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simplyeric comments on Rationality Quotes: November 2010 - Less Wrong
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"And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." —Martin Niemoeller
I think that quote speaks a little about the worst enemies within us, in purely clinical terms, that what's in the best interest of those with whom you don't necessarily explicitly associate yourself may also be in your own best interest.
The thing to keep in mind about the Jewish Holocaust is that it wasn't particularly unusual. It was unusual mostly in its location: it was rare to carry out such large scale atrocities ''in Europe''. Exterminations had been carried out by various states upon people in every other part of the world. Some were absolute, and entire races were exterminated. Hitler had great admiration for how the United States dealt with its native population. Sweden exterminated slaughtered whole groups in Africa. The list is not as short as we'd like it to be.
An interesting (and depressing) book: <u>Exterminate All the Brutes</u> by Sven Lindqvist
What I took from this book is that the enemy that is the holocaust situation is within us. The Jewish Holocaust was (unfortunately) not an outlier, but rather was/is in our culture or genes or humanity (I'm not sure I know which, although I tend towards the genetics).
What is unusual (I think) about the Jewish Holocaust is that it wasn't part of a conquest. Jews were very well integrated into German society, and had never been at war with it. Any other similar cases?
Maybe a more salient example than my integrated Native Americans: Protestants v. Catholics.
In certain circumstances it was simply war and/or strife.
("simply")
But, in situations where both groups were fully native, there were situation where one group would try to eliminate the other through legislation, deportation, and also extermination.
Ukrainians and Poles in the U.S.S.R.? I guess it would depend on your definition of "conquest".
And possibly also "integrated"-- my impression is that Jews in Germany were less geographically concentrated, but even if true, that might be reaching for an argument.
I think that within the subset of United States's aggression against the Native American population, there were many instances where fully integrated people were subsequently persecuted and eliminated. Some of it was at the "frontiers", yes. But some of it was shopowners, millers, brewers...people who had fully adapted and in fact thrived within the europeanized colonies and later states.
This was still happening in the 1950's and 60's as well, with the flooding of native lands in the Dakotas, etc, where fully "Americanized" communities were eliminated through forced relocation.