When someone is a Christian they are not constantly asked their position on the holocaust, the transatlantic slave trade, the extermination of Native Americans or any of the thousands of atrocities committed by Christians.
So why do Muslims get asked about terrorism and Jews about Israel and are grouped in with specific bad people while Christians are not required to explain themselves.
Denialism can also create an environment of hate and suspicion. Forms
of genocide denialism are not just attempts to overthrow irrefutable
historical facts; they are an assault on those who survive genocide, and
their descendants. The implacable denialism that has led the Turkish
state to refuse to admit that the 1917 Armenian genocide occurred is
also an attack on today’s Armenians, and on any other minority that
would dare to raise troubling questions about the status of minorities
in Turkey. Similarly, those who deny the Holocaust are not trying to
disinterestedly “correct” the historical record; they are, with varying
degrees of subtlety, trying to show that Jews are pathological liars and
fundamentally dangerous, as well as to rehabilitate the reputation of
the Nazis.
It’s almost like… if European Jewish people were considered white… they wouldn’t have suffered genocide? Also way to miss the point, putting this on a post that discusses Holocaust denial–i.e. attempts to erase the genocide of the very people you claim are so *privileged* by historical remembrance.
Ah, I can see how it came across that way. I was thinking more in terms of the FO having to be destroyed and then going back to the beginning to build something new, without necessarily discussing how it needed to be built (though I’m building up to thoughts on that elsewhere). I didn’t word it very well, though.
Also you might want to rethink using the term Judeo-Christian, though I know it’s incredibly common. Here are a couple of quotes from a rabbi explaining why it’s inaccurate and harmful (link, link).
Denialism can also create an environment of hate and suspicion. Forms
of genocide denialism are not just attempts to overthrow irrefutable
historical facts; they are an assault on those who survive genocide, and
their descendants. The implacable denialism that has led the Turkish
state to refuse to admit that the 1917 Armenian genocide occurred is
also an attack on today’s Armenians, and on any other minority that
would dare to raise troubling questions about the status of minorities
in Turkey. Similarly, those who deny the Holocaust are not trying to
disinterestedly “correct” the historical record; they are, with varying
degrees of subtlety, trying to show that Jews are pathological liars and
fundamentally dangerous, as well as to rehabilitate the reputation of
the Nazis.
You know, there are a lot of reasons The Last Jedi is objectively bad, but “modern art is bad because it rejects objective standards in favor of subjective self-expression” is not one of them. I won’t be posting the submitted video (link if you want to see it for yourself) because it’s intellectually dishonest in using a sheen of scholarly credibility to push a political agenda of modern Western cultural decadence. See a blog post that picks the video apart and particularly calls out the selective and misleading quote of art historian Jakob Rosenberg (link).
Ironically, Rosenberg was born in Germany and was fired as part of the purge of Jewish curators in 1937 before he immigrated to the United States (link, see page 3 of PDF), where he spent the rest of his career teaching art history at Harvard University and as a curator at the Fogg Art Museum (link). He was, in other words, a target of exactly the kind of rhetoric that blamed the decadence of the modern West on international intellectuals and makers of culture. He did not deserve to have his name associated with this shit. Seriously, anyone harping on the good old days of Western civilization activates my fight-or-flight response.
Oh look, Hitler’s well-known hatred of modern art and how degenerate it is! (Link, link, link, link, link) Here’s one from a site that’s actually sympathetic to his views and talks about “the societal effects from modern art’s
inversion and destruction of beauty” (link via donotlink).
And before anyone tries to put words in my mouth, I’m not saying anyone who doesn’t like modern art is a Nazi. If you like classical art more than modern art, more power to you! There’s a universe of works you can love and enjoy. Whether your reasons are critical or pure taste, that is entirely your prerogative.
What’s insidious and intellectually dishonest is not the failure to enjoy modern art, it’s the lie that modern art doesn’t have objective standards behind it and represents a fall from some mythical heyday of Western civilization. You can agree or disagree with the standards and theory behind modern art all you like, but you can’t simply ignore and distort the reams of theory to push an agenda of modern decadence. That’s what I object to, the dishonesty of this rhetoric and the horrific ends it has been used for and could potentially be used for again.
You know, there are a lot of reasons The Last Jedi is objectively bad, but “modern art is bad because it rejects objective standards in favor of subjective self-expression” is not one of them. I won’t be posting the submitted video (link if you want to see it for yourself) because it’s intellectually dishonest in using a sheen of scholarly credibility to push a political agenda of modern Western cultural decadence. See a blog post that picks the video apart and particularly calls out the selective and misleading quote of art historian Jakob Rosenberg (link).
Ironically, Rosenberg was born in Germany and was fired as part of the purge of Jewish curators in 1937 before he immigrated to the United States (link, see page 3 of PDF), where he spent the rest of his career teaching art history at Harvard University and as a curator at the Fogg Art Museum (link). He was, in other words, a target of exactly the kind of rhetoric that blamed the decadence of the modern West on international intellectuals and makers of culture. He did not deserve to have his name associated with this shit. Seriously, anyone harping on the good old days of Western civilization activates my fight-or-flight response.
The dictionary definition is kinda clear – it means a mass genocide, so I
understand why people use it. And Carrie was of mixed heritage – I dont
know if she even identified herself with being Jewish, tbh.
But i wouldnt call the destruction of Alderaan a holocaust – it reminds
me more of the destruction of The Temple – and Alderaanians being
scattered across the galaxy in diasporas, longing for their former peace
and glory.
@die-sphinx No, used as a proper noun it means “the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially [Jewish people] by the Nazis during World War II“ (link). This was the sense in which the questioner used the word in the ask, capitalized as a proper noun.
Small-h “holocaust” does have an older meaning of sacrifice or destruction by fire (not generic genocide), but the word has become so strongly identified with that one historical genocide that it’s iffy even to use it uncapitalized in other contexts imo. As far as I’m concerned, if a word is stained with the blood from the torture, enslavement, mutilation, rape, and murder of millions of your ancestors then you as a group have earned that word many times over and it belongs to you.
^^^Just in case someone gets confused from the way this is formatted in the notes, the above is a quote I have argued against and does not represent my opinion.
Not to be offensive, but I really wish people would stop bringing up Carrie Fisher‘s religion. Carrie and Leia still are two different people and their heritage didn’t have anything to do with the movies.
And the destruction of Alderaan was a horrible genocide and war crime, and the Empire attacked them because the planet had indeed been conspiring against them Empire.
The death Star had been a secret weapon, no one that was supposed to know about it.
That’s why in Rogue One so many planets were against helping the R1 squad retrieve the plans to the Death Star, because it would expose them as a threat to the empire and paint a target on their back for the planet destroying weapon
Bail and Leia Organa took the risks anyway to help the R1 squad.
But unfortunately they hadn’t been aware that Tarkin and Vader would also be trying to prevent the plans from being stolen and had witnessed them stealing the plans.
What happened to Alderaan wasn’t a holocaust. Genocide yes, The movies and books made it pretty clear that Alderaan’s destruction was the Empire’s Monstrous punishment for the planet conspiring against them, something both Vader and Tarkin suspected even before the events of ANH.
The Empire and First Order might be metaphorically inspired or based off Nazis, and essentially they can be called space Nazis just like the Jedi can be called space monks, but they still are not the same nor can the fictional events of a science-fiction movie be compared to the real life horror’s people had to go through. They are indeed fascists though who’ve committed war crimes.
But I myself am not Jewish, just Africa and Brazilian, so I might not be the best person to talk about this and I apologize if I got anything incorrect.
I think you hit on another reason the Holocaust and the destruction of Alderaan are in no way comparable, and in fact should not be compared. Wasn’t it a major talking point of the Nazis that Jewish people as a whole were conspiring against the state and were actively dangerous to the German people? That was not true at all of Jewish people toward Germans (other than there being Jewish Communists or some shit, but given sheer numbers there had to be vastly more goyim Communists), but was actually kind of true of Alderaan, or at least their leadership, when it came to the Empire. So there’s an argument to be made that equating the two genocides indirectly validates a major piece of antisemitic rhetoric, which is obviously not cool. European Gentiles hated Jewish people for racial/ethnic reasons, and made up an imaginary threat to validate that hatred. The Alderaanian genocide on the other hand was a vastly disproportionate and murderous–monstrous, as you put it–reaction to an actual threat.
Yeah, there were and are unfortunately a lot of genocides throughout history and they come in a lot of different forms. The Holocaust was a very specific event and is not a stand-in for all genocides omg. There’s no ground for comparing Alderaan to the Holocaust, and as far as I can tell it seems to be based solely on the meaning of the word being stretched beyond all recognition, coupled with the galactic-level reach of Leia being played by a Jewish actress.
Wasn’t it a major talking point of the Nazis that Jewish people as a whole were conspiring against the state and were actively dangerous to the German people?
This is Antisemitism. It isn’t special to the Nazis or anyone else, it is the foundation of Antisemitism and is rooted in Xtianity and their desire to wipe out Jewish people as our continued existence completely undermine their religion.
Like you will see the “Jews are conspiring against X and is dangerous to the people/government/whatever” in various iteration ever since Xtianity decided to piggyback its success off various forms of imperialism, though it was put into canonicity and Xtian mindset by the early church fathers evven before then. The piggybacking just made sure it spread to every single corner of the world and all civilizations thanks to western imperialism.
And speaking of religion. Judaism and being Jewish is not a religion. It is also a religion.
It may seem a fine point but it is a significant point.
While Carrie did attend Shabbat dinners I don’t know if she considered herself religiously Jewish. She was ethnically Jewish and she was reclaiming her Jewish heritage through the later part of her life.
So please do not dismiss this as just being “her religion”. It is extremely invalidating, not to mention woefully incorrect.
That said, it still does not make Leia Jewish. As I’ve stated elsewhere yes there are reading of her and her character that can be made to support this, but they will inevitably be fans (usually Jewish fans) looking for representation and trying to make sense of the mess that is the GFFA universe. Canonically George never intended Leia, or Han, or Luke, or Padmé, to be Jewish.
Yes canon has some really freaking skeevy connotations here – such as making a character played by a Jewish woman witness the genocide or her people and then dismiss that as nothing in canon – but that is what it is. George was an asshat on this topic as he was on so many others and he is no different on this than most other goyische creators when it comes to pulling crap like this. I don’t blame other Jewish fans for trying to make some sense of it, but that doesn’t make their fan interpretations canon.
Yeah, there were and are unfortunately a lot of genocides throughout history and they come in a lot of different forms. The Holocaust was a very specific event and is not a stand-in for all genocides omg. There’s no ground for comparing Alderaan to the Holocaust, and as far as I can tell it seems to be based solely on the meaning of the word being stretched beyond all recognition, coupled with the galactic-level reach of Leia being played by a Jewish actress.
The dictionary definition is kinda clear – it means a mass genocide, so I
understand why people use it. And Carrie was of mixed heritage – I dont
know if she even identified herself with being Jewish, tbh.
But i wouldnt call the destruction of Alderaan a holocaust – it reminds
me more of the destruction of The Temple – and Alderaanians being
scattered across the galaxy in diasporas, longing for their former peace
and glory.
@die-sphinx No, used as a proper noun it means “the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially [Jewish people] by the Nazis during World War II“ (link). This was the sense in which the questioner used the word in the ask, capitalized as a proper noun.
Small-h “holocaust” does have an older meaning of sacrifice or destruction by fire (not generic genocide), but the word has become so strongly identified with that one historical genocide that it’s iffy even to use it uncapitalized in other contexts imo. As far as I’m concerned, if a word is stained with the blood from the torture, enslavement, mutilation, rape, and murder of millions of your ancestors then you as a group have earned that word many times over and it belongs to you.
^^^Just in case someone gets confused from the way this is formatted in the notes, the above is a quote I have argued against and does not represent my opinion.
Not to be offensive, but I really wish people would stop bringing up Carrie Fisher‘s religion. Carrie and Leia still are two different people and their heritage didn’t have anything to do with the movies.
And the destruction of Alderaan was a horrible genocide and war crime, and the Empire attacked them because the planet had indeed been conspiring against them Empire.
The death Star had been a secret weapon, no one that was supposed to know about it.
That’s why in Rogue One so many planets were against helping the R1 squad retrieve the plans to the Death Star, because it would expose them as a threat to the empire and paint a target on their back for the planet destroying weapon
Bail and Leia Organa took the risks anyway to help the R1 squad.
But unfortunately they hadn’t been aware that Tarkin and Vader would also be trying to prevent the plans from being stolen and had witnessed them stealing the plans.
What happened to Alderaan wasn’t a holocaust. Genocide yes, The movies and books made it pretty clear that Alderaan’s destruction was the Empire’s Monstrous punishment for the planet conspiring against them, something both Vader and Tarkin suspected even before the events of ANH.
The Empire and First Order might be metaphorically inspired or based off Nazis, and essentially they can be called space Nazis just like the Jedi can be called space monks, but they still are not the same nor can the fictional events of a science-fiction movie be compared to the real life horror’s people had to go through. They are indeed fascists though who’ve committed war crimes.
But I myself am not Jewish, just Africa and Brazilian, so I might not be the best person to talk about this and I apologize if I got anything incorrect.
I think you hit on another reason the Holocaust and the destruction of Alderaan are in no way comparable, and in fact should not be compared. Wasn’t it a major talking point of the Nazis that Jewish people as a whole were conspiring against the state and were actively dangerous to the German people? That was not true at all of Jewish people toward Germans (other than there being Jewish Communists or some shit, but given sheer numbers there had to be vastly more goyim Communists), but was actually kind of true of Alderaan, or at least their leadership, when it came to the Empire. So there’s an argument to be made that equating the two genocides indirectly validates a major piece of antisemitic rhetoric, which is obviously not cool. European Gentiles hated Jewish people for racial/ethnic reasons, and made up an imaginary threat to validate that hatred. The Alderaanian genocide on the other hand was a vastly disproportionate and murderous–monstrous, as you put it–reaction to an actual threat.
Yeah, there were and are unfortunately a lot of genocides throughout history and they come in a lot of different forms. The Holocaust was a very specific event and is not a stand-in for all genocides omg. There’s no ground for comparing Alderaan to the Holocaust, and as far as I can tell it seems to be based solely on the meaning of the word being stretched beyond all recognition, coupled with the galactic-level reach of Leia being played by a Jewish actress.
The dictionary definition is kinda clear – it means a mass genocide, so I
understand why people use it. And Carrie was of mixed heritage – I dont
know if she even identified herself with being Jewish, tbh.
But i wouldnt call the destruction of Alderaan a holocaust – it reminds
me more of the destruction of The Temple – and Alderaanians being
scattered across the galaxy in diasporas, longing for their former peace
and glory.
@die-sphinx No, used as a proper noun it means “the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially [Jewish people] by the Nazis during World War II“ (link). This was the sense in which the questioner used the word in the ask, capitalized as a proper noun.
Small-h “holocaust” does have an older meaning of sacrifice or destruction by fire (not generic genocide), but the word has become so strongly identified with that one historical genocide that it’s iffy even to use it uncapitalized in other contexts imo. As far as I’m concerned, if a word is stained with the blood from the torture, enslavement, mutilation, rape, and murder of millions of your ancestors then you as a group have earned that word many times over and it belongs to you.
holocaustˈhɒləkɔːst/noun1.destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.“a nuclear holocaust"synonimy:cataclysm, disaster, catastrophe, destruction, devastation, demolition, annihilation, ravaging;
Holocaust written with a capital letter is the destruction of Jews and Roma. I never said it aint. But the word was “normilized” and gained another meaning – after all, it used to mean something completely different and wasnt associated with Shoah.
Yes, I am from Poland – do you have a problem with that? Just like millions of Jews who considered themselves Poles as well. Wanna walk about wartime trauma in Central and Eastern Europe? Because, you know, we are still affected deeply by the shit that happened 70 years ago. The slaughter of Jews and destruction of their heritage is simply unbearable to me thus my interest in Jewish culture – they were an integral part of Poland for over a millenium. Their suffering is undenialable – but it doesnt give their descendants the monopoly express war trauma. Sure, The Holocaust is “theirs” – but its not the only mass slaughter and genocide during the war and not only Jews died in concentration camps – other groups also have the right to use similar symbolism. Nazis targeted not only Jews. The slaughter of Poles, Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians and others was horrific and unimaginable as well – millions of people died, cities were destroyed, whole villages were wiped out.
Who has the right to take our right to cope with trauma? We also “have the right’ to be victims of Nazis. My grandfather liberated Berlin and avenged the dead and suffering – no Westerner is going to take away “the heritage” of being both the victim and the victor of Nazism.
Za głód, za krew, za lata łez.
Im still sick and tired of antisemitic bullshit going on in Poland. But Im also sick and tired of blatant antislavic or antipolish sentiments that are tolerated online. You dont want your communities belitteled and generalised because of some assholes that bring you a bad name, so… Maybe antipolonism is acceptable on tumblr, who knows? Apparently using someones nationality as an argument is OK here. How ironic.
Yes, I know her mother was Jewish and that “makes you a Jew” technically, but Im talking about cultural heritage, not biological (lets say). Unless she didnt identify as such, I dont think we can really call her Jewish – she still had that “goyim” part in her. I’ve just never read anything about her embracing Jewish identity, but maybe I missed something.
So… it doesn’t actually mean a genocide in small-h, and we’re actually in agreement about what it means in large-H. The original ask capitalized the word, you can see it for yourself, so there was really no point of contention (link).
I’ve already talked about the “normalization” aspect in my previous addition so I won’t repeat myself.
No, I don’t have a problem with Polish people in general. I do have a problem with Polish Gentiles who seem to have no self-awareness about their country’s historical role in the Holocaust and seem to believe they have a say over Jewish people in how it is discussed. For that matter, I have a problem with anyone who plays Oppression Olympics against a marginalized group. First of all who said Jewish people had a monopoly on suffering, and second of all who would want such a monopoly? Nobody said no other group but Jewish and Romani people suffered from the Nazis or that only Jewish people could use Nazi imagery, holy shit. We were literally talking about the proper usage of a word?
And please don’t assume I would react like you are right now, not everyone gets hyper-defensive about the crimes of their ancestors. If someone told me I as a non-Vietnamese Korean have no right to talk over Vietnamese people in discussing the Vietnam War, especially given Korean military forces’ crimes against Vietnamese people, I would entirely agree. I’m certainly not going to go on a rant about how the Vietnamese people were not the only ones to suffer because that’s just embarrassing lmao.
Yeah, there were and are unfortunately a lot of genocides throughout history and they come in a lot of different forms. The Holocaust was a very specific event and is not a stand-in for all genocides omg. There’s no ground for comparing Alderaan to the Holocaust, and as far as I can tell it seems to be based solely on the meaning of the word being stretched beyond all recognition, coupled with the galactic-level reach of Leia being played by a Jewish actress.
The dictionary definition is kinda clear – it means a mass genocide, so I
understand why people use it. And Carrie was of mixed heritage – I dont
know if she even identified herself with being Jewish, tbh.
But i wouldnt call the destruction of Alderaan a holocaust – it reminds
me more of the destruction of The Temple – and Alderaanians being
scattered across the galaxy in diasporas, longing for their former peace
and glory.
@die-sphinx No, used as a proper noun it means “the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially [Jewish people] by the Nazis during World War II“ (link). This was the sense in which the questioner used the word in the ask, capitalized as a proper noun.
Small-h “holocaust” does have an older meaning of sacrifice or destruction by fire (not generic genocide), but the word has become so strongly identified with that one historical genocide that it’s iffy even to use it uncapitalized in other contexts imo. As far as I’m concerned, if a word is stained with the blood from the torture, enslavement, mutilation, rape, and murder of millions of your ancestors then you as a group have earned that word many times over and it belongs to you.
L.J.'s Obsessions 