Genocide Denial

[fides' Jack]

I still don't think it can be classified as "very immoral." He's not actually doing the killing (which is very immoral), he's just saying that it was perfectly acceptable.

So - again - it could be one of two things: lying or ignorance. If his fault is that he's a liar, then sure, I'll be friends with him. There probably isn't a single person on PM who isn't a liar. If he's ignorant, then sure, I'll be friends with him; and I might feel sorry for that particular belief of his.

I'm not missing the point. I'm making my own. The question was whether it's right or wrong to "ostracize" someone for basically thinking that the armenian genocide was acceptable - not whether it's okay to perform those actions, or even to believe it's okay to perform those actions. I think the intended question was whether or not it's okay to stop being friends with the person. I say sure - but I think it could be a sign of immaturity.

Just saying...

[4588686]

[quote name='fides' Jack' timestamp='1327355882' post='2374011']
I still don't think it can be classified as "very immoral." He's not actually doing the killing (which is very immoral), he's just saying that it was perfectly acceptable.

So - again - it could be one of two things: lying or ignorance. If his fault is that he's a liar, then sure, I'll be friends with him. There probably isn't a single person on PM who isn't a liar. If he's ignorant, then sure, I'll be friends with him; and I might feel sorry for that particular belief of his.

I'm not missing the point. I'm making my own. The question was whether it's right or wrong to "ostracize" someone for basically thinking that the armenian genocide was acceptable - not whether it's okay to perform those actions, or even to believe it's okay to perform those actions. I think the intended question was whether or not it's okay to stop being friends with the person. I say sure - but I think it could be a sign of immaturity.

Just saying...
[/quote]

So it is really in bad taste to have this disdainful attitude towards Joseph Goebbels these days?

[fides' Jack]

Okay - you can't just say names like that to me and expect me to know who you're talking about. I hate history.

Fortunately, I know how to use Google.

It seems to me in the roughly 7 seconds that I read about him on Wikipedia, that he was quite significantly involved in the immoral actions of Nazi Germany. So if that's the case, then no, it's quite right to have a disdainful attitude toward him.

The genocide in question happened a century ago. Chances are this "friend" that we're discussing had no part in it. Still, I didn't say it would be in bad taste - just a possible sign of immaturity.

[4588686]

[quote name='fides' Jack' timestamp='1327357354' post='2374031']
Okay - you can't just say names like that to me and expect me to know who you're talking about. I hate history.

Fortunately, I know how to use Google.

It seems to me in the roughly 7 seconds that I read about him on Wikipedia, that he was quite significantly involved in the immoral actions of Nazi Germany. So if that's the case, then no, it's quite right to have a disdainful attitude toward him.

The genocide in question happened a century ago. Chances are this "friend" that we're discussing had no part in it. Still, I didn't say it would be in bad taste - just a possible sign of immaturity.
[/quote]

How was he significantly involved? By advocating the extermination of Jews? By using his rhetorical flourishes to whip up xenophobia and antisemitism in the German masses? Goebbels didn't actually do any killing. He simply encouraged the regime that did. By the criteria you have laid out here I think it would be quite immature to defriend a swell and sophisticated man like Goebbels, with a doctorate in 19th century romantic drama, over a silly disagreement of opinion on the moral acceptability of slaughtering some Jews.

[MissMaro]

fides Jack,

I don't recall saying anything about a crusader or my feelings about forming a friendship with one...

The kind of indifference towards immoral ideas you argue for is exactly the kind of indifference to ideas that allowed millions of people to be murdered by their governments in the twentieth century. Ideas matter because people act on ideas. Hasan basically made this point with Goebbels, but I thought I'd try to put it into my own words.

I don't know that I could be friends with someone who continually lied and advocated murder, and contrary to what you seem to think, not everyone on here is a liar. Lying is actually a sin, and it can be avoided. As I mentioned before, "Do not be deceived: Bad company ruins good morals." (1 Corinthians 15:33) If someone who speaks in favor mass murder under any circumstances isn't bad company, I'm not sure what would be.

I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt (maybe he doesn't realize the full implications of the things he's said and written), but I don't regard it as necessarily immature to avoid someone who holds immoral views. I could certainly find a certain amount of support for the idea that it's important to choose your friend carefully, and maybe I will later, but I really ought to go read some more Greek, or I will get behind in my class.

God bless!

Edited January 24, 2012 by MissMaro

[Aloysius]

I think I'd have to see exactly what he has said and written on the subject. I find it hard to believe he's just saying "the starvation, killing, and raping of innocent men, women and children was acceptable", that sounds like a paraphrase from someone who believes the historical account of purposefuly Armenian genocide, and especially if this fellow is studying the issue as part of his life's work I imagine his position has more to do with somehow supposing that the men killed weren't innocent and were somehow combattants, and that the women and children starved was collateral damage of war, et cetera... sounded earlier in the conversation more like he was describing it as the collateral damage of a civil war rather than a systematic purposeful genocide, and that he considered some of the actions to be self-defense in some way. again, I think that is a wrong position to hold,

if he is indeed advocating that one ought to starve and rape women and children to get rid of Armenians today, that is one thing. to question the historical narrative of purposefule genocide, even when one does not dispute the fact that many died, I think is quite another thing entirely. I generally support a free exchange of ideas, even wrong and stupid ones, and not just among strangers but among friends who heartily disagree. I think my points about the Irish Famine and the Abortion holocaust prior in this thread get to this point: I have friends who don't think the British actions that led to starvation in Ireland and their subsequent callous actions towards that population on the basis of wanting the low class Irish to be gone could properly be considered genocide, but who think it's free market social darwinism and is perfectly acceptable. that doesn't make them any less my friends, though I have a huge disagreement with them on that.. i have friends who know that abortion is happening but who justify it and say it's okay; again, they are still friends. I'm pretty hard-line in my assertion that I do not base friendship on idealogy, and I just think it's a better way to live.

now, if your friend was trying to get you to murder armenians, that'd be bad company in my opinion. but if he's just arguing ideas, even wrong ones, I don't see that as bad company, it's company that deserves to be argued with by a friend trying to set them right.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Aloysius

[Aloysius]

Obviously, do what you want regarding the friendship. you're under no moral obligation to remain friends with him so long as you continue to love him in Christian charity as your neighbor and brother human being... I guess I just opened up a theoretical discussion of what friendship means to me. personally, I would remain friends with the guy, certainly I wouldn't eschew his assistance in my Hebrew studies if I were you... but when it comes to what kind of company you keep among your friends and close friends, only you can make that decision and obviously you should make that decision based on what kind of experience of life you wish to have. but it's just somethng to think about, people can fall into crazy idealogies sometimes especially when the more they learn about some particular nutty theory about something, the less friends remain with them to influence them for the better.

[Anastasia13]

So what are his thoughts on the genocide? Does he think it was ok, that it was war-related, or that it was a response to rebellion/nationalism, or does he think that the killings occurred but were not systematic? Is it differing values or differing knowledge of history? How much does this come up in the relationship? Would holding differing views come up significantly?

Edited January 24, 2012 by Light and Truth

[MissMaro]

Aloysius,

I think I've already made my view on this more than clear. You don't have to agree, you can even doubt what I say about it, but you don't have to keep trying to convince me that dropping a friend over immoral beliefs is petty. I get it. You'd be willing to be friends people who thought genocide was okay until they actually started killing because you wouldn't want to drop a friendship over anything as supposedly trivial as someone [i]believing[/i] it's okay to murder another person. I've got the concept and I disagree.

[MissMaro]

[quote name='Light and Truth' timestamp='1327385912' post='2374315']
So what are his thoughts on the genocide? Does he think it was ok, that it was war-related, or that it was a response to rebellion/nationalism, or does he think that the killings occurred but were not systematic? Is it differing values or differing knowledge of history? How much does this come up in the relationship? Would holding differing views come up significantly?
[/quote]

I think I've already shared his views on the subject. He doesn't think the Armenian genocide counted as a genocide. He thinks that it was not premeditated and that the Turks were justified in doing what they had to do to the "rebellious" Armenians and so it wasn't a crime against humanity. They just did what they had to do and they had some misfortunes along the way, misfortunes that included killing people. (And yes he knows who killed the Armenians.) Whether he realizes the full implications of his thinking is beyond me. He has a denialist advisor, so it's easy to see where his beliefs come from.

As for the idea that differing points of view are possible on the subject, I'd have to disagree, and that you are willing to accept that idea is proof of the kind of damage genocide denial does. There are not two sides to this event. There is the truth of what happened which has a mountain of evidence in its favor- including evidence from foreign missionaries, ambassadors, turkish soldiers, etc, and there is the genocide denial which, as Deborah Lipstadt says, "sows confusion by appearing to be a genuine scholarly effort" and which "strives to reshape history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators."

Whether it come up in the relationship or not, his chosen career path is to become a expert in genocide studies who espouses denialist views. If he were just some guy who believed these things because he was mislead by a professor and terribly ignorant, it would be one thing. But he studies genocide all. day. long. and I consider what he's trying to do very immoral. You don't have to agree with me, but I have to say that I agree with Elie Wiesel that it's a "double-killing" because first they murdered two-thirds of the Armenians who were in Turkey and now they are trying to destroy and distort the memory of what happened in order to mislead people. It's disgusting, and I'm not okay with it in any way, shape, or form for any genocide from the Armenian one to the Rwandan one.

[beatitude]

MissMaro, I understand your perspective completely. I have just finished taking a course in Holocaust Studies, and one of the seminars was on Holocaust denial. We studied denial as a phenomenon and we looked at the writings of some noted Holocaust revisionists. But we weren't assessing their work as scholarship. What they have done does not qualify as scholarship. They would not be given a platform to spread their views at any mainstream university. That would be like inviting members of the Flat Earth Society to teach a course on geophysics, only with an additional layer of moral repugnance.

There has never been a genocide that was not haunted afterwards by the spectre of denial. It happened with the Jews, with the Roma (ironically certain prominent figures in Holocaust remembrance, most notably Eli Wiesel, have objected to the representation of the Romani people on the US Holocaust Memorial Council on the grounds that the Nazi killing of Gypsies can't be seen in the same light as their killing of Jews), with the Armenians, with the Tutsis, with the Cambodians who fell victim to the Khmer Rouge, on and on ad infinitum. The difference is that with some genocides, such denial is considered quasi-acceptable in academic circles. There are often very mundane and cynical reasons for this. It's unpleasant to watch, but really the best thing we can do is pray - for deniers, and for the historians who are able to combat them.

[MissMaro]

[quote name='MissMaro' timestamp='1327413907' post='2374379']
Aloysius,

I think I've already made my view on this more than clear. You don't have to agree, you can even doubt what I say about it, but you don't have to keep trying to convince me that dropping a friend over immoral beliefs is petty. I get it. You'd be willing to be friends people who thought genocide was okay until they actually started killing because you wouldn't want to drop a friendship over anything as supposedly trivial as someone [i]believing[/i] it's okay to murder another person. I've got the concept and I disagree.
[/quote]

I would just like to add that it's possible I misunderstood what he [i]meant.[/i] I am merely going off what he wrote and said, and I certainly can't read his mind and heart. But I can see the harm that genocide denial causes and that's why I consider it so very wrong, no matter what is going on in the mind of the person spreading it. The person's individual culpability can vary, but they are still doing something that is gravely wrong in my opinion, whether they know the harm they are causing or not.

[MissMaro]

Beatitude,

Thank you for writing what you did. I agree with you completely.

I've never taken a class on the Holocaust, but it was an obsession with me from the age of nine till I was about twelve or so, and I read a great many accounts both memoirs and history books. I have read that genocide denial is often referred to as the last stage of genocide. It's sad that human nature is so predictable, and you are right to say we should pray for the people involved.

I thought it was funny what Deborah Lipstadt said against making Holocaust denial illegal. I'm not sure I agree with her, but she makes an interesting point:

[url="http://marker.to/MYhKZj"]http://marker.to/MYhKZj[/url]

[cmotherofpirl]

I wonder what he thinks of the Irish holocaust...

[4588686]

[quote name='MissMaro' timestamp='1327421651' post='2374448']
Beatitude,

Thank you for writing what you did. I agree with you completely.

I've never taken a class on the Holocaust, but it was an obsession with me from the age of nine till I was about twelve or so, and I read a great many accounts both memoirs and history books. I have read that genocide denial is often referred to as the last stage of genocide. It's sad that human nature is so predictable, and you are right to say we should pray for the people involved.

I thought it was funny what Deborah Lipstadt said against making Holocaust denial illegal. I'm not sure I agree with her, but she makes an interesting point:

[url="http://marker.to/MYhKZj"]http://marker.to/MYhKZj[/url]
[/quote]

[url="http://articles.latimes.com/2001/may/20/books/bk-144"]http://articles.latimes.com/2001/may/20/books/bk-144[/url]

I dislike genocide laws. But I'm also not entirely comfortable with saying that the state can never step in to mute free speech in the case of a man like Hitler.