One in five young Americans think the Holocaust is a myth | Hacker News Reader

One in five young Americans think the Holocaust is a myth

economist.com

12 pointstbdenney13 comments

Open articleView on HN

And it's likely [1]...

- 1 in 5 believe the earth is flat.

- 2 in 7 believe in the Easter Bunny.

- 4 in 10 don't know that 4 of 10 is 40%

- 3 in 8 have never left their own state.

- 7 in 10 want to grow up to be online "influencers".

- And so on...

The point is, if you're looking for a factual but clickbait-ready headline just survey young Anericans. Why is The Economist dabbling is such LCD "journalism"?

[1] These aren't factual. They're fictional and for effect.

So it's not a matter of 'they are nazis' but more of an indictment of the american educational system?

Also... yes not much journalism happening in the USA these days.

It's both. The normalization of anti-semitic conspiracy theory and neo-nazi ideology though internet culture and mainstream politics is a big reason Holocaust denial has become so common - and that is a result of, among other things, the failure of the American education system and culture.

the American education system is being replaced by social media. all that's left is the american babysitter system.

I don't believe the anti-semitic side. Here in Canada, nobody is a nazi. It's not our side of the war.

If there's any legitimate holocaust denial, it's coming from 1 source.

Govenment says I must believe X. I pretty much know X is a lie and it's probably the opposite.

Exactly. What The Economist has sensationalized is a symptom. Low hanging slow-news-day fruit.

Your theoretical examples imply that you think the age range called out in this article headline refers to children, when it's actually 18-29 year olds. These are legal adults that responded to this poll, not kids who may not have yet gone through the requisite history classes. Are you really using belief in the Easter Bunny as a "whatabout" argument to hand-wave away the significantly higher rate of Holocaust denialism among this age range?

Ok. Fair enough. Strike Easter Buddy and replace it with "Won't get pregnant if you have sex standing up."

As for History class. I remember in HS we never made it to mid 20th century. And nonetheless you're assuming that taking a class will become someone dogma. That's not how hate, propaganda, ignorance, works.

The fact is, The Economist's "argument" is flawed from the start. It's a silly and senseless way to do news / journalism. And no one is catching that? What does that tell us? Yeah, ironic.

More accessible knowledge on the part of today's youth means that they see the Holocaust as 'nothing special'.

Everything that the Germans did to the Jews in the Holocaust is no different from what the Jews are doing, and have been doing to others for decades. Hence 'nothing special' about the Holocaust.

It took the Germans roughly a generation, about 30 years, to escape the conflation of Germans and 'Nazis'. It's taken the Russians a generation, roughly 30 years, to escape the conflation of Russians and 'Commies'. It will take at least 30 years for the Jews to escape the conflation of Jews and 'Israeli Zionists'.

A quick google suggests this isn't particularly surprising or out of line with polling over the last decade, though other polls and reporting on them seem to lean heavier on young people simply not knowing anything about the Holocaust rather than actively disbelieving it e.g.

> In perhaps one of the most disturbing revelations of this survey, 11 percent of U.S. Millennial and Gen Z respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust.

https://www.claimscon.org/millennial-study/

What fraction of young Americans could even vaguely describe Joseph Stalin's 3-decade reign of terror (1922-1952), let alone have a sense of how many millions he killed? Or the Romani Holocaust? Or the horrors of King Leopold II's so-called Congo Free State? Or ...

(Yes, it's interesting that the article calls the Holocaust "one of modern history’s greatest crimes" - but gives zero words to any of the others. And there's no hint that the poll asked about any of the others.)

If your knowledge of history is pretty minimal, but you keep seeing "Because Holocaust!" used as some kinda magical rhetorical/moral trump card...then having serious doubts about that "Holocaust" thing is fairly reasonable, AS AN UNINFORMED EMOTIONAL REACTION. [Please re-read the shouty part there 3 times, before you angrily respond.]

Vs. if you do know the history - the Holocaust's "special cultural/moral status" still really sticks out. My pet theory is that, from the PoV of well-educated, middle- and upper-class western whites, the Jewish Holocaust victims "look" like just-one-thing-different-from-me analogs. Vs. the poor Slavs, Romani, Black, etc. victims do not - so killing "their kind" in 7-or-so-digit quantities just doesn't push the same deep emotional buttons.

There's a difference between being unaware of something and actively denying it like the responses in this poll. It's good to also have knowledge of the events you called out, but I bet more people are aware of them than you're giving credit. A lot of Jews are pretty aware that the Nazi Holocaust targeted other groups of people as well, including Romani, Slavs, and the mentally handicapped.

By your logic, as long as a tragic historical event is referenced over and over again, it's ok for lots of people to doubt or play down its significance. Are you understanding of large numbers of people being against any of the recent black civil rights touch-points, since slavery, Jim Crow, and racism against blacks has been _the_ talking point and justification for contentious events in the US for the last 5 years?

It's fascinating that for the last couple of decades, Holocaust denialism was seen by US liberals as this inhuman and inexcusable philosophy. However, now that it's not just the "evil" right-wingers being called out for buying into it, a common and acceptable response has effectively become "eh, what do the Jews expect?" I'm not aligning with either political philosophy, just calling out the hypocrisy.

> By your logic, as long as...it's okay for...

Sorry, but NO. Please re-read my italicized & shouty & "Please re-read...before you" words another 3 more times. Then me how you interpreted that to mean "it's okay". Without assuming that I took the same Moral Philosophy 483 class as you, and subscribe to the deductive methods which you learned there.

Also notice - my analysis was history/sociology/psychology, without reference to culture wars or chain-of-logic moral judgement of people. Vs. your analysis seems to be very much the latter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com