I have an honest question for you: would you have turned away the Jews escaping the Holocaust because, according to quotas on Jews at the time, their entry into the US would have been considered illegal?

The twist to try to blame Obama for this is pure evil genius. Had to watch a second time to catch that trick.

This is actually a pretty interesting video overall, just happens to be a video of an evil asshole and his friends and guests.

Basically the radical Trumpist position is that it is OK to hurt children (or anyone) for a political cause and it is everybody elses (ie democrats) fault that they dont respond to blackmail faster.

I think its a shame these videos get downvoted so readily. Not quite the holocaust, but enough of a warning.

Bed time stories and nursery rhymes have covered vast topics thru out humanity. Ring around the roses, London bridges, Old Mother Hubbard, etc.. etc.. are all rooted in dark truths, but they are sung to babies, toddlers and kids. The Trail of Tears, The Holocaust, The Middle Passage, Armenian Genocide have their place..

Count yourself as one of the lucky if you have the privilege of never having to worry about a group of angry white men dragging yourself or your child off to some sadistic fate.

We don't stand for that kind of crap up here in Canada...

Jokes aside, we make exceptions to free speech and hate speech is something you CAN be prosecuted for. A teacher that was trying to teach holocaust denial was convicted for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_Canada

My 2 cents, punching a nazi is more wrong because of the vigilante aspect of it than in an absolute moral sense. IMO the state should have laws about support for or membership with known criminal, terrorist or hate groups. Nazi's and KKK for starters, Westboro baptists and Saudi Wahabiism too depending on where society wants to draw the line. Morally though, I have no problems with declaring that debating merits of fascism and even mistreatment of Nazi germany historically is free speech and protected, but at the same time wearing a swastika on your arm or a pillow case on your head while marching in the streets to support your 'cause' should see you convicted and sentenced.

Your video, Terminator 2 - How the Nuclear holocaust scene was made - M, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

BASF is a huge german corporation that produced Zyklon B, the gas used in Ausschwitz to kill thousands of people. They're still going strong. It is by far not the only german corporation that benefitted greatly from the Holocaust. Take IBM for example, they delivered card-computing systems to manage concentration camp popula... Oh shit! IBM is american, my bad.
The Bundeswehr, the german military, was run by Nazi Generals in its early years. Just this year there were several scandals concerning Neo Nazis among their ranks.
A lot of people benefited from the atrocities of the third Reich. Don't kidd yourself. Remember, Hitler hired Ferdinand Porsche to develop the Volkswagen. The development of the VW Beetle was started by the Fuehrer.

I put a browser in incognito mode (so there would be no cookies / history to tailor results with) and tried it. Should be pretty much on par with average Thai results since I have Thai ISP and went through google.co.th. Also, I changed the search term to "Hitler" in Thai language script: "ฮิตเลอร์".

I'm pretty functionally fluent in listening to Thai and semi decent at speaking it (I can get along in daily life fine although I'll never be mistaken for a native speaker since I didn't grow up with a tonal language). I'm not completely illiterate when it comes to reading it, but I'm quite slow. Sort of "Dick and Jane" level. Anyway, it would take forever for me to interpret the results of that search reading everything in Thai, but here's a quick once-over:

#1 result is https://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/อดอล์ฟ_ฮิตเลอร์
The Thai wikipedia article on Hitler is a bit shorter than the English one, but seems to cover everything in a similar way. I didn't try to read much to confirm but it does talk about the holocaust and Jews.

#2 result is http://teen.mthai.com/variety/57766.html
Seems to be a blog-type article on Hitler, written by a (high school?) student. I used the Chrome translate feature (which generally produces nonsense with Thai to English, but can get you broad strokes) to save time. This one does mention that Hitler hated Jews and talks about the holocaust being "cruel", although it seems to present a sort of positive take on Hitler in general. At least, more than we'd generally be comfortable with in the West.

#3 result is https://pantip.com/topic/31569039
This is a web forum. The article/post is called "(เรื่องน่ารู้) 10 อันดับเหตุผลที่ทำไมฮิ
605;เลอร์ถึงเกลียดชาวยิว", which google translate converts to "(I know) 10 reasons why Hitler hated the Jews". My stab at a better translation would be "(Things you Should Know) 10 reasons why Hitler hated the Jews". Thai doesn't really have pronouns, so that bit in parenthesis is semi ambiguous, but น่ารู้ means "should know" or "worth knowing".

This one is interesting. The list it presents is:
* Jewish influence in communism.
* Jewish causes lost World War 1.
* Jews make Depression
* Hitler knot lodged since childhood.
* Hitler was influenced by the idea against genocide.
* Hitler's brain has been affected as a soldier.
* Master Race theory
* Hitler believed in conspiracy theories about Jews.
* Political nationalism
* Hitler envious of wealthy Jews.

It explains those in brief terms (a few sentences each) and then there is a poll where readers can vote on which one was the main reason that Hitler hated Jews. There's some anti-semitic implications mixed in there, but it is also blunt about the evil stuff that Hitler did and doesn't present him as a person to be emulated / respected.


I wish I read Thai better so I could get a better read on those. Your question is quite interesting, along with (my potentially incorrect take on) those first few search results.

You did good on that joke and on its explanation. I got it just fine without the commentary though.

I left your whole commentary here, because I make it a practice to delete all comments from my wall. Your essay needs to be saved for posterity.

So here is a quirk of Videosift.

If you are ignoring someone, and they make a comment on one of your videos, you will never get another email saying that comments have been made.

I had no idea of the implosion on that comment stream. Dear god in heaven.

What is really sad is I only wanted a temp ban. I honestly didn't know of @gorillaman's propensities. I am all for second, third and fourth chances -- even though some people have left the Sift in the past because the worst abusers were allowed back. I understood their pain, but I'm still all for more chances. If you love something enough, maybe you will change your behavior. I certainly don't change immediately. I will accord others the opportunity to learn over time.

So no edit help, huh? I think I'll use this:

As "Homeland Security" says, if you see something, SAY something. (Because here is the truth: As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel wrote, "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.")

Much cleaner. Don't need the snark bit. Quote marks. Gotta love 'em. (Quote marks, not parentheses, to denote snark. I'm getting old.)

I didn't address your tendency to tread lightly with me in my first response. I figured it was made up of three things:

1. My early days on the Sift, I had really thin skin. I was easily hurt and upset. One of the biggest gifts to me in my life was learning on the Sift to be clearer and stronger in my communications. And to walk away from the abusers. And to use the ignore button. I figured that my early reactions were in your brain pan still.

2. That tone of voice thing. It is real. What is a simple, clear declarative sentence in my head can be read as a whine-fest by others.

3. I think it is great that you write carefully when you write to me. Keep it up! It's called caring about the person you are talking to. I have zero problem with that. In fact, I see it as a Great Good. (Because if you aren't, and I lay my own internal tone of voice onto your words in a way that doesn't match the words in your head, you will be hearing from me. And I am just as verbose as you, my friend! A punishment worse than death!)

And yes. We are people who hang in there. It is a blessing and a curse.
Well, only a curse to those who roll their eyes and snort "good grief, just shut up!" I'm cool with it.

Thanks for hanging in with me. And I am truly sorry about gorillaman. He did it to himself, though. He did have other choices.

In solidarity, I say to you -- Fuck Homeland Security and ginned up xenophobia and racism.

(A poet? Do you write epic odes? Surely not haikus!)

Okay

I just took a long walk to have lunch. As I walked, I noodled and noodled on my Homeland comment (if it isn't obvious by now, I use that comment all the time.) How to give it context so as to not give the wrong impression? How to keep it short, given how complicated the context is?

Finally realized the power of the snark. Parentheses. Those communicate quickly.

Still needed more. Has to be short.

I sat to eat my lunch, and opened the book of essays I was reading. (I always read while eating if alone.) And there it was.

So. Would you be interested in being my editor for this project? Help me hone it? Get it succinct? (If you are interested, I have a great story about the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls struggles to be succinct. Came to mind when I stumbled on the idea of parentheses.)

Okay. Here goes. Let me know if you would like to help me get it right:

As "Homeland Security" says, if you see something, SAY something. (Meant to be read snarkily. Because here is the truth: As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said: "Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.")


It is still long. I'll have to copy and paste a long time before I remember it. But it provides context and I hope it communicates that you cannot confuse me with a Brownshirt.

That's the point. Free speech can potentially be an act which causes harm to others.

I don't have the answer for this. When I was younger, I tended to be a free speech absolutist. My opinion was freedom of expression was absolute and that we just had to accept the consequences as a price to pay.

I no longer believe that.

As a general rule, I am opposed to censorship. People should be free to say what they want and others should be free to respond appropriately.

But it's naive to think that free speech is absolute. Nothing is. So we all have to be mature and accept the fact that (as distasteful as it is) some speech is not protected. At a bare minimum, we have things like libel and slander (which are important, but also open to abuse as well).

Back on the topic of hate speech.... it's a tricky one. For me, it comes down to how you define "hate speech", and there isn't really a widely accepted definition.

It ranges from nonsense like anti-blasphemy laws (victimless crime, IMO) to controversial things like holocaust denial (patently bullshit, but not actively harmful IMO) to reasonable provisions against incitement to violence (neo-nazis etc).

There's also the concept of "negative liberty". X has the right to free speech, but Y also has the right not to be threatened or intimidated in their daily life (note: they don't have the right not to be offended).

Again, I don't have all the answers. My point is simply that the world isn't black and white.

Ironically, I'm somewhat echoing the sentiments in the video, in that facing an uncomfortable truth requires you to think and that's not a bad thing. But my uncomfortable truth is that not all speech can be free.

A surreal juxtaposition of Muzak and Tulip Holocaust!

You're kidding, right?
Do I have to make a list? On every continent white people visited (if you can call showing up and not really leaving a visit) we fucked up the lives of a good portion of the people living there.
Sure, mankind has always been cruel, in every corner of the earth. However, white people are to murder, theft and slavery what Coca Cola is to refreshing diabeeetus (yes, that's how it's spelled). A fucking international enterprise whose traces can be found everywhere. On every fucking continent.
I hope we can agree on that. Otherwise, here's a short list: Gippsland Massacres, Nagasaki, Opium Wars, My Lai Massacre, fucking Iraq, Crusades, Apartheid, Herero and Namaqua genocide, that whole Columbus mess, Trail Of Tears and transatlantic slave trade (because why the fuck not?). Oh, my bad, I forgot the freaking Holocaust and starting 2 World Wars.
Who does this? Who? White people, that's who. Europeans and their descendants.
Would you like to argue that level of evil is genetic? I won't.
It's cultural. We europeans (and later our emigrated offspring) always thought we're better than everybody else, we had god on our side (and the Pope agreed!). Probably a leftover from the Roman Empire. And that's why everywhere we go, we steal, murder or occupy the shit out of every place. No other collection of ethnic groups has so much blood on their hands and it's not because we're worse DNA constructs than the others. All humans are capable of evil, it just takes a certain way of thinking to go that far.
Thankfully, we wrecked our own continent so badly during WW2, that we finally started to improve our ways. But here's the problem: we just started. We're far from being done.
Orban, LePen, Farage, Putin, Petry and last but not least Trump.

Being an American in Canada I'm a bit removed from the whole thing. It didn't really hit until I called my mom who just cried the entire time.

My grandmother was in the Holocaust and my older brother had called my mom and asked her, "When did the Jews know it was time to leave?"

That hit home. It's easy to see that we have not learned anything from history. We're not better than we were 70 years ago. This can happen again so easily.

I'm honestly scared.

Quote from the YT comments I found myself agreeing with:

"Here's a few things the US forces aren't doing: Burning people alive for witchcraft, keeping sex slaves, beheading journalists, kidnapping people for ransom, forcing 1/2 of the population to cover their bodies and effectively live in bags, denying education to women, throwing homosexuals off buildings, burying people so only their head is exposed and stoning them for adultery, suicide bombing their own children to get to one US soldier, denying that the holocaust existed, and the list goes on. All of the horrible things I've listed are however practiced by the people that the US, and allied nations are fighting. So my questions are:1. Why are we holding the US army to such a high moral standard, yet we give a free pass to enemies, who are doing far, far, far worse, with the only thing stopping them from doing even worse being that they aren't as well equipped or trained as the US armed forces. If we are appalled at what the allied armies are doing, then we should be doubly appalled at what the other side is doing. Otherwise we have a double standard. 2.Why did this video single out the US? When quite a lot of the western world is involved in these conflicts. This is why I stopped being a leftie. Because the left is regressing. The leftists are targeting the high end of morality instead of trying to establishing a baseline of ethical behavior which to work from."

The stats were percentage of total population, not individuals. The Jewish (immigrant)population was growing exponentially faster than non-Jewish. The concern is because it was the Jewish ones that decided to permanently relocate in huge numbers (larger than all other demographics put together) across the continent to a single small country that could not stop them, and then take it by force, expelling the natives.
This "refugee from hostility" bullshit is just that as I see it. If, as you claim, the Arab population in Palestine was already hostile to Jews specifically (and I contend that if they were it was a function of massive illegal immigration, often by militants, that pushed them to it), then moving there would do absolutely nothing to alleviate the concern they might have for people that are hostile in Northern Europe. It's a complete red herring argument, ridiculous on it's face, and worse when examined closely.

"except for the holocaust part"....
Tell that to the families of the students murdered by police, or the tens of thousands of Guatemalans fleeing murder squads. State sponsored murder is state sponsored murder, it doesn't require total genocide (although the Jews don't have a monopoly on that either) and Mexicans and others have just as valid a claim that they are oppressed by it (not to the same extent as Jews under the Nazis, no, but as much or more than before the Nazis started their campaigns).

OK, let's play pretend...starting with pretending the rest of the world has an American constitution requiring equal treatment and denying discrimination based on race or religion....but I'll bite.
Almost all that happened in the 50's-60's....in case you weren't aware....without the Rwandan genocide part, or the backing by a foreign nation arming the black side. I think there were even attempts at succeeding by some groups back then....but they got no support, and were 'driven into the sea' in essence, mostly driven into prison, hiding, or a 6 ft box in reality.
Comparing the Arab league to NATO and the US is hardly realistic, unless the black nation in your "example" gets the military backing of Russia, China, Africa, South America, and parts of central America, and NATO only contains the US, Mexico, and Canada, and has no chance against new Africa and it's allies, which beats them mercilessly then expands north for decades. Also, you have to change the immigration from Rwanda, a tiny nation, to black "refugees" from the entire planet...and even then you don't have close to the same per capita immigration problem European Jewish immigrants posed to native Palestinians. All that said...I'm pretty sure some Northern leaders publicly declared they would drive the secessionists into the sea in the civil war, so it would be nothing new here. Also, it would be totally proper to do so in your hypothetical, IMO. Any invaders can be driven out by force by any nation...and that nation gets to decide who's an invader. Keep in mind that in your example, the black nation would expel all non blacks and seize their property....which is usually called theft.

I'll stick with my Mexican analogy, it's vastly more apt, IMO....it's as if you forgot that there are native Mexicans in the US that did have their property rights infringed on and were discriminated against (and still are)...and/or aren't aware that Rwanda is much smaller than the US or even smaller than many individual states, and/or ignored that the Arab League is much smaller and infinitely less capable than the UN or NATO, so not a decent comparison.....or aren't aware of.....well, that's enough, no need to harp.