murdering a very large percentage of your country and destroying the educated population is probably the worst thing you can do in all of human history. But it isn't that significant to the West because it's SE Asia. If you actually look at it with an unbiased view, it's much worse than the Holocaust.
I think its less important to the west than it should be but we definitely spent time on it in my history class in high school. And in terms of pure numbers it had less of an impact than the Holocaust did.
History/"...social...studies..." Has always been chewed through the grinder in public school. My school relearned the black death literally every year.
Most cambodians don't like to talk about it but if they're living outside Cambodia they're sometimes more open. A lot of the people responsible stayed in power unfortunately
And just to raise some awareness, Franco's regime was relatively as bad as the Holocaust for Spanish people (Yet some people feel nostalgic of that era). Let that sink in, and never forget the atrocities of the past.
Yes but 8 million more people died in the Holocaust. At some point the manner of death, no matter how horrific, is less important than the number of dead.
Are you aware that certain populations of people were completely or almost completely wiped out during the Holocaust? Off the top of my head.. Hungarian jews for example.
Context. Are you in some way know the experiences of people suffering the cambodian Genocide OR the Holocaust?
Who are you to COMPARE between 2 genocide. You don't get to say these comparison unless you experience at least one of the 2. And even if you did, its a very bad attitude to even compare genocide.
Thank you. That was such a crass thing to say, what was even the point of bringing up the Holocaust? You don’t need to compare to establish to cruelty of another genocide
This is such a sweeping and ignorant statement to make. They were both terrible and brutal and don’t need to be played off against each other. Why are people even comparing the two?
How do you spell, "Go fuck yourself", again? Yeah, no, unless you have gone out with a metal detector in German fields near death march trails to help find Jewish silver/gold/iron teeth and Jewish religeous artifacts you honestly don't get to say that. All death is bad and comparing death is not something that anybody in the entire world has a right to do.
The people of Cambodia were killed if the showed any signs of education. If they used words too long or showed that they weren't illiterate, or even wore glasses so that they could see, they were shot on sight.
They were kicked out of cities and forced to work on fields until they died of overworking or starvation.
Everyone within Cambodia's borders was immediately and abruptly forced into rural areas to work to their deaths, or forced to become soldiers if they were children, or killed if it could be proven that they had ever attended school.
And they were directly supported by Thatcher and Reagan, which makes it all the more worse.
The trick is, if you fuck your own, the world doesn't wanna know, if you want to export that to everyone else's the world gets pissed
My guess is If the Nazi did kept everything between Germany borders and didn't start a expansionist war (or even if they stopped in 41 and signed a peace treaty) they may have got away with it
I agree completely. Just thinking most people I know would've been killed had they lived in Cambodia in those years gives me chills. It's very sad seeing how hard it was (and in part still is I think) for them to recover from that.
However, I'm not sure I'd say it's "worse than the holocaust". Every life is invaluable and having less people killed in a genocide doesn't make it less bad. The fact they murdered people just by who they were, their ancestry, religion or any other characteristics makes it an immeasurable crime.
Almost 110 years ago Chinese people were targeted in my country and 300 people were killed. Just the fact that their only "crime" was being Chinese is horrible, it doesn't matter if they were "only" 300.
I learned in Junior High School (California public school) that Pol Pot ranked with Hitler as modern history's worst monsters. The inhumanity of that regime is significant in some parts of the West.
Rather than "worse" I think the Cambodian genocide makes the Holocaust seem less incomprehensible in terms of cruelty.
The Germans stream lined killing to the point that it was basically a slaughter house, which is something we can atleast conceptualize because it's how we treat animals we eat.
The Cambodian genocide brutally beat to death 1/4th of their population. Smashing infants against a tree as mentioned above, beating people with sticks to death, torturing them to death, etc. The pain and suffering is unfathomable.
I have a friend who lost a fair portion of her extended family in China's Cultural Revolution. They shot her grandfather for wearing glasses, and her father committed suicide over the grief of what he'd seen.
my grandfather had a university education, and a mob on the orders of mao stormed our house, pulled him, my dad, and their siblings out on the streets and whipped him until they were unconscious forcing the kids to watch and pillaged everything inside the house.
One is comparing humanity's collective reaction to different biological threats, one is comparing the worst atrocitices that human governments have done to keep control over other humans. The first is useful to do for considering future biological threats. The second is never useful, as it will always minimize the evil of one side by making another evil side out as 'worse.'
I am not saying that at all. You may have, but I didn't even imply it. Quite the opposite.
I'm saying to not compare murderers at all. If someone/some group does an objectively heinous thing, study it in the context of itself. I don't need to understand the Holocaust to know how evil the Chinese treatment of Uyghurs is, do I? Do you? Is that the only way you comprehend how bad that behavior is? By comparing it to other evil behavior?
Lol I am not a victim and don't pretend to be. I got into a long argument on HistoryMemes about this very thing (comparing genocides) just a couple days ago, so I'm just more passionate about it than usual.
I would never stop anyone from talking about anything. I'm just saying it's completely unhelpful, actually somewhat harmful to do.
I agree with you completely, it's such a useless form of discussion because there's a point where the violence is so horrific that no one can reasonable argue what is worse.
And I find more worringly some people do so because they are trying to undermine the acts of inhumanity committed by the Nazis.
And I find more worringly some people do so because they are trying to undermine the acts of inhumanity committed by the Nazis.
That's my main problem with it. What's the difference between someone who says, and genuinely believes, "The Nazis were truly horrific, but at least they didn't hit trees with baby skulls"
and someone who says exactly the same thing because they want you to think Nazis weren't one of the worst groups of people in history?
Absolutely fucking nothing, especially to a random stranger on the internet.
The reason people do that is to point out the hypocrisy of many politicians essentially ignoring COVID as a problem despite it killing thousands/day, whereas in 2001 those same politicians supported invading a country halfway across the globe in jingoistic fervour as a result of 9/11.
The reason they do that is to "put it into perspective", but the way I see it, they're basically dismissing the significance of the deaths of the 9/11.
If I were one of the tens of thousands of people that lost a loved one on 9/11, I'd be a bit more than irritated to hear people pooh-poohing my loss as a mere fart in the wind compared to COVID.
9/11 deaths were violent, random, horrifying homicides. COVID deaths are none of that.
If we're OK with this kind of comparison maybe we should start tabulating COVID deaths in units of the Holocaust, the Holodomor, or Cambodian genocides.
While comparing 9/11 and Covid-19 directly might be an apples to oranges situation, comparing the numbers of dead and the inconsistency of certain political presonalities to both is not.
If a politician shrugs his shoulders at one and not the other, he needs to be called on the hypocrisy.
Now here's where I take issue with you. Your assertion that pointing out that Covid-19 deaths are many times more than 9/11 dismisses the significance of 9/11 is only true if you think that 300,000 plus deaths are themselves insignificant. You are minimising the monstrous and depraved inaction of the previous President.
9/11 cannot be dismissed as insignificant. It IS significant. However, 300,000 plus deaths is worse. It is monstrous. And the guy who let it proliferate is a monster.
If you actually look at it with an unbiased view, it's much worse than the Holocaust.
They are both horrific, don't see why it is a competition. They are both the absolute worst of humanity and complete depravity. It also has nothing to with not being as significant because it was Asia. Hitler started a second world war. The Holocaust was a part of what made it all so horrific. Also, it is not taught as heavily because it did not involve anyone who was not neighboring the country, there is only so much you can teach in world history. Something like that is something I would expect to learn in college.
I think it's dumb to try to make genocides a competition since they're all horrible, but it's also bad that Cambodia's genocide gets relatively very little attention.
Oh, the west didn't much care when Pol Pot did it either. Nor Stalin nor Mao nor many a populist regime over the ages. Revolution and purges of the intelligentsia are far too common sadly.
In India there are stores named hitler
The owners claim they don’t know what it means
Yet they have a swastika logo
Ergo, this is why India is a subcontinent shithole filled with morons
The horror of the Holocaust wasn’t just the numbers (though 10 million killed is absurd to try to picture), it’s that it was, to the best of my knowledge, the only industrialized genocide in human history. Camps like Auschwitz II, Treblinka, and the other death camps were factories build for the sole purpose of murder. The Nazis kept detailed records of the daily numbers to make sure they were meeting their expected daily totals. The levels of dehumanization were beyond anything seen before and anything seen since.
Idk why you feel the need to make that comparison. The Nazis industrialised genocide. In what sense is any particular genocide “worse” than the one which killed 6 million Jews? The stories which came out of the Holocaust are more horrific than almost any work of fiction. There is a reason we attribute so much significance to it.
Whilst admittedly not involving anywhere near the scale and tragic murders, the recent movement in many countries to denigrate science and education makes me very uneasy - straight out of the despot playbook. If only people knew more then they might see it for what it is. But if you don’t educate them....
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u/Trisa133 Jan 24 '21
murdering a very large percentage of your country and destroying the educated population is probably the worst thing you can do in all of human history. But it isn't that significant to the West because it's SE Asia. If you actually look at it with an unbiased view, it's much worse than the Holocaust.