Re: Censorship
Okay, this is reminding me a bit of Charlie Hebdo, and there was a lot of chatter online about this.
1. The reality is that we all make concessions with respect to Freedom of Speech (e.g. you're not allowed/ it is not socially normative to shout "fire" in a public place, or "bomb" in an airport).
2. Your argument (due to the very specific nature of your language) states that by employing censorship, we're JUST as bad as the Nazis. However, I propose that "Genocide", amongst other things attributed to Nazis, is ethically worse and more criminal than simple censorship.
3. We're not a public body. We're private, and that means there's nothing that makes us have to care about freedom of speech. Imagine that this were a forum for Mothers of students (I'm a teacher, so this is a fairly natural example). Do you think that said forum would have to tolerate swearing and 100% freedom of speech? They wouldn't dream of it. The same applies here.
Re: integration of blacks as signs they aren't racist.
The simple argument (although flawed in its simplicity) is the classic "I'm not a racist, I have black friends!" Frequently employed by people at my school, doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. I hope for the sake of sanity that that much is clear to you.
The sophisticated argument is that when you examine Empires of old, and even up until recently, the integration and assimilation of subjects into the Empire is a wise strategy, since by definition native citizens of the Empire will be outnumbered by the Empire's subjects. If you examine the most classic example of the Roman Empire, even they realised that the best way to sustain and maintain such a huge empire was integrate Barbarians (and even their Warlords, inherently extremely risky) into their armed forces, thus reducing the quality of their overall troops. As the Empire grows larger (like a School, or a Corporation), more and more bureaucracy occurs and wastes valuable resources. So integrating (and reducing the number of alienated subjects) is a CLASSIC strategy. Even the Romans realised it 2000 years ago, to the point they offered Citizenship as an incentive for military service, but also increasing loyalty to Rome. And even then it fell apart, as it always does.
The next case study is the British Empire. The reason this example is fascinating is that it began with mutual benefit through trading and cooperation. But the fact that the French were also competing for the Indian theatre of trade and a gateway to China meant that it was a such a prime location that it was worth fighting over. So the British and French made their respective local alliances and fought a short and brutal fight that decided which European power would be the dominant force in the region, militarily and economically.
The reason for bringing up this example is that the British were heavily, heavily outnumbered during their oppressive reign, literally to the point that there would only be hundreds, maybe a thousand total British in India. So how did they stay in power? The Indians, if united, could simply rise up against their British oppressors, and oppressors they were, as the original mutually beneficial status quo of trade had been entirely replaced by a subjugation of their people. So what kept the British in power? Their reliance on local native political allies. Prominent leaders of the Indians were allied with the British, to the detriment of their own people. And yet, despite this, all Indians were considering second class citizens, even the Indian allies.
Thus, the argument can be summarised as follows: Having Black "allies" does not show they are not racist, whether that refers to racist tendencies or institutionalised racism. In fact, as I have tried to show from case studies previous empires, the reality is probably the opposite to what we'd expect: they will tend to assimilate more agreeable parts of their oppressed populations, and put those allies into power to further oppress the more numerous subjects (after all, numerical advantage could have played a big part in the British subjugation of India). Not only that, they'd probably make these alliances very public, to convince the masses to join up rather than resist oppression.
And there is no question that Hitler saw his domain as an Empire, dubbing it the Third Reich, the second being the Holy Roman Empire, and the first being of course THE Roman Empire. (I mean, eagle imagery, Roman, Napoleonic, and Third Reich, it's not a coincidence. Also, the Imperium in WH40K! Double headed eagle anyone? Or strong Empire imagery?)
Re: Jewish representation of the Holocaust
First and foremost, guess what, this isn't our realm. This is the realm of peer review. If you don't have the guts to challenge what scientists have to say when it comes to science, you should respect peer review and accept that peer review accepts the Holocaust. Also, the reason I gave more than one example is because the persecution of Poles is unjust no matter what, regardless of who started it. That's all I have to say on the matter.
Re: Persecution of the Poles
So the actions of some soldiers on the German border justifies the systemic persecution of Civilian Poles across the entirety of Poland and beyond? Is that seriously your argument?
Remember, Total War was invented in this war. Civilians only started to be viewed as direct assets AFTER Poland got split up between Germany and Russia. Before this war, Civvies weren't seen as fair game. So this was a direct act of persecution. Thus your argument boils down to, a bunch of soldiers fucked with us in Germany, let's go to Poland and persecute EVERYONE there, including peasants who probably didn't know about or condone the actions of a few soldiers and politicians.
Think about it: if your country were to start a war you wanted no part in, and some enemy soldiers came over and fucked with you and your family, would you feel that's just?
Re: having homes to help the less well off
You have to realise that governments don't behave that straightforwardly. Here's an example:
The British nation boasts what it claims to be the most progressive socialist systems in the world. We have the National Health Service, an expansive Benefits system, so much so that the NHS is the single largest category when it comes to our Annual Budgets (I've seen them, it's pretty goddarned insane). On the other hand, the public sentiment nowadays is that there are a lot of parasites coming from the EU who try to exploit our nice fluffy comfy system. There is a lot of resentment towards immigrants (which I'm sure a lot of people know about).
Government and institutions on the other hand have biases. They always do, after all they are systems based on humans. So my housemate (who is from the EU and an immigrant) has been making legitimate claims for Benefits. Yet she gets treated like shit on the phone, and gets denied legitimate benefits. It's legitimately harder to get benefits when you're from the EU, because there's such a negative undercurrent against immigrants right now.
Further, having these systems doesn't mean that the biases of the population aren't propagated by the institution. There's no reason that they might not support "less welcome peoples" as opposed to more naturalised citizens, as with our Benefits system.
"Just check the goddamn testimonies":
Which are just anecdotal. Sure, they may have "personal experience" of said event, but let me tell you a story about anecdotal evidence.
The MMR vaccine was on course to cure the worldwide problem of Measles, Mumps and Rubella. But then after one "study" based off anecdotal evidence, parents willing chose to not vaccinate their children. This is because they believed that there was causation based off the fact that there was correlation between their children developing autism and the date at which their child received the vaccine.
Of course there is no such link, otherwise we would see a decline in autism rates after said vaccine was withdrawn. But that didn't stop the hype, and that didn't stop people believing that autism can be caused by vaccines containing mercury. Sure, they had a lot of personal experience of autism, but they didn't see the full picture.
You may say that this case is different, but I view them as the same. Sure those Jews had personal experience, but is any one individual likely to have seen the entire picture? As I argued before, I'm sure there were Black sympathists towards the Nazi cause, and I'm sure there were Black people allied with them. Similarly, I'm sure there were some Jews who didn't have such a rough war. But their anecdotal evidence is trumped by the sheer weight of academic peer reviewed journals, not to mention the weight of anecdotal evidence the other way.
Here's an excellent video about anecdotal evidence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ZZTjChW4oI must apologize, the 'Hitler did nothing wrong' comment was mostly me getting carried away. He did several critical mistakes which put Germany on a poor position and eventually lost him the war, such as declaring war on the Soviet Union. But nothing related to things like ethnic cleansing and genocide when he did everything he could to ensure the Jews left safely, and those who wouldn't, had hotel-like conditions in concentration camps.
Don't apologise, I wasn't talking about any of that stuff at all. We're talking cold hard ethics.