I was tardy in rejoining the conversation for this GNXP post and wrote a long comment in notepad, but when I got to the bottom I found it had been closed. Rather than letting it go to waste, I’m posting it here. I wish wordpress.com gave a show/hide option, like at Volokh (though otherwise Powerblogs seem shitty), in which case I’d use that and also copy all the preceding comments. Unfortunately, all I have is the “more” tag.
Via IOZ, an NYRB piece on the forgotten side of WW2 mass murder some might be interested in.
razib:
what sort of regime would actually motivate people to fight on behalf of stalin???
One whose guns were a bit further away and not already trained on their backs? Lenin & Trotsky weren’t really much better (some Russian nationalists regard Stalin as an improvement) and they managed to win a war against other Russians. A foreign invader would naturally bring even more support. North Korea & Vietnam were rather terrible communist dictatorships, but still motivated their people to fight against their brethren to the south.
the persecution of jews had a historical precedent, but it occurred via the assimilation of the german jewish upper and upper middle classes as occurred in the 19th century
Isn’t it the opposite? Weren’t Jews more persecuted before emancipation?
MM:
After America formally entered the war, all deportation alternatives (such as the Madagascar plan) became impossible
I had been under the impression that the plan was to move Jews to conquered territory in the east, and it was setbacks on that front that resulted in a change of plan.
I consider Utley extremely reliable
Funny enough, I had just read a section of “Background to Betrayal” where du Berrier says Utley was basically a dope who repeated what she was fed and wanted to believe. Of course, Hilaire does not make himself look too credible throughout the book.
I’m not on board with blaming the ills of the 20th century on democracy. As Emerson rightly pointed out, WW1 started between the Habsburg and Romanov empires, some of the least democratic states. Switzerland and the Anglophone countries never had the “dark night of fascism” hanging over them. Despite Kuenelt-Leddihn’s attempt to blame everything on Protestant heresy, the problem seemed more concentrated in Catholic & Orthodox countries (and later oriental ones). Hitler is arguably a more democratic phenomena than Stalin, since his party at least won a plurality under the rules of the Weimar republic. The Bolsheviks were a minority even among communists and took power through a military coup.
The Reichstag was, and the Reichstag mattered.
Then when the Reichstag was reduced to a glee-club, it surely must have improved things! You seem to regard the second reich as a tolerable government despite its functioning Reichstag, so what kind of poison is this that kills the fish when removed from the tank?
No democracy – no jingoism. Hence: no democracy, no “useless and barbarous stupidity.”
The Romanovs ruled the least democratic state in Europe, but they were still plenty jngoistic. I’d say nationalism has always had a tendency toward jingoism. Rather than democracy, the decline of the transnational order of the Catholic Church is to blame. Though on the other hand, the crusades seem like a variety of jingoism.
This is the bottom line on democracy: it’s been bad for the Jews. I’m aware that others have other criteria, but this is mine and I like it just fine.
I think you’ll find most Jews have chosen to live in democratic states, having emmigrated from undemocratic ones that were much less good for them. Kevin MacDonald regards the Soviet Union’s terror the revenge of a Jewish-dominated new elite on an anti-semitic order that had oppressed them (haven’t read his books, could be off there). How sensible is it to think that Jews are overwhelmingly associated with liberalism/progressivism because they are buffoons duped by WASP propagandists (even though their predilection toward leftism preceded their arrival in WASP countries)? Instead I think Ed Glaeser’s writings on liberalism/progressivism being the politics of dense, cosmopolitan urban areas makes sense. Though I haven’t read Yuri Slezkine yet, his depiction of Jews as prototypical “Mercurians” highly adapted for modernity would mesh with Glaeser’s take to explain their progressivism. Of course, since your father rather than mother was Jewish that changes the calculus completely and explains your reaction :)
Lindbergh (the aviator), like most WWII opponents, was sui generis – the internationalists came in swarms, the isolationists were one-offs
Though I myself share your take, that sets off warning signs. I’m sure there were plenty of interventionists who were horrible in their own quirky ways.
It is a little rich to call Lindbergh, an extremely practical man, a “mystic” in the age of Henry Wallace
Like it’s rich to blame the most undemocratic regimes on democracy? Can’t they both be mystics, albeit of differing degrees of silly vs frightening?
America wouldn’t have had to wait another 54 years for its first true “progressive” president
If Wilson and FDR don’t count, I think Johnson should. Nothing Obama’s been pushing seems as bad as LBJ.
Not that I’m a sexist or anything, but writers named “Heather” may just not be a good fit for Hitler Studies
Would “Savitri Devi” be a better fit?
sg:
Sinking ships to prevent them from coming into the enemy’s hands doesn’t seem odd to me. The Russians had been practicing scorched earth in the days of Napoleon, and the boyscouts still play out a ceremonial act of destruction meant to deprive the enemy.
vanya:
Is that really so different from the intent of what the US did to the Indians?
The big killer was disease and huge numbers died without encountering any Europeans. There wasn’t any planned “Final Solution” of the Indian problem. Razib had an oldie but a goodie on why europeans dominated the U.S, Canada, Australia and so on while Africa and India eventually regained independence. It isn’t because there weren’t enough Nazis in tropical colonies.
August 21, 2009 at 2:14 am
re ct Vanya: The U.S. never had a policy of exterminating Indians. By European standards, North America was thinly populated even before the population crash from European diseases. Settlers found great swathes of untenanted land. Indian title to this land was extinguished by treaty.
Some Indians assimilated into settler society (there are Indian bands in upstate New York, coastal North Carolina, on Long Island, in Maine, and in Connecticut, as well as the upper Midwest, Oklahoma, the Rockies, and the Far West). Others preferred to move west and continue their traditional ways of life. There were clashes: some Indians were forced off lands coveted by settlers; some Indians regarded raiding their neighbors (including other Indians) as good clean fun (rather like the medieval Vikings). It was not possible to deal with them as with another civilized people.
The great fur-trading companies did most of their business with the Indians. When smallpox epidemics threatened to wipe out the Indians of the Plains and the Rockies in the 1830s, Congress appropriated funds to have the Indians vaccinated.
This record is far from unstained – but anyone who says that it is the same as Nazi Germany’s record in eastern Europe is either desperate to whitewash the Nazi regime or desperate to condemn America and western civilization in general.
August 21, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Plymouth had already been devastated by disease before the pilgrims got there, due to contact with English fishermen. The Mound-Building civilization died from disease without encountered any europeans. I believe that many of the forests in the U.S were not that old but had sprang up precisely because of the indian die-off.
August 29, 2009 at 9:54 pm
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