Japanese war crimes and overdue apologies

Started by Jolene December 6th, 2009 8:50 AM
  • 1846 views
  • 42 replies

Jolene

Your huckleberry friend

Age 27
Female
Seen September 25th, 2012
Posted September 25th, 2012
1,287 posts
13.8 Years
I've been studying 20'th century history and I learned that Japan did a lot of bad stuff before when they were an empire. I always knew that they were bad to our prisoners of war, but they did even worse things to the people who lived in China:

(Don't read these if you are easily grossed out)


Nanking Massacre:


Spoiler:
In 1928, the Chinese Nationalist Government moved the capital of China from Peking to Nanking. The city normally held about 250,000 people, but by the mid-1930's its population had swollen to more than 1 million. Many of them were refugees, fleeing from the Japanese armies which had invaded China since 1931. On November 11, 1937, after securing control of Shanghai, the Japanese army advanced towards Nanking from different directions. In early December, the Japanese troops were already in the proximity of Nanking.
On December 9, after unsuccessfully demanding the defending Chinese troops in Nanking to surrender, the Japanese troops launched a massive attack upon the city. On the 12th, the defending Chinese troops decided to retreat to the other side of Yangtze River. On the 13th of December, the 6th and the 116th Divisions of the Japanese Army first entered the city. At the same time, the 9th Division entered Guang Hua Gate, and the 16th Division entered Zhong Shan Gate and the Tai Ping Gate. In the afternoon, two Japanese Navy fleets arrived on both sides of the Yangtze River. On the same day, December 13th, 1937, Nanking fell to the Japanese. In the next six weeks, the Japanese committed the infamous Nanking Massacre, or the Rape of Nanking, during which an estimated 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed, and 20,000 women were raped.
During the Nanking Massacre, the Japanese committed a litany of atrocities against innocent civilians, including mass execution, rape, looting, and burning. It is impossible to keep a detailed account of all of these crimes. However, from the scale and the nature of these crimes as documented by survivors and the diaries of the Japanese militarists, the chilling evidence of this historical tragedy is indisputable.


THE TRAGEDY AT YANGTZE RIVER


On December 13th, a large number of refugees tried to escape from the Japanese by trying to cross the Yangtze River. They were trapped on the east bank because no transportation was available; many of them tried to swim across the river. Meanwhile, the Japanese arrived and fired at the people on the shore and in the river. A Japanese soldier reported that the next day he saw an uncountable number of dead bodies of adults and children covering the whole river. He estimated that more than 50,000 people were killed at this tragic incident of the Nanking massacre.



ANNIHILATION IN THE CITY

When the Japanese troops first entered the city on the 13th, the streets were crowded with more than 100,000 refugees or injured Chinese soldiers. The Japanese relentlessly fired at these people. The next morning, tanks and artilleries entered the city and killing of people continued. Dead bodies covered the two major streets of the city. The streets became "streets of blood" as a result of the two-day annihilation.


MASS EXECUTION OF CAPTIVES

A large number of Chinese soldiers had already been captured in the suburban areas before the Japanese entered the city. The rest of the Chinese soldiers scattered inside the city and changed into civilian clothes. After the "City-Entering Ceremony" on the 17th, the Japanese arrested anybody who was suspected to be a Chinese soldier. A large number of young men who were arrested, together with those who had been captured earlier, were sent outside of the city to be massacred, from several thousand to tens of thousand at a time. In most cases, the captives were shot by machine guns, and those who were still alive were bayoneted individually. In some cases, the Japanese poured gasoline onto the captives and burned them alive. In some cases, poison gas was used.


SCATTERED ATROCITIES WITH EXTREME CRUELTY

Numerous atrocities occurred within and around the city, and the victims were largely civilians. Japanese soldiers invented and exercised inhumane and barbaric methods of killing. The brutalities included shooting, stabbing, cutting open the abdomen, excavating the heart, decapitation (beheading), drowning, burning, punching the body and the eyes with an awl, and even castration.


SEXUAL ASSAULT

An estimated 20,000 women were sexually assaulted by the Japanese soldiers during the six weeks of the Nanking Massacre, and most were brutally killed afterwards. Those who resisted were killed immediately, and if brothers or husbands attempted to intervene they were shot.


ATROCITIES IN THE SAFETY ZONE

When the Japanese were approaching Nanking in mid-November, a group of concerned foreigners formed an international rescue committee to establish a safety zone in an attempt to protect the refugees. The safety zone was located inside the city and consisted of more than twenty refugee camps, each of which accommodated from 200 to 12,000 people. During the six weeks of the Nanking Massacre, the Japanese frequently entered the safety zone to arrest young men. Every time, several hundred young men were arrested and executed on the site.


LOOTING

The Japanese looted all the storehouses and seized virtually everything from the civilians. The loot included jewelry, coins, domesticated animals, food, clothes, antiques, and even inexpensive items such as cigarettes, eggs, fountain pens, and buttons.


BURNING AND VANDALISM

The Japanese organized burning of buildings in the city. After they had set fire to buildings using either gasoline or some other inflammable chemicals, they hid, waited for and killed people who came to extinguish the fire. Numerous people were killed by fire. Nanking, once a beautiful historical city, was burned to ashes by the Japanese.



Human experimentation:

Spoiler:

"The prisoner knew that it was over for him and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down," recalled the 72-year-old farmer, who was once a medical assistant in a Japanese army during World War II. "But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming. I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time."

Finally, the old man, who insisted on anonymity, explained the reason for the vivisection: The prisoner, who was Chinese, had been deliberately infected with the plague, as part of a research project, the full horror of which is only now emerging, to develop plague bombs for use in World War II.. After being infected, he was cut open so the Japanese doctors could see how his internal organs had been affected.

That research program was one of the great secrets of Japan during and after World War II: a vast project to develop weapons of biological warfare, including plague, anthrax, cholera and a dozen other pathogens. unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army conducted research by experimenting on humans and by "field testing" plague bombs by dropping them on Chinese cities to see whether they could start plague outbreaks. They could.

Scholars and former members of the unit say that at least 3000 people and by some accounts several times that number were killed in the medical experiments; none survived. No one knows how many died in the "field testing"
It is becoming evident that the Japanese officers in charge of the program hoped to use their weapons against the United States. They proposed using balloon bombs to carry disease to America and they had a plan in the summer of 1945 to use kamikaze pilots to dump plague infected fleas on San Diego.

The accounts now emerging are wrenching to read even after so much time has passed: a Chinese mother and daughter reportedly left in a gas chamber, for example, as doctors peer through the thick glass and time their convulsions, watching as the woman sprawls over her child in a futile effort to save her from the gas.



And what's really bad is the Japanese government still hasn't apologized for what they did, and they refuse to admit that they did wrong. They also seem to be trying to pretend that it didn't happen because they don't teach it in much detail at schools, so a lot of Japanese kids don't even know about it. I think that's appalling. I think that the Japanese government should forget their pride for a bit and say sorry for what their country did to China.

Do you agree?

What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Joliet is the sun!

parallelzero

chelia.blendy

Age 32
The capital of Canada (not Toronto)
Seen May 11th, 2015
Posted May 20th, 2013
14,627 posts
19.3 Years
Yeah... Just because it's about Japan doesn't mean it belongs in Japanese Entertainment. It certainly isn't an entertaining subject... >.x

Moved

SKY GOD SLAYER: CHELIA BLENDY
twitter + raptr + myanimelist + tumblr
Age 29
Seen November 5th, 2017
Posted November 5th, 2017
3,499 posts
14.8 Years
Atrocities are committed by all sides in war. I'm rather sure Allied nations also supported forms of human experimentation; also the Tokyo bombings, Dresden bombings and the nuclear warheads dropped on Nagasaki & Hiroshima show that both sides are capable of committing terrible deeds. War is never pretty.
There were plenty of post-war trials to try and punish those responsible for war crimes. Not sure what an apology is worth when it's something like this, but anyway:
Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, in August 1995, stated that Japan "through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations", and he expressed his "feelings of deep remorse" and stated his "heartfelt apology". Also, on September 29, 1972, Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka stated: "[t]he Japanese side is keenly conscious of the responsibility for the serious damage that Japan caused in the past to the Chinese people through war, and deeply reproaches itself."
I guess they apologised already.

processr

Age 30
Male
Southampton
Seen November 18th, 2016
Posted April 11th, 2014
1,608 posts
18 Years
Spoiler: a lot of countries did a lot of bad stuff. Official apologies are only symbolic, and mean very little. With regards to the 'covering up' of that period of history, other countries do the same - British schoolchildren don't learn about the Boer Wars, where Lord Kitchener installed concentration camps to control the population of South Africa. All the information about these sort of things is available on the Internet, so it can be found. (There are some issues with systems like the Golden Shield, I appreciate.)

Jolene

Your huckleberry friend

Age 27
Female
Seen September 25th, 2012
Posted September 25th, 2012
1,287 posts
13.8 Years
Spoiler: a lot of countries did a lot of bad stuff. Official apologies are only symbolic, and mean very little. With regards to the 'covering up' of that period of history, other countries do the same - British schoolchildren don't learn about the Boer Wars, where Lord Kitchener installed concentration camps to control the population of South Africa. All the information about these sort of things is available on the Internet, so it can be found. (There are some issues with systems like the Golden Shield, I appreciate.)
British schools teach the Boer War at sixth form level. I know some people who are studying it at the minute.

And the concentration camps in the Boer War weren't designed to kill people or make them suffer. They were set up to stop civilians from helping the enemy soldiers. But the problem was the people who ran them didn't have enough resources or knowledge to support all the people, so a lot of them died from starvation or disease. It's still really bad though.

What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Joliet is the sun!

processr

Age 30
Male
Southampton
Seen November 18th, 2016
Posted April 11th, 2014
1,608 posts
18 Years
British schools teach the Boer War at sixth form level. I know some people who are studying it at the minute.
Ah, I'll admit defeat there. The people in my school have been studying Irish history (though that's hardly any better when you consider their historical relations with Britain), which is why I had said that.
Seen September 18th, 2020
Posted February 18th, 2018
7,741 posts
16.6 Years
“Only the winners decide what were war crimes.”—Gary Wills

And that's my take on it, what is good or bad, any given scenario, is a merely subjective standpoint. No nation needs to apologise for being itself.
The treatment of prisoners makes a good example of this. In Japan it is/was a great dishonour for a warrior to be captured, and a shame to his family and nation. Retention of honour is/was more important a concept than retention of life, and so as per their culture they were right to treat captives as subhuman. It is an exclusively Western ideal that everyone deserves something.


British schools teach the Boer War at sixth form level. I know some people who are studying it at the minute.
But sixth form isn't children.

Miz en Scène

Everybody's connected

Male
The Wired
Seen 2 Days Ago
Posted August 30th, 2016
1,645 posts
14.7 Years
“Only the winners decide what were war crimes.”—Gary Wills

And that's my take on it, what is good or bad, any given scenario, is a merely subjective standpoint. No nation needs to apologise for being itself.
The treatment of prisoners makes a good example of this. In Japan it is/was a great dishonour for a warrior to be captured, and a shame to his family and nation. Retention of honour is/was more important a concept than retention of life, and so as per their culture they were right to treat captives as subhuman. It is an exclusively Western ideal that everyone deserves something.
Basically, what you just said means that cruelty is relative?
I'm sorry but I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. If the Nazis won WW2, the other countries would still teach about the atrocities committed during the holocaust in schools, and that would still qualify as being wrong. That's if Germany doesn't stop it from being printed of course. Still, no matter whose side it's on it's still wrong.

Take for example Great Britain. Malaysia gained independence from GB in 1957. Even though you can say that GB technically won in that war, we still remember the hundred years of unfair taxation and rules that the British people used on Malaysia during the colonial age. Its still treated as a war crime-somewhat- in schools in Malaysia these days. We've forgiven Britain though.

I think what you mean is, war crimes are relative to the country. What constitutes as war crimes may constitute as strategy for the other side.
» Fiction «
Havisham
SWC 2011
» Fanfiction «
The Rainbow Chasers
SWC 2016 (1st Place)
——
The Promise I Made to You
SWC 2012 (2nd Place)
——
The Best
Pokecreepypasta Entry 2010
——
Using Firefox and see a scrollbar?
Tell me so I can fix it! (Hopefully)
» TBD «

Want a fanfic review?
Just ask me!

Got a review from me?
Pay it forward!
Drop a comment or a review on someone else's fic. I'm sure they'll appreciate it!
Age 33
Male
Seen July 15th, 2015
Posted June 30th, 2015
8,343 posts
17.9 Years
The fact that it was culturally acceptable at the time for the Japanese to mistreat prisoners of war is not a valid moral or legal justification for such behavior. Other Japanese war crimes, namely human experimentation and the forced prostitution of women in occupied territories, are utterly indefensible from any standpoint.

22sa

ロミオとシンデレ �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��

Male
Canada
Seen January 11th, 2023
Posted November 9th, 2022
8,421 posts
19.7 Years
The fact that it was culturally acceptable at the time for the Japanese to mistreat prisoners of war is not a valid moral or legal justification for such behavior. Other Japanese war crimes, namely human experimentation and the forced prostitution of women in occupied territories, are utterly indefensible from any standpoint.
As far as I'm concerned, the Russians were much worse... see the statistic may have been 20k raped in Nanking, but it was 2 million in Germany when the Russians invaded. And over 10 million in Eastern Europe all towards, all thanks to allowing the Russians to advance through them.

At least (besides Nanking) Japan's forced prostitution tactic using a select group of women saved the rest of the local female populations from the evil.

This is another reason I actually like the Nazi Army. They weren't only good fighters, but they abstained from the activities of rape which most armies committed in WW2 and throughout history.

. きみさえ~ いれば

Jolene

Your huckleberry friend

Age 27
Female
Seen September 25th, 2012
Posted September 25th, 2012
1,287 posts
13.8 Years
This is another reason I actually like the Nazi Army. They weren't only good fighters, but they abstained from the activities of rape which most armies committed in WW2 and throughout history.
No they didn't. They had millitary brothels all over Eastern Europe full of people who were forced to work there.

What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Joliet is the sun!

22sa

ロミオとシンデレ �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��

Male
Canada
Seen January 11th, 2023
Posted November 9th, 2022
8,421 posts
19.7 Years
No they didn't. They had millitary brothels all over Eastern Europe full of people who were forced to work there.
o.O Can't say I've heard that one before

. きみさえ~ いれば
Age 29
Seen November 5th, 2017
Posted November 5th, 2017
3,499 posts
14.8 Years
As far as I'm concerned, the Russians were much worse... see the statistic may have been 20k raped in Nanking, but it was 2 million in Germany when the Russians invaded. And over 10 million in Eastern Europe all towards, all thanks to allowing the Russians to advance through them.
This isn't really a matter of who was better or worse. You're also comparing the statistics from a single Chinese city to an entire country. The Red Army was also much larger than the Imperial Japanese army, so there's bound to me more cases of rape, civilian murder etc.

At least (besides Nanking) Japan's forced prostitution tactic using a select group of women saved the rest of the local female populations from the evil.
Don't try to justify something like that, it cannot be justified in any case.

This is another reason I actually like the Nazi Army. They weren't only good fighters, but they abstained from the activities of rape which most armies committed in WW2 and throughout history.
Plenty of women were raped throughout Poland by Wehrmacht soldiers during the Nazi invasion.

22sa

ロミオとシンデレ �� �� �� �� �� �� �� ��

Male
Canada
Seen January 11th, 2023
Posted November 9th, 2022
8,421 posts
19.7 Years
They're not well-known because they weren't tried at the Nuremberg Trials. Google it.
All right :P

This isn't really a matter of who was better or worse. You're also comparing the statistics from a single Chinese city to an entire country. The Red Army was also much larger than the Imperial Japanese army, so there's bound to me more cases of rape, civilian murder etc.

Don't try to justify something like that, it cannot be justified in any case.

Plenty of women were raped throughout Poland by Wehrmacht soldiers during the Nazi invasion.
Just saying, it's hypocritical of them to yell at Japan for war crime of rape when their ally Russia was even worse. It was 100k+ victims in Berlin, and Vienna too, if you want city statistics.

I agree no human rights violation can be justified, but it just might have been the lesser of two evils to prostitute some women to save the rest of the local female population. It's hardly better, but it's somewhat better, for the possibility at least that it actually minimized the number of women victimized. The Russian army on the other hand were ordered to violate every female in conquered territories of Eastern Europe (all females from ages 8 to 80 I heard).

. きみさえ~ いれば
Age 29
Seen November 5th, 2017
Posted November 5th, 2017
3,499 posts
14.8 Years
Just saying, it's hypocritical of them to yell at Japan for war crime of rape when their ally Russia was even worse. It was 100k+ victims in Berlin, and Vienna too, if you want city statistics.
So you say there were about 20,000 rapes in Nanjing, there were approximately 70,000 Japanese soldiers stationed there. So statistically speaking, about 29% of the army raped someone. There were approximately 2,500,000 Soviet soldiers in Berlin, 100,000 rapes; So 4% of the army committed rape.

Of course, it wasn't 'one rape per soldier', this is just hypothetically speaking to show that you can't just look at a number and say "Oh, more women were raped in Berlin, so the Soviets must have been worse!". You can never place an exact number on this sort of thing either considering a good number of the victims were murdered afterwards and there's no way to accurately record such devestation.

I agree no human rights violation can be justified, but it just might have been the lesser of two evils to prostitute some women to save the rest of the local female population. It's hardly better, but it's somewhat better, for the possibility at least that it actually minimized the number of women victimized.
Perhaps a better solution would have been to better discipline their troops and ban any form of rape or forced prostitution?

The Russian army on the other hand were ordered to violate every female in conquered territories of Eastern Europe (all females from ages 8 to 80 I heard).
The Russian soldiers were ordered to rape people? I doubt that, I expect their commanders were too busy, idk, ordering their soldiers to fight? Most soldiers committed these acts from their own will. Some individuals may have ordered troops under their command to rape any women they found, but there was no widespread order given to every soldier throughout the army as far as I know.
The Japanese military on the other hand sanctioned these brothels and "forced prostitution" (which is basically rape anyway, in my eyes.) I'm sure the Japanese didn't care about the age of those they raped either, children wouldn't have been spared.

The Japanese were just as bad as the Soviets, if not worse.
Age 32
Male
Seen May 16th, 2011
Posted October 28th, 2010
5,058 posts
18.3 Years
This is another reason I actually like the Nazi Army. They weren't only good fighters, but they abstained from the activities of rape which most armies committed in WW2 and throughout history.
...
...
...

Words do not describe what an ill informed and highly insensitive comment that was. The Nazis committed mass torture, murders, rapes of jewish and other minority women etc when they invaded the USSR. The rapes carried out by the Red Army weren't at all right, but they were out of vendetta against the Germans for the atrocities committed to their women (and men too) on their own soil.

And for you to claim nearly every army except the Nazis committed rape against civilians on a notable scale is sickening. There are few reported cases of the British, Canadian, Italian armies and many more ever committing mass rapes of civilians.
Seen April 9th, 2021
Posted February 5th, 2017
6,779 posts
15.5 Years
...
...
...

Words do not describe what an ill informed and highly insensitive comment that was. The Nazis committed mass torture, murders, rapes of jewish and other minority women etc when they invaded the USSR. The rapes carried out by the Red Army weren't at all right, but they were out of vendetta against the Germans for the atrocities committed to their women (and men too) on their own soil.

And for you to claim nearly every army except the Nazis committed rape against civilians on a notable scale is sickening. There are few reported cases of the British, Canadian, Italian armies and many more ever committing mass rapes of civilians.
You make it sound like everything the Nazis did was bad. They were the first people to start an anti-tobacco movement. Now note: I did say that's what it sounds like you said, not what you said.

Other Japanese war crimes, namely human experimentation and the forced prostitution of women in occupied territories, are utterly indefensible from any standpoint.
How is human subject research bad? I know they did it to test out objects of war and such, but experimentation is only bad when gaining knowledge is bad.




They apologized. So what? Apologies don't make up for the casualties. I doubt something like this can ever be set straight when no one has the right to do these atrocities. But I'll accept apologies since it's much better than nothing.
Age 31
Male
Seen November 9th, 2021
Posted March 17th, 2015
3,517 posts
18.2 Years
You make it sound like everything the Nazis did was bad. They were the first people to start an anti-tobacco movement. Now note: I did say that's what it sounds like you said, not what you said.
Well, I guess they were planning on recycling the shoes of Jews...so I guess that means we should look up them as being environmentalists as well!
How is human subject research bad? I know they did it to test out objects of war and such, but experimentation is only bad when gaining knowledge is bad.
Forcing medical experimentation* on people is okay? You should be sent to an institution if you think that's fine and dandy.


*By medical experimentation, I'm talking about all the macabre atrocities like sewing people together to create synthetic Siamese twins.
Ten year old account


Never expect me to post


Except when I do
Seen April 9th, 2021
Posted February 5th, 2017
6,779 posts
15.5 Years
Forcing medical experimentation* on people is okay? You should be sent to an institution if you think that's fine and dandy.


*By medical experimentation, I'm talking about all the macabre atrocities like sewing people together to create synthetic Siamese twins.
That depends, to be honest. They are still people if they are dead, which I am for, since Da Vinci himself cut up cadavers to see the human body, which led us to modern medicine. I am against experimentation that is forced unless a moderately large amount of knowledge can be gained from it(which is kinda my first point, but cadavers can't talk, so yeah :/). I don't see the point of atrocities like that when it doesn't even help medicine and seems more like an attempt to see if we could do it instead of what help it might bring to modern medicine. :|
And war reasons don't count either. I find war to be the last option, and a necessary evil.
And we really don't need more tools of destruction when countries like America have over 20,000 nuclear bombs in stock.
Age 26
In your mind
Seen February 8th, 2012
Posted July 10th, 2010
1,709 posts
14.9 Years
It was war. The very nature of war is to cause damage to humans. All sides committed terrible atrocities, and everyone tends to like to hide what they did.

For example, everybody that's form America is likely to remember Pearl Harbor. (I get a lot of crap about it myself, me being half-Japanese) However, how many know what it was like in the prison camps? I believe this is an accurate enough testimony.

"In the camps we didn’t really have any of our belongings because we were told that we could only bring with us what we could carry. We were taken away from our jobs, homes, places of worship, and schools, and even separated from our families. We were forced to live in these small barracks with hundreds of other people. The living quarters were extremely tight, with people basically sleeping on top of us. We had to eat and sleep when they told us to, and of course the food was barely edible. We were restricted to these tiny perimeters in the camp, surrounded by armed military personnel. Many of the camps that we lived in were located in cold areas, where we would freeze and be surrounded by extreme amounts of dust."

Admittedly, not as bad as what Hitler did to the Jews. It was still an atrocious act that I barely remember being mention in a sentence in my US History book.

As you can see, all sides do terrible things in war. Often, details are left out. People tend to be quite egotistical about their nationality. They like to leave out little details about their own shortcomings.

As for war crimes, they are inexcusable. Even so, it's not fair to only target Japan. Every country committed war crimes, and every country tends to leave them out of the picture.

BLACKROCKSHOOTER
Age 33
Male
Seen July 15th, 2015
Posted June 30th, 2015
8,343 posts
17.9 Years


That depends, to be honest. They are still people if they are dead, which I am for, since Da Vinci himself cut up cadavers to see the human body, which led us to modern medicine. I am against experimentation that is forced unless a moderately large amount of knowledge can be gained from it(which is kinda my first point, but cadavers can't talk, so yeah :/). I don't see the point of atrocities like that when it doesn't even help medicine and seems more like an attempt to see if we could do it instead of what help it might bring to modern medicine. :|
If the members of Unit 731 were simply studying natural outbreaks of plague, anthrax, and other diseases in Manchuria by dissecting cadavers, that would have been fine. However, Unit 731 personnel deliberately infected civilian populations with those diseases and vivisected their subjects in order to study them, and that's not even getting into all the other things they did.

Agent Cobalt

Proud U.S. Army Soldier

Age 33
Male
New Jersey
Seen December 11th, 2009
Posted December 10th, 2009
191 posts
14.9 Years
Well, I guess they were planning on recycling the shoes of Jews...so I guess that means we should look up them as being environmentalists as well!Forcing medical experimentation* on people is okay? You should be sent to an institution if you think that's fine and dandy.


*By medical experimentation, I'm talking about all the macabre atrocities like sewing people together to create synthetic Siamese twins.
It's just a classic example of moral relativism. Sure, ______ *may have* done some "bad" things during ______, but they also ______.

The fact of the matter is that, despite the Holocaust and war crimes, the fascists were considered by - and no this isn't a slam here - the American and European left to be shining examples of how we needed to be.

The Nazis (or national socialists) and Fascists supported government involvement in the economy, supported socializing/nationalizing all trusts, supported secularism, supported separation of church and state, were one of the first environmentalist political parties, contributed to the origin of the green movement, opposed unregulated capitalism, supported tobacco prohibition, spawned the health movement, supported eugenics, supported social darwinism, supported gun control, supported welfare, supported big labor and unions, supported child labor laws, employed youth movements, supported corporatism, supported the abolition of unearned income, supported pensions for the elderly, supported land reform, demanded national education reform, supported redistribution of wealth from business, wanted lowered voting ages, supported the end of drafts, supported minimum wage laws, supported 8 hour work days, supported worker safety reform laws, wanted the stock market abolished, and demanded centralized government.

Yes, before we were at war with them, Fascists were widely idolized and considered revolutionary and progressive. The Fascists of Europe and American Progressives had much in common and often idolized eachother's policies, beliefs, written works, platforms, parties, movements, and politicians. There are countless examples of those on the political left showing admiration for the societies of Italy and Germany after their switches to Fascism. The Progressives saw Fascist Italy as a vision of the future, and likewise Mussolini looked at FDR's New Deal and saw an ally.

So it's important to understand that it's really not shocking that when you turn the clock back before the genocide and war crimes, you get policies that many on the left today (and even back in the twentieth century) find favorable. And that's where this moral relativism displayed here comes from. "Sure we all agree that the Nazis ethnically cleansed millions of human beings, but hey, at least they modernized highways and hated evil tobacco products." Once you get past the mass murder and bigotry, their policies and beliefs are still supported and applauded. This is just one example of the historical short-sightedness and world amnesia that exists today.

(Now no, and I can't stress this enough, this doesn't mean today that those on the left support genocide and whatnot)