[WikiEN-l] Invitation for review

[stevertigo]

Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Original research perhaps; disruption perhaps, but it is dishonest to
> call it "intellectual support of holocaust denialists."

I already took George to the woodshed for that remark, Raymond. I'm
sure he doesn't like being reminded of that experience.

> Expanding a term to a wider application certainly does not equate to
> holocaust denial.

Its called "universalism," which is basically a real-world
philosophical incarnation of NPOV.

> It merely recognizes the plain fact that those who deny the suffering of
> other victims than the dominant group are just as guilty of denying the
> Holocaust.

I did sort of hint at this point on the HD talk, but I don't want to
go there. Finkelstein may have made this criticism, but I can't look
it up till I fix a borked storage partition.

> I don't dispute that the Jews were the dominant victims of the
> Holocaust, but it is extremely disturbing when some appear to abuse that
> dominance to minimize the suffering of others.

This gets way too far into speculative territory, and in any case I
don't think its really about minimization of others' suffering -
though that may be a side effect. It's about conceptualization - in
accord with an ethic lens.

"Holocaust comprehension" essentially covers it - that millions of
people who are missing their family are trying to cope, and using the
pen to put some events into some understanding is certainly one way to
do it.

The only issue then is that for us, in our context of NPOV, that the
ethnic conceptualizations not be employed without context, and not be
accepted as categorical.

> That the victimized Jews were more numerous than the others increases > the likelihood that they have relatives to write about them. The higher
> value that Jews attach to literacy also increases the same likelihood.
> Gays had a much lower
> number of progeny to write on their behalf.  So I fully expect that more
> will be written by Jews about Jews, but the smaller numbers of others
> does not make the fate of those others any less tragic.

The unspoken irony in the whole "denial" concept is that the basic
thesis of "denial" is actually correct, albeit in a strange way: That
no Jews - also Soviet POWs, Poles, Roma, German dissidents, etc -
"died" in the Holocaust, is a simple and plain fact for anyone who
understands what divine salvation and eternal life are.

The Nazis? Eh. Not so good.

-Stevertigo