semites. And then there's that "Jesus" character. Whenever he opens his mouth and spews that Aramaic cr*p, I just want to spew! His sect is simply the worst!
btw - I support Israel. Does that make me an anti-Semite, Ross?
Anti-semitism is never limited simply to anti-Judaism.
It would appear that the Nazi's did. After all, Hitler's real grandfather was a Jew. ;)
Was Sigmund Freud a Jew?
Was Moses a Jew? According to Freud, the original Moses was an Egyptian High priest....
Ross:
Why is it that when I'm talking to you I get the feeling that I'm talking to a jumped up little modern-day fascist? Just which little corner of the USA do they find deluded, hysterical schoolboy fanatics like you?
You are truly a typical product of your absurdly anti-reality ideology - detached from reality and hypocritical way beyond the point of farce.
You scream for censorship in the face of any dissent, go off on hissy fits and project violent fantasies upon receipt of even the slightest deviation from your ludicrous song sheet - and yet label everyone else as 'fascist.'
Whereas I positively welcome debate, I enjoy engaging with all ideas and I love true diversity, especially of opinions - which is where the far 'lefts' avowed love of 'diversity' always ends.
You smear dissenters as 'anti-Semites' even though you decry race as a reality - and fail to understand that the real Semites are Arabs, anyway - and casually chuck around the childish label of 'Nazi' without even the merest hint of substantiation - all in reaction to historical facts.
You really are in a mess, son. You have not a scrap of integrity.
If you are not religious and really do not believe in race, then why on earth did you feel the need to arbitrarily announce you are 'Jewish' on a blog comments thread?
What was it you were trying to achieve with it? And on what basis do you claim to be Jewish, if not religious?
Were you not to announce it - for no apparent reason - no one would have known and you could have held your contempt for religion in tact as well as your denial of race.
But no, you choose to trumpet that you are 'Jewish' - why?
And a little more real history for you: Jews serving in the Nazi regimes military:-
Two field marshals, Fifteen generals (Two full generals, Eight lieutenant generals, Five major generals) and around 150,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen of other ranks.
Let's not forget the most famous Jewish Pro-Nazi of all-George Soros.
The Sentinel:
This is a dull, tired, and pedantic point you are trying to make, and even then you are failing to make it.
"Anti-semitism" is a specific historical and ideological disposition founded and popularized in the second half of the 19th century, and has always applied specifically to Jews, to the exclusion of other Semitic peoples and linguistic groups.
I tend to find even the use of the phrase "religious anti-semitism" in describing the discrimination of the Judaic religion in Europe and elsewhere prior to the 19th century to be a bit of an anachronism. Anti-semitism is a modern phenomenon, though it has some of its roots in the traditional anti-Judaic practices/prejudices that preceded its concrete formation in the 19th and 20th century.
I do not believe in the reality of "races" as qualitatively distinct genetic category, but I do accept (as most normal people do) looser national and "ethnic" categories. You know what I'm talking about: Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American, Chinese-American, Jewish-American. With places like Germany, Russia, and so on, there was a national/ethnic subcategory that would designate "German Jewish" or "еврейский человек" or so on.
The concept of an ethnic group isn't tied to the fantasies of spurious race science as it was developed in the nineteenth century, following the pseudo-Darwinian aftermath of The Origin of Species, Even within an ethnic group, there are often territorial distinctions. Sephardic Jews tend to originate more from Persia, Northern Africa, and Southern Spain; Ashkenazic Jews tend to originate from Western and Eastern Europe; Bukharian Jews tend to originate from Uzbekhistan. There are different linguistic and cultural practices that distinguish them,
In the same way, many Southern Italians specify their origin and cultural traditions in contradistinction to the Northern Italians. There have long been regional tensions there that give rise to this, despite their national unification in the 19th century. The same can be said for many of the regionalistic identifications in say, Spain.
The criticism of this or that being a "social construct" is extremely misleading, especially when it suggests that this means it has no validity whatsoever. Money and currency are also social constructs; they differ from nation to nation. This does not mean that they are somehow unreal.
I can't help but feel that many of these supposed stats and figures are lifted from Holocaust-denying websites and so on. Even granting that your figures are correct (which I'm not), do you deny that the Nazi regime systematically committed genocide against the Jews, Gypsies, and to a lesser extent the Slavs?
Even providing a response to your insane gibberish and crazed ramblings is to give them too much honor. But I am perhaps naive, and believe that historical and logical truth will win out.
Spoken like a true pedant!
*Let the laughter it deserves, begin!*
lol!
But I am perhaps naive, and believe that historical and logical truth will win out.
THAT was my favorite part! How far do you have to put the stick up your *rse before it crushes neocortical grey cells and releases such a statement... that's a question that I believe only Ross Wolfe is qualified to answer. Well, Ross? How far?
Ross:
Oh, but I made my point very succinctly - hence the usual internet spiel as your opener.
So far you have studiously avoided answering two very simple and straightforward question:
1) You ask "many atheistic Jews did Hitler send to the ovens?" - but don't answer the question. How many was it?
2) If you don't believe in a religion or race, why did you feel the need - totally arbitrarily , totally unnecessarily - to announce you were 'Jewish'? What do you feel you achieved with this?
On the other hand - continuing your consistent theme of overt hatred of dissent and subsequent juvenile abuse/ ranting / smearing / labelling - you have also managed to invoke Godwin's law in your second comment as well as the time-honoured classic totalitarian device of 'do you deny', lifted straight from the witch finder generals box of tricks, ensuring the subject - if they comply - must continue from a defensive position.
I am not responsible for any of the things you have mentioned so I need neither confirm nor deny them if I so choose - but I do find the question so much the more remarkable when you admit your grasp of history is so lamentable, but expect that someone else must be so well versed themselves so as to be at the point that they are capable of absolute denial or affirmation.
The Nazis undoubtedly killed many Jews along with groups, but then on the other hand also allowed Jews to be at the very head of its military and even the SS, as well as around 150,000 others throughout the ranks.
So, lets pause there and turn the 'do you deny' table - because what happened to the Jews was but one of a long line of such incidents, and I always find the answer to this very illuminating - do you deny the Holodomor? Do you deny that the Socialists (USSR) systematically committed genocide against the Ukrainian people?
Give me the answer to that and we can continue. Quid pro quo. I am more then happy to debate you on this, no area should be taboo - nor can be and remain intact.
Oh, and by the way, those figures on Jews in the Nazi regimes military are not mine - they are actually derived from the critically acclaimed research of Dr Bryan Mark Rigg - performed under grant from Cambridge University (where he obtained his Phd) and his publication on the subject won the 2003 Colby Award.
Dr Rigg is also Jewish, by the way.
Do you think you could be a bit more civil and adult like in this debate? The abuse adds nothing to it and merely serves to degrade you.
[D]o you deny the Holodomor? Do you deny that the Socialists (USSR) systematically committed genocide against the Ukrainian people?
No, I don't deny it. Why would I? Only Stalinists and Maoists would deny it, and I'm neither of those.
In terms of the technicality of whether it was strictly "genocide" or not, I believe that's a bit more of a debatable issue, because the Stalinists were more interested in destroying the kulaks as a class than liquidating ethnic Ukrainians as such. Either way, the numbers were still disproportionate to such an extent that I would not be surprised if it approached genocidal implications.
So now that I've answered you, clearly and unambiguously, we can "continue."
Bryan Mark Riggs' research has been criticized repeatedly, from many different angles, as both sensationalist and given to exaggerations that have since been used by Holocaust deniers (like you). Riggs' ideas have been by and large debunked, regardless of his claim to ethnic Jewish heritage. While there can be no question that some Jews managed to evade capture or recognition through military service, the Nazi state was overwhelmingly anti-semitic, both in its stated policies and its actions.
Godwin's so-called "law" is irrelevant when the subject of debate is Nazism. I made a remark that it was ironic that I, a Jew, should be compared to an infamous figure from the history of anti-Judaic sentiment, Shylock. Not really an uncalled for remark.
Ross:
Glad to see this is just a little more civil - there really is no need for the hysteria - though of course you still cannot resist being a silly little tit and throwing around the new smear of 'Holocaust denier' around without even the slightest basis.
But then that is how your sort work, isn't it now, son?
You still haven't answered those two questions though I see. Why not?
Why can't you? What is wrong here?
And by way Godwin's law absolutely applies because it is not related to the subject in hand, but rather that an unsubstantiated ad hominem attack is used, specifically comparing someone to the Nazi's. As you repeatedly do.
Without any substance whatsoever.
So, anyway, your answer is not in the least bit unambiguous or clear. Indeed you say the Holodomor is 'debatable' and only that it 'approaches genocide'.
In this case you actually you are denying the Holodomor because Holodomor means the attempted genocide of the Ukrainian people.
You are a Holodomor denier and a bone fide one at that - if that's how you want to roll - but before you answer, how many aspects of the Holocaust are 'debatable'?
The old chestnut that it was the 'Kulaks as a class' that the Socialists were trying to exterminate falls down very quickly when you consider that the Kulaks (independent farmers) were spread all throughout the USSR - and yet during the Holodomor it was only the Ukraine and Ukrainians that was sealed off and earmarked for annihilation.
Ross, it was pretty obvious that up until 39 minutes ago you had never heard of Dr Rigg nor his book, and so it is also pretty obvious that what you have done is some pretty furious googling in that 39 minutes to try and find something, anything that supports your anti-reality position.
And it is equally obvious that you cannot.
You say it has been ' have been by and large debunked' - but again offer no proof whatsoever. That is because the reality is that the book is thoroughly researched and documented - and that 39 minutes you spent desperately checking Wikipedia provided nothing other then the counter-opinions that you find against any publication.
But opinions are not facts, my confused little friend.
Tell me, of just these three - which ones is Dr Rigg wrong about: General Erhard Milch, General Johannes Zukertort, and General Helmut Wilberg?
In fact, the praise for his work comes from many quarters - a small selection below.
So when we come down it, we find again that what I said before is true: You have not a scrap of integrity.
You are not even remotely interested in reality or real history either and you and the truth appear to part company every time you touch a keyboard.
Small selection of praise for Dr Rigg's book:
"Startling and unexpected, Rigg's study conclusively demonstrates the degree of flexibility in German policy toward the Mischlinge, the extent of Hitler's involvement, and, most importantly, that not all who served in the armed forces were anti-Semitic, even as their service aided the killing process."
--Michael Berenbaum, author of The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust
"Rigg's extensive knowledge and the preliminary conclusions drawn from his research impressed me greatly. I firmly believe that his in-depth treatment of the subject of German soldiers of Jewish descent in the Wehrmacht will lead to new perspectives on this portion of 20th century German military history."
--Helmut Schmidt, Former Chancellor of Germany
"Through videotaped interviews, painstaking attention to personnel files, and banal documents not normally consulted by historians, and spurred by a keen sense of personal mission, Rigg has turned up an unexplored and confounding chapter in the history of the Holocaust. The extent of his findings has surprised scholars."
--Warren Hoge, New York Times
"An impressively researched work with important implications for hotly debated questions. Rigg tells some exquisitely poignant stories of individual human experiences that complicate our picture of state and society in the Third Reich."
--Nathan A. Stoltzfus, Florida State University, author of Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany
"With the skill of a master detective, Bryan Rigg reveals the surprising and largely unknown story of Germans of Jewish origins in the Nazi military. His work contributes to our understanding of the complexity of faith and identity in the Third Reich."
--Paula E. Hyman, Yale University, author of Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History and The Jews of Modern France
I don't see what sort of point you are trying to make by raising the point that Germans of Jewish descent served in the German army during WWII. An much larger number of Ukrainians served in the Soviet army fighting the Nazis, which would seem to be an analogous point, if you are talking about Jews serving in the Nazi army.
In case you are incapable of reading what I wrote, as it appears you were, here it is again: "Either way, the numbers [in the Holodomor] were still disproportionate to such an extent that I would not be surprised if it approached genocidal implications."
How does that amount to a rejection of Holodomor as a genocide, when I specifically state that the numbers were disproportionate enough to warrant its classification as a genocide?
Again, I'm not a Stalinist or a Maoist, and so it is not as if I feel like I have anything at stake in specifically denying or affirming the genocidal character of the Ukrainian famine.
You still have not answered whether or not the Nazis committed genocide against the Jews. Do you deny the figure of 6 million, agreed upon by the overwhelming majority of scholars? Why are you so reluctant to answer this question?
Also, you don't acknowledge the simple cultural/ethnic fact that Judaism is both an ethnicity and a religious affiliation. Ethnic Jews remain Jews even if they abandon their religion: "All streams in Judaism agree that there are two routes to Jewishness: ancestry and conversion."
Ross:
So once again you have not answered any of the questions but still persist with your 'do you deny' tactic (and this is the first time you have asked me to 'deny' 6 million, so there has been no 'reluctance' on my behalf.)
To recap the questions you have evaded thus far:
1) You ask "many atheistic Jews did Hitler send to the ovens?" - but don't answer the question. How many was it?
2) If you don't believe in a religion or race, why did you feel the need - totally arbitrarily , totally unnecessarily - to announce you were 'Jewish'? What do you feel you achieved with this?
And to add to the list:
3) How does saying that it is 'debatable' that the Holodomor was a genocide and a further statement that it 'approached' - that is not quite at the stage - a genocide now equate to 'unambiguous' 'clear' and 'specific'?
4) Do you now accept - clearly having not even having heard of Dr Rigg let alone his research just 39 minutes before claiming it has been 'debunked - that Dr Rigg's work is a independent, scholarly work of research based upon not only masses of interviews but also voluminous documents and also held to wide critical acclaim?
Now until you answer these questions - all posed long before your new question - there is no chance of any real debate.
Simply answer them honestly and I will follow suit. It really is that simple. You can't just ignore questions already asked and then go on with your 'do you deny' tactic relentlessly - I have already been very clear in what I believe happened.
I can and will elaborate further, and as always with evidence to support whatever I may contend, and clearly flag what I simply do not know.
But in respect to the question as to why it is significant that an extraordinary number of Jews held the highest military ranks in the Nazi regimes military and extraordinary numbers served in the Nazi regimes military - I would suggest that fact in itself goes some way to answering your original question: "do you deny that the Nazi regime systematically committed genocide against the Jews."
As for Jews and ethnicity: There is no other religious equivalent. There are no ethnic Christians, there are no ethnic Muslims nor Buddhists. Why is that?
And race 'as qualitatively distinct genetic category' - long since proven by science.
Many times over.
From the DNA research carried out so far, scientists have discovered 12% CNV difference between the races and the SNP difference between the races is 30%.
We also know that there is significant differences in core enzymes, genotypes and hormones that produce development and behavioural expressions such as cerebral convolutions, ACTN3, MAO-O, DAB1, testosterone to name a few – but the variation in allele frequencies between populations for virtually every known polymorphic gene is significant.
To elaborate a little more, the RR variant of ACTN3, is a gene that affects fast generation of muscular force and correlates with excellence at speed and power sports.
The opposite variant of the gene is called XX. Tests indicate that the ratio of people with RR to people with XX is 1 to 1 among Asians, 2 to 1 among European whites, and more than 4 to 1 among African-Americans.
You get the same pattern for testosterone, Chinese have lower levels than Europeans, who in turn have lower average levels than Africans.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Well Ross, I am a very busy man, I work for a living. But I will check back in when time permits to see if you have answered any of these questions and are really interested in a proper debate, rather then a juvenile slanging match.
I left out one question:
"How many aspects of the Holocaust are 'debatable'?"
1. I do not know the specific number of atheistic Jews who were killed under the Nazi regime, but a good percentage of the ethnic Jewish population in Germany and parts of Russia was secularized or atheistic. I cannot say for certain whether the number of non-religious Jews killed by the Nazis matched the same percentage of the overall population, but I don't see why it would be far off. And considering that the Nazis killed at least 6 million Jews, I would contend that many thousands of the Jews killed were not necessarily religious.
2. I don't believe in strict racial divisions. However, there are undeniably ethnic and national distinctions. An ethnic Jew who is non-religious is just as much a Jew as an ethnic Jew who is religious. And in either case they are just as ethnically Jewish as a non-religious Arab man would still be ethnically Arab.
3. I believe that the Ukrainian famine was intended to liquidate the kulak class, as in other parts of the Soviet Union, but also more specifically to crush Ukrainian nationalism. This is why the Ukrainians suffered such extreme losses compared to the other Soviet Republics. I do not believe that Holodomor was strictly a genocide, in the sense that there was no clear intent that the Soviets wanted to permanently wipe out the entire Ukrainian ethnic population.
4. I have not studied Dr. Rigg's work closely enough to say one way or the other. So I admit ignorance in this affair, though I might make a brief study of it.
5. The number of points that can bet debated about the holocaust are numerous.
Ok, so I've answered your questions, Answer my one question.
This conversation reminds me of a point in a conversation between an Athenian Stranger, Theodorus (a geometry teacher), and Theatetus (a geometry student) which the great translator Benjamin Jowett summarized as follows:
All divisions which are rightly made should cut through the middle; if you attend to this rule, you will be more likely to arrive at classes. 'I do not understand the nature of my mistake.' Your division was like a division of the human race into Hellenes and Barbarians, or into Lydians or Phrygians and all other nations, instead of into male and female; or like a division of number into ten thousand and all other numbers, instead of into odd and even. And I should like you to observe further, that though I maintain a class to be a part, there is no similar necessity for a part to be a class. But to return to your division, you spoke of men and other animals as two classes—the second of which you comprehended under the general name of beasts. This is the sort of division which an intelligent crane would make: he would put cranes into a class by themselves for their special glory, and jumble together all others, including man, in the class of beasts. An error of this kind can only be avoided by a more regular subdivision. Just now we divided the whole class of animals into gregarious and non-gregarious, omitting the previous division into tame and wild. We forgot this in our hurry to arrive at man, and found by experience, as the proverb says, that 'the more haste the worse speed.'
Each seeks to cut off a number from a larger number, neither a "class".
*shakes head*
And in either case they are just as ethnically Jewish as a non-religious Arab man would still be ethnically Arab.
....both hereditarily indistinguishable via a DNA test.
Ross:
Actually you still haven't answered why an atheist who doesn't believe in race felt the need to trumpet he was Jewish for no reason at all.
I would still like an answer to that, but seeing as you answered the rest I am happy to move forward.
Point three is bizarre because if you knew the history of the Holodomor you would know the methods used were precisely aimed at exterminating the whole of the Ukraine - and only the Ukrainians. As I said Kulaks were all over the USSR too.
But your erroneous point 'there was no clear intent that the Soviets wanted to permanently wipe out the entire Ukrainian ethnic population' could just as easily be applied to the Holocaust in that the Nazis clearly and openly allowed Jews to hold the highest ranks in its military and 150,000 to serve at all other levels. There is no evidence that they intended to kill them after the war.
As to your 'question' - as I already explained it is not couched in honest terms but of the 'do you deny' neo witch-finder lexicon, with the obvious result that the subject must proceed from a defensive position and be able to state 'yes' or 'no' with 100% absolute infallibility.
Anyone with a foot firmly in reality knows that this is not reality - and it used to scream abuse at any other answer then a resounding 'no'.
The truth is I have no intention of affirming or denying anything, most especially things I am not remotely responsible for.
But I will say that I work on evidence and facts, not emotive blackmail and threats and I have never seen any convincing evidence for the bang-on 6 million figure - that was announced so soon after the war it is hard to see how it could have been established.
This is hardly a specialist subject of mine so I would have to say - if I play along - that no 'I do not deny' the figure, I just haven't seen anything of substance to support it.
And most of the renderings I have seen from scholars merely quote other scholars rather then present the workings or their own research.
The best evidential figure I have seen works on what we know and what can be proved:
A top secret report by the Chief Inspector of the statistical bureau of the SS, Dr Richard Korherr,on the progress of the "Final Solution of the Jewish question" was ordered by Himmler in mid-1943.
Meticulous figures were kept by the RSHA and Dr Richard Korherr spent considerable time corroborating these figures.
The most salient parts of the report are that 1 274 166 Jews passed through camps in 'General Government' (Aktion Reinhard) and were subjected to 'Special treatment' a code word for killing, but Himmler objected to that word and it was changed to 'sifted through the camps.'
He also list as 'Transportation of Jews' to Eastern provinces at 1 449 692 - these are believed to have been killed or starved to death outside the Aktion Reinhard camps instead, in the many ghettos of the east.
Full Report
The upper figure for the murders of Jews carried out by the mobile killing squads - the Einsatzgruppen - is 1.4 million. The Einsatzgruppen (unbelievably) were prone to exaggeration in their numbers to curry favour, but I think even given this, combined with local murders outside Nazi instigation, this figure could well be right.
Source
The figure above of 1 274 166 Jews subjected to 'Special Treatment' in the Aktion Reinhard camps has been independently confirmed by a recently discovered coded intercept sent by SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, who was the coordinator of Aktion Reinhard.
Intercept
The Korherr figures are until 1943, but at was at or around this point the Aktion Reinhard camps ceased operations.
So given this, the most accurate figure I have seen is approximately 4,123,858 Jews killed.
Either ways, a considerable sum.
But I think we are far too close to the period, and there is far too emotive resistance to any closer study of what precisely occurred; we do know some of the more sensational aspects - which many people still claim to have seen to this day - such as human soap and human skin lampshades have been dismissed by Holocaust historians after thorough investigation as wartime propaganda originating back from WW1 and merely rehashed.
There are several other glaring inconstancies with the oft given official narrative that give rise to doubt as to the precise mechanics of what happened.
But ultimately there can be no doubt that millions of innocent people were murdered.
Just as there can be no doubt that it is overwhelming dwarfed in scope by the socialist frenzy of murder listed at around 110,000,000 million innocent victims, including the worlds biggest genocide.
I think the lesson in point from both examples is that extremist, totalitarian people and parties go on to create extremist, totalitarian regimes that go on to murder millions of innocent people.
"The Nazis undoubtedly killed many Jews along with groups, but then on the other hand also allowed Jews to be at the very head of its military and even the SS, as well as around 150,000 others throughout the ranks."
Complete, utter, offensive bullshit. Jews were banned - often violently - from professions and running businesses quite early in the Nazi regime. Their skills may have been used, but you may find that was in slave labour camps.
Why do Nazis crop up in this comments box so often??? Why do I detect an unsavoury fixation among some commentators? Ditto regarding racial 'characteristics'? Or indeed a suspiciously fascistic reliance on classical sources?
Wasn't the thread supposed to be about organised labour?
BTW who gives a rat's ass if Hitler had 'Jewish blood'. Does this make him 'less Hitler'?
Race science is ideologically driven pseudo-science. There's as much genetic variation within one family bloodline as there is between continents. The right-wing horseshit I read in these threads is all very bold and macho (and pompous) in style, but I'm afraid it doesn't make it true.
Ren (and Ross) - I do visit, but arguing with extreme right-wingers is a vortex I don't wanna get lost in.
You get a reaction to liberal claims (ie - 6 million) because they've turned out to be so ridiculously over stated (isn't 4 million horrible enough?). But it's no wonder no one takes the Left seriously anymore. Despite all claims to the contrary, they've proven themselves to be largely innumerate.
Actually you still haven't answered why an atheist who doesn't believe in race felt the need to trumpet he was Jewish for no reason at all.
I actually did answer this question, though perhaps I didn't spell it out in as exact terms as you might have liked. "Ethnicity" is a far looser category than race, and is one that carries cultural implications. Race, I believe, is a fiction, but ethnicity carries a fair degree of reality. Seeing as I am ethnically Jewish (via matrilineal descent), I believe I was perfectly justified in pointing out this fact, despite my being non-religious.
Also, you seemed at one point to be suggesting that "race" has a good deal of biological reality. Do you believe that certain races are inherently superior at some activities than others? If so, could you provide some examples?
And I tend to agree with you, W. Kasper. It's almost pointless to waste one's time debating anyone on the Right.
Though there are some definite differences between the various right-wingers here. Pagan and Speedy G. are probably the closest; they seem to agree on most things. Sentinel borders on the fascist without ever really coming out and announcing his true political commitments. Sonia is so reactionary that she rejects even the American Revolution, something that Pagan and Speedy G. doubtless think was justified.
On the money with the significance of ethnicity vis a vis race. A historical legacy and experience that continues to define one's life and relationship to power structures is real. As much as it is regarding religion or class.
Right-wingers don't like 'ethnicity' because they don't like assertive self-definition and versions of historical struggle unless its their own (overwhelmingly white, Christian and patriarchal in the west). They prefer 'race' because that gives them license to define and contain those they wish to see disempowered and rendered voiceless. They want whiteness to be the only a priori reality, and then pretend it's 'universal'. They can also explain away socio-economic factors (and historical responsibilities) with racial 'characteristics'.
In a nutshell, the implication is that white supremacy is some 'natural order'. Which may be why so many freaked out at the idea of a black man upholding this order. All the bullshit about birth certificates, socialism, reparations etc. was just their way of expressing unease that capitalism and imperialism overseen by a non-white felt 'unatural' to them. That he offered no challenge to the status quo was by-the-by in the minds of the racist right.
lol!
Pick you poison, it's either the racist right or moronic left.
At least the right doesn't presume to attribute to the motivations of the left nefarious causes. We accept that you are simply "brain damaged".
On "racism" as the perpetual motivational cause of right-wing behaviour...
Nietzsche, "Twilight of the Idols"
The error of imaginary causes. To begin with dreams: a cause is slipped after the fact under a particular sensation (for example, the sensation following a far-off cannon shot) — often a whole little novel is fabricated in which the dreamer appears as the protagonist who experiences the stimulus. The sensation endures meanwhile as a kind of resonance: it waits, so to speak, until the causal interpretation permits it to step into the foreground — not as a random occurrence but as a "meaningful event." The cannon shot appears in a causal mode, in an apparent reversal of time. What is really later (the causal interpretation) is experienced first — often with a hundred details that pass like lightning before the shot is heard. What has happened? The representations which were produced in reaction to certain stimulus have been misinterpreted as its causes.
In fact, we do the same thing when awake. Most of our general feelings — every kind of inhibition, pressure, tension, and impulsion in the ebb and flow of our physiology, and particularly in the state of the nervous system — excites our causal instinct: we want to have a reason for feeling this way or that — for feeling bad or good. We are never satisfied merely to state the fact that we feel this way or that: we admit this fact only — become conscious of it only — when we have fabricated some kind of explanation for it. Memory, which swings into action in such cases without our awareness, brings up earlier states of the same kind, together with the causal interpretations associated with them — not their actual causes. Of course, the faith that such representations or accompanying conscious processes are the causes is also brought forth by memory. Thus originates a habitual acceptance of a particular causal interpretation, which, as a matter of fact, inhibits any investigation into the real cause — it even excludes it.
Ross,
Sonia is so reactionary that she rejects even the American Revolution
Whereas Ross is so progressive that he fully embraces a revolution that forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands of Americans from their homes and forced them to seek refuge in Canada, prolonged slavery (abolished much earlier in the "reactionary royalist" British empire than in the "progressive revolutionary" United States), and exterminated Native Americans (ever heard of the Trail of Tears or Wounded Knee, Ross - genocides committed by progressive American revolutionaries while the ink on the Declaration of Independence was still fresh).
Are you aware, "progressive" Ross, that almost all Native American tribes supported the "reactionary" British during the American Revolution ? Apparently that revolution was way too progressive for them.
And it's too "progressive" for me too... I would rather be a reactionary standing alongside Tecumseh and other Native American heroes, than a progressive revolutionary slaughtering Native women and children.
Kasper:
Having encountered you here before I know that you are another one that has no grasp on reality, just a fixation with anti-reality soundbites rooted in ignorance.
Allow me to clear up all of your points:
"Complete, utter, offensive bullshit. Jews were banned"
All completely 100% true and thoroughly researched, backed up with original documents and copious interviews.
Lets start with three at the very top: General Erhard Milch, General Johannes Zukertort, and General Helmut Wilberg.
History isn't what you want it to be - it is what is really happened.
That you find history contrary to your narrative 'offensive' is no surprise, you are another feckless follower of the cult of anti-reality.
"Why do Nazis crop up in this comments box so often??? Why do I detect an unsavoury fixation among some commentators?"
Because Ross brought them up. No one else. Ross.
It was his fixation that brought them here.
"Wasn't the thread supposed to be about organised labour?"
No, its an open thread.
"Race science is ideologically driven pseudo-science"
Race is a reality proven by science whereas your silly outburst is an ideologically driven pseudo-opinion based upon nothing.
First prove which scientists it is that are behind this. Then disprove their research
Start with this tip of the iceberg:
From the DNA research carried out so far, scientists have discovered 12% CNV difference between the races and the SNP difference between the races is 30%.
We also know that there is significant differences in core enzymes, genotypes and hormones that produce development and behavioural expressions such as cerebral convolutions, ACTN3, MAO-O, DAB1, testosterone to name a few – but the variation in allele frequencies between populations for virtually every known polymorphic gene is significant.
To elaborate a little more, the RR variant of ACTN3, is a gene that affects fast generation of muscular force and correlates with excellence at speed and power sports.
The opposite variant of the gene is called XX. Tests indicate that the ratio of people with RR to people with XX is 1 to 1 among Asians, 2 to 1 among European whites, and more than 4 to 1 among African-Americans.
You get the same pattern for testosterone, Chinese have lower levels than Europeans, who in turn have lower average levels than Africans.
-
"I do visit, but arguing with extreme right-wingers is a vortex I don't wanna get lost in"
That is, you wish to see dissent banned. Because you hate people and discourse that does not agree 100% with your delusions.
"In a nutshell, the implication is that white supremacy is some 'natural order'"
Again your fixation no one else has even remotely suggested anything of the sort.
-
So that is every 'point' of yours exposed for the utter horseshit it is.
Again.
Ross:
"I actually did answer this question, though perhaps I didn't spell it out in as exact terms as you might have liked."
Actually no you haven't.
Why, for no reason at all, did you decide to announce you were Jewish? To what end and for what purpose?
"Race, I believe, is a fiction"
You believe, yes. Is your belief a fiction? Yes.
Explain the above on just a few racial differences, if you will - and explain how a 'social construct' can account for them.
"Do you believe that certain races are inherently superior at some activities than others?"
No, do you? Its seems to be the fixation of the left. First Kapser, now you.
I believe in true diversity and the wonderful variations of mankind. Each different in many ways, each close in others. Every group unique and every manifestation of their uniqueness making the world a glorious and exciting place to travel.
"It's almost pointless to waste one's time debating anyone on the Right."
Actually science (again, wonderful science) has proven the complete opposite. See below.
"Sentinel borders on the fascist"
Substantiate.
Joe:
"We accept that you are simply "brain damaged"."
Well, at least genetically pre-disposed to anti-reality dogma and close mindedness in the face of reality.
DRD4 - the gene of delusion.
Report
Report
I don't want 'dissent banned', Herr Sentinel Der Zorn Gottes, I just have limited patience with assholes, particularly Nazis too arrogant and smug to recognise themselves as such. For instance, similar douchies who quote that psychotic gynophobic gimp Nietschze as though its gospel. It'll be Atlas Shrugged next. I may as well argue with cuckatoos.
Now go suck a fuck, as Donnie Darko so memorably put it...
BTW Sentinel Von Schiezen-Swigger.
You're such a 'dissenter' you shill pesudo-science - ie. political eugenics - from those hotbeds of radical dissent Harvard and the Daily fucking Telegraph. But of course, you're such an uncritical, self-felching dumb-ass, your golden peanut of a brain doesn't have enough room to ask who's may be paying for this propaganda or why.
Go on - give us all a lecture on 'reality' again. I could do with a smirk. I'm sure you'd dig laughing at the retarded, anyway. Let us have our turn with you!
Kasper:
I am really not sure what you think you have achieved with a demented rant in lieu of any substantive answers to the questions posed - all it has done is expose you for what you really are.
Typically all you have produced is a shower of hate, venom, malice and unsubstantiated smears.
And that is because you are full of hate, venom, malice and malevolent libel. That is who is you are, that is what your ideology attracts, and that is why you are attracted to it.
The hilarious part is that you no doubt think you are a beacon of tolerance, a force for good and occupying some sort of moral high ground, when nothing could be further from the truth, as you so eloquently demonstrate here.
You are in the gutter.
What you haven't been able to do - of course and once again - is to address one single point raised, answer one single question or engage in any normal adult debate - instead, once again, reverting to type and emulating an enraged faeces throwing monkey in the face of discourse that doesn't affirm your delusions.
It is quite amusing in a blog comments thread, I will admit. But the laughter ends when people like you actually make it into power - then we see the orgies of oppression, torture, degradation, mass murder and genocide of epic proportions that is the legacy of the socialists, and their only impact on this earth thus far.
You are so thoroughly deluded that you dementedly rail against a scientific reality as a 'social construct' (even though you are unable to substantiate any of your absurd claims, naturally) whilst fanatically pursuing an ideology that has its very foundations - indeed its very raison d'être - a very real, and very obvious 'social construct' - that of 'class'.
And even then, the supposed beneficiaries of your so-called benevolence have always been the ones to suffer the most:
The biggest mass murderers and oppressors of the working class this world has ever see has been the socialists, starting from the very moment Lenin and Trotsky assumed power all the way through until the evil, warped regime they kick-started imploded.
Working class people would literally have to be insane, completely ignorant of history and utterly suicidal to have anything to do with nasty, vicious, jumped-up little homicidal fanatics like you and the shit-eating brand you are trying to force on them.
Now we both know exactly what we think of each, do you have any substance to add? Can you justify any of your 'points'?
Or you happy to let everyone see what an ignorant, dishonest, ranting liability you are?
Again.
Aw gee pop - thanks! It won't happen again.
Now if you don't mind, I have some Ukranians to exterminate. I may be a little busy for a few days. Being a hate-filled mass murderer sure is hard work...
Yeah, but being an internet gobshite twat is just so easy for you though, isn't it? It comes so naturally.
What is much more difficult though is substantiating the unsubstantiateable.
You can't back up even one of your absurd claims.
And as we can all see, you find racism and genocide ever so amusing - only certain racism and genocide though, of course, in keeping with the deeply nasty hypocritical racist you are.
You are full of shit. I know it. You know. So does everyone else now.
Job done.
Did I neglect to mention that you're a fucking arsehole?
As for 'internet gobshite twat' - I'd have no problem telling you this right up to your shiny golden face, Herr Ubermeschen Doofus.
PS.
You're a fucking arsehole.
Course you would Kasper, you racist internet little gobshite twat, course you would.
You really don't like being shown up as the lying fantasist fuckwit you are, now do you?
But of course, through all the panto rage, you are just another internet hard man, aren't you, Kasper. A real, genuine loser. I always find mouthy clowns like you who need to gob off via a DSL line to be the funniest, and so does everyone else.
You just expose more and more of your demented hypocritical racist delusions every time you come here. Quite literally, you take the time to log into a comments box to make, well, no comment!
All you have is empty mantras and then angry internet gobshitery when the empty mantras are challenged.
What a lowlife cunt you are. What an oxygen thief.
First we have this reaction from you to historical fact:
"Complete, utter, offensive bullshit .... Jews"
And then this one to another historical fact:
" Now if you don't mind, I have some Ukranians [sic] to exterminate"
What a racist lowlife cunt you are: Jews = outrage, Ukrainians = hilarity.
So you are the real racial supremacist - as it always is with mugs like you - placing one group and their suffering above another group and their suffering: As racist as it gets.
Add that to the fact that you can't back up any of your absurd claims, lets just pick three:
1) Dr Rigg's research, document and interviews are "Complete, utter, offensive bullshit" ...
2) "Race science is ideologically driven pseudo-science" ...
3) "you shill pesudo-science - ie. political eugenics ... who's ... paying for this propaganda or why" ...
And then factor in the extremely embarrassing name 'Kasper' ...
... and the fact that you are so useless to society and also yourself that you can't find even menial gainful employment and have to resort to being a professional ponce, breaking in to other peoples homes to live in them and leeching off the state for the rest - i.e other peoples hard earned taxes ...
... and I guess I can understand why such a useless, parasitic, stupid, low-life cunt is just so angry at being exposed as one.
I feel for you Kasper, I really do.
No the hilarity was at YOU, you moron; with your righteous accusations that I was a mass-murdering racist Stalinist, along with your 'Ekshully, Jews did quite well under the Nazis' codswallop. The difference between the comforting lies you insist upon telling and a joke at your expense, you fucking buffoon.
You don't feel anything 'Sentinel' ('Cyborg' would be more apt, surely?), except maybe when you 'jag-off' over Soldier of Fortune magazine, and the calmer moments of Das Boot.
Now really, give it up before I get annoyed, you waffling blowhard prick.
Kasper the racist internet gobshite coward is back with more horseshit.
What's wrong Kasper, haven't got the balls to back up your horseshit claims? Or you can't? Which one is it? Bit of both?
You are quite possibly the most vile racist I have encountered on this blog, bar one actually. I think you are on par with him. You find the horrific genocide of Europeans hilarious and the subject of jokes. Your disgusting views offend all normal minded people. You truly are lowlife racist scum.
As for your new claims? More lying horseshit: I clearly said millions of innocent Jews were murdered; in fact I went out of my to prove it. You? You joke about genocide. You think its funny.
Now either answer the questions and confront your racism or fuck off.
But I must admit, to see what will 'happen' when a wimpy, little, unemployed and unemployable, lowlife gobshite internet coward cunt gets 'annoyed' will be most amusing.
Oh go on then Kasper, lets see it.
Not quite there yet, Sent the Cunt. Try harder.
What no more racist lies to tell, Kasper?
By the way, don't you feel even slightly ashamed living off other peoples labour?
Why don't you get a job? Even someone like you is employable for very simple manual labour.
Don't you realise that you are a parasite on society? A useless leech?
I'm sure my taxes have paid for your meds and the electrodes they apply to your tiny skull every now and then, fuckwit.
I don't mind, that's the benefits of a mixed economy. Even Nazis deserve medical help once in a while - wouldn't you agree, Colonel Kockoff?
You have never paid a penny of tax in your life. You are a taker, not a giver, and in more ways then one.
So do you mug people as well as squat in their houses?
ZZZZTTTT!
Fascists developed that treatment, y'know. For 'political degenerates'. Grimly ironic in light of your statements, no?
PS. You're a fucking arsehole.
Game, Set, Match... Sentinel. :P
Despite my limited resources of late, I do have a pot to piss in: Sentinel's empty skull.
Maybe he's busy deleting all those emails to his Norwegian friend...
Kasper the racist ponce just cant help but come back to further embarrass himself.
Now we have already seen how he is completely unable to justify any of his absurd statements - pretty much the point of any debate and comments box - and I have already proved what a low-life cunt he is, and here he is again proving just what a real belly crawling low-life cunt he is and the depths he can sink to.
I wondered how long it would be before he found another human tragedy to be used as humour, and here he is, before the bodies have even been buried, using the murder of children merely to continue his bizarre feud in a blog comments box.
No respect for anything, especially not human life, as we have seen in his attitude to genocide already. But given that his cult has killed more then 100M people, that is hardly surprising.
Kasper, you really are a piece of low-life shit. Not a word of condolence or sorrow for what has happened and its human misery, just a golden opportunity for you to use as a pathetic and disgusting joke.
My thoughts, like that of any normal person, are with the families of the victims and those who were forced to witness this carnage. I am not religious but I truly hope that the victims found whatever they believed in.
So there wasn't TOO many emails to delete then? Did you get a moment for a quick tank-wank too? Or are jeeps more your thang?
There's only one 'tragedy' (you sanctimonious shit-stain) that I find funny. I'm insulting it as I type.
I'm trying my best not to use long words here, but take your time if you find the above a little difficult to process.
Like I said, you are a low-life cunt now laughing at the tragedy of as yet unburied murdered children, and on top of that, you now even manage to add debased sexual references in as well.
You really do disgust me and every other normal minded person.
You really do have no respect for anyone or anything and even people you think support you can see it.
You truly are scum.
"Normal-minded person"???
Do you say that twelve times every morning into your shaving mirror? Or when you're polishing your helmet?
It's a nice day, Sentie the Bentie. Why not try a one-man parade up and down the high street with the flag of your choice (something with a cross-based design, perhaps?). If it gets too wearing after a few hours, try shoving the pole up your arse. Hopefully far enough to crush your larynx. Nazis care about air pollution, no? I know I do, being a bloodthirsty despot and all. Magazines just don't do it for some of us y'know!
PS.
You.
Are.
A.
Fucking arsehole.
Kasper, you really don't have any idea of how badly you are coming off here.
No one, but no one finds the murder of these children in any way funny and the fact that you do will just disgust all normal minded people.
So then, any thoughts on a labour-affiliated party?
You still have ten goes left on "normal minded people" BTW. Don't waste it.
Kasper, you really don't have any idea of how badly you are coming off here.
No one, but no one finds the murder of these children in any way funny and the fact that you do will just disgust all normal minded people.
Nine left!
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