Fascism and communism
were the two great killers of innocents of the 20th century.
Based on the ancient but unscientific idea of ethnic or tribal purity,
fascists
gassed, shot and burnt millions of innocent men, women and little children.
Such ideas of ethnic, tribal or religious supremacy
are still alive today
- notably in Islamic Fascism,
which is
Nazi fascism's true heir in the modern world.
Scepticism
is our best weapon
against the powerful memes
of racism, tribalism
and totalitarianism.
Women and children being rounded up for extermination
by the Germans,
Warsaw, 1943.
The boy has been identified
as 7 year old
Tsvi Nussbaum,
who had already had his parents and brother murdered by the Germans.
After the roundup,
he was sent to the
Bergen-Belsen death camp
in Germany.
He nearly died, but eventually
survived the war and escaped to freedom in Israel and America.
Though there are some
questions about whether this is him.
The animal on the right
with the gun pointing down
has also been identified.
He was 31 year old rapist and mass murderer
Josef Blösche,
SS butcher of innocents in the Warsaw Ghetto.
He was captured in East Germany in 1967
and executed.
Any sceptic can see that all tribalism and racism
is pseudo-biology and wishful thinking.
Strangely enough, racist writers never "discover" that their
own ethnic group is inferior.
Anti-racism - Why did Europeans and Asians invent everything?
A far better answer to racist thinking than to simply assert that it is wrong and everyone is equal,
is to explain why history turned out as it did.
After all,
why did Europeans and Asians dominate the world, and invent everything?
(Whereas native North Americans, native South Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, Australians and Pacific Islanders
invented little.)
Briefly, the geography of the rest of the world was against them:
First note that if 20 people are stuck on an island,
you hardly expect them to invent an advanced culture.
You need large numbers of people,
large numbers of experiments (different countries, different cultures),
yet all sharing ideas and information.
Hence Australia and isolated islands were constrained by geography.
And a North-South axis of sharing doesn't work, because the climate is different,
and hence the ideas you need are different.
And travel through the region North-South is more difficult,
because you are going to areas of different climate.
Hence less to share, less travel, less trade.
Hence the Americas and Africa were constrained by geography.
To make it even worse, the Americas and Africa have further barriers
to North-South travel.
The Americas only have one tiny narrow route from North to South,
while Africa has the natural barrier of the Sahara Desert.
But an East-West axis of sharing does work
- similar climates, easy travel, lots of ideas to share, lots of experiments going on
in a great arc from Europe to the Middle East to India to the Far East.
Europe and Asia simply form the only massive East-West axis on earth.
This is the main reason why they dominated human history, and invented everything.
I don't think this conflicts with the idea that the West
in particular now dominates the world
because of science, democracy and capitalism.
This is true, but this is a later event.
What Diamond is asking is why these ideas arose in Eurasia
rather than in the rest of the world.
These ideas are the culmination of Eurasia's 10,000 year
East-West experiment with ideas and trade.
I suppose I'm trying to agree with both
Jared Diamond
and
Victor Davis Hanson.
Hanson on the modern triumph of western ideas,
and Diamond on why those ideas arose in Europe as opposed to somewhere else.
Racism is unscientific
The other answer to racism is of course DNA testing
and genealogical research, which shows we are all incredibly closely related,
more so than most large species -
which indicates that differences cannot be racial, but rather simply
due to culture, ideas and memes.
Conclusion -
Quite likely the entire world
has common ancestry in historical times,
perhaps as recent as 1000 BC.
Discussion -
Quite likely everybody in the West, and every Jew in the world,
descends from the Prophet Muhammad.
In short, I am against racism not just because it is uncivilized.
I am against it because it is not scientific.
For example,
anyone who claims there is a major racial difference between European Jews
and other Europeans (or between Germans and other Europeans)
simply hasn't done enough genealogy.
Racism is pessimistic
Racism is also pessimistic.
Instead of saying that modern Arab culture is bad (which is true),
and Arabs should get a new culture (which is definitely true),
racists say we should simply give up on Arabs.
This idea is popular both on
the traditional isolationist right
("Third worlders are savages who need strongmen to rule them.")
and on
the post-modern left
("Third worlders have a different idea of how to live.
Who are we to judge or impose our ideas?").
Neo-conservatism
is the opposite of this idea.
Neo-conservatism
is post-racist.
It, unlike the left and the traditional right, is indifferent to race.
It respects Arabs and third worlders as fellow humans,
and says surely you want to live in freedom, peace and prosperity like us?
In more cases than you might expect, the answer is yes they do
- whenever they are allowed give an answer in a
secret ballot
free from the local strongmen and clerics.
Racism is genocidal
Racism is not the only genocidal philosophy on earth
- communism and
Christianity
and Islam
have also killed millions of innocents.
It is, however, obvious how racism leads to genocide,
whereas it is perhaps (only slightly) non-obvious how communism and religion
lead to genocide.
Since I deny the existence of hell and satan, I suppose I have no ultimate reference point for what is wrong.
I think national socialism
is as close as I can get to a definition of evil.
In the modern world, I would say
Islamic fascism
is as close as I can get to a definition of evil.
There is no god, and there is no devil,
there are only humans.
And there are evil humans
like Bin Laden and his young fascist followers.
The famous, almost biblical, picture
of the German soldier
shooting a woman and child.
From here.
Copies here
and here.
This photograph
was sent home through the mail
by a German to friends or family.
He was clearly proud of his actions.
On the back was written
"Ukraine 1942, Jewish Aktion, Ivangorod".
To me, the mother, as she tries desperately to protect her baby,
represents everything good, everything beautiful about humanity.
Thankfully, everybody civilized accepts
the existence of the Nazi holocaust,
and it is now well documented
and has no defenders.
Everybody knows that the mid-20th century Germans
systematically tortured and killed millions of
ordinary, innocent and defenceless
men, women, children, toddlers and babies.
Everybody knows that they shot, starved and gassed
millions of innocents
in scenes from hell.
Everybody knows that these monsters systematically slaughtered European Jewry
for no reason.
So I don't need to provide so many exhaustive links here,
as I do with the
holocausts that are denied.
Instead I will try to link to some uncomfortable things,
such as the origin of the Germans' barbaric beliefs,
its relationship to Christianity,
the ordinary nature of the tens of thousands of genocidal killers,
non-German collaboration,
and
Catholic Europe's neutrality.
Israeli F-15 fighters fly over Auschwitz, 2003,
in a moving tribute.
One can't help thinking:
Too late.
Too late to save all those poor people.
If only they had such heroes to save them back then.
- "We pilots of the Air Force, flying in the skies above the camp of horrors,
arose from the ashes of the millions of victims and shoulder their silent cries,
salute their courage and promise to be the shield of the Jewish people
and its nation Israel."
The capture of Eichmann in 1960
provoked a storm of criticism of Israel for "violating international law".
The UN Security Council
voted unanimously
to condemn Israel.
Israel, rightly, did not listen,
and executed the monster.
I could link forever to atrocities committed by the Germans
and their many collaborators in countries all across Europe.
It is important in particular to link to information
that is generally denied,
and lessons that are not widely drawn.
This is human nature.
This is what humans are.
Ordinary country folk.
Church-going Catholics.
People who believe in a supernatural world.
People who do not practice scepticism,
and do not recognise it as having any value.
The world is full of people like this.
All around us, in every country.
Croatia in WW2
was a Roman Catholic Nazi state, that killed
an estimated 700,000
Serbs and other minorities
with the enthusiastic support
of Roman Catholic priests, nuns, bishops, the hierarchy
and the Vatican,
some of whom (notably the Franciscans)
even participated in the killing.
Patron Saint of Genocide: Archbishop Stepinac.
In April 1941, Ante Pavelic headed a new Croat "Ustashe" regime
in alliance with Nazi Germany,
dedicated to the conversion to Catholicism or extermination
of the Serbs and Jews of Croatia.
At the end of April, as the killing began,
a pastoral letter from Archbishop Stepinac called on all
Catholics to support the Croat leader.
Stepinac remained the head of the Catholic Church
in Croatia during the genocide.
Cornwell lists some of the major facts
of church collaboration with Pavelic's regime:
While Pavelic's men were killing
thousands of innocent Serb men, women and children,
Pope Pius XII
greeted Pavelic at the Vatican in 1941.
The Vatican was fully informed of the genocide,
yet continued to support the Croat regime,
and rejoiced in the huge number of conversions to Catholicism.
How the church believed these conversions
were the result of anything other than terror
is not known.
Pius
gave a personal audience to Croat police in Rome in 1941.
Pius
gave a personal audience to Ustashe youth in Rome in 1942.
Pius
received Ustashe Police at the Vatican in 1943.
Clergy participated in the killing,
notably Franciscans, who killed in the field and in camps.
The
Jasenovac concentration camp
was run for a time by a Franciscan friar.
It was later run by another priest.
The war ended without any explicit Vatican
condemnation of the Croat genocide.
The Croat war criminal
Andrija Artukovic
was given refuge in a
Catholic monastery in Ireland
before escaping Europe.
Unbelievably,
the Vatican
excommunicated all Catholics who were involved in the trial
of Archbishop Stepinac.
Remember that the Vatican never excommunicated Hitler, Himmler, Pavelic or
a single one of the tens of thousands of
Catholic genocidal killers
of the Holocaust.
Yet it excommunicated people
involved in the trial
of a war criminal.
The church's morality here can only be described as sick.
Lawsuit against the Vatican
attempting to recover some of the assets of the men, women and children
killed
by the Catholic state in Croatia.
Cornwell shows that:
(a) The Ustashe regime stole a fortune
from the
men, women and little children
it killed,
(b) The Vatican provided a deposit service for the Ustashe treasury,
so that this loot was at one point in the Vatican,
and:
(c) The Vatican provided a safe route for Croat war criminals
to escape after the war.
It seems very likely that the Vatican made a profit
from the genocide.
These rather flawed sites may have unpleasant agendas
(anti-Catholic extremism, pro-Serb extremism)
but may still contain some useful information
about WW2 Catholic Croatia.
Despite
all the attempts to "never forget" what
the Nazis did in WW2,
it did happen again, of course, and in Europe too.
Perhaps it was predictable that a country who always saw themselves
as victims (just like Germany)
would be the ones who would become Nazis themselves.
Modern Serb fascism
led to the killing of perhaps 200,000
innocent civilian men, women and children
in 1991-9
(estimates are for 300,000 dead
in all the Yugoslav wars, including military dead).
Croats, Bosnian Muslims
and Kosovan Albanian Muslims contributed to the democide and ethnic cleansing too,
but the majority (*) of the democide in this period
was carried out by Serbs.
It is hard to remember, but the Serb Orthodox are meant to be
yet more Christians.
Socialism and Christianity are no innoculation against fascism
Why so selective?
Why not link to all atrocities in the Balkans in the 20th century
(which involves just about everybody)?
I wanted to make 2 points
- that the Croat fascist state of WW2 was fully supported by the
Roman Catholic church,
and that the modern "socialist" Serb state
was more correctly described as fascist.
Socialism
is no innoculation against fascism.
Neither is
Christianity.
Years of Tito didn't make former Yugoslavs refrain from neo-fascist genocide.
Quite the opposite.
And centuries of Christianity didn't make Croats and Serbs refrain from murdering the innocent.
The only innoculation against fascism that works is not socialism.
And it is not Christianity.
It is democracy.
He makes some good points.
I explain that:
(a) Serb crimes seem to be the main story of the wars,
if you consider absolute numbers killed,
and:
(b) to say that is not to imply support
for the Croats or Muslims.
It's not an "either-or" choice.
I agree that
revulsion at Serb atrocities like Srebrenica
should not lead us to romanticise all their enemies
- such as the
KLA.
But likewise, revulsion at the global jihad should
not lead us to support everyone
who fights it - such as the Serbs and the Russians.
If you have an argument
that Serbs were not the major killers of the Yugoslav wars,
or that Muslims were not the main victims
(in terms of absolute numbers killed),
then tell me here.
If you know of a major massacre (say over 20 killed) by
Muslims in the Yugoslav wars,
that I do not link to above,
then
tell me here.
Trailer for
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,
the movie of
the book.
And search
and search.
The film and
the book are so simple, could easily be criticised, and yet they work.
The book is perhaps the best book I have ever read on the Holocaust
(and I have read a lot of books on the Holocaust).
Every child in the world should read this book.
"People fainted, children cried. In short - Judgment Day.
People were thirsty, and there was not a single drop of water around ... Then ... it started pouring. The rain didn't stop.
...
We reported for selection at 4 o'clock. Mom, Dad and my little brother were
sent to group 1,
and I was sent to 1a.
I walked as if I were stunned ... The weirdest thing was that we didn't cry at all
...
Later on, I saw many more disasters. I can't put it in words. Little children were lying on the wet grass, the storm raging above our heads. The policemen beat them ferociously and also shot them.
...
I saw how a soldier tore a baby, who was only a few months old, out of its mother's hands and bashed his head against an electric pylon. The baby's brain splashed on the wood. The mother went crazy."
- Extract
from diary of Polish teenage Jew
Rutka Laskier,
describing a
selektion
at
Bedzin, Poland,
on
12 Aug 1942.
Support Israel
- the only liberal democracy
in the Middle East.
Support the Allies - the USA,
the UK
and Australia
- the only three countries on earth
that
have been on the right side in
all three wars in defence of western civilization
- World War Two, the Cold War,
and the War on Islamist Terror.
Since 1995.
![[Rudolph J. Rummel]](http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB1.4.GIF){kind=link}