Trump

[Mike]

That was the point I was getting to as well. Even if you "All Lives Matter" the Holocaust, Trump is the President of the United States of America. He should know that NOT acknowledging the suffering of the Jewish people in a public speech about the Holocaust would cause great offense. And if for some reason the POTUS is too stupid to know that basic fact, he should still be surrounded with people whose JOB it is to tell him such things to avoid international incidents.

So either the man was ignorant of the realities of the situation and no one bothered to tell him...

Or they told him and he forgot and/or didn't listen...

Or he intentionally wanted to send a specific message.

Any of those options is horrible.

[Phoebe]

Montel Williams explained why the response was inadequate at best. Pick your favorite outraged Twitter quote from our POTUS and compare its vigor to the too-late condemnations of bigotry. The overall picture is clear.

[poorpete]

Question.

Is Trump attacking the most vulnerable (trans teens, immigrants with little or no recourse) because that's all he can do without Congress stopping him? Is it all he wants to do, or all he can get away with right now?

[Mike]

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

Then again, no one batted an eye when Hillary's SecState release on the Holocaust didn't explictly mention the Jews.

The United States joins the global community in marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Each year, we gather together to commemorate the victims of one of the worst tragedies in human history. Indeed, almost 70 years after the end of World War II, we continue to honor those lives that were brutally taken during the Holocaust by the Nazis. This machinery of systematic extermination also took the lives of Roma, gays, persons with disabilities, and others deemed inferior or undesirable by the Nazis. As President Obama has said, “We must tell our children about a crime unique in human history…not simply to remember, but to speak” of such crimes against humanity.

Since the Holocaust, the world has witnessed other genocides -- in Cambodia, Srebrenica, Rwanda and Darfur. We see Holocaust denial proclaimed on every continent. As we move into the 21st century, we must take a stronger stand against genocide.

It is our obligation to stay true to our values and maintain constant vigilance. We must never forget that when the checks and balances in government and society that protect fundamental freedoms are lost, the result can be massive atrocities. The United States is committed to a world in which the lessons of the Holocaust are taught and that all human rights are valued so that this will never happen again.


"“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.

“Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest.‎ As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.

“In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.”

What's the difference, exactly?

[Phoebe]

I am very sorry to intrude with real facts as opposed to these alternative ones but the Israelis are not committing genocide against the Palestinians.

[Phoebe]

This is the kind of thing going on now:

This is what we can expect now.

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[Phoebe]

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

I'm having difficulty figuring out this response because I did not write any of the things you quoted me as writing - those are your words which I am claiming are false statements. Statements can be false in many ways, so responding to whatever set of straw men or teacups you are imagining doesn't mean you're responding to the arguments I would give.

To that end, let me explain some things, and yes, everything I am saying here is factually correct. No, I do not need to cite political websites to demonstrate these facts, in part because most people who aren't conspiracy theorists have already agreed on them, nor do I bear any obligation to get into demonstrations unless we're going to have a polite exchange.

The Holocaust was unique in both methodology and results. Your own counterexample makes this quite clear: Ukrainians were not transported on trains to the gas chambers and work camps. They were starved, and the question is whether that was done intentionally and because they were Ukrainians. Even if the goal was to crush a Ukrainian nationalist movement, it's clearly a different thing from the effort to eradicate an entire specific group of people from the earth. The Armenian genocide is actually more similar in that respect, but it too was conducted in an entirely different manner, for different reasons. I believe these things matter in judging whether the Holocaust is unique in method and results. If I am wrong about this, it's not because my facts are wrong.

You are also being very dishonest in your citation of statistics. You mention 6 million Jews murdered - excluding all the rest - and then compare it to the highest estimate of all people who died either through direct starvation OR through indirect results of famine in Ukraine, a number that nobody has yet successfully fixed with accuracy. The whole thing was profoundly sick and immoral, yes, but your effort to act as if the Ukrainian genocide is somehow worse due to numbers is completely misleading. It's also not clear why you're straining to make this argument in the first place, since I certainly think what happened in Ukraine was genocide. The Armenian genocide was genocide. Of course we should remember this; it should be front and center in our minds as we consider what to do about Russia's latest round of extremely aggressive actions in Ukraine. When you say things like, "hey, fuck those guys, amirite?" as if that's a relevant response to me, we cannot have a polite or reasonable exchange on this subject. I am not suggesting that any of these other cases do not matter. I am suggesting that Trump needs to specifically recognize the specific genocidal event that Holocaust Remembrance Day was intended to recognize, and not pussyfoot around it because he needs to appease all the anti-Semites who support him. How on earth does this entail that we should have any less recognition of other historical genocides?

The examples you cited in the Ukraine and Manchuria happened earlier, actually. I don't consider them concurrent. The Japanese treated the Chinese and Russians with incredible brutality, yes, but they were occupiers - they were not there to systematically wipe the entire Chinese race off the face of the earth. This matters to me and others, even if it does not matter to you.

You haven't supported any of your claims about "Zionists", who are at the very least a mixed group, especially historically. At the same time your definition of them would need to be extremely broad - anyone who supports the state of Israel - and extremely narrow - the minority that supports specific military actions against the Palestinians. Which is it, then? You also haven't demonstrated that those actions - even if they are unjust and brutal - constitute genocide. Articles in Vice aren't citations to facts. Potential-genocide isn't genocide. You'll have trouble getting the whole argument off the ground in the first place given that Israel has a significant minority of Palestinian citizens whom it is clearly not trying to destroy. The definition of genocide you cited isn't even close to being fulfilled by what is happening in Israel. Some people think the settlements themselves constitute genocide, which they clearly do not! I don't support the expansion of the settlements, either. But if the Israelis were actually trying to commit genocide against the Palestinians, they're doing an incredibly ineffective job of it.

Bottom line: you don't have to support Israel, but you don't get to say they're committing genocide without evidence. You don't have to be unhappy about Trump's statements, but you don't get to pretend that the other people - both Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and non-Israelis, who were unhappy about it are somehow minimizing other genocides. Sadly we are perfectly capable of recognizing the unique circumstances of the many instances of genocide in human history and finding all of them horrifying. The Holocaust is its own thing that doesn't have to be compared to others to be worthy of the appropriate remembrance. The systematic extermination of 6 million Jewish people certainly does deserve specific attention, no matter how much you may wish to minimize it because you dislike Israel's actions.

Jewish people in this country are experiencing a sudden upsurge of anti-Semitism - more than many have ever witnessed before in their lifetimes here. It's not easy to explain the causes but at least we know that many Trump supporters are grotesquely anti-Semitic, and we know that both Trump, his son, and some of his advisors have promoted vile anti-Semitic material during and prior to the campaign. That's a problem, especially given what he's doing now. In his press conference in Florida, he wildly and personally attacked a very Trump-friendly Jewish reporter simply because he raised a question about anti-Semitism. Only after that bizarre self-exposure did he find it necessary to say anything about all the bomb threats against Jewish centers that have been going on for months now, and the latest destruction of a Jewish cemetery. It's absolutely terrifying because it's part of a world-view that is now part of the highest levels of our government, in which Jewish elites aided by Jewish-controlled media are engaged in a long-term assault on our nation by increasing immigration. Make no mistake: Trump's relentless drumbeat against the "enemy" of the people, the media, is an attack on the (((media))) too.

[Phoebe]

Every day it seems . Along with the people being shot for seeming foreign, and the hijab wearers harassed.

[Phoebe]

And now more bomb threats today.

Fact to ponder: many U.S. states or large metro areas with populations similar to Israel and Palestine have had more murders than or nearly as many as we have seen in the Israel/Palestine conflict.

[Bonefish]

[Phoebe]

Let me make sure I have this straight. You're really pissed off because people wanted Trump to mention Jewish people or otherwise give a better response on Holocaust Remembrance Day, after a long string of other questionable and outright anti-Semitic events in this campaign. Whilst expressing your displeasure with this outrageous demand, you claim that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. This is your version of "politeness". I respond by pointing out that it's an "alternative fact" to claim this. Now I'm a teacup. If that makes you feel better about being a total fucking idiot, great - I live to serve. But meanwhile, you're oddly incapable of giving up the invalid inference that if a person believes there is something unique and worthy of special notice about the deliberate attempt by the Nazis to exterminate the Jewish people, then they also must be somehow denying that other genocides are genocides, or insisting that those other genocides are lesser or unworthy of notice or "don't count". Even when a person flatly denies all of these things in a half-dozen ways, you insist on making these unhinged claims. When you come back to the realm of sanity and logic, let me know. Otherwise, I'm sorry, but absolutely nothing you said in your reply has the slightest purchase on what I've said. You claim that I'm ignoring the non-Jewish deaths in the Holocaust? You claim I'm blaming ALL anti-Semitism on one man? Okay, I'm guessing it's after 4:20 because what other explanation could account for this? Are you actually insane?

Your suggestion that it's a "trumped up bunch of nonsens" to point out that the Holocaust specifically targeted Jews is the most craven, baseless sort of denialism and it's why we're now living in a world where people have forgotten some crucial things about how and why it happened. Today we have Sudan and Syria and more and tomorrow it will be somewhere else. The fact that you think that a "Jewish" scholar's point of view on what constitutes genocide stands as a refutation of me is hilarious - do the Jewish people maybe share one brain, Borg-style? Well, whatever the hive mind may be saying, Israel is not committing a genocide on the Palestinians, period. Or else they're the least effective killers of all time, especially given their tremendous military advantage. Meanwhile, Palestinians are still managing to kill Israelis. Innocent civilians and lots of kids on both sides have been killed, even more on the Palestinian side! And still none of it adds up to genocide.

[Phoebe]

What?¿????¿

NYT: "President Trump suggested on Tuesday that the recent spate of anti-Semitic bomb threats and cemetery vandalism could be politically coordinated attacks to “make people look bad” — an apparent suggestion that his opponents could be behind them."