Jan
29
I wrote this ‘controversial’ article Was Gandhi a Libertarian? last month which had many positive and belligerently negative responses from the readers as well as the other RFL team members12. The question which came up again and again(Gandhi was asked this during in his lifetime as well), which I unfortunately couldn’t answer satisfactorily. In fact I haven’t seen anyone answer that question satisfactorily. The question is, how would Gandhian philosophy help the Jews in Nazi Germany. What could have Jews in the Nazi Germany have done consistent to Non-violence principle to deter Nazis.
This argument seems to be like the lynchpin of Gandhian philosophy. Gandhi himself wasn’t very informed of the situation in the Nazi Germany. So even his own answer is not sufficient in my opinion. Upon being asked about the Nazi persecution of Jews, Gandhi answered:
If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy [...] the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror.3
This answer is very unpopular in the western world. Gandhi is called anti-semite(try typing the terms Gandhi and Jews in your favorite search engine and see what shows up in results). The question almost always asked is “How do you think Jews in Nazi Germany should have followed the philosophy of non-violence, the Jews were slaughtered in millions without any resistance anyway. In fact the task of the Nazis would have been much more easier had they just gone to the gas chambers peacefully”
I really had to think a lot about the possible solution of this issue. What I came up with was simple, the person who asks the above question actually doesn’t really understand Gandhian method. He confuses Gandhism with non-violence, but it is really important to differentiate between the two. Not all non-violence is Gandhism. Nor all civil disobedience is Gandhism. If few people want to bring Socialism(which is an inherently violent philosophy) through non-violent civil diobedience, they may or may not succeed for a short period of time, but in long term they will fail, because they are not being a Satyagrahi.
As I wrote in my previous article on Gandhian philosophy, what Gandhi managed to do was to remove the the color of righteousness from a morally wrong aggressor. If a thief steals something from someone, and then tries to be all non-violent when the person tries to take back his property through violence, then that’s not Gandhism. This is why Gandhi coined the term ‘Satyagraha’, because civil disobedience does not capture the essense of Gandhian philosophy.
Lets come back to the original question, what could Jews have done as they were standing in front of the gas chambers, consistent with the Gandhian philosophy. The answer would be NOTHING. They could not have done anything as they stood in front of the gas chambers, that is not the time to become Gandhist, its just too late. Then what is the right application of Gandhian philosophy in case of Jews in Nazi Germany? The answer is simple, the Jews in Germany should have done Satyagraha long before they were shipped to the concentration camps.
What Jews should have done is the moment Hitler gave the order that the Jews must stop owning all the businesses, the Jewish businessmen should have done Satyagraha against it. The moment the government took away the guns from the people in Nazi Germany they should have started Satyagraha against it. The moment Hitler ordered all the Jews to get registered and move to the ghettos the jews should have started Satyagraha against it. There are two possible outcomes of this situation:
- The German government backs out and allows Jewish businessmen to continue doing businesses, allow people to own guns, give up trying to register and move Jews to ghettos, which solves our problem but is highly unlikely, knowing what we know about the history.
- The Germany government orders shooting of the Jewish Satyagrahis or forcefully ship them to the concentration camps.
We don’t have to worry about the first outcome, so we will just discuss the second. There are some historical facts you must know about the Nazi Germany, at that particular time nobody in the world knew about the concentration camps. These gas chambers and concentration camps were not publicly known until the war ended. The only news about such atrocity were regarded as mere rumor and war gossip. When Hitler forced Germans to give up their guns, it wasn’t foreseen by anyone that he is disarming the Jewish people in some diabolical plot to eventually have his ‘Final Solution’. I am not saying that the Jews walked gladly into the concentration camps, but all I am saying is had Jewish businessmen not followed the Nazi instructions, had Jews not given up their guns so gladly for the ‘peace’ in Germany, had the Jewish people not registered and moved to the Ghettos, but instead refused to follow the orders from the exact point where they were living their lives exactly how they wanted, they would have been able to expose the Nazis WAY EARLIER, and that exposure would have been the most effective thing to do to fight against the Nazis.
When the news spread about how the Nazis shot 500 Jewish businessmen because they refused to stop owning businesses, or that they sent 1000 people to places from where they were never seen just for refusing to turn over their weapons, or that German soldiers shot 20 families inside their homes in Warsaw who refused to move to the ghettos or registered, this would have uncovered the truth of the Nazi Germany. This would have shown Jews what was coming up for them. A lot of jewish people would have still died, no doubt about that. In fact I can’t even say if more jews or less jews would die in this scenario, either way the number of people killed by the Nazis would have been much much less. It would have mobilized people against the Nazi Germany. Remember, Nazi Germany did not look as monsterous as it looks now to us. Imagine Nazi Germany just as Germany who is invading its neighboring countries without all the holocaust stuff. This is what Allies thought they were fighting during Second World War.
Conclusion
Gandhian philosophy is not applicable for the Jews already standing in front of the firing squad or gas ovens. The correct application of Gandhian philosophy is on the day when the German government first aggressed against them, when the German government wanted to take away their guns, when the German government wanted to them to move to ghettos, when the Germany government wanted them to move to concentration camps. As the aggression of Germany government increased against the Jews, the time to do anything slipped away with every new aggression. We are facing the same situation here, we trade our liberties for temporary security or peace. The UK government orders every citizen to give up their guns, and the British follow the orders, after all who wants to risk getting arrested, so people fool themselves that this will help in maintaining law and order, what they are doing is laying the ground work for another possible Hitler. Yeah the current UK government may not do anything like what Hitler did, but trust me, the new Hitler will not be racist(it won’t be Nick Griffin of British Nationalist Party, it won’t be the Klan association in US, and it won’t be Bal Thakarey in India), whomsoever it would be, you wouldn’t be able to expect him.
Today US government is installing checkpoints across the border to look for illegal immigrants. Indian government is creating a national database of all citizens and every citizen have an ID card. Whatever reasons given for these things, however rational these actions may sound, the fact is you are giving up your liberties! Once you have given up your civil liberties they are much more difficult for you to get them back. Do not give in to evil! Lets say you live in India and you think we cannot allow Indian citizens to have guns otherwise we will have a gun culture like we have in America (where our kids are shooting each other in schools). The thing is, if China attacks in India again or any foreign government for that matter, tries to disable our government and military, we will lose so many lives and property that few disturbed kids shooting each other will sound such a fair deal to the possible resistance Indian citizens could have done to a foreign invasion.
- Was Gandhi a Libertarian – II – Author: Unpretentious Diva, Dec 8 [↩]
- Gandhigiri and Libertarianism – Dec 10– Author: Unpretentious Diva, Dec 10 [↩]
- 26 November 1938 (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi vol. 74, p. 240) [↩]
16 Responses to “How could Gandhian philosophy help Jews in Nazi Germany?”
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Unpretentious Diva Says:
January 29th, 2010 at 8:50 pmAnd by that the other powers of world might have prepared much earlier and better to batter Hitler, isn’t it?
When British rulers imposed Armour Ban on Indians, Gandhi opposed that by stating one or two phrases against Gun Control. When Subhash Chandra Bose and others tried to disobey Britishers by trying to guide and teach the usage of weapons to common Indians, Gandhiji involuntarily declared Subhash as Violent. When Subhash tried to expose British extortion, Gandhi was the first to oppose him.
Anyways, both are dead, anything might have happened.
Only a fool will waste his time and energy to discuss Gandhi. I think Objectivism might have helped jews much more, I know Objectivism have helped jews much more. And Gandhian Satyagrah was always subjective.
Unpretentious Diva Says:
January 29th, 2010 at 9:20 pmOn the other hand, I realize that Subhash’s call for the British soilders of Indian origin to give up their services to Britishers and instead of fighting for British government, fight for Independence Of India Against British rulers was much more authentically “Satyagrah”.
Non-Violence is a crime if it is Practiced against the Aggressor. If someone attacks you, if someone is extorting you, you have right and you have duty to defend yourself, if violent protest is needed, it is genuine. That is the objectival Satyagrah. Subhash Demanded British Soldiers of Indian Origin to NOT to lift their weapons against their own brethren without any cause, to give up Violence, and to raise their arms Only to defend their own identity or to defend the undefended, that is the poor Indians who were even robbed of their small iron swords and unsophisticated guns and were not allowed even to keep a knife.
On the other hand, Gandhi gave up Satyagrah or better say BETRAYED SATYAGRAH by demanding the Indian youth openly to work for British rulers and obey them fully. He broke his civil disobedience, and non-co-operation movement by calling the Indian youth to serve the British. When his own comrades opposed him and chided him for his double standards openly in public, he meekly took back his words and apologized and than only he declared the demand of Quit India and declared in 1945 that this time he won’t step down from his stand even if some of the youth fights violently against the British murderers.
Renegade Division Says:
January 30th, 2010 at 2:58 amI don’t know what Jews should have done if Hitler had bothered to not take their guns and still tried to do what he tried to do, what I am trying to say is Guns are the first thing a tyrant would wanna get rid of, it could have been anything instead of Guns, it could have been their Minnoras(the six candle stand Jews lit on a religious festival of Channukah), and the Jews should have done the same as I suggested, and then you wouldn’t say what you just said. The thing is a tyrant would put getting rid of Jewish Minnoras on a higher priority than their Guns.
Guns ARE the first thing a tyrant would get rid of, so I have to talk about it first. If people keep their Guns, they will be able to keep the tyrant at bay without any violence.
Just because we are talking about Guns it doesn’t mean we cannot talk about Gandhian philosophy at the same time. I don’t know what Gandhi had to say about Guns, but Guns represent the paramount of an individual’s liberty.
Using a gun, on the other hand is a very different matter altogether. I disagree that shooting Government employees when they try to follow their law is a proper solution(that doesn’t mean that if a govt employee is in your house trying to rape your wife you cannot use violence to deter him). The whole point I’ve been making about Gandhian philosophy since the first article I wrote about Gandhi here is that Gandhian method is aimed to uncover and expose the true nature of the aggressor.
You don’t need to expose the true nature of a govt employee who is in your house to rape your wife, but if he tries to do that using the law(like you are suppose to fill out some tax, and if you don’t fill it then judge orders your wife to be sent to a Doctor where she will be ‘forced’ to serve the state, sure everybody knows what happens there but if that comes out as a law then people have masked themselves in the illusion, which will come out if a govt employee directly rapes a woman, but this is a very unlikely example). The state is trying to steal your property from you, but they do it with so much legitimacy that its impossible to make people realize what’s happening, that’s when Gandhian philosophy comes to use.
The Gun example I wrote above is simply to give an example of first thing a tyrant would wanna get rid of and is a sure example of the upcoming actions of that tyrant.
Before I go on let me tell you one more thing, when people give amazing ideas or ideologies they themselves aren’t perfect in their own ideas most of the time. Its like Mises wasn’t Misean enough, and Rothbard perfected his idea by making it consistent, Rothbard himself wasn’t Rothbardian enough, Austrians like Block and Hoppe have done a lot to make him consistent. Similarly Rand wasn’t Randian or Objectivist enough. Mises.org had an article recently about Bastiat not going far enough with his ‘what is seen and what is not seen’. It all happens because these people are the inventors of that idea, you cannot expect them to be right from start to end and perfect it by the time they die. In fact since they are raised in a world so devoid of their idea that they shy away from sharpening their idea’s its every edge.
Same thing goes here, Gandhi according to me wasn’t Gandhian enough, he wasn’t perfect according to himself, that’s why he named his book ‘My Experiments with truth’ instead of ‘My perfection of Truth’. Its only over time when Gandhian philosophy will be perfected. I am doing my part to see Gandhism in the light of Libertarianism. I cannot guarantee if Gandhi would have been a Libertarian had he been made aware of it, but I can tell you the most consistent application of Gandhian principle is against the State(or against a ‘moral’ aggressor).
If you wanna protest a gun control law, you can do it in two ways:
1) You go guns blazing, but it will be hard to beat the state this way
2) You can strap on all the possible illegal weapons and walk right to the police station and express your protest, you will be arrested, charged with all sorts of immoral laws of POTA and TADA, but there will be a big difference in this and that what happened to Sanjay Dutt, nobody could just move on with their lives thinking that you broke the law and now you must be punished, rather people would be forced to think why you broke the law, it would be impossible for people to not wonder why you got all those illegal weapon and stood in front of the Police Station, surely you weren’t hoping to not get caught(like Sanjay Dutt was) and that makes the difference.
What Subhash Chandra Bose was suggesting was different, actually he wasn’t even suggesting anything at all contrary to how you are trying to portray him, he just wanted more and more people to raise weapons against the British.
Ideally I’d keep an AK-47 in my house if I was Gandhi, and force the govt to come and get my guns, but then its not really using my guns but merely a gun Satyagraha, I don’t know how effective it might me, considering people think guns are inherently violent, maybe that makes it much more powerful maybe not, I haven’t thought about it much. But its like opposing Net Neutrality, people get shocked and confused they say “Why I thought you are a libertarian so you would be for Net Neutrality?”. Its the same thing here, ignorant morons in America call the pro-Gun Rights people as “Nazis” that’s just the dumbest thing ever, similarly stupid people in India think Gandhi would support prohibition(which sounds like a good heading for my next article, “Would Gandhi support prohibition?”).
Unpretentious Diva Says:
January 30th, 2010 at 4:56 amMay be you are trying to portray Subhash as NIL, but that is nothing new. When Gandhians and Nehruvians are the history makers, such brainwashing is expected.
And your portrayal of Gandhi is also nothing different than the way they want you to portray him.
Anyways, I was NOT trying to portray Subhash in any other way but in the Correct way he lived his life. Now go and get some information about his efforts to stage the Azad Hind Fauj and the work that little resilient force did for Indian Independence.
Unpretentious Diva Says:
January 30th, 2010 at 5:50 amWith all his motive behind Quit India and Non Co-operation movement, Gandhi’s efforts had a limitation, and that limitation was not only economic but it was ethical too.
During the second world war, when British market itself was producing less, the effect of Indians to give up using British articles was not going to affect much. But the fact that British rulers wanted Human resource to exact the German might was quite strong. Gandhi’s effort of Non-Co-operation that was very strong during 1922, was obviously not that much threatening in 1945 as the production itself was down.
And when Gandhi helped Britishers by requesting Indian youth to join British army, Britishers obviously got what they were desiring for.
At that point, it was Subhash Chandra Bose and many other Congress leaders who forced Gandhi to accept his fault and take his request for Indian youth to join British Army back. Subhash and others were the one who actually understood the real meaning of Non-co-operation movement. They applied it thoroughly, objectively and their effort was the Satyagrah, with no subjectivism. Indian youth not only declined to cooperate with Britishers, the British troops of Indian origin also started quitting the Army.
That was a major economical set-back to British rulers, they lost their biggest source of cheap soldiers ready to die for them. Not only that, the call of Subhash for Indian soldiers throughout the world also provided Ethical strength to the Indian youth as the call of Subhash removed the anomaly of cooperation in army. It made the Non-cooperation movement a proper Satyagrah. That was not the case during 1922 when British soldiers of Indian origin shoot down their fellow Indians at jalianwala bagh under the duress and orders of their British officers.
Renegade Division Says:
January 30th, 2010 at 6:56 amSure which was, lets see:
a) Socialism
b) Fascism
c) A fusion of both Socialism and Fascism which would have the justice, equality, love, which is the basis of Socialism, and combined with what efficiency and discipline of Fascism as it stands in Europe in 1930s.
Lets see what you think he supported.
Now I am not going to chastise him merely on the basis of what he had to say during his early years in life, but later in 1944, about 14 years later, he said in a speech in Tokyo University that India must have a political system “of an authoritarian character..to repeat once again, our philosophy should be a synthesis between National Socialism and Communism”.
These comments are always omitted whenever his speeches are reproduced. But his book The Indian Struggle represents his views most accurately. In addition to calling for this synthesis of the two ideologies, he also predicted a “Left-Wing revolt there will ultimately emerge a new full-fledge party with a clear ideology, program and plan of action”. The program and plan of this new party would be:
1. The party will stand for the interests of the masses, that is, of the peasants, workers, etc., and not for the vested interests, that is, the landlords, capitalists and money-lending classes.
2. It will stand for the complete political and economic liberation of the Indian people.
3. It will stand for a Federal Government for India as the ultimate goal, but will believe in a strong Central Government with dictatorial powers for some years to come, in order to put India on her feet.
4. It will believe in a sound system of state-planning for the reorganization of the agricultural and industrial life of the country.
5. It will seek to build up a new social structure on the basis of the village communities of the past, that were ruled by the village “Panch” and will strive to break down the existing social barriers like caste.
6. It will seek to establish a new monetary and credit system in the light of the theories and the experiments that have been and are current in the modern world.
7. It will seek to abolish landlordism and introduce a uniform land-tenure system for the whole of India.
8. It will not stand for a democracy in the Mid-Victorian sense of the term, but will believe in government by a strong party bound together by military discipline, as the only means of holding India together and preventing a chaos, when Indians are free and are thrown entirely on their own resources.
9. It will not restrict itself to a campaign inside India but will resort to international propaganda also, in order to strengthen India’s case for liberty, and will attempt to utilize the existing international organizations.
10. It will endeavor to unite all the radical organizations under a national executive so that whenever any action is taken, there will be simultaneous activity on many fronts.
Look I was taught the same things about these people, but you must understand something, its not about Gandhi or Nehru or Bose or Bhagat Singh.
I can honestly tell you that I’ve admired Hitler, Bhagat Singh and Bose, and despised Gandhi/Nehru in my own formative years. I come from an extreme right wing Hindu family, trust me nobody knows how to hate Gandhi/Nehru and be Nationalist more than me.
The fact is in order to unwind the brainwashing Indian educational system(which technically was ineffective on you and me) and Indian societal brainwashing(which was quite effective I must say), and see the ideas these people stood for and the actions they performed rather than what they really talked about.
That’s why I don’t really care so much what people say about these guys or what these guys themselves said. So for the love of god stop ruminating over and over you the society has always told you. There was a time when we didn’t know better so we believed what others told us, but its not that time anymore. We belong to an ideology, and based on that now we can reconsider and reanalyzed what society told us.
Nobody hated Gandhi more than I did when I was growing up, I loved S C Bose, Bhagat Singh, Lala Lajpat Rai too. But now as I have told you again and again, I am going through a reanalysis of whatever I perceived about Indian history. Someone HAS to revise Indian History, and for that its really important that you give up your Historical prejudices.
What I have found about S C Bose, I will give him a big thumbs down.
Another thing is, people get a few things wrong, that doesn’t mean that you cannot accept anything else they said or did, each action or idea must be seen on its own objective merit.
You are writing on this blog thinking that this will promote the cause of Liberty, what if tomorrow you find out that this is exactly opposite of promoting the cause of Liberty, although from that point onwards you decide to do things differently does that mean now all your ideas must be kicked out because you got something wrong?
That’s the same thing which goes on with your attacks and defenses of Gandhi and Bhagat Singh respectively. Sure if Bhagat Singh was Libertarian Capitalist it would have been a different picture, but he wasn’t a libertarian capitalist, so all we are left to judge is his actions. Honestly speaking I don’t know how raising arms against the state is going to work out, even if it would we are definitely not at the stage where anything like that can be aimed for.
There is a guy who has put on a mask (like from the movie MI:2) which makes him look exactly like a family member, you know that he is not your family member, and you try to tell others but nobody believes you, you have two options, to rip off his mask and expose him to everyone and then everybody kicks him out, or you personally try to kick him out, but the fact is nobody is going to sympathize with you, because they don’t know the truth and they’ll just think you’ve gone crazy.
This is what the main difference between the Gandhian method and the non-Gandhian violent methods is.
Unpretentious Diva Says:
January 30th, 2010 at 7:09 amthat’s what Happened no matter Subhash lived or not. Even now no state of India can decide to secede from India, even Now the federal government decides the borders of states. Its all a fascist setup.
India became a socialist fascist country and Gandhi-Nehru made it.
We are talking about non-cooperation movement, and its stand as a Objective Satyagrah. Subhash Chandra Bose, made it Objectively Satyagrah by demanding a Non-Cooperation from Indian youth to Britishers even in Army.
If you can deny that than do so. Without Subhash Chandra Bose’s contribution for Non-Cooperation movement, It was a huge failure.
Unpretentious Diva Says:
January 30th, 2010 at 7:12 am@ Renegade
Do not worry, I will write 2-3 more articles about Gandhi and Subhash now.
We can devote this fucking RFL site for your love towards Gandhi.
cchany crystal Says:
May 16th, 2010 at 2:24 pmI found my image taken from my flickr photostream, this image is published here with out giving me any credit , by doing this you violeted my creative commons rights underwhich my image is published .
I ask you to remove my image immediately from your site.
thanks
Chany Crystal
Renegade Division Says:
May 16th, 2010 at 3:21 pmSure dude, I don’t mind. Although I did link the image back to your flickr page(that’s the only way you know that I am using your image, otherwise it is hosted on my site, there is no referral url or anything). To me it sounds like you are too sensitive about your ideas. Hey if you are so touchy about it, then stay away from creative commons pool man. I am not trying to make money off your images here or anything.
I don’t know why you are trying to act such a hard ass about the crediting issue, but contrary whatever you may think, nobody reads who took the photo or anything, although if people did like the image, they click on it and go to your flickr profile(every single click you saw in your flickr stats page coming from my site is not a HIT, rather a click through, when people liked your image and went to your profile to see more of your stuff).
You may read my views on Intellectual Property(that ideas cannot be owned because they are are not scarce in nature), here, and my views on creative commons here.
Anyways I am going to remove your pic, and do tell me if in the coming times when you won’t get a few added traffic from my site, if that really worth keeping your ‘rights’ safe and protected, when nobody can even devoid you from enjoying your idea, even if they want to. Your most viewed image has 1733 views on it, which apparently you think are just way too many.
The only reason why I (try to)use only and only creative commons images on my blog because I wanna promote all the people who have released their works under creative commons. This is why I stick to the policy of linking their flickr profiles back, but putting text underneath the images instead of the comment I really wanna put doesn’t really help based on the reading pattern of the readers of my blog. When I put a quote underneath an image, people give the image a second look and may even click through to the flickr profile. But with the attribution you are demanding, people just train themselves to not bother with what’s written(just like normal readers almost NEVER bother to read who took a photo published on their newspaper(which is always written right after the caption). I wanna do it as a gesture of gratitude to all those people who have consented to not use govt aggression against those who use their work.
So my suggestion to you Chany is, stay away from creative commons, because clearly that’s not your cup of tea, I am sure ‘copyright’ protects your rights more than creative commons.
newson Says:
February 8th, 2011 at 9:26 pmi have come to believe that the nazi gas chambers are a relic of soviet and allied propaganda. nor do i believe there was a master-plan to exterminate jews, despite the large numbers who eventually died in the concentration camps and the anti-semitic platform of the national socialist party.
disease and malnutrition were a deadly combination as germany faced total economic collapse in the final defeat.
newson Says:
February 8th, 2011 at 9:53 pmin spite of public funding of holocaust museums, school and university curricula, and jail sentences in numerous countries for those who challenge the delivered version of this chapter of history, the debate continues:
http://www.debatingtheholocaust.com/
newson Says:
February 8th, 2011 at 11:27 pmjennifer peto wrote her masters thesis on the use of the holocaust (though not herself a revisionist) as a means of silencing criticism of zionism and a fig-leaf for contemporary human rights abuses occurring in palestine.
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/24619
Beefcake the Mighty Says:
February 9th, 2011 at 12:03 pmA very minor nit-pick, newson: the accounts of mass-shootings on the Eastern front are most likely accurate for the most part, although greatly exaggerated (e.g., claims that anti-partisan units [the einsatzgruppen] shot 1 million people in the course of half a year [usually not clear in over-wrought accounts whether this number refers to Jews only, or all victims], a plainly absurd number). And of course many of these killings of Jews took place not by official German security forces, but by local vigilantes who were retaliating against Jewish involvement in Communist tyranny (obviously a great many innocent individual Jews perished here, but the Jewish role in Communism is a pretty well-established fact).
In general, articles like this always puzzle me; why is there no speculation about what Ghandi would have done in Soviet Russia, or in the Palestinian territories? Why such obsession over the suffering of Jews, and Jews alone?
newson Says:
February 9th, 2011 at 6:52 pmmy gripe is with the gas-chamber claim. i’ve been to dachau, and didn’t really think to question the accepted wisdom until much later. it was quite a shock.
sites that dare to revisit the accepted narrative with the cold eye of the impartial historian get tagged with the deadly “hate” label, making net access more problematic. naturally there are also genuine national socialist nostalgics out there, and the trick is to tar revisionists with the same brush.
n. joseph potts is a case in point. until he openly expressed his reservations about the conventional history of the holocaust, his libertarian convictions were never impugned.
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2010/01/mises-daily-columnist-is-holocaust.html
Beefcake the Mighty Says:
February 10th, 2011 at 10:57 amSure, Dachau is kind of the paradigmatic concentration camp, with the horrifying (and very real) photographs of piles of emaciated corpses. But as you note, the condition of the German logistics system at the end of the war was non-existent (courtesy of US and British bombing of that infrastructure, as well as general economic exhaustion from total war, something Germany [as well as Japan] was utterly unequipped to carry out, certainly in comparison to its opponents), and the inmates of the camps in the west died from the appalling conditions (disease, starvation, etc).
According to the official account, the alleged “death camps” were all in the east, conveniently (for that account) in territories that fell under Communist control after the war. No mainstream historian (that I’m aware of) claims that there were gas chambers in the western camps.