Archie wrote:HistorySpeaks wrote:Do you guys actually believe that casualty estimates for other wars and genocides are arrived at by digging up all victims and doing a forensic analysis of the remains? You should deny all other genocides and wars, etc, if this is your epistemic standard.
The holocaust is distinctive in that it's claimed not only that six million Jews died, but that perhaps four to five million of the six million were executed by the state, mostly by gassing and shooting, and that most of these executions occurred at precise locations, principally a handful of "death camps" plus Babi Yar and other massacre sites. In that were true we should absolutely expect to see remains. Yet there were minimal remains at these sites and we are told this is because the Nazis burned all the bodies. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia is an example where it was alleged that huge numbers were executed en masse. And sure enough in that case they did find an enormous number of mass graves.
Not sure whether that figure is still taken seriously by the Historiographers of the Holocaust. Apparently they don't like to talk about the origin of the six million figure (meaning that it was actually a made up figure and they actually realize it). Their refusal to discuss the figure as well as other key issues like gassings is proof sufficient that they aren't busy with serious historiography, but that this is a field full of ideological, nay religious land mines. What that means is that 'Holocaust historians' are intellectually dishonest when they claim objectivity, rationality, empirical evidence and 'science' to be on their side. Their whole approach is to pick out some fragments, extrapolate them and then claim that this is sufficient evidence for the claim that "The Nazis killed six million Jews by gassings etc.". It's another one of those "The science is settled" postulate. Which has turned out to be a good indicator that one is dealing with pseudoscientific fraud for political gain and ulterior motives.
If it wasn't (and is) war propaganda the whole affair would have turned out far differently. The gassing allegations would be treated as rumors. People wouldn't have been told "your family was gassed", but that they would be missing and that they were still looking to find them. Because that is what happened to other missing people after the war. At the end there were still 2 million Germans missing and it was "presumed they were dad" - No legislation necessary to protect this claim against "denial".
And yes, real genocides tend to leave real evidence. But sometimes normal warfare products like shot, starved and diseased people can also be mistaken for "proof of genocide" emotional pleading and logical thinking aren't exactly friends it seems. View people have the vigor to keep reason as their master, but are prone to let ulterior desires take over their cognitive processes.
