I fucking hate the cult the West has built up around its role in WWII, the war they idolize because it was about that one time they fought (more brazen and mask off) imperialists and genocidaires, rather than poor villagers with scavenged weapons somewhere in Africa or Southeast Asia. Not just because it sweeps some inconvenient details under the rug (ie, what sociopolitical and economic developments in America/Europe led to the Nazis in the first place) but because there hasn’t been a single war or geopolitical rivalry since that hasn’t tried to shoehorn in non-existent parallels, leading up to the big-brained take that a militant Islamist group comprised hardened orphans in a walled-off ghetto is somehow the Third fucking Reich in this scenario. It’s somehow even worse when they learn about the unsavory aspects of the (Western) Allies’ conduct because they can use that to justify war crimes so long as it gets the “bad guy” in the end.

Compounding this is a profound ignorance of the Israel-Palestine “conflict” as well since I’m sure anyone who isn’t a disingenuous fool would know about the Israeli settler-colonial system and put two and two together treating the occupied Germans and Japanese as an “undesirable” indigenous population to be displaced would have similar if not worse results. There were already Wehrwolf terrorist cells in occupied zones where the west treated “former” Nazis with kids’ gloves and poured in that sweet sweet Marshal Plan aid, just imagine how bad it would have been in that aforementioned hypothetical scenario.

As a bonus, there’s another dipshit trying to imply that WWII partisans didn’t commit atrocities against “civilian” settlers participating in a war of extermination against them.

There, I was holding in that rant for a while. parenti-hands

On a related note, Kay and Skittles did a great video which touches on this, particularly on Saving Private Ryan towards the end of it.

    • Justice@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      17·
      11 months ago

      They legitimately have no idea of scale and magnitude. Ripping off Finkelstein a little, who recently said (paraphrasing) “What does any of this have to do with the Holocaust? ‘The worst massacre of Jews in one day since the Holocaust’ is the line from Israel. Hamas militants killed about 1200 Israelis on Oct 7 compared to the Nazis who were gassing and cremating over 10000 Jews PER DAY at Auschwitz. These events are incomparable.” (That’s from memory, but it was something close to that).

      This is just the “famous” atrocities that every American is surely aware of from school and media. They don’t learn much about the SS units in the East that went village to village in Latvia, Lithuania, etc., rounded up every single Jew in the village, had them dig their own mass graves, then machine gunned them in a way to ensure their bodies fell into the pit for minimal clean up on the Nazis’ part. All civilians, every Jew, from grown men, women, children, literal babies. They documented it all too. Every day just a list made by the officer in charge like male Jews, female Jews, children Jews, total number tallied up to send back to HQ. And of course they found these Jews very easily because their neighbors gave them up and in some cases the SS showed up to do their murder and found the villagers had already done it for them. Far too many of those killers never faced an ounce of justice either.

      And of course the Japanese were known for their extreme cruelty. Taking women from conquered lands to use as sex slaves (which some descendants of those slavers deny still).

      To compare Hamas, a basically powerless group all things considered, to state powers that carried out efficient operations to subjugate and exterminate or enslave entire populations would be a great joke if they weren’t so serious about it. Of course it’s no stretch at all to say Israel would fit right in with Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, imperial Japan.

      I really hate libs. On this specific subject more than any other one (the Holocaust) I just fucking despise how anyone who has read the first hand accounts from the victims and the perpetrators themselves could ever cheapen those atrocities and attempt to cynically weaponize the suffering of these millions of people who suffered and died. It’s honestly fucking enraging. I dunno. That’s the worst part of being effectively just an observer. Those of us who in good faith engage in the available accounts of atrocities know the horrors and we approach discourse thinking the libs 1) also know (they probably don’t) and 2) they actually care about any sort of justice (they don’t). Sometimes I’m just listening to the way they drop these accusations and the pieces really connect in my brain for a moment like “wow, this giant, square headed MFer is actually comparing Hamas militants to SS death squads” and I’m filled with burning anger and desire to see them pay for this callousness, their total disregard for truth and humanity. It’s easy to read stuff and take it all in as just stats and figures. I think it’s important for people to read the first hand accounts and understand the horrors.