The Rise of the Far Right

BobKowalski said:
You would favour a political doctrine that proscribes racial superiority and genocide of a race of people as official policy along with the elimination of people with physical and mental disabilities and also triggered a world war that killed some 40 million people in 5 years?

Bold take.
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Did you miss the bit were he said both lead to the same outcome?

It’s you favouring a political doctrine here I’m afraid.
 
Gelsons Dad said:
I wouldn’t favour either. I just highlighted the death toll. Genocide is common to both.
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For Nazism genocide was a design feature rather than a bug. I am not aware (I could be wrong) of the Soviet Union setting up death camps for the express purpose of genocide. Neither regime is winning humanitarian of the years awards but there is a crucial difference.
 
BobKowalski said:
For Nazism genocide was a design feature rather than a bug. I am not aware (I could be wrong) of the Soviet Union setting up death camps for the express purpose of genocide. Neither regime is winning humanitarian of the years awards but there is a crucial difference.
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You're walking a tightrope trying to make that differential. Nazism didn't start out stating they should all be killed, it developed as logical consequence of their hatred. Fascism generally hasn't specified mass slaughter, but again, it's what usually happened. The Soviet Union didn't start out saying that all opponents, religious people, the mentally ill, various ethnic groups and undesirables should be slaughtered either, but that's what happened, and I'm not going to draw that big a distinction between death camps and gulags, because if you do, it's considering concentration camps generally as being a lesser evil - people didn't die by accident in them. I'm struggling to see a meaningful differential in the motivation when the outcome is so murderous.
 
BobKowalski said:
For Nazism genocide was a design feature rather than a bug. I am not aware (I could be wrong) of the Soviet Union setting up death camps for the express purpose of genocide. Neither regime is winning humanitarian of the years awards but there is a crucial difference.
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Yea. The commies were better at killing people.

You don't think the Gulag wasn't a purpose built death camp?

The German workhouses focused on killing the Jews, the Gulag focused on killing everything. You could argue the Germans were at least up front about it. In Russia you just disappeared. Millions and millions and millions of you.....
 
Armchair Supporter said:
Yea. The commies were better at killing people.

You don't think the Gulag wasn't a purpose built death camp?

The German workhouses focused on killing the Jews, the Gulag focused on killing everything. You could argue the Germans were at least up front about it. In Russia you just disappeared. Millions and millions and millions of you.....
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Holodomor being a good example of what an ideology van do. We vowed never again but both sides seem hell bent on defending their sordid pasts by othering the others.
 
Armchair Supporter said:
Yea. The commies were better at killing people.

You don't think the Gulag wasn't a purpose built death camp?

The German workhouses focused on killing the Jews, the Gulag focused on killing everything. You could argue the Germans were at least up front about it. In Russia you just disappeared. Millions and millions and millions of you.....
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The Soviet Union deaths were spread across a far far greater period of time.

If the Nazis death camps continued at the rate they were over the same period of time then they’d have far eclipsed the Soviet Union.
 
Henkeman said:
You're walking a tightrope trying to make that differential. Nazism didn't start out stating they should all be killed, it developed as logical consequence of their hatred. Fascism generally hasn't specified mass slaughter, but again, it's what usually happened. The Soviet Union didn't start out saying that all opponents, religious people, the mentally ill, various ethnic groups and undesirables should be slaughtered either, but that's what happened, and I'm not going to draw that big a distinction between death camps and gulags, because if you do, it's considering concentration camps generally as being a lesser evil - people didn't die by accident in them. I'm struggling to see a meaningful differential in the motivation when the outcome is so murderous.
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I can condemn both regimes and point out that genocide was a design feature, a specific policy of one regime and for the other it wasn’t. I do see a difference between a camp that is purpose built to efficiently kill large numbers of people and a camp where they are left to rot. I find the idea that someone would design a means by which millions of men, women and children should be killed as shockingly repugnant. Not as a design flaw or through incompetence or callous indifference or bureaucratic indifference but specifically designed to murder them. That for me is a step beyond. It is more than being cruel. It is evil on a Biblical level of evil and that is I think why it resonates with people and why the Nazi regime and its philosophy is so widely reviled in a way that the Soviet regime isn’t.
 
Ban-jani said:
The Soviet Union deaths were spread across a far far greater period of time.

If the Nazis death camps continued at the rate they were over the same period of time then they’d have far eclipsed the Soviet Union.
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We killed more but over a greater length of time isn't much of a defence!

BobKowalski said:
I can condemn both regimes and point out that genocide was a design feature, a specific policy of one regime and for the other it wasn’t. I do see a difference between a camp that is purpose built to efficiently kill large numbers of people and a camp where they are left to rot. I find the idea that someone would design a means by which millions of men, women and children should be killed as shockingly repugnant. Not as a design flaw or through incompetence or callous indifference or bureaucratic indifference but specifically designed to murder them. That for me is a step beyond. It is more than being cruel. It is evil on a Biblical level of evil and that is I think why it resonates with people and why the Nazi regime and its philosophy is so widely reviled in a way that the Soviet regime isn’t.
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Personally, I find the mass slaughter of people repugnant without equivocation, and I don't for a moment think it's somehow less repulsive to murder millions as some kind of side effect.
 
Henkeman said:
Personally, I find the mass slaughter of people repugnant without equivocation, and I don't for a moment think it's somehow less repulsive to murder millions as some kind of side effect.
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The Gulags were instruments of political repression where millions died. The death camps were factories designed to murder people as efficiently as possible in terms of numbers and time. There will always be a part of me that cannot reconcile the act of designing and operating a killing factory with being human. I get cruelty. I get repression. I understand war. I even understand the motive to kill but I will never get people designing a operating a factory purely to kill people. It is unhuman.

For what it’s worth this is purely a visceral emotion on my part.
 
BobKowalski said:
The Gulags were instruments of political repression where millions died. The death camps were factories designed to murder people as efficiently as possible in terms of numbers and time. There will always be a part of me that cannot reconcile the act of designing and operating a killing factory with being human. I get cruelty. I get repression. I understand war. I even understand the motive to kill but I will never get people designing a operating a factory purely to kill people. It is unhuman.

For what it’s worth this is purely a visceral emotion on my part.
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OK, well I'm not going to call you out on a gut response. All I can say is that personally, I don't see much difference, in both cases people are being treated as things, and that's where evil happens.
 
Armchair Supporter said:
If you call murdering people, or starving them to death or working them to death or freezing them to death or neglecting them to death "political repression" then you are correct.
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Yeah I call that ‘political repression’. I mean they weren’t sent there for their fucking health were they?
 
Henkeman said:
We killed more but over a greater length of time isn't much of a defence!



Personally, I find the mass slaughter of people repugnant without equivocation, and I don't for a moment think it's somehow less repulsive to murder millions as some kind of side effect.
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It isn’t a defence, it’s an observation.
 
BobKowalski said:
Yeah I call that ‘political repression’. I mean they weren’t sent there for their fucking health were they?
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I call it for what it is. Murder.

I find communism genocide more reprehensible than the Nazis in one respect (jeysus, I can't believe I'm playing totalitarian regimes against each other to prove murderous intent.)

The Nazis just plain fucking murdered you without shame.

The Commies did it clandestinely and under cloak and dagger and all in the name of the greater good.

One is evil, but killing you and your generations slowly and telling you it's for your own good and for the greater good is another level.

There is no "better" in these discussions. Ffs
 
Armchair Supporter said:
I call it for what it is. Murder.

I find communism genocide more reprehensible than the Nazis in one respect (jeysus, I can't believe I'm playing totalitarian regimes against each other to prove murderous intent.)

The Nazis just plain fucking murdered you without shame.

The Commies did it clandestinely and under cloak and dagger and all in the name of the greater good.

One is evil, but killing you and your generations slowly and telling you it's for your own good and for the greater good is another level.

There is no "better" in these discussions. Ffs
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Never said there was a ‘better’. Although you seem to having a stab at it so go figure.

Look I get it. You hate Commies. Have a biscuit.
 
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