We Must Never Forget: Remembering the Holocaust

[lemit]

Thanks, Pamela, for saying some things I'm too angry to say. If I could ban Kriminal99, I would.

Anything else I could say would be inflammatory, so I'll just shut up.

--lemit

[Boerseun]

Well, however offensive Krim's above post might be, he illustrates the reason why the holocaust happened in the first place, very well.

Yes, Krim - Jewish culture is inherently flawed. But not a single jot more or less than Christian or Muslim cultures are flawed. Why hate them?

Yes, Lrim, Jews are afraid of death. Once again, not a single jot more or less than Christians or Muslims fear death. Why hate them?

Having Jews in your family is no free ticket to your obvious prejudice. It's like the old racist saying "Heck, some of my best friends are black! But you know, blacks really suck..."

I see in your post a lot of generalizations and assumptions. And with that, Hitler was able to do what he did.

[enorbet2]

Greetz
Since this is ostensibly a Science forum and since I have great confidence that "a mind convinced against it's will, remains unconvinc-ed still" and how Free Speech actually does work and is not just "pie in the sky", I will refrain from polarizing with recriminations.

Kriminal99, I wonder just how big or small a sample you think you should require before assuming you know something about "all" of anything? Do you suppose for example that Albert Einstein fits your description of Americanized Jews? Was he an illogical snot? I am quite certain that you know more females than you know Jews so do you think you can generalize about all females? Obviously you can if you so choose but aren't you the least bit concerned as to what that says about your powers of deduction? your maturity? your judgment? your humanity?

If someone is feeding you this oversimplified tripe, they are feeding you poison and it will corrupt you as surely as believing 1 plus 1 equals 4, but with greater social consequences. There is a big difference between ignorant and stupid. Ignorance can be cured while stupidity is to the bone. It would likely serve you well to do some serious reading on the subject of bigotry and intolerance and how it begins, unless you simply don't care how you are perceived or where your life is headed. There are plenty of fringe groups that will take in and take over a person who expresses such prejudice, and leave you swinging in the breeze once they've used you up for their agenda. Be careful.

I sincerely wish you well and hope you manage to rise above this myopic view to which you seem to subscribe.

[lawcat]

It's unthinkable in stable, peaceful, and prosperous times. But, it is not so unthinkable in times economic depravity, cultural defense necessity, and war. What the German State did in Europe was horrible because it was a powerful and organized machine that focused its resources on that singular goal. IT has happened before WWI, and after WWII, and it will happen again. People are easily driven to hate. It's a matter of information and leadership. Chose your information and leaders wisely.

As far as German people/nation, WWII proved quite the opposite of what their message was: they can be just as much animals as any other nation; they are just slightly better at it than some others. But hopefully those things will not be revived in Europe; nordic plunderings have been dormant for centuries.

[lemit]

Kriminal99 (I first wrote Kriminal00. I should have left it.) has described pretty accurately my father's side of my family.

Funny, I didn't know I was Jewish. How could the genealogists in my family have missed that?

--lemit

[Kriminal99]

Racism has nothing to do with what I am talking about. I am talking about the way people decide to behave. Just like how rap culture's mistreatment of women and materialism has a negative effect on people who subscribe to it.

I don't think this is something that is equally true of all other religions and cultures. There are definitely other cultures that inadvertently discourage individualism, and ones that discourage straightforward confrontation to the point of encouraging passive aggressiveness. And there are ones that encourage elitism. But none of these seem to combine these things in the same vile way as Jewish culture.

I am talking about average behaviors from jew to jew versus average behaviors from other groups.

I am not even sure that jewish people can easily realize this about themselves from their point of view. This is something that someone sorely needs to be pointed out in my opinion.

I think what I am saying can be recognized from the point of view of their own religion. For example, jewish law is fairly lax (if you happen to be a jew at least) in that for example if you steal something, you must pay it back or work for the person until you have paid them back. There are other cultures that actually use similar customs effectively - such that a person is taught to love the person they would have stolen from by becoming familiar with them.

Perhaps if fully implemented, the jewish approach towards such things would effectively build character. But it isn't usually implemented because they don't have the authority to make the laws where they live. Thus violence or straightforward confrontation is a taboo but they never learn to lose the will to destroy another person through other means.

[Kriminal99]

Originally Posted by enorbet2

Greetz
Since this is ostensibly a Science forum and since I have great confidence that "a mind convinced against it's will, remains unconvinc-ed still" and how Free Speech actually does work and is not just "pie in the sky", I will refrain from polarizing with recriminations.

Kriminal99, I wonder just how big or small a sample you think you should require before assuming you know something about "all" of anything? Do you suppose for example that Albert Einstein fits your description of Americanized Jews? Was he an illogical snot? I am quite certain that you know more females than you know Jews so do you think you can generalize about all females? Obviously you can if you so choose but aren't you the least bit concerned as to what that says about your powers of deduction? your maturity? your judgment? your humanity?

If someone is feeding you this oversimplified tripe, they are feeding you poison and it will corrupt you as surely as believing 1 plus 1 equals 4, but with greater social consequences. There is a big difference between ignorant and stupid. Ignorance can be cured while stupidity is to the bone. It would likely serve you well to do some serious reading on the subject of bigotry and intolerance and how it begins, unless you simply don't care how you are perceived or where your life is headed. There are plenty of fringe groups that will take in and take over a person who expresses such prejudice, and leave you swinging in the breeze once they've used you up for their agenda. Be careful.

I sincerely wish you well and hope you manage to rise above this myopic view to which you seem to subscribe.

Sample size? I have met far more than the number of people required to establish a decent confidence interval. Furthermore, with small sample sizes, there is a significance to there being many successes or failures in a row.

Alot of the jews I grew up around had very similar personality traits, both from my family, the ones that went to my schools, the ones I meet on the street, etc. Sure some of them are different, but not many. Part of it also is seeing the type of personality they hold up as role models, like when they all agree to like a certain person, and then that certain person has the personality I have described. I have seen this over and over again in different groups of jewish people I know.

Also, consider that many pieces of anti-Semitic propaganda references many of the same things I am talking about. People can claim they hate a race, but it is against human nature to truly do so. IMO the focus of the propaganda on poor Jewish behaviors demonstrates this.

Now, a lot of groups and cultures inadvertently prevent individualism, but not many of them inadvertently encourage passive aggressiveness as well. I am not saying that african cultures where individualism is nearly non-existent and waves of genocidal blood lust often occur is better either. Valuing group norms over truth is bad. Killing is bad and is just as inflamatory as passive aggressive behavior.

I am not the type of person to be influenced in the manner you are describing.

[lemit]

Kriminal,

You've given your impressions of a lot of people you don't know. I don't know you, but I've developed a few impressions of you.

You give the arguments of someone who has met maybe a half dozen Jewish people and has taken all the rest of his opinions from other Antisemites. Growing up on a farm in backwoods Missouri, I knew enough Jewish people to refute your stereotypes.

You probably don't know the difference between semantics and Semites, or semantics and usage, as you don't know the difference between racism and Atisemitism. Bigotry has many forms. How many and which of those forms do you wish to practice here?

Don't hide behind the claim that you are just talking about your own family, your own people. That doesn't square with your uninformed assumptions. But, if you did have Jewish blood in you and felt so flawed in your own person, you could have conducted your own self-holocaust and not troubled the rest of us with your irrational babble.

You also give the impression of someone who rarely crawls out from under his bigoted rock. I'm sorry I turned it over.

--lemit

[Boerseun]

Okay guys - come off it.

Krim, your posts are important in the fact that they perfectly illustrate how bigotry can be rationalized to the point where it makes perfect sense to the individual. Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that all the Jews you met come from New York. Let's say that they are all a bunch of cynic materialistic self-righteous bastards. Hence all Jews are like that. Have you considered that maybe all New Yorkers could be like that, and that it has nothing to do with their race and/or faith?

Lemit, I think the best course of action would be not to take the bait.

I apologise to any New Yorkers here, I don't know anybody from New York, I just used it as an example.

Although I'm offended by Krim's point of view, I think its important to leave them here to illustrate how easily one gets to slip down that soapy slope which leads to things like the holocaust, by individuals rationalizing the irrational.

But let's get back on topic, shall we?

[enorbet2]

Originally Posted by Kriminal99

Sample size? I have met far more than the number of people required to establish a decent confidence interval. Furthermore, with small sample sizes, there is a significance to there being many successes or failures in a row.

OK since this is a science forum it behooves you to back up this point, if possible, either through some widely accepted example or from a scientific study's results. I don't know the particulars of your first sentence and I know only a little about people polls. However I do know that even if 5 out of 10 people are "A" that it is unscientific, if not impossible to determine which individuals are "A" without more data upon which to base a conclusion. I also know quite well that even with something as defined and limited to binary such as flipping a coin, that even if heads comes up each of the first 5 times, that has no bearing on the outcome of the next toss. It's still 50/50, heads/tails.... unless the coin is biased in some way.

To stay on topic, it is worth noting that such discussion is exactly why not only the Holocaust, but all crimes against humanity, should not be forgotten precisely to bring about dialogue that may help people avoid such slippery slopes before they get to actual violence or disenfranchisement. With polarization, that dialogue stops, and dialogue is just as important within oneself as it is with others, especially if one would like to keep and grow his conscience.