Why is there so much emphasis on remembering the Shoa (the Holocaust of the Jews in WWII) which, although dreadful, was only one such abomination? There have been many such examples of viciousness before and since, yet there's little said about them. Is it because it was an act involving Europeans, whereas most of the rest of the genocides in the 20th century involved people who weren't European (Rwanda, Cambodia, Chinese) or were on the borderlands of Europe or outside (Armenians)?

What is even worse is that in Darfur (spreading to Chad) genocide is going on right now and the world is doing very little to stop it.

Why should they stop it? Darfur's gonna settle its own problems.

Without world intervention, Darfur's black muslims will be killed off by Darfur's arab muslims. I am somewhat appalled by the idea the world should let this happen.

Why is there so much emphasis on remembering the Shoa (the Holocaust of the Jews in WWII) which, although dreadful, was only one such abomination? There have been many such examples of viciousness before and since, yet there's little said about them. Is it because it was an act involving Europeans, whereas most of the rest of the genocides in the 20th century involved people who weren't European (Rwanda, Cambodia, Chinese) or were on the borderlands of Europe or outside (Armenians)?

Part of its connectivity and political leverage - it's hard to get into Rwanda and Cambodia, and we can't very well invade China. Same applies to North Korea, really. We stopped the Yugoslavian debate - or at least slowed it down; it was easier because it was closer.

Geoff

Without world intervention, Darfur's black muslims will be killed off by Darfur's arab muslims. I am somewhat appalled by the idea the world should let this happen.

Why?

We have too many people, and it's their conflict.

Mind your own business.

Is it because it was an act involving Europeans, whereas most of the rest of the genocides in the 20th century involved people who weren't European (Rwanda, Cambodia, Chinese) or were on the borderlands of Europe or outside (Armenians)?Yes, that's the reason. Europeans thought they were the pinnacle of civilization. They thought they held themselves to a higher standard than the rest of the human race.

They really thought that East Asians, South Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans, and Latin Americans were barbarians. Perhaps more to the point, they believed that barbarian societies were historically more violent and warlike than civilizations.

The first belief is simply racism at its worst. The second is one for which I find no persuasive evidence. I am convinced that the remaining Neolithic peoples caught in the modernizing world were not naturally as driven by hatred and envy as we are, for many complicated reasons that all derive from the simple and relatively egalitarian conditions in which Neolithic people by definition live. They learned to hate the civilizations--and the Neolithic tribes that sucked up to the civiliations--because the civilizations often treated them with casual cruelty. That hatred was able to manifest in the emergence of great barbarian warriors only because the civilizations provided the military technology that made it possible.

WWII forced the West to face the fact that we are, to put it charitably, no better than the Earth's other ethnic groups. The Nazi genocide was at the time unprecedented in its magnitude. Although notice again that Europeans and Americans only count other Europeans and Americans in their records. The number of native Americans killed off by our ancestors was an order of magnitude greater than the six million Jews killed by the Nazis but that has yet to make very many of us feel guilty or even get our attention.

Then of course there was the deployment of nuclear weapons against civilian targets. Even if they were not European civilians, this time we were actually rather horrified by our bad selves.

We are really bad asses and since WWII we have been unable to deny it.

As Carl Jung put it: No wars in history have been as bloody as those among the Christian nations. Two thousand years of frelling Christianity and this is what we have to show for it.

Fraggle:

Yes, that's the reason. Europeans thought they were the pinnacle of civilization. They thought they held themselves to a higher standard than the rest of the human race.

Agreed. Witness France and Britain's indignation when Germany invaded several European countries. Yet at the exact same time, France and Britain were occupying country after country (which they had earlier invaded) in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Apparently, invading a country was OK if it was full of yellow or dark skins.

Good point, mountainhare--have you ever read Joseph Conrad's novella 'Heart of Darkness'? He says much the same thing about the Europeans--that that they're quite happy to use any means to spread their civilisation to those who are a different colour or 'slightly flatter noses', as he puts it. Mind you, between 500-1000 years ago the Teutonic Knights and others were doing the same on the eastern borderlands of Europe...

BTW, the only reason Germany didn't have colonies at the start of WWII was that it lost them all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_German_colonies) at the end of WWI...

Also, Britain and France didn't declare war on Germany for occupying any old European countries - they only took action when Germany invaded countries they had treaties with. Very responsible :rolleyes:

Didn't WWII spell the end of most of those empires? If I remember correctly colonies began gaining independence soon after.

yes they lost them in the treaty of versailles