I'm looking for a situation in history similar to the Holocaust

I can see some similarities to the expelling of Indians from Kenya (or was it Uganda) and in the pogroms of the Chinese in Indonesia and such Asian countries.

In Communist Poland peasants had their own land. They were generally thought to be well-off, supplied city dwellers with much-needed meat and vegetables.
There were no major peasant rebellions.
After 1989, it's clear that the number of peasants is much above the "European norms", 5 times too many. So Communism artificially maintained the existence of all those village dwellers, constantly praising the worker-peasant proletarian alliance. Peasants built big houses, bought machines, felt needed. Now the age of large farms has come.

Oh? Really? As you have noted, in your post #3551445,



Now, you did have the decency to offer an apology in advance if you were wrong, which is why i did not respond angrily at the time, other than to note that i resented the charge. But you are not in a position to claim that no one accused me of anything.



I did read that post before responding, which is why, as i've noted, that i did not respond in anger. However, i have no expectation of whether or not you will read my posts. If you comment here, you do so by choice, and not in fulfilment of any explicit or implicit expectation of mine. When you respond to someone's post in a thread, it helps if you make an effort to completely understand the context in which the post is made. That often involves (and i say usually involves) reading the inaugural post, to understand thoroughly the context of that post. On the basis of the inaugural post of this thread, my response is a correct and specific answer to the question embodied in that post.

At such time as either you or Thomas, or anyone else for that matter, can demonstrate that any government in history established an organized and efficient program of genocide, which was perpetrated in invaded territories (which is the reason for my use of the term "extraterritorial") on "third parties" other than the majority population of the invaded territory, for racist reason, then i will be happy to acknowledge as much, and to say that i was wrong.

As it stands right now, this being LP's question:



Offered in the context of the thread title, "I'm looking for a situation in history similar to the Holocaust," my response is an unequivocal "No." Given that he specified "the Holocaust," then any historical situation for which someone could allege similarity would have to be a racially based genocide, and a government-sponsored, organized and efficient genocide.

So, situations such as the annual Frankish invasion of Saxon homelands to slaughter the Saxons do not qualify becaues the Saxons were slaughtered for being pagans, and not for being Saxons. After 804, when the Saxons finally surrendered to the superior military force of the Franks, and accepted Christianity, the annual slaughter ended. At no time in the process was the purpose of the Franks to accomplish racial genocide. I have acknowledged that the most similar situation was the slaughter of Armenians by the Turks--and have pointed out that the Turks, leaving aside the legendary incompetence of the Young Turk government, did not carry out such an attempt at genocide in the territory of any other nation which they had invaded.

Here is the first post by Thomas in this thread:



That was a reasonable enough request on his part, but LP had already specified the terms very carefully in his first post.

This is his second post in this thread:



Certainly in a general sense, there is good reason to group the NSDAP's final solution with other such mass murders. But that is not an answer to the specific question which LP asked. When i attempted to point out to him the distinction (which was not a whim of mine, but which arose from the specific question which LP asked), he asked why that were a problem, to which i responded, and then, in his post #3552677:



I will not comment on his employment of a stereotype of the Germans, and the rather silly inference that Germany has a history of well-functioning governments.

Now, perhaps you are unmoved by immigrants who eagerly sought to live in the United States then making such a disgusting characterization of Americans as to suggests that they are so empty-headed and callous that they would make a game show or a fast food franchise out of an organized genocide, but to me it is disgusting. If Thomas really has such a low opinion of Americans and the United States, then i do wonder why he was so intent on living here. I rather suspect, however, that he doesn't find Americans and the United States as contemptible as that remark suggests. Either that, or he moved here for masochistic reasons. Which applies is a matter of indifference to me.

No I won't. Setanta's posts are consistently interesting to read, and our exchanges of friendly insults a source of perpetual refreshment for me. There's nothing better for letting off steam.

Setanta -- fair enough. If "similar to" is measured by matching the pattern in the initial post of "Literary Poland" ...


... then I don't know of a genocide that's similar to the Holocaust.

Thank you. That has been my only point in this thread.

"Now, perhaps you are unmoved by immigrants who eagerly sought to live in the United States then making such a disgusting characterization of Americans as to suggests that they are so empty-headed and callous that they would make a game show or a fast food franchise out of an organized genocide, but to me it is disgusting."

But it can't be denied that the Gulf War in 1990-91, and the start of the Iraqi war in 2003, and the attack on Afghanistan in 2001, and the attacks against Serbia in 1999 were TV shows bloodthirsty people had been looking forward to, and assuming that the US would win easily.
Actually, exactly the same kind of a TV show as the 9/11 attacks, but those were unexpected.

I'll find you one soon, because I believe that all such patterns have been repetitive throughout history.

Actually that gameshow/realityTV/burger franchise tangent was an excercise in low, morbit humor. What can I say -- it's one of my guilty pleasures. It wasn't meant as a serious comment about the United States, and didn't refer to any particular conflict that the US was engaged in. I didn't think I needed to explain that when I posted it; but judging by the reactions, maybe I should have.

Proof that humor is not as widespread as one could think...

Ah, matters are slowly clearing up: Thomas's remark that caused you such umbrage, Setanta, was simply meant to say Americans love a good show. To see this, walk into any bar in France, or Peking, or St Petersburg, whenever the European Space Agency - or whoever - is launching a space mission and ask them to switch their TVs to the firing of the booster rockets; they'll think you mad. Conversely, walk into any bar in the US when a Space Shuttle mission is being launched - you'll find all the TVs in that establishment are tuned to Cape Canaveral. QED.

Btw, the reason I could interpret his comment correctly is that the only people who score lower than the Germans on the humor scale are the Swiss (ahem) - and while I don't presume to know your esteemed family's ancestry, Setanta, it's a safe bet neither ethnic group is heavily represented in it

Couldn't put it better myself

What about:
We are Americans. Our enemies, the Commies/the Islamists, live in Vietnam (Indonesia, Laos, Burma, Afghanistan ). Let's get rid of them.

As a Westphalian, I'm proud to rank as low as the Swiss (though just an itsy bitsy teenie weenie above the Bernese [those from Berne, not Béarnaise from Béarn].

You're clearly unacquainted with Appenzell Innerrhoden, Walter..... Even the Bernese qualify as gigglers there

But their (the Innerrhoden) cheese is much better!
[And conservative really should love their small 'government' - though small is used here more literally ]

It also cannot be denied that those same images sparked a ground swell of opposition to those military ventures. Within days of the beginning of the ground war in the Persian Gulf War in 1991, there were posters going up on college campuses in the United States which showed the charred corpse of an Iraqi soldier who had tried to escape from the upper hatch of his tank. It was a potent weapon in the widely expressed opposition to that war in the United States. Opposition to the war against Serbia was also loud and wide-spread in the United States. Probably no war in American history has been so loudly and widely opposed as the invasion of Iraq, at least since the Mexican War. There was not as much opposition to the invasion of Afghanistan, and that probably was precisely because of the images of the September 11th attacks.

Images are powerful tools of propaganda, and have been for centuries. That is not a basis upon which to allege that Americans consider war or genocide in the light of a game show.

Are you trying to claim the Polish are somehow superior in that regard? Your "what about" is bullshit, by the way. In the more than half century that i have lived in the United States, i've never known any American to express the sentiments with which you are trying to slander them. You're a hypocrite, and a liar.

<<The third stage would be a war to obliterate what Hitler considered to be the "Judeo-Bolshevik" regime in the Soviet Union.>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zweites_Buch

Maybe we should concentrate on Laos.