The most famous forms of Holocaust denial and revisionism tend to focus on Jews, casting doubt, for example, on how many were exterminated in the camps. But denying the impact the Nazis had on the other groups they targeted, including queer and trans people, disabled people and Romani people, is still Holocaust denial. Maybe someone should tell J.K. Rowling.
Naturally when people called her out for being wrong she quickly set up a strawman to keep herself from having to admit any ignorance or fault. What a stupid hill she has chosen to die on, she could have been universally beloved if she just kept her shitty views to herself.
Weird. I feel kind of ambivalent, but not dysphoric or anything. Like I could just as easily have been born into a different body and felt no worse off.
I went through a bi panic in college and did a bunch of thought experiments with myself, mainly because I want getting action from either gender to try and test that out.
Ok, fellas: the intention of the author is inaccessible, the intention of the work can be interpreted, her public persona is that of a transphobe who always finds new lows to fall to in her brigade. You can still read HP and recognize that she is a shitty person.
Sure but used book stores are great, you can find some weird shit sometimes. Serisously I once found an old ass copy of dianetics in the sci-fi section, old lady running the place found it great that I got her little joke.
It’s also possible for someone to be a shitty person and a shitty author. There are tons of discussions on just how badly written HP is and that would be true even if she suddenly stopped being a horrible person.
Yeah, 1-4 are fun “monster of the week” kids book with worldbuilding that falls apart if you look at it too much. 5-7 have “George Lucas” syndrome - editors couldn’t say “no” anymore. The Horcruxes and the Deathly Hallows were clearly last minute ass pulls.
Idk I read a lot of similar quality YA when I was a child. I don’t get the obsession.
I will wait until she dies so she can’t profit from it. I know it’s a drop in the bucket but it’s my drop.
She had a choice. Her Twatter account could have just been happy stuff about Harry Potter. She repeatedly choose to create this situation. So fuck her she isn’t getting a cent from me.
I gotta say, I’m dealing with cognitive dissonance right now. I remember having bookmarked her Harvard commencement speech and listening to it from time to time, admiring the principles and standing up for the good of all people. I felt someone who wrote those books would HAVE to have a keen understanding of right from wrong and fighting the good fight.
So these recent years with her position on this have been confusing and sad for me. I hope she grows and learns from this.
I disagree. The Potter goblins are diminutive, hooknosed, saurian creatures, with creepy long fingers and crafty natures. They have exceptional financial skills and stop at nothing to acquire or protect money and precious objects. It is antisemitic that anyone would encounter such a character and think: “Aha, a Jew!”
No, John Jon Stewart looked at the Harry Potter goblins and saw an offensive Jewish caricature. As an ethnically Jewish trans woman I agree with him. Rowling’s goblins and her Holocaust denial are harmful. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan too, so I don’t begrudge anyone for enjoying her content or even paying for content. I of course appreciate when people avoid those things. Profits from her games, books and movies go to funding anti-trans causes which make her content harmful. All I ask is that when Rowling does something harmful, like Holocaust denial or fund anti-trans causes people agree that what she is doing and her content is harmful.
The author once again attracted attention after donating $97,000 to For Women Scotland. The funds are earmarked for a legal challenge set to be heard in the UK Supreme Court. The objective of the lawsuit is to redefine the word “woman” such that it applies exclusively to cisgender women. The proposed redefinition stands to harm transgender women who have undergone gender-affirming procedures. Rowling publicly supported her donation, stating: “You know how proud I am to know you. Thank you for all your hard work and tenacity. This truly is a historic case.”
LGBTQ+ activists are warning that redefining the word “woman” paves the way for discrimination and prejudice against transgender or non-binary individuals.
I do not think J.K. Rowling is anti-Semitic. I did not accuse her of being anti-Semitic. I do not think that the Harry Potter movies are anti-Semitic.
John Jon Stewart said the goblins are an offensive Jewish caricature. None of these statements contradict each other. The point is, no one looked at the goblins and thought they were Jews as the author of Please shut up about the Harry Potter Jew-goblins suggests. It is not antisemitic to point out that the goblins are collectively an offensive Jewish caricature. edit: typo, adl.org/spelling-antisemitism-vs-anti-semitism, typo, Jon not John
I didn’t say they were, but I do think it’s an important distinction because the entire purpose of highlighting this in context of J.K. Rowling is to accuse her of explicit antisemitism. Whereas Jon (not John) continued to write:
“tropes [like the goblins bankers] are so embedded in society that they’re basically invisible.”
This means, indeed, that two things can be true at the same time: Rowling subconsciously used a Jewish caricature (as did Tolkien before her), and (2) Rowling is not Antisemitic.
Many people – not you, necessarily – equate the two.
Perhaps; though that’s not a reflection of her – but as Stewart points out society as a whole and the power we give to racist stereotypical tropes in the first place – it’s a convenient target for those who are already looking to hate on her for other more substantive reasons.
On a separate note, do you not think it’s a stretch to lump her in with holocaust deniers this quickly? Isn’t it a little too soon to categorize her lack of understanding that the concept of trans or books being burned occurred under nazis versus those who deny millions were murdered in general? If anything, doesn’t that water-down the category of Holocaust Deniers?
Doesn’t anyone who actively tries to defend literal Nazis by saying “wait wait guys the Nazis weren’t THAT bad” thedailybeast.com/jk-rowling-adds-holocaust-denia… warrent like…an immediate “this fucker is insane” thing? I mean if you’re trying to defend someone who is trying to defend WW2 Nazis I think you’re in the wrong camp is all
I think there is a considerable logical leap if not an outright non-sequitur between being misinformed on nazi atrocities / history, and "defending nazis"
I don’t think we can strawman what Rowling did with, "Nazis weren’t THAT bad."
I think it’s too early to put considerable weight on her intent or beliefs surrounding nazis on this singular tweet.
But yes, I do agree people who legitimately defend nazis are insane.
Categorically calling it holocaust denial to me diminishes the scale of damage caused by legitimate holocaust deniers.
I suspect there are many individuals who already hate Rowling personally for comments related to Trans rights are looking for things to an irrational degree.
That being said I don’t think I can add any more to this conversation that I haven’t already and so thank you for the discussion and oblige you with the final word.
Doesn’t she, as a public figure, whose tweets (xhits?) will reach millions, have more of an onus of responsibility on her to fact check herself? I do agree with you on the fact that she’s not ENTIRELLY denying the holocaust and to put her in the same camp as those who do DOES weaken what that means, 100% agreed on that. She’s not a holocaust denier, she just denies some specific things that happened in the holocaust. It’s still SUPER shitty and SUPER wrong but yes, agreed, she’s not going around spouting “it never happened!” shit. I just came into this conversation but I appreciate your input all the same
society as a whole and the power we give to racist stereotypical tropes in the first place
Ignoring racist stereotypes in fiction isn’t the solution. We should want to do better.
On a separate note, do you not think it’s a stretch to lump her in with holocaust deniers this quickly?
No. Holocaust denial is holocaust denial. It’s never too early to call it out.
Isn’t it a little too soon to categorize her lack of understanding that the concept of trans or books being burned occurred under nazis versus those who deny millions were murdered in general?
No. Valuable research was lost that could have benefited millions of people. Not to mention trans people were killed by the Nazis. The fact millions of Jews were killed does not diminish the harm in denying that other groups were targeted by the Nazis.
If anything, doesn’t that water-down the category of Holocaust Deniers?
Although Jews were the group who had the most causalities, the Holocaust affected many different groups of people. Denying any part of the Holocaust is harmful and calling that out in no way diminishes the seriousness of Holocaust denial.
I appreciate the sources and acknowledge everyone from Jews to Communists to Gypsies, LGBTQ, to the Handicapped and so forth were ostracized, discriminated upon, and murdered by the Nazis. What I note does not detract from that; merely to say that someone not recognizing what is frankly not a mainstream fact about the Holocaust does not make them a holocaust denier; it may make them holocaust illiterate. So I mean it’s good to be proactive with this stuff but it’s also important to give people the chance to take a step back and give people a way out instead of compelling them to become what you repeatedly label them as. Reading too much into a single tweet when there – to my knowledge – hasn’t been a response or clarification from Rowling – is jumping the gun. I admire the confidence in your convictions but I don’t agree with your conclusions.
Despite your argument’s insistence to the contrary nowhere in my argument do I accuse Rowling of being anything. Whether or not Rowling is ignorant is irrelevant. Her actions are what matter. When presented with new information about the Holocaust her response was not to become more informed, but to deny the information. That is Holocaust denial and it is harmful. edit: typos
In her mind she IS fighting for “right vs wrong”. She’s just REALLY fucking wrong about which side is “right”. One of the biggest things I’ve learned in life is that EVERYONE thinks that they’re the hero. That they’re doing good and the “others” are the bad guys. Rowling is a piece of a shit but she THINKS she’s the good guy and that’s the most dangerous part of all.
It’s weird to me because I don’t view her in the same way I do, say, Republicans or Trump or Bannon or Miller or Putin, etc. For all intents she is a bleeding-heart leftist who vehemently opposes the narrative of the right’s fearmongering in respect to most other issues. If she was just another greedy sociopathic republican-type then I wouldn’t be the least-bit surprised.
So I’m not convinced she’s a psychopath sociopath on par with the aforementioned; from what I can tell I do think she’s deeply confused and has some personal trauma that feeds a puritannical belief in feminism.
If she was a leftist, Harry wouldn’t have become a cop. Hermione wouldn’t have been ridiculed about SPEW until she gave up. And so on.
Unless she is the most pessimistic leftist who can’t even dream of a world where things change for the better when she creates that world all by her own.
What gate-keeping philosophy suggests all leftists must oppose cops – did I not get the memo? I didn’t realize she’s a Thatcher plant because Harry went to work for the Ministry and overhaul it for a place of good lol.
In a capitalist society, cops are mostly busy with protecting rich people. I don’t think a material analysis of what cops are and do will result in anything that redeems the institution as it is now.
Hot take but I think that probably over-generalizes the role of police and is particularly centered specifically around American cop culture and not, say, European or Scandinavian ones.
Thus I remain unconvinced that this is what they are destined to do. If good cops exist, then it’s a matter of altering the system and model to promote good instead of bad seeds no differently than paying teachers better, or giving nurses more training.
That’s not how it works. Not in America and not here in Germany. Good cops only exist until one of their comrades fucks up, then they’re bullied out of their job unless they cover for them.
Trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) are a thing. I’m not sure why but it is. There are many. From what I’ve seen it’s mainly women who are SO heavily misandrist and hateful of men they think any trans woman is still a man and therefore out to rape and kill them by design, but I haven’t looked that deep into the bigotry.
I disagree. I have felt like crap many times when I did what I consider the wrong thing. She knows what she is doing which pretty much only leaves sociopath or sadistic. Either way time to stop apologizing for her.
No one is apologizing for her. You felt like crap when you did something wrong because you realized it was wrong. Good people make mistakes and learn from them. People should be like you. She thinks she’s doing right and is a pig headed bigot. People should not be like her.
How did you determine that? Not trying to be snarky and I think it is important to give everyone the assumption of good faith (once) but I really don’t see any effort on her part that confirms this.
She hasnt even done the fake non-apology celebrity thing where she pays a charity and says she has to learn more. she has repeatedly doubled down.
I’m heavily confused by this. If she thought she was doing wrong she’d do the whole apology tour. Which she hasn’t, as you said. Your two paragraphs don’t play well with each other. She has exactly doubled down, which means she thinks she’s right so I have no idea what point you’re trying to argue.
I do something wrong, I know it’s wrong. Someone calls me out on it.
Yeah you are right = lose face admit that I wasnt being a good person.
No, I am right = don’t lose face and say it enough no longer feel guilty. Because now you get to feel like you are the real victim here. And a victim can never be wrong.
This is why you keep getting these well liked rich fucks bitch about how much harm has been done to them by being cancelled. That woman quite literally has a net worth equal to what I will earn if I worked for over 10,000 years. And yet she is the victim in this? Hell I bet every single trans person combined net worth in the UK isn’t equal to her own.
She knows she is wrong but she thinks if she keeps saying 2 + 2 = 5 she will win.
Yes, that’s…that’s what I’m saying lol. Which is why your argumentative nature of the post confused me. And still does. Well, sorta. She DOESNT know she’s wrong because she 100% believes she’s right and everyone else are the “bad guys”. That’s my whole point. She DOESNT GET that she’s wrong. It’s everyone ELSE who is wrong.
On your link there, I’m sorry to say the author is making a very silly argument. It boils down to ‘if you see a specific race in this racist caricature then you’re the real racist’. This would only be true if racist caricatures were a new thing never seen before. It’s akin to saying ‘oh i didn’t mean black people when i screamed the n- word. You’re the racist for thinking the n- word refers to black people’.
That’s an extreme example but you see my point that there’s a history that’s being ignored.
That’s kind of an individual thing. Like, I get it, I get what you’re saying, but, when I think about the books (which I used to love), I just didn’t think of them fondly anymore; I can’t think of any of those characters without that irritation and disappointment coming up.
I was super excited about having my kids read those books – and my oldest started the series, but then needed a break to mature a little before hitting book…3 I think? Idr. And now I just don’t really care whether they read them. (If they do choose to read them on their own, I won’t tell them about JKR until after they’ve finished them.)
However I have no problem setting aside the shittiness of Knut Hamsun or Henry Miller; I still really enjoy their books. Heidegger? Too shitty for me. Picasso: meh, he’s fine.
That’s My Hot Take: if it bothers you, acknowledge that, and don’t force yourself to be uncomfortable. But also don’t shame people for whom her toxicity is something they can set aside.
(As long as they are setting it aside and not enjoying the work because of her toxicity.)
That said: pirate her shit, you don’t need to give her money.
I can’t listen to many bands I used to listen because their members turned out to be really shitty people.
I mean, if I have to hone my skills at slap.bass in a rock context, Flea is my go-to choice, but Anthony Kiedis boasted about having sex with an underage girl and regularly dates girls 40 years younger than him, that soured the whole RHCP thing for me.
In short, my ethical and moral principles are worth more than aesthetic enjoyment.
Ethics are interesting because you can ignore them. It’s like, ethics exist within you regardless of whether you agree to them; if you don’t listen to that little voice, it gets easier and easier to ignore it. To put that in practical terms: murdering someone is pretty ethically difficult. Murdering a second time is less ethically difficult. It’s like we build a climate around ourselves; the more you listen to your ethical beliefs, the more repugnant the idea of ignoring them becomes.
That said, I’m not sure I’m on board with you on RHCP – but that’s maybe just me. I used to listen to them a lot in jr high (I’m old) when blood sugar sex magic had just come out. And while your opinion is totally valid, for me, like, I never thought he was much of an ethical role model. His lyrics are pretty misogynistic. (And, not great regardless, from a “objective artistic/poetic” perspective.) So like yeah he’s not a great person, but he never pretended to be, so to find out he isn’t doesn’t change much.
(As opposed to, say, Jowling Kowling Rowling, who used to talk about hating bigotry, but then turned out to be a super terrible bigot.)
Flea, on the other hand – I’ve never looked into him. I’m also a bassist and his influence on my bass education is so deep that I’m afraid to find out if he’s toxic lol. But he’s been in a band with Anthony Keidis for like 40 years, so, he’s probably not perfect.
(I’m not a slap or funk bassist, but what I learned from Flea was how to feel it. You can’t play Flea’s bass lines mechanically, they literally don’t sound correct; you have to feel the vibe, the groove has to move your fingers, not the time signature. That dude, ffs I hope he’s not an asshole, because he’s fucking incredible.)
Though IDK – after long careers together, from what I understand, people tend to see each other less.
For example, after the whole Me Too thing started, I heard an interview with Bob Weinstein, Harvey’s brother, the two of them started Miramax together and were basically partners. But he knew his brother was a piece of shit, and, at that time a few years ago, hadn’t actually spoken to him in “many years.” He didn’t dwell on the topic, he just said that, basically, and his tone was like, obviously disgusted, but he didn’t want to spend the time talking about that, so he didn’t.
He wasn’t exactly going to snitch his own brother into prison, and that’s asking a bit too much imo, but it shows ethical strength to not slip into that same kind of toxicity, especially when it’s so close to you, and probably so easy.
Trade unions and lgbt clubs were attacked within the first three months after Hitler became the Chancellor. Already in the first month trade union offices and lgbt clubs were destroyed by the SA and people were sent to camps.
It was news to me and I feel I have a fairly decent understanding of nazi atrocities, but I also wouldn’t be confident in denying it without first researching.
Yes. And also it should be known that this isnt part of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is the genocide against Jews. But the Nazis persecuted lots of groups of people, and committed all kinds of crimes against humanity.
Not every heinous Nazi crime is “the Holocaust”. But it’s just as awful and denying it should lead to a social ban against the denier.
I was going to argue that that was a slightly reductive statement because of all the other groups that the Nazis genocided, but I looked it up and you are correct.
Which brings to question, why the genocides of the concentration camps are quite deliberately reduced to the holocaust in many perceptions.
The German government denied adequate compensation to LGBT concentration camps survivors to this day and only in 2017 they opened for legal rehabilitation. So until 2017 someone that was convicted for homosexuality by the Nazis and put into a concentration camp was considered a convict.
Equally political activists, Sint and Roma and disakled people (or people ascribes as being so) faced similiar issues of non recognition and non compensation.
And it is no surprise that the option for homosexuals was only opened when almost all the surviving victims have died of old age. Focusing the spotlight on the Holocaust was done to deflect from the continued discrimination and subjugation of other victim groups.
The amount of people defending her statements in this thread is absolutely disgusting. I wonder why she feels so emboldened as to say such horrific things in public?
Because people can’t tell the difference between the Israeli government and a random jewish person in North America that has nothing to do with anything
She’s denying that nazis committed genocidal actions against trans people during the holocaust.
I get that that may not matter to you, but that is incredibly important to me. I cannot ignore when someone is trying to claim that trans people like me were not victims of the holocaust. I cannot ignore genocide denial. She has a real effect on politics and public opinion. It is very important that she be called out for her words and actions.
Maybe it’s just me, but she said “Nazis did not persecute trans people.”
Do you have evidence showing that Nazis specifically targeted trans people? If I had to guess, I’d wager they didn’t even consider “trans” to be a thing. They probably just lumped them in with the other “queers.”
I’m not responsible for you or JK Rowling being ignorant on history.
Good place to start. They absolutely considered trans people to be a thing and specifically targeted trans people as part of the holocaust and in their propaganda. They demonized Magnus Hirschfield as being a pedophile and corrupting the natural order of man and woman. They appealed to eugenicist mothers by saying that the influence of his clinic would cause their children to be trans and therefore subhuman.
Magnus was a gay jewish man. He was a pioneering figure in transgender rights. Lili Elbe, the Danish woman, received vaginoplasty and a womb transplant at his institute for sexology. She wasn’t the first person to receive it there. Trans women were prescribed hormones there in very early hormone therapy regimens.
They’d be around to tell you about it but they were sent to concentration camps and even if they survived that the allied occupation forces all also had laws that persecuted trans people. Many were forced into the closet to survive.
Stop denying genocide against us. You are literally doing the thing we’re all here to talk about. Stop denying my history.
Nah, put them on blast, air out their dirty laundry, let people see that these aren’t just ‘respected people’ with concerns about the evil transgenders but actually broadly politically active ghouls
Once I found out that Harry Potter glorified the British class system by having it take place at an elite private school where people less privileged than them are looked down upon and even called names I was already turned off… but once I got to the obviously antisemitic goblins, I was done.
I wish it wasn’t so damn popular.
Edit: I realize this article isn’t about antisemitism. This is just another example of Rowling’s bigotry.
Hogwarts is not elite. Anyone can enrol if they have magical ability. It’s addressed in a later book that attendance is not mandatory but nearly every witch and wizard in Britain is educated there. It’s just a school that doesn’t even have an admittance exam.
That’s the thing that makes everyone defending this shit so sus. Harry Potter has so. many. layers. of terrible shit in it. Maybe people didn’t realize it when they were reading the books as a child because they were young and naive, but as an adult you should be able to recognize shit like the only Asian character being named “Cho Chang” and realize you’re reading an awful book written by an awful person. The fact that people know about Rowlings bigotry and still read HP to their kids blows my mind. If we all just agreed she was a shitty person and stopped passing her garbage writing along, she’d be forgotten in a generation.
I don’t care about HP, but it’s just a standard fairy tale. I read the books to my kids. Stories about knights, kings, princesses, super heroes…pretty much any story in which a normal person can fantasize about being someone who has much more power than they do, have been the stock-in-trade for story-tellers forever. Harry Potter lives a terrible life with his abusive relatives until he gets whisked off to a fancy private school where, it turns out, he is pretty special. Does it glorify the British class system? Sure, in some ways. But, it also undermines it insofar as Harry’s friends are mostly from the lower classes, and the villains are mostly “old money” and those who are obsessed with genetic purity. Also, the entrenched authorities like the Ministry of Magic are shown in a rather poor light, with their dementors, cruel bureaucrats, and insanity-inducing prisons. Hermione is meant to symbolize someone who got to Hogwart’s based on ability, not birth or connections. So, the story is at least partially about the transformation of the old structures of power from being based on money and birth to being based on ability. It shows British power structures in transition, I would say. What do you think?
That may very well be so. I did not get that impression from the first book, but, as I said, it was the only book I read and maybe it was clarified in the sequels.
By the way, my father was a similarly privileged to go to a prestigious British school on scholarship despite coming from a poor background and had nothing but bad things to say about it, so that does color my judgment a little.
That explains it. Each book gets progressively darker. The first book was written for 11 year olds, if I recall correctly. It doesn’t really get into politics. The subsequent books expose the corruption of the class system and the horrifying complicity of the bureaucracy.
Sadly, for those involved, society at large didn't really give a shit enough to teach about every group attacked by nazis. From the history books openly available at the time in my country at least, post communist era, Jews were the main victims, gypsies second and the handicapped or malformed in third place, as per importance in extermination.
That's it.
I doubt her education was better than mine and she seemed willing to accept the updated information as explained in the article, so it's not that she's completely rigid.
And to be unbiased, "deviants from the norm" were attacked in every major country, before and after the nazist period. Book burnings are common enough even now. So linking this exclusively to the Holocaust is in poor taste and denies it being a global issue that has little to do with Nazism itself but rather the causes that elected its rise.
But it’s also true that the Nazis specifically exterminated them, as opposed to for example Weimar or GDR.
It’s a good point that British education is awful, it was illegal to talk about gays at all when JK was getting her education, but also that’s why you shouldn’t make bold definitive claims like this and when you get proven wrong you should apologize and stop and when you get schooled by George Takei you should listen.
The person above apparently posts here specifically because they don’t agree with us based on their responses in this thread. So I guess they don’t understand why people would want to be around those they are in agreement with.
Conservative are also the people looking to save various fauna and flora from extinction due to unbridled human activities.
Are they also a plague?
You should avoid bringing negative connotations to words that can be or are a force for good.
Rename the evil if you want, but don't turn away the good as you focus solely on the bad.
even if they were the same word… context has meaning.
in a politics news sub, talking about politics; you’d have to be a moron to conflate conservatives [individuals who espouse conservative politics] with something else.
One, this is regular news. Nowhere in the title of the community or the rules listed does it say only politics news, far as I've seen.
Two, you'd have to be a moron to consider people who don't think the same way you do as morons.
Three, morons are allowed to participate in society. If you disagree with this, well, good thing we're in the right place to discuss discrimination.
You wouldn’t expect an article about MC Hammer, some one saying “its hammer time!” to mean home improvement. it’s a news sub, and the article is about politics, not wildlife conservation. you’re being obtuse.
That could actually be a great The Onion theme.
Inflamatory - but ambiguos - headline with the article jumping from theme to theme through homonyms and context changes
You're partially right. I am confusing the two, but not the spirit of their meaning, which is "to conserve". Conservation is a force for good, but this political party thing is only focused on the bad.
Why let it occupy the entire meaning and overshadow its better uses? To say "Conservative" with disgust is to ignore its potential for better uses.
Conservative is yet another word that’s been commandeered to the ends of the right wing. They have a long history of distorting or outright willfully misinterpreting words and symbols. Their use of the punisher logo is a classic example
I appreciate that there has been some confusion regarding the use of this word. And I also appreciate your sentiment that it would be nice to focus on the positive. However, so much evil throughout history has come from conservatism, that the word weighs heavily with negative connotation that should not be removed.
In social context, nothing good in the history of mankind has ever come from conservatism. Nothing at all.
Here is a non-political definition, for some clarification. Note the lack of preservation of nature.
conservative /kən-sûr′və-tĭv/ adjective
<span style="color:#323232;">Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change. Traditional or restrained in style.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">"a conservative dark suit."
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Moderate; cautious.
</span><span style="color:#323232;">"a conservative estimate."
</span>
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition • More at Wordnik
(My apologies for the American dictionary reference in a thread about an English person. It was just the easiest one to copy/paste on a phone.)
Yes, these are my thoughts on the word's meaning, in large.
A moderate and cautious approach to change.
Absolute refusal of change is the extremism part of this definition that seems to be viewed as its defining attribute instead.
Edit: Maybe this view of mine is flawed, but it's how I see a Conservative party should be. To avoid unchecked progress, maintain stability and implement only rigorously verified policies, in small, but certain steps. Their core tenets are moderation and cautiousness.
Shore up the defenses, create logistics trains, be certain of the allies available, initiate battle when ready and after all diplomatic recourses have failed.
Have a standing replacement framework, compensate losses, ratify laws to support equal rights in its entirety, reduce support of transgressors in public eyes over time. There were few slave owners. Turning the masses against them wouldn't have been difficult.
Prepare alternative replacement in case of refusal, then support unionizing while giving subsidies to encourage participation.
Ideally, it's supposed to advance slowly while keeping everyone relatively happy and stable.
A government is supposed to consider all of its citizens and that means taking into consideration the consequences of failure, while also planning how to remedy them.
You asked for a moderate and cautious approach. I gave you an example of one.
If you draw from this more than what it is, then that's on you, not me.
The war in the US at least was fought due to a poor approach on the subject.
The UK, at the very least if anything, managed to end slavery peacefully on its soil.
Britain has not ended slavery. And when it technically outlawed slavery within the British Isles (which is actually all the anti slavery laws did), it was neither a moderate nor a cautious approach.
But, more importantly, there is still slavery in Britain:
Britain didn’t even end slavery in the 19th century either. They just changed the term to ‘indentured servitude’ and ‘blackbirding.’
So it wasn’t ended peacefully because it wasn’t ended.
Also, the idea that you even should end slavery gradually is pretty offensive to all of the people enslaved throughout history. Would you be comfortable saying to them, “you won’t be freed, but we’re ending this eventually because it’s a gradual process.”
Yes, it should be done gradually.
What did the former slaves in the US have after they were freed? Nothing.
Food, clothing, housing are burdens we can't afford even now. Did you expect them to magically appear out of thin air once the slaves were freed?
You want everything to be done now, on the spot, a fair and just world for everyone. How nice of you. But do you have the resources? The infrastructure? The personnel?
You think that everyone will without a doubt respect everyone and everything without enough basic necessities to go around?
But there were issues. The starving ones who were fed too much and too fast died, while because the train tracks and roads leading to these camps were destroyed, logistics was slow in giving them the help they needed.
So freedom wasn't as instant as you'd like to believe.
No, the freedom was instant. There may have been logistical issues with medical treatment of the now free people. In all my conversations with Holocaust survivors, I have never heard one say that they were not free after the camp was liberated. That is just a nonsense take.
When death is unavoidable, the goal is to minimize the number of deaths. Taking into account the situation before, during and after can help create the better results.
If we just free someone without taking into account whether they'll be able to live afterwards is just patting ourselves on the back. Sure we can say we did the right thing, but without making certain they at least have a starting point, we might just be condemning them to desperation or crime.
Actually, by in general, I was thinking about people who live their lives in constant suffering and would like to have the option of a peaceful release.
Euthanasia is still taking a life, and I would prefer an alternative to that.
Was writing "in general" not enough to go beyond this particular instance?
Really? How many good men or women can one find in a country, willing and able to head out across borders to get involved into a war, solely to sacrifice themselves for the sake of saving others from genocide?
I'm not seeing armies heading out to save Palestine. Ukraine. Any of the African countries currently at war that i know so little about.
Simple truth is that not everyone agrees with this kind of selfless sacrifice.
The US had a small, but growing Nazism political party in its ranks before the war and the majority of those able to vote were against sending troops before Pearl Harbor happened. What do you think would have been the result had the acting US government sent troops into Europe without the approval of their citizens and without the shaming of the middling Nazis among them?
When forcing the issue, without making sure the ones opposing it won't suddenly strike at your back, you only send out more people to their deaths. And instead help the enemy achieve their goals more easily instead.
Nazist America was a real possibility at the time, not just a fantasy.
So yes, moderate, cautious and gradual isn't the evil you want it to be. It's just another route that considers the consequences of failure. And it's not without flaws, principal being the people involved.
Also, you may think I'm advocating for it, but that's just a side effect of my original point. Anything can be a force for either good or bad. Only focusing on the bad points and ignoring the good, vilifies it.
Tell me how that at its most basic meaning is different from what those you claim to hate are doing. Just because the subject of the hatred is different doesn't change the fact that the act of hatred is the same damn thing.
You don't like that things can be both bad and good? That's fine. But what you're pursuing is purity. Doesn't matter which side of the extreme you're looking for, it's still an extreme.
I wrote a lot of stuff, but then I realized I don't really understand what you're trying to say.
Are you speaking exclusively about the idea itself or the circumstances of the past?
Because if you're talking only about the theoretical idea, then I agree with an immediate stop or prevention.
But if you're talking of the circumstances of the past, I was pretty much wrapped up in the details of realistically trying to reduce the losses. Couldn't figure out what magic way you wanted for the allies to save them sooner.
Their core tenets are moderation and cautiousness.
Lol no
Viewing words that prescriptively is kinda insane and willfully ignorant.
When someone says “gay”, do you start arguing about how “it has nothing to do with sexuality, it just means carefree’, ‘cheerful’, or ‘bright and showy’.”?
Fair enough. If politically conservative people legislated with a moderate, cautious demeanor, I would respect that. In fact, I might even side with them on several policies.
The big problem about discussing conservatives / Conservatives here is that this board seems quite US-focused. The British Conservative Party (the current party of UK government) pretty much came in to existence back in the day to “conserve” things and put a check on “progressive / liberal” policies. Conservative means something different whether your context is American-politics or whether it’s politics-politics.
To believe “conservative” branded political parties are conflated with the English connotations of the word is quite frankly falling for propaganda at this point. Politically speaking “conservative” has a unique meaning that has nothing really to do with financial prudence or slow and measured progress. What they seek to “conserve” is old power structures. Heirachies founded on intergenerational wealth or old exclusionary policy that created privileged citizen classes. Sometimes they dress it up in the mask of “traditional values” but it’s all basically just smoke and mirrors. It’s why they attack inclusive policy, civil rights fights including education policies, social safety nets and tax policies that target wealthier citizens. They have to “conserve” the pecking order where old money remains uncontested power, new money casts the illusion that upward mobility it possible and nobody is allowed to mention that they are being treated as a second class citizen.
The idea of self branding yourself a “conservative” serves by flattering ones own ego because as a label it’s primed to make one feel reasonable and measured… But. It’s just fluff.
The type of Holocaust denial they’re suggesting she’s doing wouldn’t make her antisemitic, because she’s not denying its impact on the Jewish people. It just makes her more transphobic, which we already knew.
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