Tony Greenstein asks ➤ Why is the Nazi holocaust more important than the Slave Trade and the Death of 10 million Africans in the Belgian Congo?


There is no greater insult to the memory of the 6 million than to exploit their deaths, as the Holocaust Education Trust does, in order to legitimise Israel’s foul racism.

Below is yet another excellent article from Gavin Lewis, Israel, Holocaust and the Un-existing of Black Victimhood. It has prompted me to write an introduction which is longer than the article itself. My apologies but it’s a topic that doesn’t lend itself to brevity!

If you Google ‘books on genocide in Belgian Congo’ you come up with just one book. Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. If you type in ‘Nazi holocaust’ then you have an endless selection.

There are literally thousands of books, from every conceivable angle, on aspects of the Holocaust. Most are worthless but nonetheless no respectable library is without a shelf (at least).

How is it that the Jewish Holocaust (because there are few books on the other victims – the Disabled, Gypsies, Russian POWs, Political Prisoners, Jehova Witnesses) has received such attention yet the genocide of Black Africans has not?

Continue reading @ Tony Greenstein's Blog.

Nazi Holocaust & African Slave Trade

Tony Greenstein asks ➤ Why is the Nazi holocaust more important than the Slave Trade and the Death of 10 million Africans in the Belgian Congo?


There is no greater insult to the memory of the 6 million than to exploit their deaths, as the Holocaust Education Trust does, in order to legitimise Israel’s foul racism.

Below is yet another excellent article from Gavin Lewis, Israel, Holocaust and the Un-existing of Black Victimhood. It has prompted me to write an introduction which is longer than the article itself. My apologies but it’s a topic that doesn’t lend itself to brevity!

If you Google ‘books on genocide in Belgian Congo’ you come up with just one book. Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. If you type in ‘Nazi holocaust’ then you have an endless selection.

There are literally thousands of books, from every conceivable angle, on aspects of the Holocaust. Most are worthless but nonetheless no respectable library is without a shelf (at least).

How is it that the Jewish Holocaust (because there are few books on the other victims – the Disabled, Gypsies, Russian POWs, Political Prisoners, Jehova Witnesses) has received such attention yet the genocide of Black Africans has not?

Continue reading @ Tony Greenstein's Blog.

23 comments:

  1. What connects the Shoah/Holocaust, the African slave trade, the genocides of the the indigenous populations of the Americas in the 16th century and those in the Scramble for Africa in the 19th century is that they were all committed by European imperial powers.

    It is because of this commonality that it is essential that the Holocaust, the African Slave trade and other genocides and criumes against humanity be permanently memorialised. All represent the evil of racism which was spawned in Europe and it was to Europe that colonialism was brought back to and all the accretions of European racism accumulated in the Shaoh.

    No supporter of the Holocuast Educational Trust would ever seek to downplay other genocides. Holocaust Memorial Day also commemorates the genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia and Darfur. Nor would they disregard the genocides of the Disabled, Roam and Sinti, POWs, JWs. Nor does the HET work to legitimise the right wing Likudnik nationalism of the current Israeli governent.

    What makes the Shoah/Holocuast unique is not so much the ethnicity of its victims but that it was declared state policy in a modern European state to exterminate an entire group simply because of who they were/are. As such it was a crime against the entirety of humanity and most be remembered as such not used in some sort of spurious competition of evil as Tony Greenstein does as part of his obsessive antizionism.

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  2. Barry - it was a horrific event but one of many that have been committed down throughout history. As Steven Pinker says in The Better Angles Of Our Nature, genocide was pretty common. Operation Barbarossa in my view was a greater crime than the Holocaust and the figures are there to shore that up. I think Tony G's point might well be that there is no Barbarossa industry but there is a Holocaust industry.

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  3. Anthony

    As I have said many times before, what makes the Holocuast unique was the logistics, racial taxonomy and sheer irrationality of a state-sponsored project by a modern not ancient state to the physical and memorial destruction of an entire group of people because of who they were.

    More may have died in Barbnorossa and under Stalin but as Martin Amis phrases it "When I read about the Holocaust I exoerience something that i mdo not experience when i read about the Twenty Million: a sense of physical infestation." As Christopher Hitchens says when quoting his erstwhile friend, the distinction (between Nazism and Stalinism) is certainly worth preserving).

    I do not doubt or relativise the inhumanity of Operation Barborassa but the revenge that the Red Army wreaked in the rape of 2m German women and massacre and expulsion of ethnic German populations in Eastern Europe. War crimnes which Putin did not see fit to mention in today's Remembrance fest in Moscow.

    The Holocaust like other Nazi genocides such as Y4 and those of the Gypsies were not military operations carrued out against another country but crimnes against humanity carried out agakinst utterly defecneless people.

    I have no more problem with a so-called Holocaust industry that I do with the so-called race relations industry. Those who raise these spectres have denialist agendas.

    The comments beneath Gavin Lewis' s article put my case more articulately than I ever could.

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  4. Barry, the Holocaust was no more unique than Operation Barbarossa. 3.5 million Soviet POWs done in alone. The difference is that Barbarossa was worse. It matters no what opinion Martin Amis might have on it. The opposite subjective feeling is every bit as weighty. This chosen people nonsense has led to a form of racism that elevates the Holocaust to levels above cases that were even worse.

    Around 14 million civilian deaths with an estimate that over 7 million were the result of genocide and planned extermination.

    The real denialism lies in refusing to see that as something significantly worse than the Holocaust for the propaganda purposes of legitimising Israel's Nazi like crimes against humanity and war crimes.

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  5. Anthony

    To elevate the Holocaust is not to subscribe to the chosen people myth which is an antisemnitic trope nor does it legitimise the Occupation of and settlemwents on the West Bank and the conduct of Gaza operations. But it is Occuaption that Israel is guilty off not Nazi-like extermination programmes and it is a gross travesty of history and the scale of Nazi crimes to compare the two.

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    1. Barry - it seems there are a lot of anti-Semitic tropes in that strange world view, once again reinforcing the view that anti-Semitism is often a Zionist smear to deflect attention away from Israeli war crimes.

      It is not the Jews' detractors that coined the term chosen people but those of Jewish faith themselves. It seems to me to be a very racist terms when applied by people to themselves.

      If the cap fits wear it - if we choose one group of people and claim their experience was unique and by implication suggest that an even worse experience was somehow not unique, then you are back to the chosen people nonsense. Why choose Jewish rather than Soviet for the exalted status of unique?

      No, it is not merely the occupation that Israeli is guilty of. It is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But like their counterparts the Nazi Holocaust Deniers, the Israeli War crime deniers find the need to create a fiction.

      The Nazis were guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. That is what defines them. Any war crimes by any body places them in the same camp as the Nazis. Should Israeli war crimes be exempt from that?

      Is there any war crime or crime against humanity that is not Nazi-like? Point to just one.

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  6. Barry,
    What's not an anti-Semitic trope? It features in every debate about Israel. Are people encouraged to divert and talk nonsense about tropes when discussing Israel? It happens too often regardless of how illogical to think it's organic.

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  7. Anthony - The Nazis wewre guilty of racially motivated, planned and executed cerimes against humanity. The whole Nazi edifice was built on perpetual racial struggle. That is what sets Nazism apart from all other reginmes and ideologies. Only the Rwanda, Balkan and Khmer Rouge, Darfur genocides come close as comparators. it is because of the Holocuast that genocide is a crime in international law and it is because of the murder of 3.5 Soviet POWs that the Geneva Convention outlaws killing or mistreatment of POWs.

    i have no truck with the chosen people nonsense nor do most Jews, secular or non-secular. I suspoect that it is a Christian Ziomist invention.

    To return to the Holocaust, Jews suffered a loss of two-thirds of its European population proportinaely more than any other group. Thatr is simply fact. Poland was the country that suffered proportionaely the greatest losses - 6 millions (including 3mn Jews) out of a population of 20m.

    If Israel or the Zionists were guilty of war crimes in the 1948 war( i take it that's what you are referring to) then so were the Arab regimes by starting it. Plstimian Arab groups committed atrocities in that conflict as well and fedayeen groups did afterwards.

    David

    What is not an antisemitic trope is condemnation of the Occupation and Netanayu's govt. What is are conspiracy theories like Mossad was behind 9/11 and the creation of ISIS; that Jews are loyal only to Israel; that Zionists and/or Jews colloborate in cabals. And most, recently that Israeli security and police services train US cops to use knee restraint. it was for retweeting this untruth that Becky-Wrong-Daily got her marching orders from the Labour front bench yesterday.

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  8. Barry - this is to miss the point. The Nazis can be set apart but not their crimes.
    The Jews suffered terribly but the Russians suffered more. That the Russian figures were not even higher in terms of proportionality was because they fought back and halted the Nazi threat whereas the Jews were civilian and had little opportunity to fight back.
    I am not referring to 1948 but war crimes took place there. No point in blaming Arabs for the war crimes of Israel.
    I am referring to the war crimes since 1948, including - in the words of Benny Morris - "Israeli massacres of Arab civilians and prisoners of war in the subsequent wars of 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982." We have man more since in Gaza.
    Are Israeli war crimes not Nazi-like? All war crimes in my view are Nazi-like so why therefore should we have a special exception for a chosen state?

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  9. Barry,
    It's not limited to your examples and I think you know this. I.e I was reading an article on a right wing site the other day and it was Soro's behind blm blah blah blah, in the comments section it was anti-Semitic trope! After anti-Semitic trope. I re-read the article a couple of times Judaism wasn't mentioned, Israel wasn't even mentioned only an individual financed an organisation. The very next article was Gates is behind covid, blah blah in the comments section no mention of his religion or even political allegiance. This is got to be deliberate their must be people looking out for his name and straight away screaming anti-Semitic trope. That's retarded.
    Celebrating someone's demotion for sharing a tweet doesn't shine you in a good light in my eyes. People should be allowed to say whatever they like, especially politicians how else do you know who they are. This selected censorship is nonsensical and won't end well. It'll be interesting to see if Labour demote someone who tweets a falsehood in support of blm etc.
    Lastly if I said mi5 was behind 911/isis, that masons and/or Christians collaborate in cabals would that be an anti-Christian trope?

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    1. David

      Derogatory and conspiratorial theories about George Soros are classic right wing antismeitic tropes precisely because he is a Jew who finances liberal, open society and human rights causes and so attracts the ire of antiglobalist right figures such as Farage, Orban, Lde Pen etc.

      Rebecca Long-Bailey was sacked after a four-hour stand-off with Keir Starmer in which she refused the options offered which were disavow the article and tweet as they were clearly untrue and to fully apologise. She didn't so good night Irene because Sir Keir is determined to take the poison of antisemitism out of the Labour Party by its roots.

      So you think politicians should be allowed to say what they like? Should Nigel Farage have been allowed to tweet about "illegal immigrants" being supposedly resident in that hotel wnich has been the scene of today's tragedy in Glasgow. Should Trump have been allowed to call for a Muslim immigration ban, to call Mexicans bad hombres. Was Enoch Powell entitled to make the Rivers of Blood speech?

      Ok let them say what they sant and let them reap the full consequences of what they say.

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    2. When everything is an anti-Semitic trope there are no anti-Semitic tropes. The more widespread the usage of the term the more it is constitutive of a label for suppressing dissent.

      Sir Keir Tory behaved disgracefully in sacking Rebecca-Long Bailey. He is trying to emulate Boris who did much the same with those who had the cojones to challenge him.

      This was not about justice but about appeasement of advocates of a brutal state. She tweeted an article with the words "Maxine Peake is an absolute diamond." There can be possibly be nothing wrong with that, no more than had she said "Maxine Peake is an absolute dick".

      Peake might have been wrong in her assertions but the Israeli kneeling on necks but at the time she seemed right. But the accusation that Israel might be brutal cannot by any stretch of the imagination be anti-Semitic. It is like claiming that allegations that the RUC tortured people are sectarian. RUbbish.

      What the hounding of Rebecca Long Bailey incident does do is illustrate very well that the anti-Semitism label is used to suppress criticism of Israeli policy.

      Sir Keir Tory's reaction is as bad if not worse than what we see in universities up and down the UK - a suffocating Woke and snowflake culture that is slowly strangling intellectual life.

      You should be challenging this thing Barry rather than approving it.

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  10. Barry,
    There's derogatory and conspiratorial theories about every power base in the world but only those deemed Zionist are defended with such vigour. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's organised as the same deflection tactics are used concerning the same individuals/topics even when illogical. I find it pathetic. I don't know enough about Soros to debate you but I'd be stunned if it's as straightforward as you suggest.
    The details of Long-Bailey don't interest me, the Labour party can continue to tear itself apart it doesn't concern me it's their problem. What concerns me is the glee taken by the woke mob in this cancel culture, intellectually to stifle debate is retarded. From a street mentality it's little children running back and telling the teacher. It's weakness masquerading as strength.
    Hundred percent politicians should be able to speak their mind otherwise how do you know their character? Of course the politicians mentioned should have been given air time you can't protect people from what you deem bad ideas. That's stupid.
    There's always consequences to what people say and do better that than not being allowed to speak or act.

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    1. David

      There were most certainly consequecxndes for black people after the Rivers of Blood speech. So should nothing be off-linits for politiicans to say.

      Delete
  11. Anthony

    As I have already explained. Rebecca Long-Bailey retweeted an afrticle by Maxine Peake which alleged that the knee technique used to murder George Floyd was taught by the Israeli police. Maxine Peake later acknowledged that this was not true and apologised for it. RBL was given the opportunity to delete and retreet the tweet; she refuded and was then sacked from the front bench.

    BBL was sacked not for condemning Israeli treatment of Palestinians but for airing a conspiracy theory involving Israel which is a central featufre of modern antisemitism. Condemning Israli policies in the West Bank can never be antisemitic; putting Israel at the epicentfre of everytning that is evil in the word and lying aboiut it is and this is an example of it.

    The "hounding" of RBL was not an example of the AS lable bdeibng used to suppress criticiosm of Israeli policy is incorrect as there was there was no Israeli policy to condmemn in the first place

    Keir Starmer casmne into office pledging zero-tolerance toswards antisemitism. This is a welcome first step. Note the contrast with Boris Johnson's failure to sack Dominic Cummings and Robert Jenrick for breaking Covid-19 rules and taking money from a millionaire porn merchant property developer.

    Regarding woke and snoswflake culture in UK universities, antizionsists (I will noit call them pro-Palestinian because they do not give a damn ab obout them) are probably amogst the wokest.

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    1. Barry - that makes no sense. It means you are going to hide behind what is a label of anti-Semitism - rather than a party code - for the purpose of facilitating the suppression of sentiment that pits itself against Israeli brutality. But there really is nowhere to hide. Everybody can see it for what it is.

      RLB tweeted a post that expressed no anti-Semitism. The post expressed a view that Israeli forces kneeled on people's necks. You know they do much worse.

      RLB did not air a conspiracy theory. She allowed people access to an article that did not express anti-Semitism but did express criticism of a perceived brutal Israeli practice. RLB said nothing about that practice in her tweet.

      What we find here is that rather than RLB being culpable of any anti-Semitism you are guilty of smearing her with the label Anti-Semite.

      You suggest that only what the Israelis do in the West Bank is subject to criticisms. This leaves out their war crimes everywhere else. Gaza is not in the West Bank.

      The contention that there is no Israeli policy to condemn in the first place is so disingenuous, it beggars belief. You know that Israel has a torture policy, which things like kneeling on necks are probably mild by comparison.

      It is very hard to find fault in Ronan Burtenshaw's observation:

      To many onlookers, Rebecca Long-Bailey’s sacking might have seemed strange. After all, she was fired for sharing an interview by someone else in which they made a claim which was only marginally incorrect. (The Israeli police do, in fact, train the US police and encourage the use of “excessive force” against those who “pose little or no threat.”)

      Whatever way I look at this even trying to play devil's advocate any charge of anti-Semitism is bogus. What disappoints me is that you must know it yet prefer to smear the woman. In doing so you can only fuel suspicions that you are a mirror image of the anti-Semites.

      People in the BLP must be free to speak out against Israeli terrorism.

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  12. Barry - in already explaining you failed to explain anything. You now want people done over in the BLP not because they are anti-Semites but because they retweet articles.
    Had she said the Palestinians kneel on necks she would still be in place.
    Sir Keir Tory is behaving as an apologist for a brutal state and is trying to suppress criticism of that brutal state.
    RBL retweeted an article with the comment that the article's author is an absolute diamond. That is what got her the sack. She never mentioned the Israelis in her tweet, just the author. And for that she was sacked.
    She aired no conspiracy theory. She shared an article. There can be nothing wrong with that.
    And you are back to the bull about yet another anti-Semitic trope. You know that Israel tortures prisoners and that the Israeli Supreme Court permits torture. So, Maxine Peake blaming the Israelis on neck kneeling is hardly the worst type of accusation. The Israelis do worse and are permitted to do so by their courts.
    If Maxine Peake is wrong, she is wrong. It hardly makes RBL guilty of antisemitism.

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    1. Anthony

      I want BLP members who retweet articles or express that break the Party's code on antisemitism or indeed any code on racism and other discriminatory attitudes to face the appropriate sanctions.

      The fact is that George Floyd was murdered by racist US cops and nobody else. The antizionist crank left must not be allowed to piggy back on the Black Lives Movement.

      Keir Starmer is not suppressing criticism of Israeli policies as this affaifr does not concern what goes on in the West Bank. Throughout the entire sorry saga of antisemitism in Corbyn's Labour Party, every time an accusation is made about antisemitic acts and words by Labour members, it is met with this stock reply that they are motivated by the desire to suppress criticism of Israeli policies. Not one smidgen of evicdence has ever been cited in support of this claim by allies of Corbyn but it is made over and over again in the manner of Goebbels' Big Lie.

      The fact is that among those who have been most critical of Labour's past handling of antisemitism have been Lisa Nandy who as Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East is a doughty defender of Palestinian rights. The Jewish Labour Movement and Jewish MPs such as Margafret Hodge have been to the fore in opposing the annexation plan for the West Bank.

      RBL was asked to disavow the contents of that article; she didn't and paid the penalty. Swift justice compared to how Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker and Chris Williamson and many others were indulged for for admittedly more egregrious offences under the Magic Grandpa.

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    2. Anthony

      From Jonaathan Freedland in "At last, Labour is getting serious about antisemitism in yesterday's Guardian:

      "If people can absorb that Israel is not responbsible for all the world's evils, but rather a very specifc injustice that desperately needs resolution, then perhaps wew can move away from a conversationb mthat casually echoes centuries-old slurs agaiunbst Jesws, and toawrds one that at last addresses the on-thr-ground reality. That reality is gdetting worse for Palesrtinians with the prospect of annexation of the West Bank loomig ever closer. We need to hear that, without getting diverted by medieval fantasides about Jews"

      He earlier says that "to look at the US, with its centuries of police brutality, and to decide that the Floyd killing was not somethking US police might have come up with all by themselves - that they required the instruction of faraway Israel - is to stray from rational analysis into the wildest reaches of conspiracy theory".

      That is the nub of contempofrary far left antisemitism. No Labour rep should be or dever has been disciplined for explicity condemming Israeli brutality towards Palestinians.
      It has been the promotion of conspiracy theories around Isealin involvemt in 9/11, forminbg ISIS, helping to start the Iraq war and historical untruths such as the Jews largely financed the Avfrican slave trade (Jackie Walker), that Hitler supported Zionism (Ken Livingstone) and Holocaust demial by pafrty members and reps in the Corbyn era that has been at the cose of Labour antisemitism crisis and a cancer that Keir Starmer is determined to excise.

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    3. Barry – this is a most lame attempt at deflecting away from both the smear and the injustice done to RLB.
      Freedland is right that Israel “is not responsible for all the world's evils.”
      It is responsible for its own evils which include child murder, terrorism, torture.
      RLB never uttered one word about Jews. She made no reference to medieval fantasies about Jews. She praised an author who wrote a piece in which it was very specifically stated that Israeli security forces kneel on the necks of Palestinians. RLB at no point mentioned that was why she retweeted the piece. But we both know as does everybody else that Israeli security services inflict much worse crimes than that. It is not as if she was retweeting a piece by David Irving. But even if she did, she is entitled to, just as you are entitled to give me a book by David Irving without some smear merchant accusing you of being anti-Semitic.

      Even if in her article Maxine Peake subscribed to a conspiracy theory it was not against Jews but against the Israeli state. But it suits the smearers to confuse the two for the very purpose of suppressing criticism of brutal Israeli practices.
      So, what we have is RLB being attacked by Sir Keir Tory for nothing other than prising an author and sharing her article, part of which was critical of Israeli violence and not critical of Jewish people. That Maxine Peake was wrong (and only mildly so) is no reason to punish RLB.
      If Israel was not involved in forming ISIS (which I am not aware of its complicity), 9/11 (which I am not aware of its complicity), helping to start the Iraq War (which I am not aware of its complicity), then accusations that it was involved are not anti-Semitic but anti-Israeli state. They should be called out as dishonest, an abandonment of the principle that if we are to speak truth to power we must also speak truth about power and not make things up. But all this type of crap could be made up about Pakistan yet those making it up do not merit the label Islamophobic. They are anti-Pakistani state.
      A ridiculous conspiracy theory against Israel is not anti-Semitic unless there is an anti-Semitic motive for doing so (and I am sure there often is such a motive). A hatred of Israel because of its history of war crimes against Palestinian civilians undoubtedly exists in many quarters but without excusing the hatred we understand what it is. It is not anti-Semitic. Because something is not anti-Semitic it does not make it any less wrong.
      Sir Keir Tory is not moving against anti-Semitism here but against the Left. People can make an argument that the Left in the BLP are ruinous or on the road to nowhere and need faced down. I can at least consider that on its merits. But I will not consider a patent slur a proper means of addressing that problem.
      Sir Keir Tory should move to cut out nonsense in the party where it exists: where Israel is blamed for all manner of things it had no role in. But he could show the way by stating that as a former prosecutor he supports the call for Israel to be investigated for war crimes, by stating that he fully supports party members who oppose Israeli atrocities and Israeli terrorism.
      What could possibly be wrong with that?
      Now, if RLB retweeted an article in which it was stated that Tony Blair was not a war criminal, she would not be dismissed by Sir Keir Tory, even though there are strong grounds for contending that would be a lie.

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  13. Barry,
    Politicians should say what's in their hearts and if people concur then vote for them. Is that not the basis of democracy? If you're arguing that politicians who say repugnant things shouldn't get air time in case they get in to power is that not implying that the majority of people are themselves repugnant? Is that your argument? Are you saying the rivers of blood speech should've been banned? In my opinion democracy doesn't exist without free speech, what is it, democracy or a woke technocracy?

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    1. David

      Powell should most definitely have been prosecuted for incitement to hatred specifically for saying "that in twenty years the black man will have the whip hand over the wnhite man" with all the imagery of slavery that that evokes. And for his lies about streets in Wolverhampton being taken over by "coloured people".

      All across the world we are seeing the consequencdes of nationalist demogogues being elected to power; from Trump to Putin; from Modi to Orban; from Netanyahu to Bolinasario.

      Should Adolf Hitler been granted unrestricted airtime?

      Do minorities and those subjected to social disadvantage and structural racisn who are most likely to be impacted by powerful bigots not figure in your definition of democracy?

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  14. Barry,
    I disagree. Prosecuting people for having hideous, stupid opinions isn't just authoritarian, it's unworkable. For a start you'd have to lift all religious people.
    Some people could argue these 'nationalist demogogues' are a direct result of policies you support, economic, foreign affairs etc. Why leave out the consequences of western imperialism, why one example?
    The worst person you can imagine should be given air time, free speech is that important. The Hitler argument is redundant, he broke enough laws, he could have been kept in prison for his actions not his words if the will of capability was there.
    Everybody figures in democracy, that's the point. When our people were disadvantaged the slogan was one man one vote. You've got to trust people. Or it's a collective dictatorship.

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