Same reason people say Gaza genocide is not real.
Who the fuck says that? I get taking a defensive stance for Israel but pretty much saying all Gazans and Civis aren’t getting fucked is mind blowing.
Don’t take fascists at their word. They’re lying to you, they don’t believe it was fake, they want you to doubt it and cede ground. Don’t engage with them, they’re operating in bad faith
100% this is the answer. They deny reality, hoping you will too. The whole goal is collective dismissal of past horrors, so they can do them again, or pretend they aren’t that bad. See what Israel is doing to Gaza for a literal playbook for what they want to do to minorities. They can’t fucking wait to pave over their bodies and pretend they’re victors of a holy war.
These aren’t people with a normal sense of empathy.
It’s also a tactic to control the conversation. Even if you don’t doubt it, even just engaging to prove it gives their bullshit undeserved credibility. Every response is a losing proposition; your best option at that point is “fuck off, clown.”
Right. They understand it puts them in a bad light, and people they hate in a sympathetic one, so they deny it happened.
“It never happened, but if it did it was a good thing and I hope we do it again!”
Want an even better question? How can they deny it and celebrate it at the same time?
That’s racism. It’s always double standards, double speak, and cognitive dissonance.
Oh a good black man with a law degree from Harvard, who is also a civil rights attorney, who lectures at Harvard Law in constitutional law, who’s deeply qualified ran and got a senate seat? He’s now a meteoric success, now he’s president? Well… he’s not REALLY black! He’s only HALF black! It hardly counts.
A black man robbed a store? SEE! SEE! THEY’RE ALL LIKE THAT! ALL OF THEM!! He’s only 1/4 black? Well obviously he got enough of the black genes to be a born criminal! They’re all like that!!!
There was a show almost ten years ago were a black comedian went to racist groups to live with them for a day or a week or so. It actually had surprisingly little drama, maybe helped change some minds. Obviously it wasn’t very successful as a show.
In one episode he was living with a couple who absolutely denied the Holocaust. Towards the end the guy and his girlfriend were going back and forth agreeing on how much they didn’t believe it happened, until the girl said something like “I don’t think it happened but you know… It should have”. The man seemed a little shocked by that. It ended with the comedian and the racist talking things out and it at least seemed the guy was in thought.
It’s a very dark part of conspiracism in general. The same tactics, both conscious and unconscious, are used to evangelise these ideas - and defend them despite being indefensible - as are used in all conspiracy theories and “alternative” views of established fact.
So, it has less to do with the available evidence, and more to do with personality flaws. It’s not even about reasoning skills or intelligence - the more intelligent you are, the less likely you’ll be to change your views because you’re so good at generating narratives that support your position. It’s a deep flaw in human psychology that can’t be reasoned away, and trying to combat these ideas with facts just reinforces them and gives them credibility (which is why no one with any sense debates Holocaust deniers anymore). It’s like when a schizophrenic person hallucinates; you don’t want to do or say anything that makes the hallucination seem real, you don’t want to say “where is the creature? Here? I’m stamping on it, is it gone? I don’t see it!” you simply accept that they’re hallucinating and don’t engage with it beyond that. Extreme example, but the logic is the same.
Never underestimate how absolutely fucking stupid people are
Conspiratorial thinking.
Many people are motivated by a need to feel superior to others, have a strong distrust of authority, and/or feel that acceptance of a belief system is a requirement of their internalized group identity.
They’re afraid of a simple truth: they don’t matter.
In the grand scheme of things, none of us do. Not even those “remembered” by history. A person is so much more than a name or the deeds they accomplished, but none of that will last beyond your death. Not for any of us.
You can’t assume they are arguing with a genuine belief. They don’t care whether or not those people died. They want to debate you over the validity of their claims.
Some people genuinely believe the world is flat despite all the evidence against it. That some deny historical events shouldn’t be too shocking.
Some folks just have a hard time believing something so horrible could’ve happened.
Other folks believe it happened but are spreading disinformation and pretending like they don’t. The “just asking questions” type. They’re Nazis, plain and simple.
If something disagrees with someone’s world view, they can either update their world view or find a way to not believe it. Someone whose world view has become their identity will struggle a lot to update that world view, so it’s cognitively easier for them to believe a conspiracy theory instead.
So basically, motivated reasoning.
You are assuming they argue in good faith, I consider any holocaust denier to argue in bad faith and I will not engage with them.
If you see someone starting to accept their arguments, you can absolutely start questioning them and try and reason with them to get away from that scene, but a die hard holocaust denier is simply not worth your time or energy.
Just disengage and move on.
Because people like that don’t believe in the evidence or think it is faked.
Hate and an inherent distrust of ‘the experts,’ or as they may see it, ‘the establishment/system’
But mostly hate and stupidity
This is the same core issue with flat earthers, moon landing deniers, and the anti-vaxxers. There’s just a core element of their minds that has flipped and now denies established and accepted truths simply because they are otherwise accepted.
Fear. It starts with fear. As Matter Yoda taught us.
The same way the same kind of people are managing to deny history’s first livestreamed genocide: hate.
