[fh]

In essence, you say that the Nazi cult that some Pakistanis (supposedly) entertain is no big deal, because they are not responsible for the Holocaust. As a German, who as a matter of fact doesn't feel particularly guilty about things his great-grandfathers did half a century before he was born, I'd like to know how you come to such a peculiar opinion. Evil is less evil if you can blame someone else? It's okay to revere mass murderers as long as you're not the one who let them come into power?

Your point about children's names is almost the textbook definition of a straw man, and I think you know it. Many German children are named Joseph, but that name has a long cultural and religious history, and no one in their right mind would associate that with Stalin. I guess the story with the name Osama in Muslim cultures is similar. However, if Pakistani parents name their children Adolf, a name that has no cultural associations in Pakistan whatsoever except being linked to a brutal mass murderer, then that's at least a little bit cringe worthy.

(I wonder if Godwin's Law applies to a discussion that's already about Hitler in the first place, and if a factual discussion about such a topic is even possible...)

[plinkplonk]

"you say that the Nazi cult that some Pakistanis (supposedly) entertain is no big deal,"

There is no "Nazi cult" in Pakistan. Talk about exaggeration.

Yes, for some people Hitler had some virtues (as they do Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, Che, Lenin, George W Bush) which they think are worthy of being admired.

" I guess the story with the name Osama in Muslim cultures is similar."

You are wrong.

There is a rise in babies being named Osama after 9/11. I thought that was obvious from the context. Sorry if I was not clear enough. Arab and Pakistani teenagers wear T shirts with Osama's picture on them. There are large numbers of people who think Osama Bin Laden is a heroic figure. You (and I) think he is a homicidal maniac. Other people don't.

You can always find some people somewhere who admire the mass murderers of history (including Osama, Mao , Stalin and the British who created concentration camps in the first place), as compared to those whose ancestors were massacred. It doesn't mean much.

Germans expecting all Pakistanis to hate and abhor Hitler as much as they do is like some Pakistanis expecting them to love Osama Bin Laden.

So yes the world doesn't always have prejudices in lockstep with your own, and sometimes admire people you abhor and vice versa. Sorry about that.

[andrew1]

It sounds like you know a lot more about the Boer concentration camps than I do, maybe you can clear something up for me. From a quick perusal of Wikipedia it seems as if the concentration camps in the Boer war were intended to be more like prisons, i.e. restricting the movements of those persons held there. Due to incompetence, negligence, lack of facilities/medicine a large proportion of the inmates died. I would not wish to lessen this tragedy, but it does sound like a different situation to what we understand a concentration camp to be in common parlance, i.e. a camp set up with the intention of working to death/explicitly killing those sent there. I think there is a distinction between those two types of camps, and while both are highly unpleasant I don't think they're actually the same thing.

[plinkplonk]

" it seems as if the concentration camps in the Boer war were intended to be more like prisons, i.e. restricting the movements of those persons held there. Due to incompetence, negligence, lack of facilities/medicine a large proportion of the inmates died."

Sounds like what the Germans would say today if Hitler had won the war and founded a strong and dominant Germany? yeah there were mistakes but they weren't intentional. Sure.

The point is that an argument could be (and was) made that such starvation and ill treatment was intentional, as a method of forcing the Boer commandos to surrender. The British were essentially stalemated and could see no way of ending the war. By the accepted norms of war of the time, starving non combatants to death was a crime. But the British won and were a World Power (much as the USA is today), so no one convened the equivalent of Nuremberg. If the Boers had won, (unlikely, but just as a thought experiment) you bet your ass some Britsh politician would have been "criminals".

Let us read Wikipedia though.

"Hobhouse published a report in June 1901 which contradicted Brodrick's claim, and Lloyd George then openly accused the government of "a policy of extermination" directed against the Boer population.

In June 1901, Liberal opposition party leader Campbell-Bannerman took up the assault and answered the rhetorical "When is a war not a war?" with "When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa," referring to those same camps and the policies that created them."

All that said, do read up on the Khaki Elections and the Boer War. Don't just read Wikipedia. Read your history in some depth and then talk.

" i.e. a camp set up with the intention of working to death/explicitly killing those sent there."

This is exactly what some people, especially the Boers and their allies the Germans thought the British were doing (see above). The British Leader of the Opposition even claimed as much!

Political maneovres aside, What matters is that people died in the tens of thousands. ( A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom 24,074 [50% of the Boer child population] were children under 16) had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the concentration camps. In all, about one in four (25%) of the Boer inmates, mostly children, died.

It is thought that about 12% of black African inmates died (about 14,154) but the precise number of deaths of black Africans in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the 107,000 black Africans who were interned. It is, however, worth noting that Emily Hobhouse and the Fawcett Commission only ever concerned themselves with the camps that held white Boer refugees. No one paid much attention to what was going on in the camps that held native refugees". - Wikipedia)

Is it a lesser number than Jews in the Holocaust? Sure. Was starving non combatants to death (and denying that such things were happening) a "war crime"? You tell me. Victors are never war criminals are they?

[andrew1]

> Read your history in some depth and then talk.

Thank you for the advice. I will make sure in future that I never try to engage in a discussion about something of which I am not fully informed.

[eru]

> Thank you for the advice. I will make sure in future that I never try to engage in a discussion about something of which I am not fully informed.

As long as you keep asking like you did, you shouldn't be afraid to contribute. Just pushing opinions would be another thing, though.

[gruseom]

I wonder if Godwin's Law applies to a discussion that's already about Hitler in the first place, and if a factual discussion about such a topic is even possible...

I'm not sure how this didn't occur to me before I posted the article. What was I thinking? Well, I guess I know what I was thinking: it is an observant article about an interesting new (to me) phenomenon. It isn't particularly critical. In fact, the most surprising quality of the article itself is how gentle and non-judgmental it is. And I still think it's one of the most fascinating cultural pieces I've read in a while.

But you're right: Godwin's Law doesn't fail to apply just because one begins at the absurd instead of going through a reductio to get there, which means the probability of a good discussion approximates zero.