Holocaust denial and dissent - the difference.

[Alex Jacob]

From an article about Neil Risch:

"Whether or not race is real, researchers said, it doesn’t mean one race is better than another. “Great abuse has occurred in the past with notions of 'genetic superiority' of one particular group,” Stanford University's Neil Risch wrote in the July 1, 2002 issue of the research journal Genome Biology. “The notion of superiority is not scientific, only political, and can only be used for political purposes.”

And Muremaker wrote:

"Sir, mine is a purely empirical, non-valuative Conception of Race. I judge not by the colour of one's skin, but by the content of one's character; which not being directly observable, can only be infer'd by one's outward Behaviour; and discovering average Differences in Behaviour betwixt the various Races of Men, I act with greater precaution in respect of some Races than of others, and expect more creative Productivity of some than of others, in proportion as the said Races have been dispose'd to emit criminal or creative Behaviour, & in proportion as such behaviour is engendered by the Influences of Heredity."

It seems to me that you have immediately moved from the 'purely empirical' directly into the nearly pure political. From what little I have read, I have gleaned that though there are genetic differences that conform to racial differences, these differences between races are often less extreme than variations within the races themselves. Clearly, what mostly determines behavior is culture and cultural context, don't you think?

I am all for reasserting cultural supremacy, if one can pull it off in theis climate of multi-culturalism, and am less inclined to see race as a deciding factor.

You wrote:

"I have a higher regard for a Negro of Wit & Learning than a white Dullard; though I hold that a randomly selected Negro is less likely to be a man of Wit & Learning than a randomly selected Mongol, or White Man, or East Indian, owing to innate differences in cognitive Capacity between the said Peoples."

Shame that there are not more Negros of Wit and Learning on this forum...(joke)

Just out of curiosity, of the names you included in your list, who among them is coming to similar conclusions? It seems you have moved very quickly to rather typical conclusions, typical of classical racism it would seem, and yet the evidence of racial difference points only to rather subtle differences, or am I mistaken?

"I am opposed to any form of Equality betwixt the Sexes, except upon the Basis of Merit; although I hold that the average Woman is less intelligent than the average Man; whether due to Nature or Nurture, I know not, tho' I strongly suspect the latter, in view of certain scientifick Findings, that have likely been discuss'd elsewhere on this Forum."

Then I assume you would agree that with similar nurture, over a few generations or a few hundred years, that women would evince similar or the same 'intelligence'? It seems to me that a number of feminists say something similar. If a context that supports similar nurture is created, the socially enforced gender differences will diminish.

Personally, I am rather up in the air at this moment on these questions. It seems to me that men and women are radically different in so many ways. But none of that should have much bearin gon 'equality before the law'.

For gezinteh hait

[Lykaios]

From what little I have read, I have gleaned that though there are genetic differences that conform to racial differences, these differences between races are often less extreme than variations within the races themselves.

I don't think that this is "often" the case (although we might disagree about what "often" means). You could say that the dramatic height difference between Bantus and Pygmies, or the dramatic difference in pigmentation between Scandinavians and Aboriginal Australians, are merely superficial, but there are some highly socially relevant traits, such as intelligence, on which various races differ far more on average than individuals do.

Clearly, what mostly determines behavior is culture and cultural context, don't you think?

The best researchers of the present day have not yet decided on that. Clearly, culture is not very important for the development to heritable, biological traits such as height or pigmentation, although of course it does play some role; given that intelligence is known to be over 70% heritable by adulthood and to relate to a host of biological factors (most of these involving, unsurprisingly, the brain), and that intelligence strongly affects human behavior, it is not at all obvious that culture and cultural context are, by themselves, what determines behavior. Human beings are biological organisms and the result of biological evolution, and as such, it is never safe to ignore biology or evolution in predicting their behavior.

[Leyla Shen]

Moronmaker (Oceaxer) wrote:

I repeat: That the Holocau?t hath been appeal'd to for this or that politickal End; that it hath had the peripheral Effect of reënforcing Jewish ethnick Solidaritie; this hath no bearing what?oever on the Facticity of the Event.

I repeat: “the Holocaust” is used precisely for political ends. I don’t really care about the factual basis of details--they are not necessary to this argument. My argument remains whether it was 10,000 or 3,000,000.

The Mongol Famine was cause'd by agricultural Incompetencie; unlike the Holocau?t, it was not an intentional Act of Genocide directed against a specifick ethnick Group.

No, it wasn’t. It was political “incompetence.” Name one politician who knows like the back of his hand how to single-handedly run what in the Australian West equates to every ministerial portfolio. There are none. Thus, the manifestations of that incompetence simply took on different faces, and victims, in Mao than it did in Hitler. Hitler, like you, was a deluded racist. Mao Tse-tung was a deluded communist. And all three of you do not have a single decent philosophic bone between you. You take the wisdom, the very voice, blood and sweat of individuals, and instead of developing independent character, turn them into symbols for the intellectually famished herd to feed on; into religion and culture, in whose name you kill. There’s no insight in you. No truth. No light. No life. And definitely no character, which you somehow think you possess in mimicry.

What about Israel?

Pay attention.

I do believe in the ?cientifick Reality of Race, the Relevance of Race in the Formulation of publick Policie, and the De?irabilitie of race Con?ervation. I am oppo?'d to the prepo?terous ?ociali?tic Doctrine, promulgated by Martin Luther King, of race Equalitariani?m. I am, however, equally oppo?e'd to the Nordick Supremaci?m and Anti?emiti?m of the KKK, David Duke, and other National Sociali?t dullards.

See above.

Stupid wrote: There is no ?uch thing as a 'Pale?tinian'. 'Pale?tine' is entirely mythical; & the Region was largely uninhabited when the Jews arriv'd.

L: And that is typical and utterly false Jewish propaganda.Simply calling my Argument propagandistick refuteth it not.

That was not an argument. It was an assertion, dickhead. There’s nothing to “refute.” Instead, it stands yet again as grand testimony of your herdly ignorance. (Though, you could probably turn it into one, which I could quite easily refute since you argument against Palestine is so ridiculous that you need to resort to such inanities.)

L: The only place Israel existed before 1948 and Palestine did not is in religious texts. And you call Palestine and Palestinians mythical?!

Stupid: It was a Land without People and the Jews were a People without Land.

Pure myth. See above.

[Alex Jacob]

"Name one politician who knows like the back of his hand how to single-handedly run what in the Australian West equates to every ministerial portfolio."

I am concerned about the structure of this sentence, Leyla-kins. (I don't understand what you mean).

"Thus, the manifestations of that incompetence simply took on different faces, and victims, in Mao than it did in Hitler."

The construction of concentration camps and a rational plan to round people up, and then work them to death/gas them---is a manifestation of incompetence?

"Hitler, like you, was a deluded racist. Mao Tse-tung was a deluded communist. And all three of you do not have a single decent philosophic bone between you. You take the wisdom, the very voice, blood and sweat of individuals, and instead of developing independent character, turn them into symbols for the intellectually famished herd to feed on; into religion and culture, in whose name you kill. There’s no insight in you. No truth. No light. No life. And definitely no character, which you somehow think you possess in mimicry."

My experience is that most people are racist. The vox populi is racist, in fact. Racism is the rule, and whatever is opposite to racism is the exception. If there is a lack of racism or an assertion of a doctrine of whatever is the opposite of racism, I always have the impression that it is a rather superficial doctrine overlayed on a sort of essential racial prejudice and racism.

Leyla-sweetness, it is just ridiculous to employ such a strange tactic in a civil discourse (I resist the overpowering temptation to write Civil Discourse...), that is to mention a duo of evil-doers and include Muremaker---like some Friar Tuck---along with Hitler and Mao. I do really like the rhetorical flourishes though. Dramatic! I think you could tart it up a little more though: "You pervert the noble wisdom, the very plaintive voice, the blood and sweat of individuals borne of a harsh earth who forged values, and instead of developing independent character, transform them into marketing slogans for the intellectually famished herd to feed on in a great desert of ignorance; into satanic religions and deviant, vain culture, in whose name you murder recklessly. There’s no insight in you. No truth. No light. No life. And definitely no character, which you somehow think you possess in mimicry".

(If it were me I'd include a 'Selah' just to top it off).

[Alex Jacob]

Lykaios,

I see your point. I am very interested in what this research is bringing to light, but I have noticed that people (usually not the researchers themselves, for various reasons) do seem to jump quickly to conclusions about what race means. Naturally, what I am saying is that some of these conclusions look pretty much like the standard prejudices of racial theory, and so I think they are questionable, meaning one can probe them with questions.

"...it is not at all obvious that culture and cultural context are, by themselves, what determines behavior. Human beings are biological organisms and the result of biological evolution, and as such, it is never safe to ignore biology or evolution in predicting their behavior."

Intuitively, with no reference to research or 'educated opinion', it would seem to me that if 'intelligence' had been developed as a heritable trait, it most likely happened over the course of a long period of evolution. Statistically, I would imagine that human intelligence is fairly equal among human organisms. In a prehistoric past it would seem to me that the intelligence demanded of human organisms in most or all contexts was pretty much the same. It seems that the implications of the conclusions of this genetic studies based racial theory is to reinforce some of the ideas about racial difference (superiority-inferiority) and to ascribe to cultural achievement and cultural ascendency a base in a special or increased 'intelligence'.

[ChochemV2]

I don't think that this is "often" the case (although we might disagree about what "often" means). You could say that the dramatic height difference between Bantus and Pygmies, or the dramatic difference in pigmentation between Scandinavians and Aboriginal Australians, are merely superficial, but there are some highly socially relevant traits, such as intelligence, on which various races differ far more on average than individuals do.

Bantu and "Pygmies" aren't different races, skin color is a genetically insignificant difference and I've never seen a good study on differing intelligence between the so-called "races". Race is a fine term for artificially separating people based on aesthetics but there is no reason to take it seriously as a term with actual biological significance.

[Alex Jacob]

Any White dullards 'round these parts ever read Proper Studies by Aldous Huxley?

[Lykaios]

Bantu and "Pygmies" aren't different races

I think they are. True, they are more closely related than, say, Eskimo and Maori, but they are still separate "breeding groups," or different "semi-endogamous populations." That is what the term "race" means, at least as used by anyone investigating human races.

skin color is a genetically insignificant difference

For the most part, yes. But race and skin color are not at all the same.

I've never seen a good study on differing intelligence between the so-called "races".

How many studies have you seen? The data for IQ are quite consistent regarding certain racial groups, and they not only demonstrate excellent predictive validity for individuals (correlating well with grades, future earnings, brain size, and so on) but for differing racial groups. For an overview of the IQ research, you might consider reading the American Psychological Association's report on Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns:

http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/apa_01.html

Race is a fine term for artificially separating people based on aesthetics but there is no reason to take it seriously as a term with actual biological significance.

Where is the evidence for this statement? If blood type, stature, brain size, skin color, hair texture, bone density, lactose tolerance, twinning rates, genetic diseases, and a host of other variables are closely connected with a person's ethnic origin, why does it not have biological significance? If a person's ancestry can be determined by a DNA test, why not take it seriously? This was initially a thread about the Holocaust, so perhaps it would be useful to demonstrate that Jewish ethnic origin can be measured with DNA, and that the Jewish people are genetically similar to other populations currently inhabiting the Middle East, where the Jews originated:

Science Daily": "Jews Are The Genetic Brothers Of Palestinians, Syrians, And Lebanese"

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html: "Advanced genetic testing, including Y-DNA and mtDNA haplotyping, of modern Jewish communities around the world, has helped to determine which of the communities are likely to descend from the Israelites and which are not... The Israelite haplotypes fall into Y-DNA haplogroups J and E."

I tend to think that most people simply don't realize how powerfully race predicts biological traits. Here's just one example to consider, lactose tolerance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_tolerance#Biology

In the biology section of that Wikipedia article, they include not only an ethnic breakdown of lactose tolerance, but a map of lactose tolerance around the world. With some variation, Scandinavians show around 5% lactose intolerance, while Southeast Asians show over 90% lactose intolerance throughout their population, and this is only one example of a biological trait which greatly differs between races. So, I really don't think most people who take the time to consider the evidence will reach the conclusion that race is meaningless.

[ChochemV2]

Before I even contemplate diving into this we have to establish some kind of common definition and measure of significance.

As I know it the term 'Race' separates people based on common ancestry. Historically these divisions have been determined through aesthetics (skin color, hair type, facial features, etc) and only recently can we actually measure the differences in people due thousands of years of genetic drift in relative isolation.

I'd also like to know what you consider significant. While differences may be biologically important they don't seem to be important enough for the scientific community to adopt the term 'Race' as a serious biological name such as species, genus, phylum, etc. These differences may be important to individual humans but they are more important anthropologically than biologically. As far as I can tell from briefly skimming the net the genetic variation between any two humans might add up to a 1% difference in their genetics. I can easily acknowledge the difference but it seems quite insignificant.

[ChochemV2]

My previous post was an attempt at trying to figure out what would be a usable and useful definition of race and what criteria must be met for such a designation to be applied. Simple difference isn't enough to separate people into different groups, you need to identify a set of differences which are unique to each group before people can be categorized.

How far back into human history do we go? We would have to identify a time when separate groups of people began to become genetically divergent from each other and define 'Race' using that as a starting point.

How many races do we allow? Since we're not talking about an easily-applied definition like "animals which can breed with each other" you would have to arbitrarily set a percentage of genetic difference, a type of gene which differs, a kind of trait, or something like that. The number of races could be anywhere from five to a few dozen, a few hundred, or (depending on the sensitivity you set) each individual would be a separate race.

It's the same problem that existed with defining race before genetics, what constitutes a different race? Do we stick with skin color and facial features or include ancestry and, if so, how far back into history do we go before saying "That is the beginning of racial differences!"? The whole thing is far too arbitrary for race to ever actually mean anything.

[hsandman]

Since dan said no more of these should be started I thought I will just do a bit of necromancy.

gas chamber expert Fred Leuchter

hello lalaland, I am cantfused :-S

Holocaust Facts vs. Fiction part 1 of 3

The roof is on fire (interesting comments eheh)