I would tend to agree with you on this.

Although it does manage to raise an eyebrow or two when the so-called "experts" present absolutely absurd data.

I was reading an article about the Tehran conference and noticed that one of the 'experts' claimed with certainty that only 2,009 Jews were killed at Auschwitz.

It's one thing for Duke or Ahmadinejad to brazenly refute obvious fact, but it is another thing completely when some pie-in-the-sky number is pulled out of who knows where to support such a ridiculous thesis.

Not even Bush, while building the case for war in 2003, attempted to give a specific number of WMD in Saddam's possession.

Or did he...

They don't matter. It's what happens if they are not opposed that matters.
Ask the scientific community about Creationism/ID -- they took the high road, avoiding debates and fights, and managed to lose many a battle to people who were actually passionate about converting schools to teach Creationism. It was the scientific community organizing and developing stratagems that allowed wins like Dover.
Or, in a similar vein, ask how many local school boards and county/city councils how effective Evangelical takeovers are. A small-but-vocal community, if organized and focused and wise, can and does beat a silent majority.

As a black man, I'd much rather know who's hating me, and be able to talk in the open, than to have hate suppressed, or even ignored. Hate put to light can be fought, education made, minds enlightened. Hate brushed aside and ignored is a sure way to have it fester and grow.

--

APOSTATE: Angry Young Black Man Does Raqs.

Holocaust denial is very painful. It is like removing even the memory of the victims. That is usually why it is done. That and to some degree to rehabilitate the Nazi and Fascist reputation (in the same way, but to a different, extent the way a Ronald Radosh tries to trash the volunteers who fought to defend Spain against Franco).

I won't begrudge anyone who wants to fight against hate and intolerence.  But in my mind trying to engage these Holocaust deniers plays right into their hands by saying they have credibility.  There are always going to be people that hate.  Then there are the ones who hate so much they go to lengths to "justify" their hate.  Intelligent Design is one thing because the arguments are about something that can't be quantified.  The Holocaust is a fact...there is no disputing it.  By arguing with the Holocaust deniers people play right into their hands because you are now arguing about the justification for their hate.  To me arguing with the Holocaust deniers is like trying to argue with someone who claims there wasn't slavery and it was only Africans who wanted to come to America for good jobs and a better life working on the plantations.  It is so ludricous it needs to be dismissed out of hand...

Do people hate?  Yes.  Are they a threat to others?  Yes.  Should we fight against the forces of hate by keeping them out of a position to act upon their hate?  Yes.  But I am not going to give their rationale for hate one iota of credibility by arguing it with them.

There was an amazingly unfortunate juxtaposition of articles in a recent New York Times. One was an article about the upcoming Iranian conference on the Holocaust. The other was an article about historians revising the number of people killed in the Croatian concentration camp Jasenovac downward from around 500,000 to around 100,000.
It had been inflated by Tito for political purposes.

The reason Holocaust denial is so important to these people is that the Holocaust screws up their world view. The Jews must be opposed because they own and control everything. How could the people who own and control everything allow the Holocaust to occur? Obviously they would not. Therefore the whole thing must be a Jewish plot to illicit sympathy from gullible Christians and allow the creation of Israel.

No way the Jews of Europe were just working-class and small merchants for the most part, vunerable to the whims of their government. It's an article of faith with this crowd that the Jews are running the world. They have no choice but to come up with an alternative story of the Holocaust because the truth calls their entire raison d'etre into question.

And let me also bring up that when we constantly refer to the 6,000,000 Jewish dead, we play right into their hands. The last thing the denial crowd want to talk about is the millions of Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, and plain old political prisoners who died in the camps. The Roma (gypsies) may have suffered a greater percentage loss of life than the Jews, but it is hard to be sure because of the sporadic (at best) records about the Roma.

Let's instead talk about the 10-12 million dead in the Nazi attempt to ethnically cleanse Europe called the Holocaust.

Asim has this exactly right. It is important to speak the truth and to remember.   To ignore is to consent to the erasure of the collective memory.  Truth perishes with too little care. Soon you have the media trying to present "both sides of the issue."

Ovid

I think you're onto something here. Let's generalize Holocaust denial into Denial of History. Not sure how to set objective standards, but perhaps it would be best to take the approach followed by the writers of the Geneva Conventions on war that avoided a precise definition of torture, leaving it to a sort of prevailing standard.

More distant historical periods are of course uncertain, but there is no excuse for tolerating historical distortion regarding such a well-documented event. Not only the millions of victims' relatives, but the many US soldiers that saw the camps as they were liberated, testify to truth.

Why deny the holocaust? Maybe the world in general is becoming tired of it being used to allow a fascist state like Israel to do whatever it wants and if detected in their crimes.... scream "holocaust" . I know its getting old for me. I wonder, did the jews behave before WWII as they are now? The holocaust was a horrible crime against all people, and those that use it today are commiting another. Whoever keeps it alive for the sake of forwarding an agenda is as big a criminal as Hitler. If not worse, for they are also causing many unjust deaths. I figure the reason we dont hear about the American Indian Holocaust is because they have too much honor to bring it up again, because doing so dishonors the ones they lost.

Ahmadinejad is not crazy. He has a specific political purpose in holding this meeting. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm willing to guess it has something to do with his stature within Iran. Perhaps he is trying to prove his ability to stand up to the west.

To call him insane ends the discussion too quickly. There is power in history. The Germans have made holocaust denial a crime. Why? The Turks imprison people who even hint that there may have been an Armenia genocide. Why?

If history didn't matter why such extreme reaction to free speech? Rebutting Ahmadinejad's claims is important for the same reason that he thinks making them is important. One doesn't even have to fully understand the why to see that promoting the truth must be a priority.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

I expect there are about 20 million Iranians
who just roll their eyes. And wonder how to get rid of this guy who is turning a proud country
into a laughing stock.

And who may actually be less sinister
than the hidden leaders who really pull the strings.. There's an interesting book "Answering Only to God" by a couple of reporters who entered Iran in 96 to cover the reform (no quotation marks) and watched the thwarting of
the majority's desire for Iran to join
the reality based community(which we were about
to leave).

And barely escaped 4 years later.

One scene describes the secret police (not under the government's control)not only killing an opponent-and I think his family- but also wiring the house first so their masters could
enjoy listening . Nice .

None of which is an argument for nuking those
20 million Iranians who want to watch soccer, go skiing and have a chance to have their votes counted.

As for actually denying the Holocaust.It's nuts . A particularly hurtful example of the phenomenom of manifestly improbable
theories from: Roosevelt hid the information about the coming attack on Pearl Harbor , to the IDF was responsible for 9/ll .

About pearl Harbor. The Attack may have been predicted. When everyone knows bush is still hiding his reasons for Iraq, it should not be a suprise. Previous to Pearl harbor, the US Military had cut off Japan's supply of oil.... would cutting off our supply be considered an act of war today? probably. That is the nice thing about America, we are free to question things we have been told since we were little.... or not.

The reason it is important to respond vigorously  every time a group starts trying to deny the facts of the holocaust, is that there are still far too many seemingly rational people in the world who will grab onto such denials as justification for their anti-semitism.  Even in this country if there is ever a large body of writing that pretends to support the theory that the holocaust is a myth there will be many people, some even in government, who will gleefully refer to that writing.  Bigotry is not dead, but is alive and very enthusiastically existing in our country.  So, I believe it is vital for all of us to speak up whenever another attempt is made to legitamize the idea that there was no holocaust.

Hoppy in Sacramento

David Lloyd George was Britain's Prime Minister during WWI. If you want to see Realpolitik, read his account of the REAL reasons behind Britain's creation of Israel with the Balfour Declaration. The relevant section from his "Memoirs of the Peace Conference" are here: http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/l-george.html

Some excerpts:
**********
"It seems strange to say that the Germans were the first to realise the war value of the Jews of the dispersal. In Poland it was they who helped the German Army to conquer the Czarist oppressor who had so cruelly persecuted their race. They had their influence in other lands - notably in America, where some of their most powerful leaders exerted a retarding influence on President Wilson's impulses in the direction of the Allies. {ed. - before the Balfour Declaration} The German General Staff in 1916 urged the Turks to concede the demands of the Zionists in respect of Palestine. Fortunately the Turk was too stupid to understand or too sluggish to move. The fact that Britain at last opened her eyes to the opportunity afforded to the Allies to rally this powerful people to their side was attributable to the initiative, the assiduity and the fervour of one of the greatest Hebrews of all time: Dr. Chaim Weizmann. He found his opportunity in this War of Nations to advance the cause to which he had consecrated his life. Dr. Weizmann enlisted my adhesion to his ideals at a time when, at my reguest, he was successfully applying his scientific skill and imagination to save Britain from a real disaster over the failure of wood alcohol for the manufacture of cordite."
[bmastiff Note: Cordite = high explosive desperately needed for artillery shells, ammo,etc]
**********
"The Balfour Declaration represented the convinced policy of all parties in our country and also in America, but the launching of it in 1917 was due, as I have said, to propagandist reasons. I should like once more to remind the British public, who may be hesitating about the burdens of our Zionist Declaration to-day, of the actual war position at the time of that Declaration. We are now looking at the War through the dazzling glow of a triumphant end, but in 1917 the issue of the War was still very much in doubt"
*******
"For the Allies there were two paramount problems at that time. The first was that the Central Powers should be broken by the blockade before our supplies of food and essential raw material were cut off by sinkings of our own ships. The other was that the war preparations in the United States should be speeded up to such an extent as to enable the Allies to be adequately reinforced in the critical campaign of 1918 by American troops. In the solution of these two problems, public opinion in Russia and America played a great part, and we had every reason at that time to believe that in both countries the friendliness or hostility of the Jewish race might make a considerable difference.

{p. 725} The solution of Germany's food and raw material dificulties depended on the attitude of Russia and the goodwill of its people. We realised, and so did the Germans, that Russia could take no further part in the War with her army, but the question was: when would she conclude peace with Germany and what manner of peace would it be? Time counted for both sides, and the conditions and the temper of the peace between Germany and Russia counted even more. Would the peace be of a kind which would afford facilities for the Germans to secure supplies of grain, oil, and copper from the immeasurable natural resources of that vast and rich country, or would it be a sulky pact which would always stand in the way of Germany's attempt to replenish her stores from Russian resources? In the former case, we could not hope for a better issue of the War than a stalemate after another year or two of carnage. In the latter case, the stranglehold of our fleet would be effective, and the Central Powers would be deprived of essential food and material and their will and power of resistance would be weakened to a breaking-point. The Germans were equally alive to the fact that the Jews of Russia wielded considerable influence in Bolshevik circles. The Zionist Movement was exceptionally strong in Russia and America. The Germans were, therefore, engaged actively in courting favour with that Movement all over the world. A friendly Russia would mean not only more food and raw material for Germany and Austria, but fewer German and Austrian troops on the Eastern front and, therefore, more available for the West. These considerations were brought to our notice by the Foreign Office, and reported to the War Cabinet.

The support of the Zionists for the cause of the Entente would mean a great deal as a war measure. Quite naturally Jewish sympathies were to a great extent anti-Russian, and therefore in favour of the Central Powers. No ally of Russia, in fact, could escape sharing that immediate and inevitable penalty for the long and savage Russian persecution of the Jewish race. In addition to this, the German General Staff, with their wide outlook on possibilities, urged, early in 1916, the advantages of promising Jewish restoration to Palestine under an arrangement

{p. 726} to be made between Zionists and Turkey, backed by a German guarantee."
************
"Another most cogent reason for the adoption by the Allies of the policy of the declaration lay in the state of Russia herself. Russian Jews had been secretly active on behalf of the Central Powers from the first; they had become the chief agents of German pacifist propaganda in Russia; by 1917 they had done much in preparing for that general disintegration of Russian society, later recognised as the Revolution. It was believed that if Great Britain declared for the fulfilment of Zionist aspirations in Palestine under her own pledge, one effect would be to bring Russian Jewry to the cause of the Entente. "
****************
"It was believed, also, that such a declaration would have a potent influence upon world Jewry outside Russia, and secure for the Entente the aid of Jewish financial interests. In America, their aid in this respect would have a special value when the Allies had almost exhausted the gold and marketable securities available for American purchases. Such were the chief considerations which, in 1917, impelled the British Government towards making a contract with Jewry. "
*********
[Bmastiff note: Lloyd George is referring to the American Jewish leaders who played a major role in getting Woodrow Wilson elected President and who had great influence with Wilson --Frankfurter, Brandeis,etc.

While JP Morgan had loaned Britain large sums, the second largest financial firm in New York -- the Jewish firm of Kuhn Loeb -- had stood aloof.]

Re Pearl Harbor:

James Bamford's "The Puzzle Palace" contains a very detailed analysis of what we knew , when we knew it ,and who was told what , when. In essence, we did have advance knowledge and did communicate that to Pearl Harbor but ,
for some reason did it via an RCA cablegram which , as luck would have it , was mishandled
within RCA and arrived late.

Obviously those details could still be the basis for a not-off-the-wall conspiracy theory which ,as I know from personal experience , was indeed quietly subscribed to by some senior naval officers .
.............................................

The current Nation has a non-paranoid article about the way paranoid 9/11 theories have sprung
up and goes on to suggest that an overly credulous media creates a fertile ground for
such overly paranoid conspiracy theories.

I just remembered a friend in college, Ladan, who was from Iran. It was at the time of the hostage crisis. She was dismayed and amused, I think, because our interpreters literal translations of what the Iranian leaders were saying did not convey the meaning at all. "Death to America" does not mean they want to kill Americans, it is just because of their style of speech. I don't know. I'm a 50 yr old white guy.

Nothing wrong with being skeptical but then it makes sense to try and resolve your doubts.

In my case they were resolved by a winter's afternoon I spent in the museum at Dachau which I happened to be visiting on an army assignment. There was no docent , in fact no one else even present.

Two things stayed in my mind . First the photos showing the inmates being marched down the main street on their way to work. Clearly starving. Passing by ordinary housewifes doing their shopping and communters hurrying to the station with their attache cases. Everyone knew.

Second an SS memo( I read German )instructing the camp manager to charge the local farmers , say ,100 pfennig per day to rent the inmates for work , and to feed the inmates at a cost of , say , 50 pf. When a farmer refused to pay 100 for a particular worker , cut the price to ,say, 60 pf and move him to another area where the food cost 30 pf. And so on. Or Und so weiter .

I was convinced.

When I returned to my home base I spent a pleasant afternoon with a german friend . Drove to Wiesbaden , had tea at a tennis club. On the way back he said , suddenly ,"So you've been to Dachau."

"Yeah" I answered.

" I suppose you believed what they tell you there".

"Eric , nobody told me anything.I just saw what I saw"

" You don't know what they were like"

fertile ground for such overly paranoid conspiracy theories.

I don't think that the 9/11 folks are trying to prove that 9/11 was a conspiracy but, instead, they're trying to prove that the official story was bogus.

My analogy: the 9/11 investigation was like the OJ Simpson trial, there wasn't a conspiracy but people lied to cover up the facts.

I don't see the media as credulous but, instead, a breeding ground for propaganda that breeds conspiracy theories.

For example, we had Judy Miller (NY Times) coluding with the government to push the Iraq war, major media repeating Colin Powell's theatrics at the UN and, based on Amy Goodman, the NY Times wrote that only the initial explosions of atomic bombs kill people, not the radiation, after we bombed Japan.

And what about Representive Mark Foley? Instead of reporting him as a child molester, they let PR agents turn him into a victim and many major news organizations all of the sudden started labeling Foley a Democrat.

And what about the mayoral election in NY? The NY Times made everyone think that the major democrats, like Clinton, supported Bloomberg and never let the Democratic Opponent get traction or much credibility.

In general, if you analyze newspapers, you become skeptical that they take pains to be totally truthful and it's hard to believe that, when they get it wrong, they were "simply misinformed" or "lazy about the research" and I say this because European papers were debunking Bush's intelligence daily while US papers bent over backgrounds to legitimatize it with spin.

With regards to this thread, the US newspapers paint Iranians as deranged while counter-balancing that with "favorable reporting (read spin)" on Israel.

That is a problem. The White House controls the intelligence reports and the translators --hence, the translations.

Someone once said that the history of the 20th Century was driven by the fact that Americans found it easier to understand British propaganda than German propaganda.

In the case of WWI, I believe there's some truth to that. JP Morgan was owned by anglophiles who drove the US government to aid Britain against the beastly Hun.

Later, Jewish American Bernard Baruch complained that the Versailles Conference was overrun with bankers from JP Morgan.
Those bankers were obviously concerned that Britain get German reparations --that the conference "squeezed the pips till they squeaked" so the British branch of the House of Morgan could settle accounts with the New York branch of the House of Morgan.

Hopefully, at the end of the day, the US government is the one wearing the white hat. But it's hard to be sure because that hat is usually covered with more corporate logos than a NASCAR race car.

I'm sorry to see the low ratings your comment has drawn without any arugment, danielius.  

The truth is that American Indians "bring it up" all the time - it's just that they have no real voice in the Americas (except for pop-spiritualism and twinkieism, that is..) It's the result of social marginalization.

The reason genocide against this hemisphere's people is seldom heard is primarily, in my opinion, that the whole historical tragedy has been passed-off as the unfortunate consequences of disease epidemics.  But there were no reliable population statistics, so the native populations were grossly estimated to measure the impact of disease epidemics.  More reliable is the historical comparison with kill rates of diseases elsewhere in the world where population densities were better known.  30% mortality in the Black Plague in Europe is a huge number, of course, but 70% of the population survived.  Why would it be otherwise in the Americas?  There could be higher kill-rates, of course, but the fact remains that significant numbers would have survived.  

The last Mexican census I looked at, maybe 25 years ago, showed that there were 9 million Indians in Mexico who spoke only their native languages, and didn't speak Spanish.  That could very well be more Indians than existed in Mexico in 1519, but no one really knows.  But it shows that historical epidemics did not empty the land and opened it up for European occupation.

In 1960 Brazil, under a military coup government, began the extermination of Amazonian Indians which lasted just about 10 years before it was stopped by Brazil's more liberal citizens.  There are no numbers, suffice it to say it was mighty.  While there were diseases such as influenze that took their toll, the primarily killing was accomplished by guns and machetes.  

In 1980 the same rate befell the Maya in Guatemala - the low estimate is around 400,000 but the actual figure was undoubted higher.  There was no disease involved, except for some outbreaks among Maya refugees in the jungles of Chiapas and Quintana Roo in Mexico.

Somewhere in between those dates was a great killing of Mapuches in Chile.   

Historical research shows almost countless "great killing" throughout the hemisphere from the time Columbus set his foot on American shores. My point is, that if disease had depopulated the Americas, we wouldn't have these horror stories to contemplate.

So in my mind "denial" is the key word here.  It's an example of the selectiveness of history.  The Germans today are an interesting example of NOT sanitizing history to create a noble sense of manifest destiny designed to comfort people.  They've faced the horror straight in the face, and I admire them for it.

For better or for worse, the Holocaust has become an important part of Jewish identity in our modern world.  I think it's a good thing, personally.  MJ's words in another thread, Never Again, ring true to me.  But I certainly would appreciate that same bundle of concepts extended to other people who have suffered genocide.

Neoboho

Israel is not a fascist state and anyone who says it is knows nothing about either Israel or fascism.

One reason why the Holocaust is mention is that is a blunt illustration of what happens when Jews have no place to go. Europe the civilized part of the globe joined in an effort to exterminate every Jew on the planet. That it failed does not change the fact.

The situation of the American Indian was terrible but it in part far preceeded the existence of any of the European based countries on the any of the Americas, disease as much as any policy led to the Indian's demise and many individual Americans chose to drive off and kill the Indians rather than the government.

Should Americans leave as reparations to Indians? Sadly they were a conquered nation. Jews were citizens of Germany and the rest of Europe and scapegoated and murdered.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Andrew Carnegie started out making $1.20 a week as a bobbin boy and wound up one of the richest men in the world, but Horatio Alger is a myth.

The Shoa happened, but the Holocaust is a myth.

Well, I have spent alot of time in europe, its my main residence. I have talked to many people who lived in the times before the Nazis. I live there in a community of about 12,000 that is about the same size as it was prior WWII. At that time, it had about one fourth of its population Jewish, and they do not have pretty stories to tell. They did not strike me as rascist, but rather just telling the sory of how it was. These people have lived hard lives. It is in eastern Europe, part of the USSR. I brought the question up because of the stories and impressions I have received. I just said, "I wonder". And I should clarify, I am not really talking about Jews. I am speaking of Israel. Today. If you look at what is happening, and their history, it aint pretty. Any other country couldn't get away with it. When you treat your neighbors like Sh_t, you might get some back someday if history has any lessons for anyone. But "holocaust!!" and they can do anything, against any body.

Everyone should sit back, take a deep breath, and look up Fascism in the dictionary. It is not simply a bad thing you say about someone you don't like, it is a set of definitions which describe a form of governance. Israel DOES meet many of the qualifications. The USA does as well. It is good to learn what words mean before we use them, or before we critisize another's use of them. I am not against Jews, I have no feelings one way or another. The Jews I have known seemed like everyone else to me. But the COUNTRY of Israel IS sowing a crop it may not wish to harvest.

Juan Cole's opinion about Ahmadinejad's motives, from a post today,
"The New Middle East Cold War: Saudi/Israel/Lebanon versus Iran/Syria/Iraq/Hizbullah":

Iran's farce of a "conference" on the Holocaust is a way of underlining its government's complete rejection of a two state solution and of a Zionist state in the Middle East. Iran's leaders support a maximalist Hamas vision of a fundamentalist Muslim Palestinian state in all of historical Palestine, which requires the dissolution of the Israeli state. Since Israelis tend to justify their state project with reference to the Holocaust, the Ahmadinejad faction in Iran is replying with Holocaust denial as a counter to this argument. Note that other prominent Iranians, such as former President Mohammad Khatami, accept the Holocaust and have lambasted Ahmadinejad for questioning it.

also quite interesting, from the same post:

....a de facto Israeli-Saudi alliance appears to be building against Iran and the Shiites....Saudi Arabia is equally frantic about the possibility of a nuclear Iran, and is moreover apoplectic that the US delivered Baghdad into the hands of Iraqi Shiite fundamentalists allied with Iran. Saudi Arabia fears Hizbullah in Lebanon as an Iranian cat's paw in the Arab world. The Khomeinists of Iran and south Lebanon believe that Islam is incompatible with monarchy (Khomeini said, "there are no kings in Islam.")....

Note: for those who don't know his work, Prof. Cole could not exactly be described as a strong supporter of many of the actions of the state of Israel.

why do Jews have no place to go? Think.

marcf, re:

I hope I misunderstand.

Checking new comments on this thread, it's suddenly become clearer for me that you did not.

I'm going to copy a new reply, just above yours, by danielius to Daniel A. Greenbaum, below, in case it gets removed or changed:

On December 13, 2006 - 10:48pm danielius said: why do Jews have no place to go? Think.

I understand the position of some British friends who regret Churchill's having been chosen PM in 1940 instead of Lord Halifax who intended to accept Mussolini's offer to act as honest broker : 50 million deaths avoided (those particular deaths ,that is) including those at Hiroshima , perhaps expulsion of Germany's Jews
(to Madagascar !)rather than the Holocaust , no Cold War since the Axis would have attacked the USSR .

Nothing lasts forever and at least the European winners might have evolved as ,for example , Spain did . The Adenauers and De Gasparis were all there already and some turn of the wheel might have brought them to power.

It's an iconoclastic position , but not a stupid one.

you highlight the main problem: people, in general, don't play well together because they want to hog their own toys.

although, I enjoy the fact that Ahmadinejad defends his country's sovereignty so eloquently.

I enjoyed him and Chavez at the UN this year.

Bush's speech was, well, uninspiring.

How bout them global-warming deniers?

There are very few real scientists and they wouldn't matter, except that (1) there are deep pockets behind them, the oil companies, giving them publicity and support, and (2) their message is popular with some, even though it is wrong. So the global-warming deniers have an enormous effect on our world, delaying effective action against a worldwide threat.

Holocaust deniers haven't mattered either, even though their message is undeniably popular with many. But now Ahmadinejad is supplying the deep pockets.

A big difference is, the data on global-warming keep coming in and the facts become ever clearer. Whereas the Holocaust is fading out of memory and into History.

It is likely that the pre-Columbus population of the Americas was ~ 100 million, and that 95% of them were killed by disease, the greatest tragedy known to history.

For documentation, the impressive book "1491" by Charles Mann. One example will suffice. In 1539 de Soto tramped around the central Mississippi. The area was crowded. It was "very well peopled with large towns, two or three of which were to be seen from one town." No other Europeans visited until La Salle in 1682, in canoes. The area was deserted, not one Indian village for 200 miles along the river.

Read it, the documentation is undeniable.

I'd take it one step further: the notion that Hitler was a madman is dangerous. It clouds our understanding of the actual social processes that culminated in the Holocaust.

In the early 80s I read a fascinating essay by two social scientists associated with the Henrietta Szold Institute who asked the question what could lead human beings to genocidal acts.  They went to the Yad Vashem library and asked the librarian "We're looking for books addressing why and how humans could commit genocide and the librarian told them they had no such books.   

What they were proposing was a Genocide Early Warning System.   A computer database that would evaluate news stories around the world on the basis of what we already know about the preconditions for genocidal acts (which was very little, as this important topic is seriously understudied).

That's why the madman thesis is dangerous.  As long as we see genocide as abberations we'll get nowhere in terms of understanding the social process and preventing it.

Here's the citation:

It's out of print - a good academic library will have it.

Neoboho

It is likely that the pre-Columbus population of the Americas was ~ 100 million, and that 95% of them were killed by disease, the greatest tragedy known to history.

"Likely" according to what?  Scholarly estimates range from 5.8 million to 112 million, actually.  Take your pick.  The truth is that the numbers are not known, and impossible to know.   These are extrapolated estimates based on weak data - tiny shards of evidence.  So the 95% disease kill rate is a very suspicious argument.

Here's one reference that challenges population estimates.

Henige, David. Numbers from Nowhere: The American Indian Contact Population Debate. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8061-3044-X.

Documentation of DeSoto's travels is indeed deniable, marcf.  There is no agreement among scholars where he went.  Florida (Tampa area) is pretty solid, but the native populations in that area did not disappear after 1539.  He is said to have traveled to the Carolinas, Tennesee, Georgia - all places that had thriving populations by 1682.  If the Mississipian were infected, and alternative explanation is that they simply abandoned their towns to escape infection, which probably transformed their society dramatically, especially with the introduction of the mustangs that escaped DeSoto's army.  The point is that there is no way of knowing how many died of disease epidemics.

But I'm glad you offered the example of DeSoto.  He's credited with defining the European/Indian relationship as one of hostility.  His brutality and murderous tactics seemed to have matched Nuño de Guzmán's genocidal campaign in Western Mexico a few years earlier.  Disease?  The only reliable evidence we have are the boastings published by eyewitnesses who wrote about killing Indians with swords, fire, muskets and so on.

I remain skeptical. 

Neoboho

I must say, I find your bookkeeping of victoms extremely distasteful. Each of these atrocities is uniquely horrible.

However, I don't think I have ever heard anyone argue that the Holocaust justifies any wrongs committed by Israel. Not once. Rather, the Holocaust is essential to help understand how we, the world, got into this awful situation with the Jews and the Palestinians. Otherwise, the conclusion is that the situation arose because the Jews are bad people!