Mentioning the war – on the Watermelon Blog

19 Responses to “Mentioning the war – on the Watermelon Blog”

1. 

   Steve at the Pub June 26, 2011 at 9:42 am #

   Hmmm, some people have no sense of irony! Labelling people as “Deniers” whilst simultaneously accusing them of breaking Godwin’s law.

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2. 

   gerard oosterman June 26, 2011 at 10:19 am #

   I think that in Australia, it is not so much Godwin’s law that is used by climate deniers. We have our own unique ‘latte sippers’ but, sadly, with the term ‘chardonnay’ losing some momentum by the clilmate deniers.

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3. 

   Steve at the Pub June 26, 2011 at 10:40 am #

   There we go again, Climate “Deniers”. Labelling a group with a holocaust reference.

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     Jennifer Wilson June 26, 2011 at 10:54 am #

     So does that mean we can’t call cookers “ovens?”

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       Jennifer Wilson June 26, 2011 at 11:46 am #

       In my profession we use the words denial and denier when we’re talking about a well known psychological phenomenon, and if I’m right, this began with Freud. So we shouldn’t use these terms anymore because somebody once appropriated them to describe people who reject the reality of the holocaust?

       Thank you for pointing out that the term “denier” is used about the Jewish holocaust, Paul. There have been many genocides of many millions, each one a holocaust, and I am sometimes at a loss as to understand why we use the word holocaust only to refer to the Jewish tragedy.

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     Dejan Tesic June 26, 2011 at 5:50 pm #

     I agree with Steve at the Pub – “Climate Deniers” is a wrong term to use. It should be “AGW Deniers”.

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       Jennifer Wilson June 27, 2011 at 7:48 am #

       Well said, Dejan!

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4. 

   paul walter June 26, 2011 at 11:18 am #

   Where has Gerard said anything remotely related to presumably, the Jewish Holocaust. This is an attempt at a thread derail.
   The notion of shutting down debate by employing coded insults against political correctness as a dismissal, considered or other wise, of a contrary viewpoint is the reason our people struggled to come to grips with life in the real world in the refugee doco.
   Real conversation has been circumscribed by a new right hegemony on opinion.
   Now, the thread is about the wretched Godwin’s Law and the attack on its prior use as a metaphor used as to stress an analogy as some thing equivalent in or to Hitler’s Germany such as calling an unimaginative authoritarian or piggish boss a little Hitler or naming your school after a concentration camp, as we kids did back in the ‘sixties.
   You can’t call the Intervention some thing a bit “nazi” because you will be “godwinned” by some blog moderators who either want to avoid offending lobby groups or want people to invent new analogies, an apparatus I’ve questioned as a bit you-know-what, meself..

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5. 

   Sam Jandwich June 27, 2011 at 12:03 pm #

   Haha, i’d never heard of Godwin’s law before. I wonder if it applies equally to drunken conversations with fashion designers??

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6. 

   gerard oosterman June 27, 2011 at 2:51 pm #

   One wonders what Klara (Hitler) would now make of our argument? She, as most mother usually do, thought her little boy a very nice little boy and loved him as much as the other five kids.
   Didn’t Monckton get a nice reception after all?

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7. 

   paul walter June 27, 2011 at 7:40 pm #

   Gerard, you seem to heading in the direction of the old question of Hitler’s pathology, for want of a better word. As I’ve read it, Hitler was beaten at times savagely as a kid by his father Alois, who was loathed by both his wife and his son. Maybe another factor could have been Hitler’s mothers relatively early death.
   Then again, none of above, he was just an individual who became a historical road block because of some curious synergies with unfolding reality in his era. Barking mad, but for some reason seems melded to some sort of group mind in Germany over roughly the span of his life that he issued forth from and fed his own anger and vision such as it was back into, to the extent that it became toxic for Germany, him and the world, most of all including his Russian and Jewish victims in the millions (unless Irving was right).
   No, what reference to Hitler has been expunged for, is that his Germany, apart from the sheer magnitude of the death toll and accompanying suffering, offers a lens for us with which to see our own era.
   I think the paramount motif for the twentieth century is IG Farben, a German industrial giant, tendering for the job of building the death camps.
   Fast forward to cluster bombs and the Congo?

   Now, a good moderator would step in and point out that I was godwinned and in the sin bin for the next twenty four hours.
   I would say, how can we learn about our own mentality if we have not recourse to history (?).

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     Jennifer Wilson June 28, 2011 at 8:23 am #

     I can’t have a sin bin because I would spend inordinate amounts of time in it myself.

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8. 

   gerard oosterman June 27, 2011 at 7:53 pm #

   I would say to err on the side of compassion and steer clear of obstinacy of mind which is not always a sign of strenght..

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     Jennifer Wilson June 28, 2011 at 8:24 am #

     The phrase “obstinacy of mind” immediately makes me think of John Howard and Julia Gillard. One of the many traits they have in common.

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9. 

   paul walter June 27, 2011 at 9:08 pm #

   Sorry, its just East Africa over recent times has provided a death toll that amounts to a holocaust, but has been more surreptitious. The fine point could be, to what extent the East Africa events have been malevolent and intentional both within and more strongly without, the region. I’m presuming we are thinking of the Horn of Africa with its eternal miseries as a distinct location, as with West Africa. And what do we think of the more subtle issues and events involving trade, finance and commerce that seem callous, if mused upon, as far as I’m concerned.
   I suppose each age will bear its own shames.

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10. 

    Steve at the Pub June 29, 2011 at 10:46 am #

    “Oven” I am familiar with Jennifer, the word “cooker” is one that’s never been used in this part of the world.

    Dejan Tesic has a good point, to be technically correct the term should be “AGW denier”.

    The conceit required to use a holocaust term is more than I can muster. If a believer in AGW seeks to convince non-believers to switch to their faith, then calling them “denier” is most counter-productive.

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      gerard oosterman June 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm #

      Don’t come the raw prawn here. Australia’s most iconic early gas stove was called….. wait for it………………….. The early COOKER,

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      Jennifer Wilson June 29, 2011 at 1:25 pm #

      SATP, probably because I’v had years of working in a world where the terms denial and denier are descriptive of a psychological condition, applicable to any situation involving denial used as a defense mechanism, I’m unable to see the terms as only related to the Jewish holocaust.

      I understand that some people only accept the word in that context, but to me it is a word with a far more broad application.

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11. 

    paul walter June 29, 2011 at 3:09 pm #

    Steve, none so blind as those who will not see. Too much Leon Uris and not enough real history, my boy..

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