>John W. Spencer is a retired United States Army officer, researcher of urban warfare, and author. [1]
lmao, if I find two people from the military or law who deny the holocaust, then will you deny it too? Actually, maybe you shouldn't answer that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Hausdorff
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spencer_(military_officer...
In any case, this is really going off topic. All I am interested in is in voidhorse's answer to my simple question. That doesn't require retreading many of the the dark corners of human history.
In one case, naming two people who studied the events in Gaza and denied that it's a genocide was sufficient. In the other, you required a higher threshold of evidence. Arbitrary reasoning.
If there's a genocide I would really like to know about it. All right-thinking decent people should. But the people pushing the idea that there is one don't seem to be applying sufficient rational skepticism and don't seem to be willing to engage in intellectual discourse on the topic, so they're really not winning me over.
Here's one of the big questions I find it hard to get an answer to: how is what's happening in Gaza materially different from what happened to Germany and Japan during WWII, or to the Vietnamese during the Vietnam war?
Now that we've cleared up that I'm not interested in answering your questions without some reciprocity, you can prove to me that the Holocaust was real. If you do, I'll respond in kind. If you won't, then you're out of luck. Knowledge is a gift, and you are not owed anything.
On a forum like HN I think it's reasonable to be asked to justify strong claims that one makes. However, I wasn't even doing that. Rather, I was asking whether voidhorse thought false claims of genocide were equally bad as defence of genocide. It turns out the answer is no: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44320889. I disagree, but fair enough, other people think differently.
So, I have what I originally asked for.
I don't actually have any questions for you. I was only asking since I perceived you were trying to convince me of something. If you're not, that was just a misunderstanding on my part, and no need to continue the conversation. I'm not trying to persuade you of anything! That said, I'm happy to continue to participate in a process of reasoned discussion and inquiry if anyone wants to, but firstly it's going wildly off topic. and secondly I don't see the standards of discussion so far to as particularly high.
> the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
I didn't read the arguments of the people you cited because you didn't bother to link to them, but looking at their credentials, I'm not sure either of them are in a position to solidly refute the scores of footage and testimony to the contrary. The only people I've seen defending this have some kind of personal attachment to Israel, but come on, man, you can maintain that attachment and still condemn horrific acts committed by the state when they happen.
Under your dictionary definition, would you say that the Allies in WWII committed genocide of Germans and Japanese? If you say "yes", then I suppose you're entitled to your interpretation, and I know exactly how seriously to take it. If you say "no" then perhaps you could explain what is the difference between WWII (where proportionally far more civilians were killed) and the current Gaza war.
> you can maintain that attachment and still condemn horrific acts committed by the state when they happen
I agree. And one can refrain from condemning horrific acts that one is not certain happened.
I'm happy to continue the discussion if you like, but all I'm really after is your answer to this simple question: do you see defence of true genocide as equally bad as false accusation of genocide? I would be content with a simple yes or no. Or does the question make you uncomfortable somehow?
Still, for the record, other independent observers have documented the practices and explained why they don't meet the definition of genocide, John Spencer and Natasha Hausdorff to name two examples. It seems by no means clear that it's valid to make a claim of genocide. I certainly wouldn't unless I was really, really certain of my claim, because to get such a claim wrong is equally egregious to denying a true genocide, in my opinion.