It seems the most popular catch-phrase these days is "apologist", which is fast replacing the previous "revisionist". Though they are both used with venom I vastly prefer the latter, as the former is usually inaccurate and a deliberate attempt to discredit another party. I've been called an apologist myself, when pointing out that the CCPs figures of Chinese WWII casualties are unreasonably high. People get all defensive when someone presents a case that maybe atrocities have been exaggerated in recorded history.
I've heard figures to the effect that Ghengis Khan supposedly slaughtered as many as 40 million, or that as many as 600 000 innocent people were murdered by the Inquisition. The numbers themselves are atrocious, as the available source material only indicate a fraction of those numbers. But for some reason, people have a need to view the objects of their hate as utterly rotten and evil as conceivable, and invariably believe the most horrible figures (even in the face of contrary evidence).
Also, many people tend to apply isolated incidents to a wide spectrum. For instance, there was an SS woman in one of the camps who collected tattoed pieces of skin from murdered Jews, and among other things made lamp shades out of some of them. I've often seen this sort of thing used as an example of "what the Nazies did". However, she didn't do these things because she was a Nazi (or we'd see countless such examples) - she did it because she was callous and psychotic. The Nazies carry the responsibility for placing such a person in such a position, and for turning a blind eye, but such revolting examples are not representative of "Nazi behaviour".
In addition to such isolated incidents, there are also other exaggerations if not outright fabrications. The myth that the Nazies made soap out of human fat, for example, was long believed by many. Besides having since been recanted, it's a ridiculous premise: is it really plausible that Germany was that desperate to wash that they had to resort to human fat? And how much fat would they get from their starved prisoners anyway? There were more important things to focus resources on. And sure, prisoners could've had a healthy storage of fat when they first arrived, but why waste perfectly good labour on soap?
When I've criticized the credibility of various horror-stories, I've been accused of "siding with the Nazies/whomever". That, of course, is a totally flawed conclusion. I could make up a story that the Nazies used to eat little babies. If you didn't believe that story, would that mean you were siding with the Nazies? No, you're simply siding with fact. And tweaking the facts, in ANY direction, is retrograde to that purpose. If fact is drowned in exaggerations/fabrications, it becomes unrecognizable. And if the facts become unrecognizable, how will we then be able to see the signs in our own time?
The sad fact of the matter is that we do not recognize the symptoms in our own time. Those who do, belong to a small minority. We simply seem incapable of learning from history, just like only few of us learn from our parents' mistakes. Persecutions are the result of fear and hate, and people fail to see that hate for the persecutor is the exact same kind of hate. Hate makes blind, even more so than love. For that reason, we do ourselves a disservice by hating anyone at all. Yes, it may take a Herculean effort not to hate the Nazies, but by refusing to understand and recognize their humanity (for better and worse), we make the same mistake they did.
If we believe only monsters could do what the Nazies did, then we have let our guard down.
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