Quote Originally Posted by Skullheadhq View Post
X is Y so argument Z is invalid. How are these arguments called?
If that's a valid question I'm going to try and prove I learned something on the .org:
I think it's "non sequitur" as in "does not follow" since you cannot logically say that Z is invalid just because Y applies.

This is an interesting topic, I find it hard to make a moral judgement on the Holocaust in comparison to the rest of WW2 because on one hand it wasn't a necessary slaughter, it was just born out of the lunacy of the ones who thought it up, as rory said they probably made a net loss, they just wanted to kill the jews because in their minds the jews had these and these bad traits and were controlling the world etc. On the other hand I don't think organized and industrialised killing is any worse in itself than slaughtering a lot of villagers with a mob of warriors or whatever, both are murder and both are horrible in their own way, some argue gas makes it worse, others could argue that being scalped or torn apart by a rusty blade isn't fun either, in the end I think you cannot say one is worse than the other.

And of course it was at the same time intertwined with WW2 and not, WW2 did not spawn the holocaust as the first concentration camps etc were being built shortly after Hitler came to power, on the other hand the war allowed for a great expansion of the holocaust because of the jews in the newly captured territories. Then there is the point of the war being necessary if Hitler really wanted to exterminate all jews, he'd have to conquer the world, I doubt the USA for example had handed him their jews to kill. But at that point we're arguing about the mind of a someone who had become an insane megalomaniac already.

That it was a major event for those who were in it is an important point, some of them are still alive to tell the story, it's hard to find someone who can give an account of the Mongol horde raping and pillaging in his village so the horror is lost, the same level of technology that allowed the nazis to kill so many jews in an industrial fashion also allowed them and others to keep very detailed records of it, I guess if we had video material of the events that inspired the Song of the Nibelungs, we wouldn't give it to our kids so they could make a school play out of it, I haven't seen a school play about the Iraq war or Kosovo either and most would probably call it very tasteless. that's the impact of history and technology, the video already changed the world before YouTube came along if you ask me, as they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words", and a video consists of thousands of pictures...well, that and it's recent history as I mentioned so I don't really see the surprise in the holocaust being more prominent than many other cruel events.

I also think WW2 dwarfs WW1 in public discussion, movie making, video games etc. even though WW1 was a very horrible, big war as well, but I haven't seen anyone complain about that.