I agree that it has that effect. But on the other hand, working people to any kind of death on inadequate food and shelter is no less cruel. Has he denied the moral dimension of the Holocaust?
Consider this perspective. Stalin had work camps for his ideological enemies. Often, these were defined in ethnic terms: West Ukrainian, Polish, small nations that cooperated or were alleged to cooperate with the Germans. Or, no less cruelly, they were class enemies, i.e. simply productive hard working people, the "kulaks". Tens of millions perished: they were worked to death.
Stalin, and especially Lenin also had executions on the spot by bullet in the head.
But they had no gas chambers. I have a feeling someone digging dirt in the permafrost for 25 years eating rotted herring would not mind a gas chamber.
Making the gas chamber, -- and not mass murder by the godless state -- the centerpiece also denies something. It denies, or at least pulls the attention away from the victims of Communism, another "purely exterminationist, annihilationist" crime against humanity.
Some of them, yes he has.
We not should say "even one killing is evil," though certainly it is.
What we must say is "each killing is evil."
The actual Holocaust is twenty times more evil than he claims, and that is just judging evil by body count, only one measure of the evil involved.
But they had no gas chambers. I have a feeling someone digging dirt in the permafrost for 25 years eating rotted herring would not mind a gas chamber.
I will not participate in this kind of comparison. I will not degrade the evil of the Holocaust by granting it some kind of merit of efficiency or quickness.
Making the gas chamber, -- and not mass murder by the godless state -- the centerpiece also denies something.
It denies nothing. That is a false dichotomy. It was systematic industrialized annihilation by a godless state. Both aspects are evil and both aspects apply.
It denies, or at least pulls the attention away from the victims of Communism, another "purely exterminationist, annihilationist" crime against humanity.
I recommend to you Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism. The GULAG system was not purely exterminationist or annihilationist. They were worked to death, slowly, being fed enough to keep them alive for the further extraction of work. That is not systematic exterminationism. It is different, in the totality of the act and not merely from the point of view of each individual.
The victims of the Holocaust--Jewish or not--were killed smoothly and efficiently, as fast as the rolling stock could be misdirected to carry them.
“Making the gas chamber, — and not mass murder by the godless state — the centerpiece also denies something. It denies, or at least pulls the attention away from the victims of Communism, another “purely exterminationist, annihilationist” crime against humanity.”
It is not an apples and oranges argument. Speaking of the horrors of the Holocaust does not deny the horrors committed by Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, or any other dictator, be it from Communism, Fascism, or just a plain old dictatorship. One can speak to all of them. We humans are very capable of chewing gum and rubbing our tummies at the same time. It is not an either/or discussion. One does not take away from the horrors of the other. Your argument here is a false one. I don’t understand why you keep on trying to defend the indefensible.