Another extraordinary round of cybernat activity is drawn to my attention, this time on an article about Holocaust education. For some reason, there are people out there who believe that the Holocaust (6m+ dead, less than 60 years ago) is less relevant than Glencoe (78 dead, more than 300 years ago):"The killing of million of Jews is abhorant and a dark shadow on modern history. However, the Clearances and the Glencoe massacre has more of an effect on our (Highlands, Islands and MacDonalds) pyschie than Aushwiz, if you see what I mean." - Dave from Barra
No, Dave, I don't. I don't believe you're speaking for the whole of the Highlands and Islands, either.
One Richardinho (rumoured to work at Holyrood, and certainly an SNP supporter) dismisses the death camps as "Polish history".
"the 'most vital history lesson of all' for Scottish children would be to learn about Scottish history, not Polish history."
Others compare the Nazi exterminations to Culloden, a battle lost by an incompetent Jacobite leadership to the "Duck of Cumberland", a man so odious that one ex-pat in the thread refuses to eat Cumberland stew despite knowing there's no connection.
"It might be more appropriate to take Scottish school children on a tour of areas of concern to Scottish history including, for example, the battlefield of Culloden; there to be told of the butchery of the Duck of Cumberland. Visits to the likes of Auschwitz have no more relevance to Scottish school children than would an educational tour of the Siberian gulags where Stalin butchered millions of his own people; or to the killing fields of Cambodia or the sites of mass graves in the former Jugoslavia." - Guga II
Before the woad-covered backlash begins, yes, I am aware of the barbarism that followed Culloden. But no, I don't think there's much that can be generalised from the conflicts between the Jacobites and the Hanoverians, whereas Cambodia and the Balkans do illustrate the fact that genocide and ethnic cleansing are a continuing risk.
Most disturbing of all, perhaps, is the comment near the end (yes, I read these things so you don't have to) about the picture associated with the article, which shows Auschwitz inmates looking insufficiently gaunt for one "Brage", the prime denier in this thread. He notes that:
"Incidentally, the photographs at the begining of the article does not indicate that the purported inmates were starving!"
Words fail me. I do hope we're not really condemned to repetition.
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