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GunFred
Supreme Hero
Sexy Manticore
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posted July 15, 2013 04:27 PM |
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artu said:
You should keep in mind that brutality was a norm during the times of Alexander. Him, Cengiz Khan, William Wallace, Atilla the Hun... those people simple wiped out anyone they saw as an obstacle in front of them. It was pragmatism in times that the concept of universal human rights didn't exist. Hitler wiped people out for who they are, he seeked them out and terminated them because of their identity. History is almost never black and white but anyone with an IQ above 60 can clearly see Hitler indeed was a villain.
William Wallace? Braveheart may not be a documentary but perhaps you meant William the Conqueror? 
Drakon-Deus said:
You obviously weren't paying attention. I don't believe in hell, it's very pagan. God will have all men to be saved and come to knowledge of the truth.
And if the Axis had won, now Churchill and FDR would be portrayed as villains insetad of Benito and Adolf
I did have history lessons in school, but those were biased toward the Allies.
Wut? I thought hell was hardcoded into Christianity...
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 15, 2013 04:35 PM |
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Edited by artu at 16:53, 15 Jul 2013.
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Gunfred said:
William Wallace? Braveheart may not be a documentary but perhaps you meant William the Conqueror?
Nope, if you read encyclopedic material (especially written before the semi-fictional movie) you can see he was quite brutal too. But I might have said William The Conqueror, it was just an example.
Jolly Joker said:
Does that somehow excuse him, his party or Germany? Nah. But it was obviously within the boundaries of what was possible at the time - it's just the scale. Take for example the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti - has that been better? Of course Haiti never was a world power or killed as many, but within their frame ...
So I think that this kind of demonizing doesn't do any good here and serves no purpose.
You seem to be skipping the context here, people emphasized what's specifically "evil" about Hitler because there was some mumbling about how the Axis was only considered evil because they lost. Since Sal and Zenofex opened up on that, we carried it from there.
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You might say that Hitler was also just pragmatic
I'm having a hard time contemplating that. Jews were not a threat to the Nazis militarily or politically. They weren't a minority in rebellion. In most cases, they weren't even on the way, they were collected from invaded land.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
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posted July 15, 2013 05:28 PM |
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artu said:
Jolly Joker said:
Does that somehow excuse him, his party or Germany? Nah. But it was obviously within the boundaries of what was possible at the time - it's just the scale. Take for example the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti - has that been better? Of course Haiti never was a world power or killed as many, but within their frame ...
So I think that this kind of demonizing doesn't do any good here and serves no purpose.
You seem to be skipping the context here, people emphasized what's specifically "evil" about Hitler because there was some mumbling about how the Axis was only considered evil because they lost. Since Sal and Zenofex opened up on that, we carried it from there.
That's the problem - SPECIFICALLY EVIL. You really think, it makes a difference, HOW people are killed?
What about simple slavers? Ever read about the conditions on a slave ship, transporting the black Africans to America? How many died below the deck? And more:
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You might say that Hitler was also just pragmatic
I'm having a hard time contemplating that. Jews were not a threat to the Nazis militarily or politically. They weren't a minority in rebellion. In most cases, they weren't even on the way, they were collected from invaded land.
On the contrary, the Jews were a threat to the whole world, the venom that had poisoned the human race for a long time, brought about all kinds of wars and whatnot for sheer profit greed and were considered the "evil of the world". So going about their eradication was very pragmatic - as pragmatic, maybe, as the missionaries that came with the conquistadors and pragmatically converted the people - or killed them, if they didn't want to be converted.
Or is pragmatism only allowed and at least partly excused when the motives are greed and power?
Who is more evil? The criminal who kills for money or the terrorist who kills for ideas? Is there a difference?
The problem with Drakon's "victor history" thing in this case is, that the Nazis were NOT just power-hungry people, but had an ideology that would have brought back something like the Roman Empire. Masters and Slaves plus the Armageddon for ALL Jews. In this regard the Nazis's war was more a crusade than a war. STILL, in the end, the vision was not so different from the English Colonial empire or the Confederate States's view on things. What would have happened, if the Confederates had won THAT war? Would there be STILL slaves today? Would other countries have maybe even followed suit?
Asked differently: Is there really such a big difference between Nero's Rome and Hitler's Berlin?
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mvassilev
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posted July 15, 2013 05:37 PM |
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Slavery is evil, and the conditions in slave ships were awful, but as bad as that was, the Holocaust was even worse. It's one thing to not acknowledge people's rights and treat them like animals, but it's even worse to intentionally exterminate them. No slaver would send his slaves into a gas chamber. Slavers are motivated by profit, not by hatred.
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artu
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posted July 15, 2013 06:13 PM |
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On the contrary, the Jews were a threat to the whole world, the venom that had poisoned the human race for a long time, brought about all kinds of wars and whatnot for sheer profit greed and were considered the "evil of the world". So going about their eradication was very pragmatic - as pragmatic, maybe, as the missionaries that came with the conquistadors and pragmatically converted the people - or killed them, if they didn't want to be converted.
Or is pragmatism only allowed and at least partly excused when the motives are greed and power?
In short, yes. It is not allowed or excused but identified with such characteristics. You have to have actual benefit. The things above were just propaganda mostly made up by Goebbels and his crew and he didn't even believe it himself, he just thought it was okay to deceive the masses with it for the greater ideological good. He says so himself.
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Asked differently: Is there really such a big difference between Nero's Rome and Hitler's Berlin?
1- The spirit of time. Concepts like human rights, ideals of the French Revolution etc. had been in circulation for a long time.
2- Classical empires, unlike colonial ones, don't usually kill for national or ideological purposes. They are truly pragmatic in that sense. As long as you plead your loyalty and pay your taxes, you're good to go. You know how they say one of the reasons Rome has fallen was too many official holidays because of every minorities' religious festival or sacred day. (That's partly a joke of course but the detail in it is true.)
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Fauch
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posted July 15, 2013 06:41 PM |
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Edited by Fauch at 18:42, 15 Jul 2013.
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JollyJoker said:
The real question is, how was it even possible, that a person like Adolf Hitler actually came into a position to act out his ideas, ideas that haven't sprung out of his evil, warped mind, but that had been around for some time.
apparently, the same way that people get elected today, he got the support of very rich and powerful people, and we know that some people made massive profits thanks to the war, so they probably knew what they were doing when they helped him get the power.
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Drakon-Deus
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Qapla'
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posted July 15, 2013 06:50 PM |
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So ultimately, Hitler was not the devil.
He was actually an artist. He wouldn't have become a dictator if the academy of arts in Vienna would have accepted him... bad mistake, shame on them.
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Fauch
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posted July 15, 2013 07:10 PM |
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then people would start world wars all the time 
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JollyJoker
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posted July 15, 2013 07:15 PM |
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mvassilev said:
Slavery is evil, and the conditions in slave ships were awful, but as bad as that was, the Holocaust was even worse. It's one thing to not acknowledge people's rights and treat them like animals, but it's even worse to intentionally exterminate them. No slaver would send his slaves into a gas chamber. Slavers are motivated by profit, not by hatred.
And that is better? You mean a professional killer, who murders his victims because he is paid to do so, is BETTER than someone who kills people that he hates because he blames them for the evil in the world?
artu said:
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On the contrary, the Jews were a threat to the whole world, the venom that had poisoned the human race for a long time, brought about all kinds of wars and whatnot for sheer profit greed and were considered the "evil of the world". So going about their eradication was very pragmatic - as pragmatic, maybe, as the missionaries that came with the conquistadors and pragmatically converted the people - or killed them, if they didn't want to be converted.
Or is pragmatism only allowed and at least partly excused when the motives are greed and power?
In short, yes. It is not allowed or excused but identified with such characteristics. You have to have actual benefit.
In short, NO. Pragmatic simply means more or less functional. You are pragmagtic if you do what is necessary to get a specific job done. In this case. Take the death camps. The gas was a PRAGMATIC solution, because the shootings were impractcial - as hideous as it sounds.
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The things above were just propaganda mostly made up by Goebbels and his crew and he didn't even believe it himself, he just thought it was okay to deceive the masses with it for the greater ideological good. He says so himself.
That is in fact untrue. GOEBBELS isn't the question here, it's Hitler. And if you had read "Mein Kampf", you'd know, that he later did what he had actually announced a decade earlier. HE believed the anti-semitism alright.
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Asked differently: Is there really such a big difference between Nero's Rome and Hitler's Berlin?
1- The spirit of time. Concepts like human rights, ideals of the French Revolution etc. had been in circulation for a long time.
That's untrue as well. I explained in the post above that the spirit of time was DARK. The ideals of the French revolution ... do you really think there is that much of a difference for the victims between the overtime working guilloutines and the gas chambers of the Nazis?
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2- Classical empires, unlike colonial ones, don't usually kill for national or ideological purposes. They are truly pragmatic in that sense. As long as you plead your loyalty and pay your taxes, you're good to go. You know how they say one of the reasons Rome has fallen was too many official holidays because of every minorities' religious festival or sacred day. (That's partly a joke of course but the detail in it is true.)
You may want to reconsider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire
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artu
Promising
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posted July 15, 2013 07:49 PM |
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In short, NO. Pragmatic simply means more or less functional. You are pragmagtic if you do what is necessary to get a specific job done. In this case. Take the death camps. The gas was a PRAGMATIC solution, because the shootings were impractcial - as hideous as it sounds.
That's just word play. Having a pragmatic world view and applying pragmatic solutions on operational basis to achieve an ideological goal are different things. Nazism itself can not be defined as a pragmatic ideology, unless you enhance the meaning of benefit in an absurdly inclusive manner. (Like saying giving money to the poor is also pragmatic cause you feel good about it.)
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That is in fact untrue. GOEBBELS isn't the question here, it's Hitler. And if you had read "Mein Kampf", you'd know, that he later did what he had actually announced a decade earlier. HE believed the anti-semitism alright.
I didn't say he didn't truly believe anti-semitism. I meant he didn't actually see a concrete, immediate threat by them and such stories of Jews doing that and this were fabricated and Hitler surely knew about the fabrication process which was mainly handled by Goebbels.
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That's untrue as well. I explained in the post above that the spirit of time was DARK. The ideals of the French revolution ... do you really think there is that much of a difference for the victims between the overtime working guilloutines and the gas chambers of the Nazis?
Spirit of the time may be dark but some ideals existed and people, practicing them or not, were aware of such ideals. Comparing the age of Roman Empire and 20th Century fascism is anachronical. They have different norms by every means possible.
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You may want to reconsider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire
I know about, that. Doesn't change the truth in what I say, I havent made any research about the motivations behind persecution of Christians, the Wiki page is also weak on that. But I'm sure it was not an operation of assimilation in the modern sense.
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antipaladin
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posted July 15, 2013 08:30 PM |
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Quote:
On the contrary, the Jews were a threat to the whole world, the venom that had poisoned the human race for a long time, brought about all kinds of wars and whatnot for sheer profit greed and were considered the "evil of the world". So going about their eradication was very pragmatic - as pragmatic, maybe, as the missionaries that came with the conquistadors and pragmatically converted the people - or killed them, if they didn't want to be converted.
Or is pragmatism only allowed and at least partly excused when the motives are greed and power?
that's racist,antisemitic propaganda.
which is against the CoC
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(3) Provocation and aggravation. Provocation is behavior which deliberately tries to create a negative feeling or response from another individual. Aggravation is - either intentionally or through neglecting to recognize the effect of your behavior on others - disrupting the ability of other people to enjoy themselves. Both are forms of fomenting trouble. As with insults, there is a degree of subjectivity to identifying these behaviors, but moderators reserve the right to define when and where posters are being chronic provocateurs or aggravators.
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mvassilev
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posted July 15, 2013 08:37 PM |
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You mean a professional killer, who murders his victims because he is paid to do so, is BETTER than someone who kills people that he hates because he blames them for the evil in the world?
No, I mean slavers didn't want to kill their slaves, because to do so would be unprofitable. Hitler actually wanted to kill the Jews.
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JollyJoker
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posted July 15, 2013 08:41 PM |
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artu said:
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In short, NO. Pragmatic simply means more or less functional. You are pragmagtic if you do what is necessary to get a specific job done. In this case. Take the death camps. The gas was a PRAGMATIC solution, because the shootings were impractcial - as hideous as it sounds.
That's just word play. Having a pragmatic world view and applying pragmatic solutions on operational basis to achieve an ideological goal are different things. Nazism itself can not be defined as a pragmatic ideology, unless you enhance the meaning of benefit in an absurdly inclusive manner. (Like saying giving money to the poor is also pragmatic cause you feel good about it.)
Of course it's a pragmatic ideology, because it's a pragmatic answer to a specific situation and its hopeful solution: Germany in tatters after having been beaten on all fronts, especially at home - and by the "world Jewish conspiracy" which is considered to be to blame for nearly everything. The rest is consequential, pragmatic "putting the programm into reality".
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That is in fact untrue. GOEBBELS isn't the question here, it's Hitler. And if you had read "Mein Kampf", you'd know, that he later did what he had actually announced a decade earlier. HE believed the anti-semitism alright.
I didn't say he didn't truly believe anti-semitism. I meant he didn't actually see a concrete, immediate threat by them and such stories of Jews doing that and this were fabricated and Hitler surely knew about the fabrication process which was mainly handled by Goebbels.
He saw a threat in "the Jews" as you would see a general threat in, well, rats (sorry for the implication). Or germs. Or "poison". A SUBVERSIVE threat.
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That's untrue as well. I explained in the post above that the spirit of time was DARK. The ideals of the French revolution ... do you really think there is that much of a difference for the victims between the overtime working guilloutines and the gas chambers of the Nazis?
Spirit of the time may be dark but some ideals existed and people, practicing them or not, were aware of such ideals. Comparing the age of Roman Empire and 20th Century fascism is anachronical. They have different norms by every means possible.
No, it's not per se. There are differences, sure - but doesn't it actually strike you odd, that all these WORDS about freedom and equality didn't actually have results ANYWHERE? Do you really think, that an English nobleman would think of himself as equal with an English worker - not to mention with an Indian or Egyptian? Or any woman? All these "ideals" were just words at that time - I thought your outlook on history had a Marxist background. So look at the darn REALITY, not at the words that were used to galvanize the people in an effort of the wealthy, but unprivileged to acquire power.
And you can OF COURSE compare things - there are limits, but people have been dying the same all over the course of history - a death is a death is a death. The life of a slave wasn't worth much in Rome - but was it worth more in Alabama 150 years ago? Socially, there is no difference: there have always been in-groups and out-groups, and if you were part of any of the out-group of the in-group in power you had a problem.
And there have always been the ideologies to support the rights of the in-group to do something bad to the outgroups.
The theory here - your "explanation" - amounts to: the Romans DIDN'T know any better, but the Nazis COULD HAVE known better. What about the Christian religion, then? Why are we discussing so much about that one? Because it's supposedly preaching to love each other, but no one actually took that to heart, the Romans certainly not when they were prosecuting them, but certainly not when they adopted the religion, either. Nor did their follow-up states, even though they claimed a lot of things.
So why would a beaten-up, disappointed and territorially plundered Germany suddenly have started to "discover" the virtues of humanistic ideals? Isn't the contrary true? That in such a situation you may lose the belief in such ideals completely and instead go for the contrary.
And if you still say no - what about the Duvalier regime in Haiti? Shouldn't THEY have known even better than the Nazis? What about the modern "evils"? All those petty dictators? Children warring in Africa?
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You may want to reconsider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire
I know about, that. Doesn't change the truth in what I say, I havent made any research about the motivations behind persecution of Christians, the Wiki page is also weak on that. But I'm sure it was not an operation of assimilation in the modern sense.
So? Is just killing off people for a reason in an unorganized way better than tackling the "problem" in an organized way? More specifically, is the decret of a Roman Emperor to kill Christians because they are supposedly being guilty of having torched half a big city better than the decret of a dictator to do the same thing because they are supposerdly being guilty of having wasted who knows what (or killed Jesus, for that matter)?
And
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artu
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posted July 15, 2013 08:43 PM |
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@antipaladin
He is talking from Hitler's perspective to make a point. He doesnt actually think like that.
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artu
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posted July 15, 2013 09:33 PM |
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JJ, you are taking pragmatism to a very abstract level. Pragmatism, in politics, is quite a specified pattern. US foreign politics for example, is known world wide for its pragmatism. US ideals may contradict in every way with Sharia Law but US will do business with Saudi Arabia still the same and consider it an ally as long as there's profit to be made from oil. Now, let me give you an example from Nazi Germany... Near the end of the war, Germany offers 50.000 Jews to the Allies, and in return asks for some non-offensive vehicles (like trucks, jeeps) with the condition of using them in the Russian front. The Allies say they MAY consider the offer if ALL Jews being captive are delivered to them. Keep in mind that these vehicles are of critical importance to the Nazis at that point in the war, yet, they still refuse. That is like a definition of what's NOT pragmatism.
As for your other comments, I think they are displaying things quite black and white. Rather then going into detail about all of them, I'd like to simplify my point this way: Rome was the most civilized and relatively free empire among its contemporary peers. Hitler Germany, on the contrary, was the most oppressive and brutal state among its contemporary peers.(If our basis is industrialized modern nations). So instead of comparing the two, if you compare both with other examples from their own age, I think you'll see the difference.
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JollyJoker
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posted July 15, 2013 10:54 PM |
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The point wasn't, that there was NO difference - the point was that the difference wasn't so big as people want to make it seem. Ask yourself, how many people the Brits have killed as a colonial power. How many slaves they traded. How many wars they fought. How they even dealt with the Scots and the Irish. Or the French. How THEY dealt with Europe under Napoleon, how they treated their colonies. And even the US - they CONQUERED their territory, after having shed the colonial chains, killing the native population AND using slave labour. And all of THEM had a constitution that should have made these things a lot more difficult.
Germany got rid of the constitution and made no secret about what they had in mind.
And look at how strange the points suddenly get. Mvass says, hey, the slavers didn't want them blacks to die, they wanted to sell them. Now suppose, the Nazis had only enslaved the Jews - would then things have become better? I mean, before the death camps became death camps, they were "just" forced labor camps with pretty hard rules, where people might die from strain or starving or simply being beaten and so on - would THAT have been more acceptable? Without the war they might have worked their whole life until their miserable death. Better?
In other words, is a genocide more palatable, when it happens for a monetary gain or when it is done for an idea? I asked that and I got no answer: who is worse, the terrorist or the profi killer-for-hire. Or the so-called "mercenaries" who lead a war for everyone who pays up?
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fred79
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posted July 15, 2013 10:57 PM |
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i like where this discussion is leading...
carry on, gentlemen. carry on. 
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artu
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posted July 15, 2013 11:12 PM |
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Well, that question was directed to mvass but if you want my opinion, if the idea is the victim being sub-human, I find the hit man killing for profit less disturbing.
Now, if your point is the difference not being as big as people want to make it seem, why do you think
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Maybe he's better than anyone else impersonating all that had gone wrong the 400 years before him, culminating in something so radical, that it would wake up the world - just as the Hiroshima bomb did.
You also seem to accept the fact that it was SO radical despite the darkness of the times. What makes it radical then?
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mvassilev
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posted July 15, 2013 11:51 PM |
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JJ:
I don't know if someone killing for money or out of hatred is worse - it depends a lot on the specifics of the situation and what aspects of "worse" we're talking about. But I'm not comparing killing out of hatred to killing for money, I'm comparing it to slavery. It's about the actions, not the motivations - not hatred vs money, but genocide vs slavery.
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Corribus
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posted July 16, 2013 12:17 AM |
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Friends, I feel this thread is beginning to get far afield of the intended topic. We are not at the point yet where I'll call it off-topic, but please make a conscious effort to connect your posts to the theme specified by the thread title.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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