08-22-2003, 04:30 PM
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Confirmed User
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 1,291
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Quote:
Originally posted by punkworld
The Chinese suffered about 10 million civilian casualties, almost twice as much as the number of Jewish casualties. However, the difference between them and the Jews is that they were (generally speaking) not murdered in a mechanical, bureaucratic way, but massacred. Also, the percentage of a specific group within the population murdered was a lot lower. It wasn't so much an attempted genocide as it was mass slaughter.
Obviously, that doesn't make the situation any better, but it is a lot more like violence previously seen in the world's history.
The Armenian genocide, although indeed an attempted genocide, can also be seen as more traditional violence. (attempted genocides have happened throughout history) The Turks didn't create an almost automated, extremely bureaucratic industry of death. Also, the scale was smaller. I believe between 800,000 and 1,5 million Armenians were murdered between 1915(?) and 1923, which - although ofcourse still mindblowing - is a lot less than the number of people killed in the holocaust.
I have no idea, however, why Jews would deny that this happened.
The difference between the murder of the Jews in WWII (and also the homosexuals, gypsies, disabled people, etc.) and violence seen before that is that it was the first time that people tried to exterminate entire groups of the population with the tools of the industrial world. It was the first time industrialized genocide occurred, one could say.
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I think it's funny how you keep arbitrarily narrowing the definition of "holocaust" until it only refers to the Jews.
The Armenians were definitely singled out for wholesale industrial slaughter. Just as the Nazis blamed the Jews for Germany's problems, the Turks blamed the Armenians for their problems and had them systematically rounded up and killed. |
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