A pattern I've noted: Leftists will frequently obsess and conspire about a single, innocuous statement, instead of addressing someone's argument.
Functionalism Vs Intentionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intentionalism (H/T DerRoteKumpfflieger)
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There's an old saying that goes, great minds talk about ideas, mediocre minds talk about events, and lesser minds talk about people.
I bring that up to assure you folks that this is not going to be a video about drama.
It's going to start with drama, but ultimately this is about ideas.
In particular, it's something I've noticed with those that have weak or damaged amygdalas.
It's that they tend to take completely innocuous statements and form conspiracy theories around them.
It's something I've seen several times, but this recent drama is such a perfect public example of that that it really serves to introduce the whole topic.
So if you've been following my Twitter over the past week, then you probably know who I'm talking about.
It's a doofy-looking chemist who's been accusing me of anti-Semitism, taking quotes, quote-mining me, taking them out of context, and just generally making an ass of himself.
Yeah, it's this guy right here.
I mean, white guy with dreadlocks, you know.
Welcome to the decline, folks.
Now, where does this accusation come from that I'm a Holocaust denier?
Well, it comes from actually talking about real historical theory about World War II.
You see, there is a very real debate going on right now amongst World War II historians about how the Holocaust came to occur.
What led up to it?
What caused it?
And there's two basic schools of thought.
And by the way, hat tip out to Derot Kumpflingerflieger for linking the article on this, and link down below to it.
The two schools of thought are functionalism and intentionalism.
See, the intentionalist argument, this one goes, like the extreme form of it argues that Hitler was planning the Holocaust as early as 1919.
Now, there's no documents demonstrating this, of course.
There aren't even any documents demonstrating that he knew it was happening, period.
Although he almost certainly did.
And even if he wasn't aware, he set up the government and the conditions that allowed it, so he's absolutely morally culpable for it.
The other school of thought, the functionalists, are the ones that argue it was the whole setup.
It was the nature of the National Socialist government.
It was the starvation due to the war.
And it was a ground-up thing as opposed to a top-down thing.
Now, those are the two extreme positions on it.
And there's lesser versions of it that, you know, they were planning it in their 30s, you know, versus, you know, it kind of occurred naturally, like all these forces were in play.
You know, at first it started off with trying to expel the Jews, then it went to, you know, taxing them, attacking their businesses, putting them in labor camps, and then turned into the Holocaust.
And the synthesis argues that it's, you know, all the conditions were there by accident, and then the leadership decided to genocide the Jews.
And that's probably the closest to my position.
One of my favorite professors in university was John C. Weaver.
And he's very much a structuralist in most of his historical theories.
He particularly focuses upon the relevancy of how property law leads to different behaviors in society.
So, yeah, I'm very much within the functionalist school of things.
Like, obviously there were people at the top organizing it, planning it.
But the best evidence seems to suggest that the idea of the final solution, the idea of murdering all of the Jews, didn't really come about until 1941.
Hitler was planning, and there have been published letters, he was planning to expel all the Jews from Germany as early as 1919, but the idea of gassing them all to death was 1941, 1942 is when that plan was really put together and put into effect.
And so I was discussing this in a video because there's this concept nowadays of the Nazis as supervillains.
Most people out there, they get their image of the Nazis from Castle Wolfenstein or from the Captain America movie.
The idea of these guys in Hugo boss uniforms, they're just completely evil and want to take over the entire world.
And that's not an accurate historical explanation of who the Nazis actually were.
It has no subtlety for how they came into power.
And it really deprives us of being able to try and understand how genocides happen.
And I think that's an important question to be asking.
And so in this particular video, I said there was no plan for the Holocaust.
And some historians would disagree with me.
Others would agree with me.
That prior to 41, 42, there was no plan.
And that, like, once there was a plan, they implemented it.
Obviously, it didn't happen completely by accident.
It takes a little bit of planning to ship the gas to the labor camps.
But, you know, in context, it was pretty obvious what I was saying.
And given that I'm talking about how the Holocaust happened, I'm obviously not a Holocaust denier.
Although I will say, in the interest of free speech, it's absolutely sickening that Holocaust denial is a crime in many countries.
I mean, creationists are a great example to explain the principles of evolution to a wider audience.
And, you know, the Holocaust denial, having a debate with one of them is a great example for, or a great opportunity for historians to go over all the evidence.
The truth doesn't need to hide behind censorship, quite frankly.
No, girl, get back over here.
You're going to knock the tripod over.
Now, the dum-dum was out trolling through my videos looking for a quote that he could use to attack me.
And he came across this one.
He posted it out of context and accused me of being a Holocaust denier.
Now, the funny thing is, yeah, like I'm obviously not a Holocaust denier.
And he's really making an ass of himself by claiming that I am.
But no matter how many times he's presented with evidence that my opinion on the Holocaust, my, well, and first of all, it's an opinion based upon fact.
If you have better facts, give them to me.
I'll change my opinion.
But it's a mainstream opinion.
You know, I agree there are plenty of professional historians teaching classes that agree with me, and my opinion is taught in colleges and universities.
And yet he is absolutely convinced, even though I have said that, yeah, the Holocaust happened, that I'm a Holocaust denier.
So, what's going on here?
And this is not the first time I've had this happen.
It's like you write an article, and they take your thesis statement as if it was a slip of the tongue, as if it was a Freudian slip that gave away your secret motives when it's your bloody thesis statement.
It's like, no, I'm not being secretive, that's it right there.
That's what I literally said is what I literally mean.
And yet they take your literal statement and they start, oh God, he said that.
He didn't realize he said it, but he said that.
He must be whatever.
And it's something I've been puzzling about for a while now.
But I think I might have figured out why it happens.
Now, here's the thing.
When any of us, if any of us listen to opinions that we disagree with, it tends to irritate us.
You know, like this is why I don't read Jezebel, because it's really stupid.
You know, there's a lot of nonsense in there, and I just don't have the time for that.
You know, so I try and stick to things I like reading.
However, if I am going to analyze a feminist, you know, I will watch her video, I will read her writing, and the whole time I turn all the emotional affect off.
You know, that's just a natural part of being human, is that we like hearing people agree with us.
We don't like hearing people disagree with us.
But if you're actually honest, if you have intellectual integrity, if you're a true scholar, when you find something you disagree with, you turn off the emotions and you approach it with a scalpel.
And you look very carefully at what is being said, what the intention is, and you don't need to misconstrue things if they're wrong.
You know, you can just prove that they're wrong.
Or perhaps they're right and it's up to you to change your opinion.
That's for us regular people, though.
You know, we don't really like it, but it doesn't put us into a panic attack.
Now, with those that have suffered amygdale damage, what happens when they run into somebody that they disagree with is they get triggered.
They are just overwhelmed with emotions of antipathy.
You know, they just get furious.
They get into a panic attack.
And for some reason, the Holocaust in particular seems to be almost like an article of faith for the modern liberal atheist cult.
You know, not the Holodomor, not what the young Turks did to the Armenians, not the UN's failure with the Rwandan starvation and genocide.
You know, those don't trigger them, but the Holocaust, as soon as anybody that they disagree with on a fundamental level, whether it's because they're confident or even arrogant, Donald Trump, Trump 2016,
whether it's that or they're good looking or they're a winner or whatever, if they are upset by this person and this person mentions the Holocaust in any manner whatsoever, alarm bells start going off in their head.
They can't remove the emotional affect because it's triggering them so incredibly hard.
And so they can't think straight.
They can't listen to what is actually being said there.
Like facts and logic go out the window for them because they are way too emotional, way too wound up.
And so if they find one statement, you know, if they can find one sentence, so they don't have to listen to the whole thing.
They don't have to read the whole argument.
They can just find that one sentence.
That's all they can think about.
They are too emotionally excited.
They're having too much of a panic attack to actually understand the whole argument.
They can only focus on that one little bit, and they will use that to prove that the speaker is evil, that they are bad, they are politically incorrect.
And because the Holocaust is such an article of faith for them, Holocaust denial is evil, as opposed to just ignorant.
Now, this also explains, by the way, I mean, Thunderfoot's this guy that sells himself on being a scientist, on being rational.
So being completely irrational is really putting a lot of egg on his face.
And I mean, the guy's got like 10 times my subscribership.
I probably have a much higher total IQ amongst my subscribers, but he's got the larger subscribership.
So I'm a small fry.
Going after me, you know, is not really helping him.
In fact, it's completely undermining his credibility.
But he is having such an emotional reaction that he, again, he cannot think straight.
He cannot understand the entire argument I was presenting because he's overreacting.
He also can't think straight tactically or strategically.
And that, like, if you win this battle, it's not going to do anything good for you.
And if you lose this battle, it's going to really, really hurt you.
And yet he still makes it.
Well, this actually goes to the lack of self-control you find amongst leftists.
So here's the thing.
Take his profession.
What he does, science, he does a little bit like chemistry, some nuclear engineering as well, I think.
These are all numbers.
These are all facts.
You don't get emotionally engaged when you're simply talking about facts and science.
There's no investment of the self in any of that.
And so he, doing science, being moderately talented at it, he never had to learn any self-control.
And in interpersonal relationships, he lacks self-control as well, which is why he's attacking me so hard, even though it certainly doesn't profit him in any manner.
It's a topic that he can't be reasonable about because his identity is wrapped up in it.
And so you take this innocuous statement, you take the thesis statement that the Holocaust was not really planned until 4142, and that it was more organic factors that led to it.
And I believe in the video he quoted, I was saying that, listen, the internment of the Japanese citizens in America and Canada, if America and Canada had been starving, if the Japanese were invading our borders, it's quite possible that our societies might have wound up performing a Holocaust against the Japanese.
None of that will register with him because it's an emotional investment.
So, folks, when you're out there, when you're sending out feelers, looking out for people with amygdala damage or leftists or narcissists or people like that, this is one of the things you look for.
If they latch onto a single phrase somebody said and take an obsess over it and then conspire about it, you know, like this phrase means he's a Holocaust denier or that she's racist or that she, she, whatever.
If they're making unwarranted conclusions based upon a single statement, that's a sign that you're dealing with somebody that's not fundamentally rational, who lacks a lot of self-control, and who is prone to panics.
And if you get too close to them, they are very prone to treachery.
