Dear Jesus, Save Me From Your Followers

New at Reason: While the heated discussion goes on a few posts down, I'm having a hard time believing the "controversy" over Mel Gibson's Saveheart has any purpose other than to promote what's looking more and more like a snuff film with subtitles. Cathy Young weighs in again on whether Mad Mel believes the Holocaust happened.

Comments

[Grummun]

I don't see the problem with Gibson's comments, and I don't understand how Young rightly points out the double standard of Nazi condemnation vs. Commie sympathy, and then turns around and faults Gibson. He acknowledged that Jews died in concentration camps. What is it, that he didn't accord the Holocaust a "unique status in the annals of 20th century crimes against humanity?" Why are 6 million Jews more tragic than 20 million Russians?

G

[Equality 7-2521]

So what am I missing? Cathy points out that there is a double standard involved in acting as if the 6M holocaust deaths is a bigger atrocity than the 20M Stalin killed or 50M Mao killed, but then condemns Gibson for basically saying the same thing.

[thoreau]

I subscribe to the unmathematical view that once a body toll tops a few million there's really no point in making a hierarchy of "what's worse". If somebody asks me "What do you think about [insert act of mass murder here]?" I don't say "Of course it was horrible, but so were [insert other acts of mass murder here]." I'll just say "Absolutely heinous." Any sort of "Well, I want to give equal time to these other acts of mass murder" just, well, seems pointless. It's not a matter of equal time, it's a matter of "here's the subject at hand, let's discuss."

[Steve in CO]

I think (or believe) that the problem is, that Jews were systematically exterminated purposely for their supposed "collective crimes." The bastard communists were killing through mismanagment (e.g. famine) and through state oppression of (both real and imagined) opposition to said power, not out to exterminated an entire people (class, race, ethnicity, etc).

Mel's problem is that he is too stupid to see by trying to diminish the holocaust by comparing it to other pogroms, instead of just acknowledging it on its own (since that was the subject matter, not Russia, it wafts of distaste for the mere existence of Jews. It is as if he was really saying, "so what?"

[Steve in CO]

I think (or believe) that the problem is, that Jews were systematically exterminated purposely for their supposed "collective crimes." The bastard communists were killing through mismanagment (e.g. famine) and through state oppression of (both real and imagined) opposition to said power, not out to exterminated an entire people (class, race, ethnicity, etc).

Mel's problem is that he is too stupid to see by trying to diminish the holocaust by comparing it to other pogroms, instead of just acknowledging it on its own (since that was the subject matter, not Russia), it wafts of distaste for the mere existence of Jews. It is as if he was really saying, "so what?"

[Steve in CO]

sorry for the double shot...

🙁

[matt]

If you search hard enough for anti-semitism I'm sure you'll find it. It doesn't look to me like Gibson was trying to "minimize" the atrocities of Nazi Germany as Young asserts, he was just pointing out that other groups besides the Jews suffered and died by the millions during the war. The Nazi's also managed to eradicate 5 or so million Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, policial prisoners, etc....basically anyone who didn't meet their wacked out aryan ideal.

[MadPad]

Let's not forget the OTHER 9 million people that died in concentration camps - Gypsys, Poles, Homosexuals, etc.

Is he minimizing Jewish deaths or un-minimizing all the non-Jewish deaths in concetration camps

Sure as a single group, at 6 million, Jews were the largest single group targeted by the Nazi's.

Were all these terrible atrocities? Absolutely.

Is Mel an anti-semite? Maybe, although I don't see it in his statements

Is his movie anti-semitical? Probably no more than the Gospels themselves?

Is he a revisionsist? Maybe by this definition:

Holocaust "revisionists" typically do not deny that Jews were killed; they simply minimize the killing ...In Bernstein's opinion, "Gibson is skirting pretty close" to this kind of minimization.

I think that's a bit of a stretch.

Frankly, this is the FIRST time that I've ever heard that Holocaust revisionists don't outrightly deny the holocaust.

I'm not trying to be disingenuous (sp?) but after hearing him say on Diane Sawyer that 'it's both against his religion and a mortal sin to be anti-semitic and racist,' that's good enough for me.

I just don't buy a sincere Christian rationalizing some way of saying that without actually meaning it.

[matt]

In relation to the deaths of several million Unkranians mentioned in the piece, Eric Margolis wrote a very informative piece a few months back about the "forgotten holocaust." If anyone is interested here is a link to it:

http://www.ukemonde.com/genocide/margolisholocaust.html

[Warren]

Given an opportunity to state clearly that the Holocaust happened and that it was a horrific crime, Gibson, instead, chose to hedge-to give a "yes, but" answer, to gloss over the Nazi extermination of the Jews and quickly move on to other victims of other regimes. This may not signify anti-Semitism, but it certainly signifies a frightening moral obtuseness.

Young's thesis is that Mel could have been unequivocal but instead chose to "hedge", and that such "minimization" leaves him ripe for charges of anti-Semitism. Not that they are warranted, only that they are to be expected, and should not be dismissed without a more affirmative concession.

[Steve in CO]

Spot on Warren.

🙂

[thoreau]

To amplify on Warren's comment, Young specifically said:

Given an opportunity to state clearly that the Holocaust happened and that it was a horrific crime, Gibson, instead, chose to hedge?to give a "yes, but" answer, to gloss over the Nazi extermination of the Jews and quickly move on to other victims of other regimes. This may not signify anti-Semitism, but it certainly signifies a frightening moral obtuseness.

The implication is not that he's necessarily bigoted, but that he's really, really stupid. When somebody brings up a mass murder with a body count in excess of a couple million, it makes no sense to say "Yes, it was horrible, but why don't we also talk about these other mass murders with body counts in excess of a couple million." Please, Mel, one mass murder at a time.

He had a perfect opportunity to make a statement that is innocuous, 100% true, and would flatly contradict accusations made against him. (i.e. say "Of course it happened. No sane person would doubt it. It was absolutely horrific and one of the worst episodes in human history.") He decided to veer off-topic, however, and dilute the point about the Holocaust. It doesn't prove any accusations, but it suggests that he's, well, obtuse.

[Greg]

I think people lose site of the fact that when debating the holocaust, often times people will confuse historical uniqueness and moral uniqueness. This leads to an infinite back and forth, where both sides aren't even arguing over the same thing. It appears from his statement mel does not think that the holocaust was morally unique. This is not an indefensible position as many have noted above.

Also, it may just be that judging a person's position on the holocaust based on statement given at an interview about a movie may not be all that fair. It iss quite possible that he sees this whole issue as a distraction (because he does believe that the holocaust was real and thinks its silly that anyone is questioning him on that) and was simply stating a quick "of course" and trying to move back to talking about the substance of the movie. Judging these remarks under a moral microscope seems unfair at best.

[Pavel]

Frankly, I can't fault Gibson at all for this particular comment. Basically, it translates to:

Mel, please tell us how much worse the Jews had it than anyone else. Unequivocally. And please don't hedge, you son of a blatant anti-semite bastard.

If the statements demanded of him are to be expected, his obstinance should be equally expected.

[dhex]

or that he's fried the PR part of his brain.

however, and maybe this is the latent anti-semite hiding in my underwear, but part of me fails to see the difference in being hunted down for one's religion, one's ethnicity, one's sexual preference or one's political affiliations. it's still the state deciding "thou art not fit to live due to (x, y, z) factors"

[Pavel]

Or to put it another way. What Greg said.

[Lee]

The genocide by Stalin was also targeted.

So anyone want to explain why the 6 million Jews are different than the 6 million other 'targeted' minorities that died in the holocost?

[thoreau]

Lee-

What's your point?

I've never heard anybody say "Yeah, Stalin was a mass murderer, but so was Hitler" when discussing Stalin's crimes. The closest I've ever heard to that was "Yeah, Stalin was a mass murderer like Hitler, but we needed his help" to explain why we formed that alliance in WWII. However, when the topic shifts from our WWII alliance to Stalin himself, I've never heard anybody try to put his crimes "in perspective."

Keep in mind that I was raised in a pretty left-wing family, and that I now attend a west coast university with a lot of lefties. And I've never heard anybody say "Yeah, Stalin was a mass murderer, but so was Hitler" or "Stalin wasn't the only mass murderer."

However, in discussions of the Holocaust, I sometimes here people say "The Holocause wasn't the only mass murder at the time." They usually sound like they're reacting against some perceived need to be PC, or they sound like they're reacting to a perceived excess of attention on the Holocaust.

[mike]

The point is not who's genocide was worse. The point is what motivates him to say "but so many others were killed also", implying "what's so special about jews". Both statements may well be true in some senses. But the question is why change the subject? The question presented to Mel was not "was the holocaust unique among attempted genocides?" Why did he assume that was the question or why did he want to make that the question? The reason perhaps points to an anti-Jewish bias so strong, that he didn't even hear the question Noonan asked.

Consider: If an individual of Turkish origin (perhaps an actor turned film-maker) were asked whether he acknowledged the Ottoman attempted genocide against Armenians, would you not find it peculiar for him to answer, "well sure it occurred, I know many Armenians who lost family members, but what about the 6 million jews killed in Germany, and the communists killing 20 million, and pol pot killing x million, . . ."?

If you don't find that peculiar, change "Armenian" to some ethnicity or group you do identify with and "Turk" to some ethinicity or group who has acted abominably toward them.

[joe]

Oops. Not only do you know what I'm talking about, thoreau, but I see you got there first.

[Jean Bart]

How can any of these atrocities be put "into perspective?"

Imagine for a moment telling a person who survived Cambodia's killing fields, or their son or daughter, that they need to put that experience "into perspective." There is no "perspective." And to be blunt, Gibson's attempt to create "perspective" is not that he is saying that these atrocities were equally horrible, but more that these were the things that happened, tough and get over it none of this was special or particularly bad. It is the Dickensian "they were the worst of times, the best of times argument."

[thoreau]

Joe-

I actually don't think that all of the people who "put things in perspective" are anti-Semitic. Some, surely.

But I remember one guy in college who said something like "A lot of people died in WWII. Stalin actually killed more Jews than Hitler." (I have no idea whether that statement is numerically accurate, but Stalin killed so many people that I suppose anything is possible. Anyway, the point is that regardless of the precise numbers, this guy wanted to "put things in perspective.")

This guy, whom I knew for a good part of a year, never struck me as bigoted. He struck me as an idiotic college student who had just learned some new facts and wanted to dazzle people with "Hey, look, there's actually all this other stuff going on and I know about it!" Having gone through that phase (sans Holocaust "perspective") I recognize it well. He also struck me as somebody who perceived (quite correctly) that the Holocaust is a touchy subject (mass murder tends to be), and he wanted to rebel against an atmosphere of "speak respectfully on this subject."

Now, maybe Gibson isn't in the same category as that college idiot. But I suspect at least some of the idiots who want to "put the Holocaust in perspective" are idiotically rebelling against the (quite reasonable) atmosphere that says "be respectful when you talk about the Holocaust".

They're all idiots. But I'm reluctant to call all of them bigots. Not because I excuse some bigots, but because I've learned just how diverse idiots really are. They come in all sorts of categories with all sorts of bizarre notions.

[Critic]

"So anyone want to explain why the 6 million Jews are different than the 6 million other 'targeted' minorities that died in the holocost?"

Sure. They are different in that they have had more success in publicizing their history. Official victimhood has its perks, and "the Jews" are pros at PR work. As proof, ask 20 people what they first think of when you say, "Six million." I'll bet that at least half will reply: "Holocaust."

[Equality 7-2521]

Joe,

I don't see any problem with your quote. The list of people killed by statist regimes is horrific.

I would make the same kind of statement as Gibson, but not because I want to bring back the glory days of antisemitism. Rather, I think it is important that people realize that a government killing its own people is the norm and not the exception. By pretending that the Nazis were some bizarre one-time freakish aberration, you can continue to believe in the general benevolence of government.

[Citizen]

I hear that JB, but the reality is that for people who were not in Cambodia's killing fields is that we do need to move on. Let's learn the lessons but don't forget to breathe. Life is still worth living.

I think it's clear that Gibson is not denying the Holocaust, but he's failing to genuflect far enough just because a couple of religous leaders who haven't seen his work are passing pretty serious criticism.

thoreau et al, seem to argue that because he's "changing the subject" that it could be indicitive of a preponderance towards the possibility of some anti-Semitism. Who's changing the subject? Gibson made a movie. The interviewer asks him about his dead father's wrong beliefs. Again, who's changing the subject?

[Greg Antrim]

Mike -

The reason Gibson tried to change the subject is because he was being interviewed about a movie, The Passion, and not about the meaning of the holocaust or his assessment of its moral consequences. The Passion is ostensibly not related to the holocaust. He may just have considered the charges of holocaust denial so specious that they didn't deserve careful commenting. They don't. There is no evidence he is a holocaust denier, or that he is an anti-Semite. I would be offended if someone asked me too.

(right on, Citizen)

All of these charges rest on discomfort with his esoteric religious beliefs and his apparently insane father, neither of which even come close to amounting to an inference of anti-Sematism that can be imparted to Mr. Gibson himself.

Second - a careful reading of his comments does not show an attempt to say, "but what about" anything. His actual quote reads -

"Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives."

At best this amounts to a statement that war is horrible, and so was the holocaust. This is true.

Trying to drawn inference of holocaust denial and anti-Semitism from this is ludicrous. It was an interview statement given while trying to discuss his movie. This level of careful moral criticism is better left to be addressed against well reasons term papers on the subject. I think this is borne out just based on the discussion it has generated here.

I am surprised he didn't claim he eats babies and worships the devil. I know I could possibly have been driven to say such things if I had to listen to Peggy Noonan for more than 5 seconds (Her grating and smug tone of voice is a pet peeve of mine).

Look, it is quite possible that he is an idiot or insensitive or what not, but to draw a conclusion that he does not satisfactorily accept the holocaust based on this interview goes beyond the scope of what can be inferred by his statements, which is why I disagree with Cathy Young's position here.

[Jean Bart]

Citizen,

Several Jewish religious leaders have seen the movie and consider at some of its elements anti-semitic; but maybe they are just "uppity" and "overly sensitive" Jews.

[Andrew]

Looking forward...

what is the "future" of genocide?

The Caucasus region contains a lot of potential for further tragedy. The India-Pakistan dispute could heat up again. The war in the Sudan is genocidal on the part of the Khartoum government. Presumably there are still inter-tribal disputes in sub-Saharan Africa that could be as bad as Ruanda. There are rumors of racial blood-letting in South Africa after Mandela dies.

(Although the dissolution of the Israeli state seems an unlikely prospect to me, I have little doubt that tragedy would ensue in the event...at the very least, millions would leave.)

Offhand these are the only situations that appear likely to meet Thoreau's ONE-MILLION THRESHOLD.

How we choose our causes is a little strange. No doubt Joe could cite books and commitees on the Left attending to some of these issues...but it would be fair to say that there have been as many commitees on the situation in North Ireland as there were individuals killed-- many campus types can recite chapter and verse on the sufferings of the Palestinians...how many could describe the situation in the Sudan?

I learned a long time ago that the Left is not interested in the body-count as such...they're interested in the spin, and in how the situation could be characterised. And to some extant, how much inherant public interest there is in Western societies.

As a fall back, the Left would say that particular causes are being strategised...in a better world, everything will be hunky-dory, so we gotta get there.

Perhaps that is fair enough, on their own assumptions as to what makes the world a better place, but anyone with different assumptions can reason the same way-- efforts to bring capitalism and democracy to the beknighted should also be strategised...focused where they are most apt to be successful, rather than where the bodies are piling up thickest.

Meantime, it seems idle to compare examples, all of which are historical.

[Russ D]

I disagree with Cathy on this mainly because she frames Gibson's answer as a "yes, but" reply when it can just as plausibly be considered a "yes, and" reply. The bias of the writer is just as apparent as the bias of Gibson.

[thoreau]

Greg-

Here's Gibson's full reply:

"I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."

If he had cut it off after "Yes, of course" and then said "Can we talk about my movie?" (or some more tactful transition, he's better at giving interviews than I am, obviously) then I'd agree that Gibson changed the subject so he could get back to his movie. But instead, Gibson changed the subject to other genocides. He wanted to go even further from the original subject. The leap the interviewer made was "movie about death of Christ -> Anti-semitism -> Holocaust". Gibson had the opportunity to cut that leap short and return to the movie, but he chose to expand it by adding one more link to the chain: "Holocaust->other mass murders."

I don't know if he's anti-Semitic. I do know that he acted like he wanted to "put this in perspective." If I were accused of anti-Semitism, I'd want to refute it and then get back to more comfortable subjects (e.g. the movie, in Gibson's case) rather than say "Hey, let's have a wider-ranging discussion of mass murder".

Strange.

[Jean Bart]

Andrew,

There is a current and ongoing genocide in the Congo right now; millions dead over the past few years.

"The war in the Sudan is genocidal on the part of the Khartoum government."

The Christians aren't innocents either - regarding Muslims or the animists.

And to be wholly blunt, while you may be right about about the left, at least they notice the atrocities, unlike the right, which ignores them until they can use them as P.R. cover and patriotic fervor for a military operation.

[SM]

MadPad,
"Frankly, this is the FIRST time that I've ever heard that Holocaust revisionists don't outrightly deny the holocaust."

I don't think that's quite true. For instance, David Irving & his ilk don't entirely deny the holocaust. They instead try to prove that the numbers were all wrong ie vastly exaggerated & that the Fuhrer didn't really know what was being done in his name.

[Jean Bart]

SM,

The "Fuhrer" wasn't aware is a classic holocaust denial strategy; that coupled with the statement that the Jews were "rebels" or died at the hands of the Soviets. Its a more sophisticated and subtle form of holocaust-denial; since the cruder version has a difficult time explaining where say all of Poland's Jews went to.

[SM]

JB,

I remember seeing a documentary on David Irving where he was splitting hairs over declassified german documents and basically arguing that the dimensions of the gas chambers were such that the numbers of those killed could just not be right.

[Jean Bart]

Andrew,

I should say to clarify that the Sudanese Christians aren't innocents; they been known to kill to the last person villages where animists and Muslims reside.

Of course there is also the fact that at least someone (Christian or not) is fooling Westerners to "buy" slaves into their freedom in the Sudan, when it has become clear that at least some of this a scam.

[thoreau]

I never heard the "unaware Fuhrer" story. I seem to recall hearing somewhere the opposite story: Nazi records exaggerated the number killed to keep the Fuhrer happy. So, you see, there weren't nearly as many deaths as reported.

(And yes, I'm aware that respectable estimates have ranged from 4.5 million Jews killed to 6 million Jews killed, but once the body count tops a million or so I don't let the error bars get in the way of outrage. They're important for historical accuracy, but they don't change the moral aspects, or should I say "immoral aspects.")

The "Fuhrer exonerated on grounds of being oblivious" story is a new one to me. But I don't follow these things too closely. What's next? "The Fuhrer used an army of clones to do it, so there's only one person who needs to be blamed. Everybody else is innocent."

[Citizen]

JB,
Are you accusing me of calling the Jewish religous leaders that have passed judgement on this movie "uppity"?

[Jean Bart]

Citizen,

"I think it's clear that Gibson is not denying the Holocaust, but he's failing to genuflect far enough just because a couple of religous leaders who haven't seen his work are passing pretty serious criticism."

Yes, I am saying that you are. And that is a fair reading of the above statement.

[greg antim]

Jean Bart -

>Several Jewish religious leaders have seen the >movie and consider at some of its elements anti->semitic; but maybe they are just "uppity" >and "overly sensitive" Jews.

Yes, and several Jewish leaders and citics have seen the movie and found none of it to be anti-Sematic; but maybe they are just not "sensitive enough."

thoreau - I do not disagree that your explanation is not one of a number of possible explanations for his answer. I simply think that this quote, taken for what it is, a response to live interview question, off topic from his movie, can not be used as evidence of anti-Sematism or holocasut denial without some other serious overt act or statement by him to corroberate it. (I hate being a lawyer)

You say here is the full quote. But that is just one part of his answer. The full interview does not appear in print yet (Does it?) May be he does go on to say now get back to my movie in the next sentance?

You also say if he had stoped at "Yes, of course" and then said "Can we talk about my movie?" (or some more tactful transition, he's better at giving interviews than I am, obviously)then you'd agree that Gibson changed the subject so he could get back to his movie.

But even you acknowledge that that would have been a terse answer. Maybe his more tackful transition WAS to say yes of course, there were lots of problems in during WWII. This may have been his polite way of dishing and trying to get back to the movie. Personal interviews have a completely different atmosphere than written answers.

My real problem is the level of scrutinty being given to an interview quote, out of context from the entire interview. Interview quotes like this should be given their proper weight. Maybe if he though about his answer, wrote it down and editted it, you could conclude that he was at least insensitive or ducking a written quetion.

Maybe he should be better prepared for these kinds of questions and have a prepared practiced statement, but would that even solve the problem; if he looked rehearsed?

I am waiting for the movie and the interview to make any further determination on his state of mind.

[Jean Bart]

thoreau,

The level of wilful obtuseness and willingness to pander to all sorts of a-historical theories amongst holocaust deniers is endless. Last year I got into a fist fight with an engineer in New Hampshire who tried to justify the holocaust on the grounds that Jews controlled the world's oil. This man was someone who had a master's degree, yet he believed this non-sense. Anyway, I soundly thrashed him. 🙂

[Citizen]

Does that make Maia Morgenstern an "Uncle Tom"? She was play Mary and is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. See her comments at the following link:

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/04/film.passionactress.ap/

[Jean Bart]

greg antim,

"Yes, and several Jewish leaders and citics have seen the movie and found none of it to be anti-Sematic; but maybe they are just not 'sensitive enough.'"

They may be disagree, but that of course is not the point; the point of Citizen is that they should have no opinion at all.

[Jean Bart]

Citizen,

What is an "Uncle Tom?"

[Jean Bart]

thoreau,

He also called my wife a "Jewish whore" and a "filthy Jew," so I had more provocation than what I first described.

[Mo]

Citizen is right about the PR. While I'm sure most of the H&R crew is familiar with say, the Armenian genocide in Turkey, ask most Americans and they will scratch their heads. Here's an interesting article in the relative brutality of muderous regimes.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/021018.html

[Citizen]

JB,
That's rather disarming of you.
It's from H.B. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. I don't know if there's a Jewish equivilant.

From dictionary.com
n 1: contemptuous name for a Black man who is abjectly servile and deferential to Whites
2: a servile black character in a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Of course they're entitled to their opinion. But Gibson ought to be able to disagree without facing accusations of racism being the default response to that disagreement.

[Jean Bart]

Citizen,

What is rather disarming?

"Of course they're entitled to their opinion. But Gibson ought to be able to disagree without facing accusations of racism being the default response to that disagreement."

The default response wasn't anti-semitism; indeed, the first negative response came only with the leaking of the first script, where critics reasonably argued that at least of the script appeared anti-semitic. Gibson got very angry, started using tropes that are directly reminiscent of "Jewish conspiracies" in the past, etc. So far I have yet to see any Jewish leader call him an anti-semite (even Foxman, despite attempts by news firms like NewsMax to spin otherwise, has not said that); but they have said that aspects of his statements and the movie as they know it so far are anti-semitic. Its a legitimate criticism and Gibson doesn't like the fact that he is being criticized and is acting childishly about it.

[Jean Bart]

Citizen,

I am a Frenchman; I do not know every American colloquilism (indeed, I often get British, Australian and American colloquil statements mixed).

[Citizen]

JB,
Asking what I meant by "Uncle Tom" is disarming because it doesn't allow for snide remarks, but makes the conversation more presise. It was something of a compliment.

See you at the theatre.

[Citizen]

precise

[matt]

From Mo's link:

"state-sponsored slaughter of innocents averaged 5,300 victims worldwide per day--170 million in all. (That's a conservative total, too, compiled in 1987.)"...and that's just last century.

And people call me crazy for being an anti-state libertarian-anarchist....

[Andrew]

JB

You make my point. NOBODY can have a politically neutral Humanitarian foreign policy...and it wouldn't do much good, if they did. You can only judge policies by which way they nudge the world.

The EU/UN drift is pretty much statua quo-- and if there is a case for it (and I believe there IS...although I don't accept it) it would be that this is either a more optimal way to allow the world to progress...or the most reasonable way to deal with the fact that it may not.

Recent American policy has been more pro-active-- not perhaps everywhere it imaginably COULD be, but enough to characyerise this as a major shift. (I would that it were mosreso, although I still feel all the really important moves are being made.)

I don't think the European take is necessarily immoral...but it seems obvious that they are morally uneasy about it themselves, and it falls right in line with arrangements that they have grown comfortable with.

Sometimes the shrillness on particular issues sounds an awful lot like the sound of gas escaping. Perhaps one thing neutrals ought to do is...well, stay neutral. Sweden and Switzerland had a perfect right to sit out WWII, and they didn't find it necessary to make a case for the Nazis.

[Homer]

In whiny voice: "Aw, Mel Gibson doesn't feel the exactly the same way as I do about the Nazi holocaust. Lousy, no-good anti-semite."

I find it interesting that in a "free minds, free markets" context, Mel Gibson uses his free mind without coercion of any kind and he gets figuratively nailed to a cross for it. Ah well, free minds, free markets, free emotions.

Do I deny the holocaust? No. Do I deny the approximate numbers of Jews killed? No. Do I deny it being the single most disgusting waste of human life in 20th century history? Yes.

[dj of raleigh]

> So what am I missing? Cathy points out that there is a double standard involved in acting as if the 6M holocaust deaths is a bigger atrocity than the 20M Stalin killed or 50M Mao killed, but then condemns Gibson for basically saying the same thing.---Posted by Equality 7-2521

You are missing the point that this is about killing Jews!
Jesus, let us not forget, was and is a Jew!
Jesus was killed.
One Jew who rocked the boat and died.
The Holocaust was about millions of Jews being killed.

I cannot fathom why Jewish leaders think the attention
of this controversy is in any way good for their cause.
Perhaps I do not understand their cause in this case.
The much ado did do a lot for the attention to the movie.
I can't wait to see it myself.
I can't wait to see how folks like the sub titles.
I can't wait to see how it does at the Oscars,
as a foreign language film.
I can wait to see if the predicted violence against Jews
is going to be self-fulfilling prophesy or not.

[SM]

Homer,
"Do I deny it being the single most disgusting waste of human life in 20th century history? Yes."

Gibson was not asked to compare the loss of life in the holocaust to genocide x, y or Z. He was asked specifically about the holocaust.

[Mona]

Jean Bart writes: "And to be wholly blunt, while you may be right about about the left, at least they notice the atrocities, unlike the right, which ignores them until they can use them as P.R. cover and patriotic fervor for a military operation."

It is precisely because the above is so entirely wrong that I am ambivalent about the kinds of statements Gibson made. On the one hand, I'm rather a Semitiphile, and feel a profound horror at the Nazi extermination campaign against Jews that is not as strong as my emotional reaction to other genocides. On the other, I am outraged that the American communists and many non-communists on the left willfully refused to accept the evidence of Stalin's monstrous purges and purposeful, genocidal famines. (Whoever up-thread attributed the famines to "mismanagement is grossly mistaken.)

Even today, you will see people required to utter the appropriate disgust about the Holocaust as Gibson seems to have been expected to do, but for many on the left all manner of excuse is made for those who apolgized for Stalin. Joseph Davies, ambassador to the USSR during the FDR administration, praised the Soviet Union's actions during the purge trial by stating "there were no fifth columnists in Russia--the government shot them." Davies produced a film, "Mission to Moscow" (read about it here http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/filmnotes/missiontomoscow.html) that is repulsive, in light of the reality of Stalinism. Some few even today insist that, as Davies claimed, the purge trials were justified on the basis that an anti-Soviet conspiracy really was afoot. Where is the interest in pillorying these people?

So, if some feel an impulse to protest the unseemly disinterest in examining Stalinism under the same moral klieg lights that have been properly shown on the Nazis, I can sympathize. We've had movies, mini-sreies, and many popular treatments showing the horrors of the Holocaust -- almost no one is going to suffer disrepute for telling that story. But where are the analogous examinations of the horrors of Stalinism, and the repudiation of the monstrous lies that some leftist Americans aided and abetted? When does *that mini-series come out?

--Mona--

[Ruthless]

Drive the new Genocide.
It's not your father's...

The farther back we go in history, and we needn't go far, the less we valued each other's existence.

Acknowledging a goodly number amongst us "need killin,'" Julian Simon--wishin' he were still amongst us--has taught me to value 99 percent of my fellow homocidal heathens.

Peace love sex.

Hey, while Jesus didn't need killin', and I wouldn't have personally kilt the dude, his own father, so the story goes, said he needed killin'. Get jiggy with the plot. He happened to be in Israel at the time. Who else was gonna step up? Yassir Arafat?

... Corpus "delecti" Christi

[dj of raleigh]

What is the rule about opinion on the Holocaust?
Besides that Jews were specifically murdered by the millions
just for being Jewish, what else is one supposed to say?
...or not say?

Does one have to give it status as "The Holocaust?"
Does one have to say six million, or is millions OK?
Saying the Holocaust didn't happen is NOT like saying
"Men never went to the moon!"

Jews give exclusive focus on The Holocaust, but others,
might they not, include Jews into the greater loss?
Where are the lines, I am asking, so I'll know.
I believe the Holocaust certainly happened.
I won't argue numbers. I will argue the point
that Jews were deemed less than human by Nazis,
and also that other eastern Europeans, such as Poles,
seemed to be thought of as sub-human, too.
The Holocaust happened.

[Mona]

I wrote this: "On the one hand, I'm rather a Semitiphile, and feel a profound horror at the Nazi extermination campaign against Jews that is not as strong as my emotional reaction to other genocides." And meant to write this: "On the one hand, I'm rather a Semitiphile, and feel a profound horror at the Nazi extermination campaign against Jews that is stronger than my emotional reaction to other genocides."

Lesson: do not post when just home from a long day at work and hungrily shoveling food in your face.

[Mona]

joe asks: "but I don't think it's accurate to describe such left wing denial as an ongoing phenomenon. Any contemporary examples?"

Sure. Ongoing adulation of Fidel Castro and a willingness to overlook or whitewash his atrocities, especially those against gays. And, contemporary left-wing historians and Victor Navasky at The Nation regarding recent and compelling evidence that domestic communists were in thralldom to Stalin and some engaged in espionage. See Haynes and Klehr's book "In Denial" about the angry resistence in leftist acadamia on this score.

--Mona--

[Jean Bart]

Mona,

"You contrasted the left as a sector that notices atrocities, with the right that (according to you) never does. You claim the right does so only when noticing human rights abuses suits their political purposes. But the left sometimes ignores atrocities for the same reason, and also sometimes exploits human rights abuses in furtherance of a statist agenda."

Please note that you eschew the use of my actual statement.

"As for your claim that I only said you were wrong..."

Actually, you said I was wrong; you never told me why I was wrong. Therefore I was left to guess what my supposed error was. Then you lambasted me for using a "straw man," when indeed any guess I could have made as to your statement would have been a straw man.

[joe]

I have to disagree, Mona. I've read articles bashing Castro in the Nation, along the lines of "a lot of good things have been done, but the oppression cancel them out." Surely you don't consider a thesis that puts descriptions of a police state front and center to be a whitewash, just because the author doesn't confine himself to describing only the bad things?

And I haven't seen any contemporary leftists defending Stalin, though I've seen many attacking those who defended him in the past, or at most explaining what led them to their errors.

[Douglas Fletcher]

"Lesson: do not post when just home from a long day at work and hungrily shoveling food in your face."

Does this mean you've dropped that Atkins diet thing?

[CONFUSED IN CANA]

As to whether or not Mel is an anti-semite, well let's all put on our foil hats, shall we? Follow along now children from your conspiracy theory handbooks:
Blaming Jews for killing Jesus is anti-semitic
Making a movie about same is too
Jews control the movie industry
Jews control the media too
Media whips up controversy around movie
Movie gets lots of free advertising (plays into the whole Jews are cheap thing)
The only logical conclusion is:

Jews are anti-semitic.

[Andrew]

JB

Allowing Assad to run his police state is not the same thing as letting folks do their own thing.

There may be all kinds of practical reasons to tolerate and ignore tyranny...but it is silly to wax eloquent about respect for the way other people like to do things.

Are we to take it that in the future any expressions of regret are basically insincere? Just rhetoric?

[Jean Bert]

Mona,

"It is precisely because the above is so entirely wrong that I am ambivalent about the kinds of statements Gibson made."

Well, you've established that you think that they are wrong, but not that they are indeed wrong. Like Andrew, you get the cart before the donkey. Indeed, the American right does not care about the issue of human rights until it suits them; they are very crass and hypocritical about it (not that this isn't true about every other Western nation either). But to claim that the American left is somehow singularly crass and hypocritical is to be blunt, silly.

"But where are the analogous examinations of the horrors of Stalinism, and the repudiation of the monstrous lies that some leftist Americans aided and abetted? When does that mini-series come out?"

I don't know about the U.S., but there are a number of fine European films that deal with the issue Stalinism - for example, the French film "Est-Ouest" ("East/West") (2000). Five minutes into that film you see people being summarily shot (no due process, etc. in other words, simply murdered) by Soviet soldiers for example. Indeed, Eastern European nations have been particularly good at dealing with these issues.

[Jean Bert]

Andrew,

"The EU/UN drift is pretty much statua quo-- and if there is a case for it (and I believe there IS...although I don't accept it) it would be that this is either a more optimal way to allow the world to progress...or the most reasonable way to deal with the fact that it may not."

I would say that experience has shown that in the main, allowing people the freedom to decide their own futures is the best choice. After Cambodia one would think America would have discerned this.

"I don't think the European take is necessarily immoral...but it seems obvious that they are morally uneasy about it themselves, and it falls right in line with arrangements that they have grown comfortable with."

I am not particularly uneasy; indeed, like the U.S. we pick our battles (thus our proposed peace-keeping force for Haiti).

"Sometimes the shrillness on particular issues sounds an awful lot like the sound of gas escaping."

There has been nothing more shrill than American conservatives on the issue of Europeans or the U.N. of late. Remember "freedom fries?" How more shrill can one get?

[Jean Bert]

MALAK,

Mona really hasn't done anything; except waste some bandwidth that is.

[dj of raleigh]

Jews are presented to be persecuted all over the world
throughout all of recorded history. I believe it.

Last month Israel charged the French with anti-Semitism.
Jews believe it. I don't believe it.
The French are seriously against anti-Semitic
and if any thing, seem over-tolerant of different religions.
In the current banishment of glaring religious
dress in public schools, the French seemed even handed.

Now come these charges and questioning of Gibson
and his film, and long before it even came out.
Gibson is openly suspect. His father is brought into it.
I don't believe it.

The long history, and most recent Holocaust,
plus the current struggle in the Middle East
has the world-wide Jewish community on the edge.
The media seems to dwell on the charges by Jews,
not on the charges against anti-semitic criminals.
I believe their constant awareness of persecution
is counter-productive in both the short and long run.
I believe that because of discussions like we're having.
We're talking about worries of what might happen, the future.
We're talking of the past, W,W,W,W, W, how much and how many.
Right now, what is happening right now? Suicide bombings!
And what does that have to do with the Passion of Christ?
A wall is being built. Land is being held. Peace is not.
And what does that have to do with the Passion of Christ
That we are having the discussion is more telling
that what we are saying.

[joe]

Pavel says that Gibson's minimization is appropriate, because he was asked "Mel, please tell us how much worse the Jews had it than anyone else. Unequivocally. And please don't hedge, you son of a blatant anti-semite bastard."

The question that generated the above outburst was, "The Holocaust happened, right?"

So to sum up, being asked to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened is the equivalent to being asked to grant Jews a special moral standing, according to Pavel.

I've seen this shit before. It's the same ideology that explains Gibson's need to wander off into Ukrainian history.

[TWC]

"Of course Gibson shouldn't be blamed for the sins of his father; but..." let's paint him with that brush anyway. Afterall, Noonan gave him a chance to prove he wasn't a Nazi.

[Mona]

Douglas Fletcher asks: "Does this mean you've dropped that Atkins diet thing?"

I went off it about a week ago when I took a short vacation. But the problem yesterday was I was very busy at work and didn't eat all day, and scarfed my supper in front of the H&R board. Atkins says never ever to go more than 6 hrs without eating, so I've been a bad girl all around.

But I'll soon be back in the saddle again. 🙂

--Mona--

[Mona]

Jean Bart writes: "Like Andrew, you get the cart before the donkey. Indeed, the American right does not care about the issue of human rights until it suits them; they are very crass and hypocritical about it (not that this isn't true about every other Western nation either). But to claim that the American left is somehow singularly crass and hypocritical is to be blunt, silly."

You are arguing against a strawman. My objection to your statements was based on your manifestly incorrect claim that the LEFT does not ignore atrocities; it clearly has egregiously done so vis-a-vis Marxist regimes. Whatever may be true about the right -- and I did not address that portion of your argument -- and its record with regard to human rights, your claim about the left is utterly wrong.

--Mona--

[Jean Bart]

"My objection to your statements was based on your manifestly incorrect claim that the LEFT does not ignore atrocities..."

When did I make that assertion? I did say that the left does notice atrocities; I did not claim that they noticed all of them or even most of them. My point is that the right does notice any. The only creating strawmen here is you.

[Jean Bart]

Mona,

BTW, your earlier post did not even say why my statement was supposedly incorrect (which it isn't); you merely said that it was. I went with the most logical explanation for why it might incorrect in your eyes; if I am left to guess, and my guess is wrong, that is not particularly my fault, but the fault of the writer, that is yourself.

[Jean Bart]

Mona,

And to be totally blunt, it was leftists who started organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, not right-wing ideologues. Only recently has the right taken up the cause of human rights; but it has been so selective about it as to question its honesty.

[Jean Bart]

Mona,

BTW, before you repeat the canard that A.I. never cared for Iraq, let me suggest that you review Bush and Colin Powell's statements about Iraq which use A.I. as a source.

[KJ]

Mon cher Jean Bart!

Somehow I've got a notion you could actually be convincing if you only managed to disagree without being disagreeable.

[Mona]

Jean Bert claims: "When did I make that assertion? I did say that the left does notice atrocities; I did not claim that they noticed all of them or even most of them."

You contrasted the left as a sector that notices atrocities, with the right that (according to you) never does. You claim the right does so only when noticing human rights abuses suits their political purposes. But the left sometimes ignores atrocities for the same reason, and also sometimes exploits human rights abuses in furtherance of a statist agenda.

As for your claim that I only said you were wrong but offered no support for that claim, I do not understand. You want documentation that Davies was a Stalin apologist and that some on the American left were as well?

Finally, I agree with you that the left gave us Amnesty International and some other organizations that, on the whole, perform good work. Among the reasons I am a libertarian rather than a conservative is that I embrace classical liberalism, while the right pretty much just parrots the values but does not have a lot of interest in extending these values in the U.S. See, e.g., many of their diatribes about homosexuals or drug policy. (And also see that the left can be oddly silent or diffident when Fidel sends gays to concentration camps.)

--Mona--

[Mona]

kj writes of Jean Bart: "Somehow I've got a notion you could actually be convincing if you only managed to disagree without being disagreeable."

Yes, but Jean did a superb job last week trouncing a religionist who was spouting prejudiced and facile claims about non-theists/atheists. He's sometimes very effective.

--Mona--

[joe]

"But the left sometimes ignores atrocities for the same reason,"

I think your tense is wrong. There were certainly segments of the left that whitewashed Communist atrocities during 30s-60s (70s?), but I don't think it's accurate to describe such left wing denial as an ongoing phenomenon. Any contemporary examples?

[MALAK]

Jean Bart notes that at least the Left notices atrocities . . .HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

He's here all week folks. Don't forget to tip your server.

[MALAK]

Seems like Monas did my research for me. Thanks. As for Mel, he's never been the most politically correct interview going. I will go and see the movie, then I will decide if the movie is anti-semitic. Owing to the fact that I will probably never get to spend much time with Mel, and so make up my own mind, I will reserve judgement on whether he is anti-semitic.

[MALAK]

Not 'did', done. Three weeks ago I could not spell illiterate. Now I are one . . .

[Jean Bart]

Andrew,

"Allowing Assad to run his police state is not the same thing as letting folks do their own thing."

Actually, it is. Indeed, letting people do their own thing is even more beneficial when that includes bans on weapons sales.

"There may be all kinds of practical reasons to tolerate and ignore tyranny...but it is silly to wax eloquent about respect for the way other people like to do things."

Who is "waxing eloquent?"