Comment by philipallstar
5 days ago
Reducing funding for something sometimes harmful, which then correspondingly means the funding is not passed on to others, is not the Holocaust.
The utter degrading of the meanings of powerful words might get us there, though.
> is not the Holocaust
Hitler and Nazi Germany did not start with the Holocaust. It was instead the end result. Something can be compared to Hitler or compared to the Nazis or their rhetoric without being literally the Holocaust.
Keep in mind that Hitler and the Nazis took power starting in 1933 but forcing jews to carry identification (i.e. add israel or sara to non-jewish names and add jewish identification marks to paperwork) didn't start until mid-to-late 1938 with Kristallnacht following only months later in Nov 1938.
But in that early period however Nazis began
- gutting research institution
- literally destroying research institutions and research. (ex the famous 1933 book burning picture was from the demolition of the Institute for Sexual Research which studied gender non conformity, intersex traits, and broader topics in the LGBTQIA academic space. Also was where the first transgender sex reassignment surgery took place.)
- expelling academics
- dismantling social programs
- pressuring companies into aligning with state ideological and industrial objectives
- seizing control of, attacking, or privatising domestic and foreign media
- pressuring domestic and foreign entertainment into aligning with Nazi ideological stances
- punishing, oppressing, and expelling political and cultural enemies of the party from the military and civic institutions.
- converting prisons into work camps.
- building out detention facilities/prisons for "illegals" with deplorable conditions with intent to make them suffer as long as possible. These would later become concentration camps and then death camps once crowding became too extreme. And notably this began with the romani population in the early 1930s who Nazis believed to be criminals illegally present within the country.
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Nazi germany was so much more than just the Holocaust and genocide of the Jewish people. They were part of it however they were the conclusion not the start.
> Reducing funding for something sometimes harmful, which then correspondingly means the funding is not passed on to others, is not the Holocaust.
This is a rather boring straw man characterisation of the claim you are replying to. Don’t do this.
It might be a good idea to mention what the straw man is, rather than just throw the phrase and see if it sticks.
The straw man is obvious and you are being disingenuous. The comment you are replying did not at all imply that "[r]educing funding for something sometimes harmful" was a crime on the same level as the Holocaust, or any such thing. It is you making that assertion; your straw man.
It is very obvious, surely, that the comment was a dark, sardonic point about the tendency for "anticipatory obedience" in the Trump era (calling AI "superintelligence" etc).
That is to say, stopping doing something fully legal and uncontroversial out of the fear of reprisals that are ultimately the result of a government (the Trump administration) acting beyond their bounds; there is no reason at all for companies to stop their DEI initiatives when Trump's power is limited to federal institutions, and there is even less reason for them to withdraw sponsorship.
Anticipatory obedience absolutely is part of why major German (and US) firms ended up complicit in the Holocaust.
Companies engaging in anticipatory obedience, taking away programs that are still addressing inequality of opportunity, are on that slippery slope. The last couple of years have made it easier to understand how companies get captured by extremism and illegality.
(Law firms especially; Trump has broken, humiliated, defanged and belittled law firms who took on merit-based cases against him and that is part of why corporations are backing out of DEI initiatives; their law firms cannot be counted on to argue for them)