Heinrich Himmler

Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146II-783 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

I hate the Holocaust.

There, I’ve said it.

Somebody had to.

Funny thing is, nobody likes the Holocaust. Except maybe the folks at the ADL and Wiesenthal Center who’ve made a bundle off it.

But for everyone else, the good (Jews who don’t profit from the murder of Jews), the bad (far-rightists like Elon’s favorite Naziboi Keith Woods who blame Holocaust history for the fall of the West), and the ugly (“the Holocaust didn’t happen but it should’ve…Hitler half-assed the job” freaks like Elon’s second-favorite Naziboi Lucas Gage), the Holocaust is not liked.

I don’t wanna write about it anymore (cue Nik Kershaw—“don’t wanna be here no more”), but, as the Holocaust is the reason I’m unemployable, I have to sometimes.

However, last month on my Substack—which is proving so much more fun than Twitter (I wouldn’t go back even if Elon unbanned me)—I took a poll of my readers, asking what topics of mine they prefer.

I have, essentially, four revolving topics: I scold rightists, I talk about Holocaust history, I cover local issues regarding race and crime, and I muse about Hollywood. What’s your favorite?

The results were clear: Scolding rightists and talking Hollywood were the winners (you can join the fun by subscribing to my Substack. It’s free, you jerks!).

The Holocaust came in dead last. That was refreshing. I don’t wanna talk about it, you don’t wanna read about it. So next week will be something about Hollywood.

But this week, I’m gonna take a Memorial Day vacation by running an unpublished Holocaust column I wrote last year, because—being an alcoholic—I always keep a few “evergreen” columns in store, in case I find myself too drunk to write something new. And the Holocaust is certainly “evergreen.”

It’s not like the Trump trial or Gaza; there are no updates incoming.

So this was written after a speech by Syria’s Assad in December. I think I have one more pre-written Holocaust piece to unload, and maybe I’ll do it on July 4th to give myself another vacation week.

But that aside, I want to go for a while without revisiting the topic, because my readers have spoken!

I love you guys, and I obey your commands.

Begin pre-written text:

For those who don’t follow Holocaust historiography, the “Holocaust singularity” debate, which has been going on for fifty years, concerns whether the Holocaust is unique among historical atrocities.

The current flare-up of the singularity question began with a Dec. 9 New Yorker “think piece” by Jewish “they/them” Masha Gessen (if you ever go to a Jewish deli, never order the Masha Gessen; it’s terrible). Gessen explored the notion of “Holocaust singularity” and why it’s racist because to insist that there’s something about the Holocaust that sets it apart from other mass-murder events means that evil white people can continue to do evil white people things while saying, “At least there’s no gas chambers!”

As Gessen puts it, “The insistence on the singularity of the Holocaust” creates an “out” for whites, as the Holocaust becomes something they “must always remember and mention but don’t have to fear repeating, because it is unlike anything else that’s ever happened or will happen.”

“Zhe” ties Holocaust singularity to Israel’s “collective punishment” of Gazans, and how Israelis are Holocausting poor Muslims, but because of Holocaust singularity, Israel can do this new Holocaust while changing just enough of the particulars to skate the accusation that the Holocausted have become the Holocausters.

Gessen’s screed caught fire on Akbar Twitter, with Muslim influencer “Keyvan” posting it on Dec. 16, adding, “The German (and I would argue American) push to singularize the Holocaust as an event that is unlike any other functions as a warrant for justifying other systematic acts of cruelty, because they will never be like the Holocaust.”

A few days later, Bashar al-Assad decided to weigh in:

There is no evidence that six million Jews were killed. True, there were concentration camps, but what shows you that this is a politicized issue, and is not a humanitarian issue, and is not real, [is] how come we talk about these six millions, and not the 26 million Soviets who were killed in that war? Are those six millions more precious? The same acts were everywhere. There was no method of torture or killing specific to the Jews. The Nazis used the same method everywhere.

What an odd coalition of bedfellows aligned against Holocaust singularity: leftist tranny Jews, Muslim dictators, Akbar influencers, and white nationalist Holocaust deniers.

Obviously this collection of the world’s best and brightest couldn’t possibly be wrong.

*Cough*

I want to delve into the “singularity” question because it holds contemporary lessons for rightists. So let’s delve away.

And let’s start with Assad’s idiotic “we never talk about the 26 million Soviets.” The Russians talk about that all the fucking time. Putin used it to justify the Ukraine invasion. The Russians consider their war dead so singular, they even have their own name for WWII that takes “world” out of the equation.

Holocaust deniers love asking questions like “All Americans know the ‘6 million Jews,’ but how many know how many Chinese were killed during the war?”

Well, a billion Chinese know. In China everyone knows about Nanking, but most don’t know about Treblinka.

That’s how it works. You obsess about the things that matter in your nation. American WWII remembrance has typically focused on Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Iwo Jima, Battle of the Bulge, and concentration camps. And sure, you’ll say, “But them D-Day vets wuz majority Amuricans! Them Jews is a minority.” Yes, but a culturally significant one. You don’t have to like Jews to cede that point. Cultures reflect the significant more than the numerical. In the 20th century, Americans of German descent comprised a plurality of the population. Yet American foreign policy, and culture in general, skewed Anglophile.

That happens sometimes. The notion that a nation’s concerns must match its raw numbers sounds rather like DEI “doctors should look like America” bullshit. By that measure, 17 percent of all Florida doctors should be black. Oh, wait, you’re okay with Florida doctors being disproportionately Jewish? Hey, Palm Beach millionaire—you don’t want to trade Dr. Sid Lipschitz for Dr. D’Odaciousness Kangzmun?

But numberz!

Numberz, dude!

Now, about that “singularity” question…

The Holocaust is “singular” because Himmler chose to make it so. From the beginning, Himmler expressed a desire to differentiate the Nazi “treatment of alien races” from the Soviet treatment of unwanted ethnicities and classes. In May 1940 Himmler explicitly rejected the notion of “physical extermination” as “Bolshevist and un-Germanic.”

That was 1940. After Barbarossa, things got complicated. SS squads were killing adult Jews to cleanse occupied Eastern territories of potential enemies, but they were leaving the kids of the murdered Jews behind (you know, so as not to be genocidal or anything). And the sight of those children—alone, starving, screaming through the night—prompted Generalstabsoffizier Helmuth Groscurth (backed by his military chaplains) to bombard high command with complaints that encountering all those wailing orphaned Jewish children was killing the morale of the enlisted men because it was “Bolshevist” in its cruelty (Groscurth specifically declared that the sight of the children was making his men wonder whether the Nazis were “the baddies”).

So Himmler went ach scheiße! His plan to not be Bolshie had backfired (it got worse after the SS responded to Groscurth’s complaint by machine-gunning the kids and telling the Wehrmacht, “Happy now?” It’s no accident that Groscurth became part of the anti-Hitler resistance).

Luckily for Himmler, Sturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Höppner, SD chief in Posen, Warthegau (a Jew-heavy district in occupied Poland), rode to the rescue, with a suggestion (conveyed to Eichmann) that the actual non-Bolshevik thing to do would be to put the Jews to sleep, painlessly.

It should be seriously considered if the most humane solution is not to finish off those Jews incapable of work by some quick working means. In any case, this would be more pleasant than letting them starve to death.

And here we see Himmler’s transition from “killing them is Bolshevist and un-Germanic” in 1940 to “wait, letting them starve is Bolshevist! Euthanizing them painlessly is Germanic!” in 1941.

Höppner found just the right angle to persuade his higher-ups to accelerate killings in the name of being humane. And Aktion Reinhard was born—“painlessly” putting Jews to sleep far away from the hectoring of moralists like Groscurth and his chaplains (I go into greater detail about this in my book, which you can buy at…oh, shit—it’s banned thanks to Debra Messing and Amazon. Sorry!).

The point is, the Holocaust is singular because Himmler (with Hitler’s blessing) wanted it to be singular. His every move was based on “not doing it the way the other guy does.” The Nazis own that singularity, and that “putting entire families to sleep via some quick working means” thing was only used against Jews. Other “enemy populations” were starved, shot, killed by overwork, etc. But there was indeed “a method of killing specific to the Jews,” Assad, you chinless retard.

I mentioned “contemporary lessons for rightists,” didn’t I?

Here we go.

You own your decisions. And the consequences. Following the liquidation of Polish Jewry, Himmler told his SS generals at Sonthofen, “It was bold to kill the kids, but we made the choice cuz we’re based as fuck” (I’m paraphrasing). Then in the last months of the war, as Germany was collapsing, Himmler was like, “Wait, we didn’t kill nobody! We dindu nuffin!”

Fortune favors the bold. Unless the bold lose. At which point history scorns the bold, and the bold become cowards.

That’s why all failed attempts at “boldness,” from Aktion Reinhard to J6 to every “screw your optics” racially based mass shooting, end in denial. “The Holocaust never happened!” “J6 was a setup!” “The mass shooting was a false flag!”

To be clear, I’m not comparing J6 to the Holocaust. A point I would make when assistant-teaching my high school AP history class: Human nature is constant, so we examine the actions of the great and terrible to understand them and draw lessons for ourselves. On the day of, J6ers wanted to own their singularity. Storming Congress to halt electoral vote-counting? That’d never been done before! Bold! They lost, and today, they weep like babies trying to disown that singularity.

“Why are we given longer sentences than a black dude who stole sneakers at Target?”

Well, maybe because you chose to do something singular.

Germany is forever tarred by Holocaust singularity. Blame Himmler, not “the Jews.”

And take this lesson into fall 2024, a period poised to be one of the most politically chaotic in our nation’s history: Your actions will matter. And they may outlive you.

Don’t deny Holocaust singularity; learn from it.

Don’t be the guy who does something that you, or your descendants, may one day have to deny because the “singularity” made history in the worst way.