Of course it's a highly emotional topic and justly so, but one of our intentions here is that we all work on self-regulation around this kind of thing (e.g. processing strong reactions internally before rushing to comments) - not really for ethical reasons, but just because it's the only way to avoid the failure-mode end states of internet forums.
no problem, any time
HN guidelines: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
I agree, and I vote accordingly.
I'll call a spade, a spade. Any day of the week, week of the month, or month of the year. Not being willing to do so is a disservice to everyone around you, and even to the person in question, who may be caught in the Nietzchean transformation into the very monster they putatively fight; something even the people of Israel may be served well to remember. It's one thing to be besieged on all sides, it's another to ante up atrocity on top of atrocity.
You don't get to claim you aren't the monster when you're doing the Same. Bloody. Things. It isn't different this time. You aren't justified doing it, and we've all seen where this movie goes before, your attempts to control the narrative aside.
An African American executive espousing abusive workplace policies targeting a disadvantaged or otherwise unable to realistically defend themselves group of workers is a fair game target for being called out as a slave driver or plantation owner. A people espousing the employment of phrenological methods for the purposes of undesirable population control are a dead on ringer for the Nazi political regime circa 1940. No it doesn't dilute the message. It reinforces that evil is often seductive and insidious in it's tendency to convince even good people that they are doing the right thing when by all objective definitions they most certainly are not.
You, sir, would be well advised to think through the consequences of your pleading. To minimize the usability of highly disambiguously responded to subject matter is to unfasten society's overall moral compass by atrophying the ability to sense the fundamental ways in which the evil that drove that atrocity was itself a composite of goods to the people doing it.
I hear you, and I in no way do not feel sympathy for the victims of those atrocities. Quite the opposite. I have a near all-encompasding moral mandate to ensure that the confluence of circumstances, and lack of accountability holding, or voices of reason that led to such vile rhetoric taking root never happens again. I will call out BLM for their civilly destructive tendencies, and lack of restraint of those that step out of line at their protests; I will call out the woke movement for doing the same thing you espouse, thus ensuring a fields of ignorance and uncommemorated infamies evils for previously experienced to grow and burst forth out of.
If people weren't so prone to doing evil things thinking they were doing the right thing, nobody would have to call them out.
Evil, just as hope, springs eternal. It is our duty as the gardeners of our species collective morals to be on top of it. That does not happen by locking the ugly away in a box or by ignoring it. What you ignore has just as much of a positive consequence as what you willfully do. The act of willful ignorance is the one great unforgivable intellectual sin.
So no, absolutely not, those subject should never be off-limits. Already your desire to mythologize the holocaust may have caused you to overlook what was happening halfway around the globe. Certainly treating the holocaust as a special case that could never be repeated seems guaranteed to cause people to miss warning signs as those same principles rise in popularity again, as history shows they have and do and will.
The evils Hitler inflicted has plenty of parallels. It doesn't diminish how bad it was to acknowledge that there have been plenty of horrible people throughout history. Post WWII PR efforts made Hitler a cultural icon of evil. Let's not mince words. He was maximally evil by any relevant framework. But putting him on a different plane of moral existence is a disservice to those suffering from the evil of other, non-hitler, evil people.
I absolutely would accuse someone of color of imitating a slave,r if the shoe fits wear it. I have never been afraid to step on toes and I don't think society should fear to give offense if it gets in the way of honest discussion. Contrary to your assertion I think discussion keeps the events of the holocaust top of mind and relevant. Too many already deny it even happened.
Also complaints about getting downvoted attract downvotes.
On the primary topic of discussion do be aware that a Israeli terrorist detector might misidentify both Jewish people and Palestinians but who do you think would be subject to additional scrutiny or mistreatment? Such tools run the risk of attaching seemingly scientific justifications to our pre existing prejudices.
Usually, mentioning Nazism doesn't work well due to the way it invites flame-wars, to the point where Godwin's Law is well known. However, the specific irony they mentioned is in fact a valid observation: pseudoscience used by the state with grave consequences. I am saying this even though I myself have a strong pro-Israel bias.
Asimov mentioned this idea in a discussion with Elie Wiesel with reference to the treatment of the Edomites as described in scripture. It's an argument that has more to do with exploring the nature of political power itself than to demonize a specific group. It just so happens that in this case we have a group that has experienced one of the most poignant extremes of this phenomenon, hence why it comes up often.
Is the spotlight often placed repeatedly and with unfair frequency on Israel? I personally think it is. But that doesn't close off the topic on its own.
Not just imitating, but being slave traders too, either in the past or even today. Plenty of tribes in Africa sold other Africans to Europeans, and slavery is still very much a thing in Africa today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Africa
https://qz.com/africa/1333946/global-slavery-index-africa-ha...
They do, and they aren't.
While I agree with the message of your comment (i.e. the critique of everybody using the word Nazi for everything they don't like), I feel you make another mistake here by - probably unconsciously - reducing Hitler's misdeed to the Holocaust. This is very upsetting to huge populations of non-Jewish people who lost many members of their families during WW2. Especially to Russians - they lost 27M as opposed to 6M Jews. I don't want to compare the horror of both numbers in any way, just want to mention this because I notice more and more many people seem to reduce the evil of WW2 to the Holocaust.
I feel it is a great danger to think in this way. If you disregard the others[0], you may overlook certain important aspects of these evil people - especially the factors that allowed them to gain popularity, to rise to power, and to actually execute their cruel plans. Focusing just on Hitler is myopic.
https://fee.org/articles/who-was-the-biggest-mass-murderer-i...
All I'm saying is :
- Faception is accusing people of terrorism from analysing the shape of their face.
- Faception is pretenting some people have "higher IQ" (== is a naturaly superior race) based on the shape of their face
I'm not making this up, just check their website :
--> https://www.faception.com/
Pretending that some race are naturally dangerous criminal while other race is "higher IQ" is straight Scientific Racism.
One of the main example of scientific racism on Wikipedia is WWII : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
If you prefer another example of Scientific Racism such as Colons measuring African's skull to justify the Caucasian superiority (on the same wiki page) then be my guest.
In any case I really in courage you to check the picture with "High IQ" and "Terrorist" on https://www.faception.com/ . Maybe you'll better understand crazy those people are and how dangerous it can be for society