R.M. Schultz wrote:
I think there is a hierarchy to moral violation. Genocide is probably worst, because the victims are completely blameless. Next would come democide which, though also constituting a moral atrocity, at least allows the victims a means of escape by changing their "demos." Last would come the gratuitous punishment of those actually guilty..
Jews, Gipsies, Slavs are the most sympathetic victims of the Holocaust because they in no way chose their fate. Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, vagrants all could have chosen a different path in life, and thus haven't quite the same moral standing though they ares still to be numbered among the innocent. Thieves and other bona fide criminals, being deserving of some punishment, and thus the offence against them is a quantitative matter of harshness, not a qualitative matter of innocence.
I would confine the use of the term "Holocaust" to the innocent victims of Nazism and, though I certainly wouldn't object to a memorial for the over-punished, I do not favor it either.
I dsagree with you. A victim is a victim is a victim. I agree with you regarding the uniqueness of the Jewish position within the Holocaust, that they were the victims of Genocide. But on the other matters, I differ from you. If I was a Nazi (perish the thought) and I shot a Jewish person in the head and I shot a communist in the head, I would have shot both for different ideological reasons which constitutes that I shot one for a genocidal reason and one for a demicidal reason. But from the victims perspective, both are dead with bullets in the head. From my perspective, I also have a bloody mess to clean up. I look at the problem from the victim's perspective and the end result. Whereas I believe the Nazi did not have a right to shot either one of the given victims, the question of whether or not they had some form of choice in their deaths is irrelevant. I know you did not intend this, but your argument boils down to a "blame the victim" argument.
Hierarchy of guilt???? What were the communists, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, etc., guilty of?
You are looking at these groups from the Nazi perspective, and applying Nazi "morality" to these groups which I reject out of hand. Unknowingly and unintentionally, you are in a sense validating Nazi morality. Screw the Nazis and their "morality." All the above groups are sympathetic because they are all innocent.
Apply a civilized standard of morality to these groups and their victim status appears.
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