Comment by suddenlybananas
5 months ago
Well, Snyder himself is a bit of a propagandist with his ridiculous double genocide theory.
Here's a longer discussion[1] with examples of how he is an ideologue. (I would have liked to post a reply to the people responding to me but alas, I cannot.)
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1brdk1l/comm...
Could you please stop repeatedly editing multiple comments to respond to replies? The "reply" function exists for a reason, and your backedits disrupt the directional read of a thread, confusing the discussion.
If the HN system tells you that you're posting too fast, and you need to slow down, that also exists for a reason: you are, and you do. You can still reply (so please stop saying you cannot), you just need to slow down, be patient, and wait. It's ok to wait. Don't try to evade the restrictions. Wait.
I'm just replying to make my position clear since you replied with very misleading content. It's not my fault HN wants to be an echo chamber and makes it difficult to respond to people when they are wrong.
Looks to me like you can use the "reply" function just fine. Good job! Keep it up.
Indeed, everybody except me is a propagandist with their ridiculous 'saying things I don't believe or want to agree with'.
I, on the other hand, am always right.
There are many academics who disagree with his characterisation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_genocide_theory#Bloodla...
The point is, he's an ideologue (who may end up being right even if I think he's not) which makes it a bit ironic to mention in the context of talking about propaganda.
Indeed, everybody except me is a ideologue with whom at least 2 academics and a reddit poster disagree. I, on the other hand, am always right, of course!
Additionally, as a jew, I was raised on an ironclad ideological assertion that the holocaust was the worst thing people have ever done to each other, and no genocides have or will ever rival it. I'm keenly aware that there is a vested interest in maintaining that view [0], even if it is not true (many academics say that an equal, perhaps greater number died in The Holodomor, for example – not that that need be true for the two to be compared).
Take your own link, for example: it describes David Katz, a holocaust scholar, who commented, "Snyder flirts with the very wrong moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin". This is just a dude saying his opinion, even though a moral equivalence between Hitler and Stalin is not, in fact, "very wrong".
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_uniqueness_debate
7 replies →
> drew scholarly criticism for being seen as suggesting a moral equivalence between Soviet mass murders and the Nazi Holocaust.
That's a propagandist?
I'm not educated, let alone a historian, but there do seem to be some parallels here and it seems like the most disparate factor would be the very specific oppression of Jewish people. But the Soviet mass murders involved the death of a huge number of 'undesirables'; most just happened not to be Jewish. They were thrown into unspeakable conditions of torture, murder, starvation, etc. so I can see why Snyder would see them as similar.