I'm worst sort of human. Despised by both the anti-semites and the jews. Because whether the holocaust happened or not, whether numbers were inflated or actually underreported, it none of it changes the way things are NOW.
It's not that it didn't or doesn't matter. It's that it does not apply. Same for Mao and the great leap forward. We have other problems, and trying to decipher the past doesn't help with the present.
I would have to disagree with your assessment of history. I firmly believe that understanding our past can guide our future. It is foolish to keep making the same mistakes over and over because you have forgotten your past and lost what was successful and what was a failure. I am not saying we should relive the experiences, I am saying we need to learn what happened, why it happened, what enables it to occur and what worked or didn't work. Even conjecture as to what steps could've been taken to have prevented it from happening in the future. The most basic premise from the rise of Nazism was a huge divide between the have's and the have nots. After the disastrous Weimar Republic and its loss in WWI, the reparations placed such a massive financial strain that the deutch mark collapsed. As bad as the Depression was for the US, it was far worse in Germany. This allowed the promises of Socialism to rise to popularity and power and evolve into the Totalitarian dictatorship the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazi) turned into. This particular warning rings true with the possible complete collapse of the US dollar and the overwhelming debt we have already. We have to be very cautious to not fall victim to the same trap of utopian Socialism that the younger generations think so fondly of. The simple fact that the newer generations have banded together and supported the Anti-fascists and Socialists against what they call Nazi's. The very fact that they don't realize they are following the exact path of the Brown shirts in Germany and the Blackshirts in Italy and fail to realize the Nazi's and Fascists were Socialist economic systems.
I'm worst sort of human. Despised by both the anti-semites and the jews. Because whether the holocaust happened or not, whether numbers were inflated or actually underreported, it none of it changes the way things are NOW.
It's not that it didn't or doesn't matter. It's that it does not apply. Same for Mao and the great leap forward. We have other problems, and trying to decipher the past doesn't help with the present.
I would have to disagree with your assessment of history. I firmly believe that understanding our past can guide our future. It is foolish to keep making the same mistakes over and over because you have forgotten your past and lost what was successful and what was a failure. I am not saying we should relive the experiences, I am saying we need to learn what happened, why it happened, what enables it to occur and what worked or didn't work. Even conjecture as to what steps could've been taken to have prevented it from happening in the future. The most basic premise from the rise of Nazism was a huge divide between the have's and the have nots. After the disastrous Weimar Republic and its loss in WWI, the reparations placed such a massive financial strain that the deutch mark collapsed. As bad as the Depression was for the US, it was far worse in Germany. This allowed the promises of Socialism to rise to popularity and power and evolve into the Totalitarian dictatorship the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazi) turned into. This particular warning rings true with the possible complete collapse of the US dollar and the overwhelming debt we have already. We have to be very cautious to not fall victim to the same trap of utopian Socialism that the younger generations think so fondly of. The simple fact that the newer generations have banded together and supported the Anti-fascists and Socialists against what they call Nazi's. The very fact that they don't realize they are following the exact path of the Brown shirts in Germany and the Blackshirts in Italy and fail to realize the Nazi's and Fascists were Socialist economic systems.