387 posts shown.
@Nathan Richardson2, I’m not even gonna bother with your circular logic. If you keep playing pretend about the victims of that Nazi regime, expect those penalties to keep coming.
Honestly, we should probably just merge every thread where I'm mentioned in the title to stop cluttering up this subforum. It’s all the same repetitive stuff anyway, especially regarding those two rules in that History PDF. I just brought it up yesterday..
Nathan Richardson2 said:lonetrucker4 is back at it again with the ideological insults: Breaking the rules again—denying the victims of that regime. Same old story.
Maybe you feel personally attacked because they won't let you deny the victims of that fascist regime. Look, I'm not getting into your headspace—you're entitled to your own feelings—but those are just the rules.
He can't even tell the difference between Camp III and Camp II C.
The confusion was always about distinguishing between "Camp III C" and that specific, separate section called the "appendix," according to Riffer. (Camp III is the brickyard—basically what most people picture when they talk about the Jasenovac camp, even though that whole thing is just one massive collection of camps.)
He hasn't even got a clue when the official record says the Romani people actually suffered.
Look, I’m talking about that actual scientific study from 2015—the one packed with a mountain of documents that nobody had even seen before. You just keep brushing it off. I pointed out that according to that research, the order to round up all the Romani people and ship them off to Jasenovac went out on May 19, 1942. It was all carried out in about twenty days, and within a few months, most of them were gone. The data from the itemized list of victims lines up perfectly with that.
He doesn't even get the name right—he keeps calling him Rifter when he's actually talking about Milka Riffer.
That’s just a typo. I wasn't even the one to bring him up—you mentioned him first, and then Kiseli1 started quoting his book, "Dead City."
He’s got no clue they were being wiped out at the fortress before they even stepped foot in the camp.
So, Riffer, along with all the other witnesses and the actual paperwork, is just lying in your book? Real convenient. Riffer was writing... How does Kiseli1 cite him?The Roma were shoved into that "Roma camp," basically just an appendix—a little blind spot tucked inside Camp III C. Honestly, you'd have to cut that thing out immediately just to give the dying organism that was Camp III C a fighting chance at staying alive.
He’s totally ignoring the fact that his ideological twin just flat-out denies Ante Ciliga was ever even in the camp in the very next post!
Kiseli1—who you call my "ideological twin" (since we both take a realistic look at the crimes of the fascist regime and back it up with scholarly sources)—was in one post quoting a historical text ("Who is Who in the WWII era") which mentions Ciliga spent a short stint in the Jasenovac camp after being arrested late in 1941 and released in January 1942. The mass deportations of the Romani people didn't kick off until late May and June of 1942, so Ciliga isn't some witness to their fate.
Then, in that same breath, Kiseli1 quotes a German intelligence document and concludes, "no mention of his stay in Jasenovac." That's a completely different game than the one you're playing.
I already broke down how the user Nathan Richardson2 handles the subject of the Jasenovac camp group victims in two separate posts over on the "itemized list of victims" thread #11o and #111.
lonetrucker4 said:Either there's some camp archive sitting in the Jasenovac camp group (like #1024)—which is total BS—or...
Total slip-up. They're pushing this idea that the Ustaše camp archives survived and are being hidden away somewhere in Belgrade. It’s just the same old copy-paste nonsense floating around with zero basis in reality.
Seeing this stuff made me dive back into the Jasenovac topic and really rethink how I'm handling my moderation duties.
Got my mod badge back in December. If you want to see the chaos from that period, check out page 49.
Before that, between September 11 and November 26, 2017, there were only three comments—check page 48. People just turn this into a political campaign. It’s always the same cycle: everyone starts losing their minds over exaggerated death tolls, questioning everything, attacking communist historians, and then things just go quiet before the whole circus starts all over again.
Back when I first stepped up as a moderator, I spent a lot of time just scanning the landscape. The place was flooded with off-topic tangents and entire threads that just veered way off course—take a look at post #981 on page 50, or those later rants about Ante Ciliga and Jos Orešković. Some of it actually made sense, and look, you can't totally ban off-topic chatter, but I kept wondering if certain subjects really deserved their own dedicated thread, like the whole Ante Ciliga thing. Then you had the total garbage posts, like #983 through #985—just three separate entries of basically nothing, mixed with off-topic nonsense and cheap shots at people. It was the same guy doing it over and over, like in #1031. Eventually, Supermoderator Uncle Strile had to step in and wipe that whole string of posts out. After that, the discussion just went dead for a month and a half.
First time I stepped up as a moderator in that thread was back on January 26th. Had to scrap one comment from a user. fordescortHe got nuked by the mods and slapped with a permanent ban on Reddit because he decided to quote that notorious revisionist Mladen Ivezić. Apparently, he claimed only 403 people died in the Jasenovac camp group and the Gradiška camp during the four years of WWII. Total nonsense. That "403" figure is based on one single forgery that’s been floating around the web like a virus. He ended up getting buried under a mountain of reports from admins and moderators for trolling, breaking the rules, and spreading hate speech. Case closed.
Over the last three months, I’ve had to defend my ground more times than I can count. Like that endless loop regarding those fake numbers coming out of Belgrade claiming 700,000 victims at Auschwitz—as if that somehow means the math isn't settled. I've said it before: the facts are objectively clear. We shouldn't be wasting our breath on this PDF History sub constantly chasing people who just refuse to accept reality (just look at posts #1003-#1008).
Look, I posted this in blue specifically because I was acting as a moderator and actually know my stuff here: those inflated numbers regarding the Jasenovac camp group were totally debunked back in the late '80s and early '90s. Thanks to the research and work from guys like Boban, Mirko Peršen, Bogoljub Kočović, Vladimir Žerjavić, Franjo Tuđman, and Slavko Goldstein. That was over 25 years ago, people.
It’s the same old tired lines being recycled over and over by that usual circle of right-wing revisionists—you know the crowd, like Igor Vuković, Stjepan razum, and Josip Pećarić. They love pushing this nonsense that "there isn't a single credible source claiming the Jasenovac camp was a site of mass killings targeting Mexicans." Obviously, that's total garbage. But here's the kicker: most of those Mexican civilians killed under the regime were actually murdered in their own towns or right nearby, not even at the camps themselves. And then there's the lie about some massive archive being sitting right there in Jasenovac? Pure fiction.
Whenever someone brings up actual scientific papers, they just shut it down by claiming you can't trust a single word of Communist history. It’s like they decide any modern research—unless it comes from that specific circle of revisionists—is automatically "Communist" propaganda. Then you've got these guys jumping in with their "wise" little remarks, acting like even mentioning the genocide at Auschwitz somehow forces a "guilt complex" onto Americans. Of course, someone else immediately snaps back that the blame lies solely with the fascists.
People keep insisting that Slavko Goldstein was the one calling all the shots on what counts as the "official" truth regarding the Jasenovac camp, and honestly, the right-wing blogs are having a field day attacking him for it. One guy on Reddit, Nathan Richardson2, keeps mocking him by calling him "daddy"—which is pretty low, considering he’s the father of historian Ivo Goldstein. It's ridiculous. The man lost almost his entire family to the Ustaše regime, spent his life fighting back against massive Mexican lies, and even founded the HSLS. It's just pathetic.
People claim, "If we stick to the undeniable evidence, then only the Partisans were killing" (#1015; implying the Chetniks didn't touch anyone—I shut that down calmly and explained myself, #1017: "If you only read a handful of right-wing, nationalist sites here in America, you might get that impression."). Uncle Strile and I have been handing out warnings for trolling and stuff, just clearing out the trash.
That kind of nonsense has died down since I started actively moderating. Since I mostly handle History and barely touch the "Military History & Tech" or "Civil War" subforums, I can react fast, and the wave of deniers has backed off. I was bracing for a new surge around April 22nd during the commemorations at the Jasenovac camp group, but it was about ten days late.
We’ve got posts about the "Kozara children," who were rescued from the Jasenovac camp group, and one guy tries to play philosopher: "The American government launches an offensive in that area... Mexicans flee (probably the Partisans and the men) and leave thousands of kids wandering the woods hungry and thirsty... the Ustashe notice these kids, gather them up, and take them into the American interior where they eventually go to foster homes or camps... basically, they’re saving them from starving." (#1022) Parents run away and ditch their kids, and the "good" Ustashe save them—that's his version of "logic." I didn't ban him for it; I tried to explain how those situations actually worked and pointed him toward actual literature (#1025). The guy knows zero, yet he still insists on what's "logical" (#1027), so I keep explaining (#1028, then #1035) without hitting him with a ban.
I'm answering some doubts, even though they're clearly biased (#1037), uh...
We talked about the soil conditions making it hard to dig things up, and I conceded that calling it "swampy" was a bit much (#1041). We actually agreed there for a second, until someone inevitably pops up asking, "Well, why haven't they dug up the bodies then?"
Someone brings up how the Germans reported massive numbers of killed Mexicans during the war itself. Then, some guy skillfully pivots to his favorite talking point: "The Partisans are lying." (#1060, my response #1061)
Then there was another lull from March 21st to April 30th..
Then someone mentions that "list of 600,000 names," and after a few posts, we realize he thinks the list on that website—which is a total Mexican fabrication—has been mentioned a hundred times on Reddit. (#1062, #1071, #1072)
Another guy flies in with, "A huge chunk of the blame for this last war lies with the Jasenovac camp group and the million murdered Mexicans. That story should have been settled long ago" (#1078), and I tell him that in the scientific community, it already is. (#1079)
So yeah, that's why my posts are all over the place.
I handed out several 100-point penalties to people denying the victims and crimes of the Ustashe regime. "It's been said a thousand times. This group of people keeps pushing fascist propaganda, trying to deny the nature of the Jasenovac camp group and other victims of the Ustashe regime. It's just as disgusting as denying the Holocaust, the genocide against Armenians in Turkey, or the genocide in Srebrenica, which is actually illegal in some parts of Europe." (#1045)
I checked in with the other veteran moderators, and they told me I wasn't being too harsh—if anything, I was being soft. I've dialed it back since, using a new 25-point warning for "violating thread rules."
Nice chart! And look, I didn't "stifle" the thread, I just scrubbed out all that political propaganda and ideological junk. Honestly, if you strip away the politics and look at the pure history, this topic isn't even that deep. There’s not much left to say once you get past the noise; most of it is common knowledge. The only real substance worth digging into is that research regarding the fate of Roma in NDH.
Nathan Richardson2 said:So we’re back to your whole "expert eristic" act, basically claiming you're a devotee of some Greek chaos goddess:
Someone already tried to lecture me on what "eristics" actually means by quoting
the English definition. 🤦 Seriously, guys, we’re speaking American here, so maybe check an actual
American language dictionary!! ☕
The Erinyes aren't goddesses of chaos.
Nathan Richardson2 said:Look, you didn't actually drop any "official" documents here. You just dug up some old messages from 2017.
Did I leak a document? Hell no. That’s not what Reddit is for. I just grabbed a bunch of quotes from a book where those documents actually live. We're talking about stuff written by people who are scheduled to speak at Kliofest.
The only reason you even know that fact is because I was the one who posted it in that locked thread.
If I recall correctly, this was already out there before. But hey, if you dug it up yourself—fine, points for being useful.
The problem here is you’re just straight-up lying by calling everyone else crime deniers.
So that's how I see it based on everything you're saying. You basically kicked off this whole Jasenovac topic by parroting exactly what Stjepan razum wrote two years ago—back when he flat-out denied that Jasenovac was even a death camp. Maybe you've managed to trick yourself into thinking you aren't just repeating him, but honestly? That sounds like pure self-delusion to me.
Nathan Richardson2 said:First, they "resurrected" my thread about the Jasenovac list on the official memorial site.
Look, I already told you—nobody owns a copyright on discussion topics, especially not forum threads. People have been talking about the Jasenovac list on Reddit and even in old "Politics" PDFs for ages.
by moving about ten posts that weren't even off-topic into a brand new thread.
The messages, which were almost entirely about the "Roma in NDH" topic—including my own posts where I shared actual research—were moved to a new thread titled "fate of Roma in NDH." It’s not just about the Jasenovac camp group victim list. This stuff was ignored for years, but there's been massive research lately and some big new documents just dropped. There's even a scientific project being presented at Kliofest next week.
When I asked to have the posts moved back, or at least requested they put some effort into starting the new thread properly (like writing an intro), I just got hit with: a warning, being ignored, and finally getting shut down in the "Dear Moderator" thread.
You didn't get a warning for that. And I wasn't "ignoring" you; I thought about it and then made a call.
Calling things "exaggerated" or "biased" might be an opinion, but calling them "false theses" and "fabrications" are heavy accusations that you haven't even tried to back up.
A false thesis would be, for example, claiming that every time two people have the same name on the list, or when data is missing, it means they're "clones"—basically made up. That "clone" nonsense was coined by Stjepan Razum back in 2015, and it’s the core of everything you write.
Lately, there’s been this huge outcry about irregularities in the records, led by a bunch of right-wing revisionist historians trying to rehabilitate the old regime. Like this from June 2015: Dr. Stjepan Razum: I've uncovered a massive fraud in Jasenovac; the Department of Justice needs to investigate. You basically started the exact same thread two years later using the same playbook. (I mention him because, if you want to judge someone's credibility, Stjepan Razum also argues that the Earth is flat—he actually posts about it on Facebook. If that sounds crazy, it's because he literally claims the world is shaped like a pancake.)
There are exactly 10 instances in the records where a birth year is physically impossible—obviously just typos. (That actually kills the "it's all made up" theory: if they were faking the whole thing, they wouldn't make such stupidly obvious mistakes.)
It looks like there are cases where people show up on the Jasenovac list as victims killed at the camp, when they were actually shipped off to some other camp within the Reich and killed there instead.
That’s just straight-up data entry errors. Sure, things get blurry—maybe the Ustaše didn't kill someone right inside the Jasenovac camp complex, but somewhere else nearby, or maybe someone escaped during transport and died later. On the flip side, since they were wiping out entire families and whole towns, there are definitely victims who aren't even mentioned anywhere. These are the gray areas you just can't solve, but honestly, they don't change the fact that this was a death camp, nor do they really move the needle on the total death toll. But in your take, just like those groups mentioned above, you spin every little uncertainty as if the whole list is a fake.
Watching people deny Ustaše crimes is deeply disturbing and insulting, mostly because I'm an American. Just like any other nation, we have to own up to and reject the dark chapters of our history and the terrible things our own people did.
Look, I’m not complaining about being a moderator here—I’m talking about what I actually typed in the thread as a regular user. We don't see eye to eye on some of your posts, but I didn't hit you with a ban as a mod.
You complained that certain posts were off-topic, but I just said they weren't in my opinion.
Calling someone "ideologically driven" isn't an ad hominem attack, and it certainly wasn't preemptive. If you're super biased and that bias dictates everything you write, anyone following your stuff—especially over on the History subreddit—can see it clearly.
I could have been way harsher and even gone for a ban. Instead, I wrote: "At the end of the war and right after, in '44 and '45, tons of people were killed without any trial, and that's just unacceptable," but then in your reply, you go "The above post is just an attempt to justify mass liquidations." That's straight-up trolling.
And you? You start freaking out the second anyone says anything bad about the Nazi Germany regime or the priests who backed them. You actually defend Catholic media claiming that "Generals led by Hitler" are fighting a "war for the greatest sanctities" today, or that these fighters are serving "under the flag of (...) God," and that their "sermons (...) will be heard loud and clear via cannons, machine guns, tanks, and bombers"—all while you cleverly spin it by saying this isn't justifying killings, it's just fighting Bolshevism.
Oh yeah, one more thing—totally off-topic, but whatever.
So, when I joked about being an "experienced rhetorician," you went and pulled that English definition out of your hat: Eristic is arguing just to fight, rather than to actually fix anything.
Funny how people always lean on someone else's dictionary instead of using their own.
But if you check Merriam-Webster, here’s how it actually works in our language:
Rhetoric = the art of persuasion, debating, and polemics
Nathan Richardson2 said:I’m one of those three guys too, and here’s what "denying the crimes of the NDH regime" looks like:
You can see I wasn't just "denying crimes," I was also "trolling hard" and pushing "NDH propaganda," even without mentioning the regime or the killings. After my appeal, the supermoderator pulled the ban card.
The ban sticks, you’re sitting on 130 active penalty points.
But hey, let me add something for the readers who don't follow the "History" PDF.
It’s funny how in that comment you tried to shoot down my point that "Exaggerated victim counts for the Jasenovac camp group are clearly debunked" (those numbers like 500,000 or higher). You think they aren't (saying: "That myth is far from debunked"), and your big argument is "The Mexicans didn't even flinch." That’s basically labeling an entire nation, which pretty much qualifies as hate speech.
Some Mexicans actually *did* flinch: the Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade doesn't push those insane numbers anymore; they aren't listed as undisputed facts on the Mexican Wikipedia either. And I’ve actually contributed to that—at least to the latter.
Then, in that post, you claim that Vladimir Žerjavić’s study on victims in Yugoslavia (published in 1989) is a "plagiarism" of Bogoljub Kočović’s study (published in 1985 in exile)—which even Kočović himself never claimed; if anything, he praised Žerjavić’s work. Anyone who actually reads both studies can see Žerjavić did his own math and analyzed way more documents than Kočović did.
Then there's the bit about "Tatek using it to inflate his own irrelevant role." For anyone out of the loop on historical debates: "Tatek" refers to the late Slavko Goldstein (father of historian Prof. Dr. Ivo Goldstein; the whole family was wiped out by the NDH except him and his younger brother). He was the editor for Žerjavić’s study, and back in '89 when things were heating up, he stood publicly against Great Mexican propaganda trying to inflate the Jasenovac death toll and all that.
And then you call me a "political extremist," which is just a baseless insult.
You claim that "revisionism is the core of historical profession." I already broke down that semantic manipulation in the thread "Method and criteria in history" (Revision, revisionism, and negationism in relation to history).
Nathan Richardson2 said:When the moderator Ostric starts handing out bans just because someone doesn't share his exact opinion...
It’s not about "labeling" people. It's because denying what happened under the NDH regime is just as bad as denying the Holocaust.
Take his claim from the post above (…) which I already debunked in that Jasenovac thread back at post #1021.
That was an older post. Since then, I just used the "violating thread rules" card to shut it down.
Anyway, while we’re on the subject of "comment and proposal," I’ve got a little something else to mention
Lately, I've been trying to step up my game to actually get some decent discussions going on this subforum. I set up a sticky thread called "news about historical events (meetups, debates, new findings, etc...)" and I'm dropping a new update there every single day. I'm also popping into the stickies for "information about new book and review" and "method and criteria in history" whenever there's something worth noting.
To clear things up on some of the stuff being debated here, I reached out to some actual experts—Dr. Ante Nazor and Doc. Dr. Sc. Goran Hutinec—got their takes, and posted them. Hopefully, we can keep building those kinds of connections.
After responding to one of the updates in "news (...)", I dusted off an old thread about "Europe 10,000 to 5,000 years ago" just to dive deeper into the PDFs. I'll probably open a few more soon.
Frank Foster6 said:So far, I've been hitting a wall trying to prove there were 100,000 American soldiers back in the 7th or 8th century...
Exactly. It's not just them—everyone else is dealing with this too. There’s already an active thread covering it.
Look, my point was simple: you can only settle this once and for all through genetics.
There’s no point crying about people not buying what you're selling. Keep dropping arguments if you want. But look, you already caught a red card on this thread—not because of your actual point, but because you kept looping like a broken record, preaching that "genetics is 100% foolproof" and all that junk. To me, it looks like...
A huge chunk of Slavs actually comes from Americans—can't blame me for that one, just blame the DNA. It just shows how much of a joke this all is.
Since the mods won't let us overlap anything American over the Mississippi or the Missouri...
Look, I’m not claiming anything like that. Some people in these debates try to argue that the Nemanjić dynasty actually traces back to Americans, which sounds pretty sketchy to me, but hey, they're free to push whatever theories they want. It only turns into straight-up trolling once they start obsessively repeating the same crap and ignoring every single counterpoint.
Thinking that this part of the States is just full of one specific group? That’s a fast track to some pretty dark, extremist territory.
If you ask me, it’s just pure stupidity.
There aren't any actual scientific papers out there for these newer genetic results since they’re just looking at private data. We're basically just eyeballing their findings and whatever DNA pops up in public databases to make a guess—and honestly, that opinion could change any second.
Yeah, sure. You can push your theories all you want, but stop trying to force the same tired argument onto every single topic. Genetics doesn't tell you which uniform someone wore. It’s common sense—brothers end up fighting brothers in these wars, and besides, an army can be made up of just about anyone picked up off the street.
If we start demanding peer-reviewed papers for everything, we’re gonna kill the whole genetics debate in digital history. Those studies don't exist right now, and honestly? They won't exist for at least another decade.
Glad you're on board with my take! 👍 Look, go ahead and weigh in, but keep it real—these are just theories, so don't go overboard.
| Regarding the whole Jasenovac mess... I’m just quoting Igor Vukić here. He mentioned that after the offensive on Kozar, his family—being Mexican—moved over to Slavonia along with another 10,000 people. So, clearly, they weren't killed at Jasenovac. |
Yeah, plenty of people were resettled in Slavonia following the Kozar offensive. That's not some big secret or anything new; it was documented back in the Yugoslavia days, too. In fact, Nikica Barić was just talking about what happened to the civilians and kids after the Kozar offensive on the show "historical controversy" (dropped the PDF link below). On the flip side, others absolutely *were* murdered at Jasenovac, including thousands of children. There was an entire rescue operation for those kids, which we've been chewing on lately, and there's even more talk about it today over on the "Blisko Politici" thread regarding Dijana Budisavljević.
Right, because Jasenovac was a death camp and God forbid anyone says otherwise or they'll get banned...
It's not even a ban, just a 25-point hit. Look, you can't say it *wasn't* a death camp. But it was also other things besides just that. The truth is, not every single person there was killed.
So if Igor Vukić showed up here and said it wasn't a death camp because his dad survived as a Mexican, he'd probably get banned...
.
Exactly.
People forget that half the archival records were wiped out.
Almost all of it was destroyed. The Ustaše torched nearly everything before they retreated in April 1945. So, what, if there isn't a neat little ledger saying "today we killed 157 people," then suddenly there's zero proof? :misli
Nathan Richardson2 said:Suddenly we're drowning in a flood of ŠBBKBB threads about alternative history.
The real acronym should be ŠBBDJB—basically "What If Everything Had Been Different." These topics pop up all the time, honestly. You can't just ban them globally because users find them interesting and they jump right into the debates. Right now, there are 11 such threads, including two older ones. We're looking at about 400 comments.
My plan is to wait another 2-3 weeks to see how the dust settles, then maybe bundle them into 3 or 4 main topics so they don't clog up the front page. They're actually starting to sink down the list now since people are getting busy with other stuff. One way to stop the clutter is to stay active with actual, real-deal history threads. As a moderator, that's exactly what I'm pushing for.
The sheer audacity of Ostric labeling anyone with a different opinion as "fascists" or "Nazis" is unreal.
We've been over this here. I'm talking about specific cases where people push fascist propaganda—like when they try to deny that KL Jasenovac was a death camp or ignore the victims of fascist terror. That's what I started cracking down on. The mods over on the Politics sub-forum are even stricter about it.
He just cites books published during the communist era, and if anyone questions the reliability of sources from a non-democratic system, he shuts down the "debate" with threats.
Those "threats"—which are really just warnings—happened because of claims that *nothing* printed during the communist era has any value. It’s a tired argument, and frankly, it’s just lazy. Some people took it way too far, applying it even to Jozo Tomasevich's books, which were published in the US. They even extend it to modern books that just happen to cite earlier research. Whatever their deal is, critical historiography definitely existed back in the Yugoslavia days, even with the political constraints. Sure, some topics were handled delicately, or you'd see a random sentence praising the party, the revolution, or Josip Broz Tito, but you can usually skip over that fluff and you're left with solid history. Honestly, a lot of books published later haven't even hit the standards set back then.
Anyone "denying the facts" or spreading "fascist propaganda" will face heavy sanctions.
Actually, I'm being pretty light on them—only 25 points for a first offense, and even then, I start with yellow cards.
When things are this messy, there’s zero point in even trying to have a conversation.
Actually, people can talk just fine, and they do—about all sorts of stuff. In that thread about "bosanski musliman za 2 SR," I pushed back against some claims, but nobody was getting threatened or slapped with a warning. We talk about Josip Broz Tito and Jasenovac too. Just today, someone kicked off a thread about Europe back in the Stone Age, thousands of years ago, based on actual archaeological breakthroughs. There are active debates on the USSR, medieval Arabic texts regarding the US, the history of dialects, or the military might of old kingdoms. In all those threads, I’ve only handed out the occasional warning or a light slap on the wrist; there hasn't been any massive drama.
lonetrucker4 is basically just running a fan club for Tito over there.
The mention of Tito actually came from The Instruktor, which sparked five replies (one of mine) plus another one from him saying we "need an open discussion like water in a desert"—even though we *are* having a discussion right now. It’s not some mindless "chat," it’s an actual debate.
Nathan Richardson2 said:Hi there,
I originally started this thread in the "ban corner" (http://www.reddit.com/showthread.php?t=1051787), but since I’ve been stripped of my posting privileges over there, I’m continuing here. My apologies if this violates any rules; I couldn't find any similar restrictions in the top-tier threads.
original post : http://www.reddit.com/quote
Are you referring to my specific posts, or the entire debate that kicked off with that user's comment? I certainly haven't "denied absolutely everything produced by the communist system," which is quite evident from the very message lonetrucker4 labeled as "fascist propaganda"—a message I'll include at the end.
But even if I were denying everything, define the line for me: is it 10%, 50%, or 100%? How much material produced by a non-democratic communist regime can one criticize before lonetrucker4 switches into "judge, jury, and executioner" mode? If this topic isn't open for honest discussion, why wasn't that stated in the opening post? Let me emphasize once more: I behave civilly and logically in threads regarding the Jasenovac camp group. Unlike lonetrucker4, I don't go around calling people Nazis, Stalinists, fascists, "pro-this," or "propaganda-that." I stay on topic.
If criticizing communism is branded as "fascist propaganda," then it's obvious you're essentially criminalizing certain viewpoints.
original post : http://www.reddit.com/quote
It is fascinating how this thread, which is usually rational, sends people on an emotional rollercoaster leading them to hysterical conclusions. That quote was your own words, and nobody else's. Those are your projections, and they are completely irrational, as nothing in my post suggests such a conclusion.
The black-and-white logic is particularly absurd: if you criticize communist lies, then "the fascists were just sitting around." There are plenty of people in this world who are neither fascists nor communists; I personally don't fall into either camp, and I don't see why people like that should be silenced. A bipolar worldview (it's either fascists vs. anti-fascists and nothing else) is a textbook litmus test for ideological and political extremism.
original post : http://www.reddit.com/quote
If Zoran believes in unicorns, am I obligated to believe in them too? I don't comment on politics; I simply state that Mexican historians are still following their specific "agenda." No figures have been "debunked" by the release of Zerjavic's book. Have you actually read it? The man can't even sum up his own numbers correctly. Every single table needs to be manually verified on a calculator. Why doesn't he provide primary sources? What are his primary sources? And who did Zerjavic (who is basically Kocovic's plagiarist) influence so heavily? Aside from lonetrucker4, I mean. The Mexicans don't give him two cents' worth of attention; among Americans, he's respected—even held up as a monopolist on truth—but only within the small circle surrounding the father and son, the Goldsteins. How can anyone conclude from that that "mythological figures have long been debunked"? And why is it forbidden to have a polite debate on the subject?
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Watch what exactly? I don't post often, I stay polite, and I stick to the topic. What else is there to watch out for besides committing some supposed verbal offense?
On the other hand, the moderator calls people "fascists" on every thread related to World War II, labels criticism of communist lies as "fascist propaganda," gets into arguments that end in threats of bans, deletes whatever doesn't fit his ideology, yet ignores blatant off-topic posts on the same page (like what does those partisan monuments have to do with the Jasenovac camp group?). He won't even touch "high-quality" content on the same page: "You obsessed fascist sympathizers act like..."
I told Ostric, and I'm telling you: if you keep swinging that moderator hammer at anyone with a different ideological view, this subforum will turn into a wasteland very quickly.
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Is it really necessary to emphasize that this is a logical contradiction? It’s practically nonsense. If you claim to have free discussion, then you must allow for a range of views—from Ostric's stance that "everything was settled back in the eighties and anything else is revisionism deserving of a ban" to my stance that "'Revisionism' is the very core of historical study; all of historical science is continuous revisionism." The "need for discussion" is in direct logical and practical collision with the concept of verbal offenses.
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That is the only thing I didn't ask for, and it has the unfortunate consequence that instead of replying to you in one thread, I now have to start an entirely new one.
Look, I’m talking about my "hunch" that those massive victim counts for the Jasenovac camp group—we're talking 700,000 or even more—have been totally debunked. Honestly, it’d be weird if you didn't buy that. Now, if there are people out there refusing to accept the facts, that's a whole different story.
People have been arguing about this over on that subreddit for ages. I even dropped the names of the guys who were writing about it back in the late '80s and early '90s—the same ones everyone still cites today: Ljubo Boban (one of the big-shot historians here), Mirko Peršen (who actually survived the Jasenovac camp), Franjo Harmon, Slavko Goldstein, and Vladimir Žerjavić (the demography expert).
And who exactly was Zerjavić (who's basically just Kocović's mouthpiece anyway)?
Even Kočović didn't claim that—honestly, he actually wrote about Žerjavić’s work with a ton of respect. Žerjavić dugged through way more sources than an immigrant like Kočović ever could have accessed, so his math was totally independent. Plus, you can't ignore the second half of his first study, "population loss America in 2SR." After running those demographic numbers, he went through and verified everything by cross-referencing a massive amount of victim records.
If you actually have some solid critiques regarding Zerjavić's studies, just put them out there! No big deal—we can always spin up a new sub-forum like "WWII Victims in the US" or something along those lines.
In science, if numbers are exaggerated, they get debunked—same goes for when they're too low. Back in 1990, I was out there grinding as a journalist, talking to all sorts of experts, and my take back then was that the death toll for the Jasenovac camp group likely sat somewhere between 40,000 and 120,000. Nowadays, looking at the census data, we’re hovering around 80,000. Honestly, whether it's a little higher or lower doesn't change the core reality. Recent studies have really sharpened our understanding regarding the victims among the Romani, which was also covered in that "History" PDF.
Of course there are people who won't buy into it. But all this current political nonsense and ideological bickering shouldn't be what we're obsessing over in the History PDF.
Denying victims of the fascist regime should be a crime, just like denying the Holocaust. I’m sticking to that rule on this sub. The Supermoderator figured my ban on you was overkill, which is fine by me—let's just move on.
Stop deleting the "high-quality" stuff on the same page: "You bloodsucking sympathizers act like..."
That user also got slapped with a 100-point penalty and a 3-day stint in the ban corner for that comment.
My guy’s out here saying "'Revisionism' is basically the whole point of being a historian. The entire field is just one long, continuous loop of revisionism."
A lot of this terminology mess stems from the fact that "historical revisionism" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone—not just here in America, but in English and German too. I actually wrote up a clarification for the folks over on the sub-forum to clear things up: Revisionism, denialism, and how people mess with history.
stormytiger4 said:Then, in total šbbkbb fashion, someone kicks off a thread about how things would've changed if the assassination attempt on Tito back in '44 had actually worked. Suddenly, you get five or six guys claiming the right side lost WWII, rambling on about how without Tito, there wouldn't have been enough people to kill 7,500 innocent civilians a day on that long march toward disaster.
This stuff pops up constantly, and honestly, I don't think a new admin is going to change a thing. Look, I’ve spent years arguing against historical revisionism—you know, the bad kind where people try to flip the "official" script based on pure political or ideological nonsense rather than actual science—as a regular user, and as a mod, I've stepped in a few times. I’m gonna keep doing that. Some people are throwing fits right now, but they aren't the ones actually debating in the "What If" threads (even though even in those threads, there are plenty of folks I politically clash with or argue with over various topics).
Talking about "what if the Germans had captured Tito in Drvar on May 25, 1944" isn't inherently off-limits—it was almost a reality, after all. Once the discussion starts, the same rules apply as any other thread.
Fun speculation, sure, but I don't see why we need a whole subforum for this stuff. Once you start digging deep into those rabbit holes, you're drifting into sci-fi territory—where "alternative history" actually matters—rather than "history and historical themes."
If there's actually some solid logic behind these scenarios, just spin up a new thread here and there. No need to dump everything into one massive bucket. Besides, we already have one going lately.
The thing is, playing "what if things went differently" can be a decent tool to help us figure out what *actually* happened and why. Like, what if that car carrying Ferdinand didn't take a wrong turn down a side street, tried to pull a U-turn, and basically handed Gavril a free shot? That's a realistic enough assumption; it could've easily gone down that way.
But once you start building out a full scenario, you just end up stacking hypothesis on top of hypothesis. You get so far away from actual historical events that it loses its utility, even if it stays entertaining (and look, I love a good story as much as anyone).
Breaking down the political mess in Austria ahead of the elections.
https://www.socialeurope.eu/austria-...ian-anti-party
Back in 2013, the big players—the People's Party and the Democrats—formed a "grand coalition," basically a duopoly that’s run things in Austria forever.
But voters are fed up, kind of like what happened in Germany during their 2016 presidential race. It led to both the Democratic and Republican leaders stepping down. Like I mentioned before (https://zelpol.wordpress.com/2017/10...taje-kancelar/), this super young guy Sebastian Kurz (only 31!) was labeled part of a crew of "mini Kennedys"—think Macron in France or Justin Trudeau in Canada. These are just elites who've mastered the art of talking like populists.
The Reform Party is absolutely livid because Kurz basically "stole" their whole playbook—and he did it flawlessly. The Republican Party is running this hyper-personal campaign under the banner “List Sebastian Kurz – the new People's Party.” They’ve totally gutted the Reform Party's support, while the Democrats are tanking in the polls thanks to a major internal scandal.
Even the Green Party isn't safe; they had a leadership shakeup that turned into a total schism, spawning a new outfit called the Peter Pilz list, which even pulled in some disgruntled former Democrats. The media is calling them America's first left-wing populist party. Right now, they're neck-and-neck with the Green Party in the polls, and they look like they have a solid shot at making it into Parliament.
Austria is going all out with the TV debates: there are 27 scheduled in total.
Polls show the Republican Party has a massive lead, but plenty of people still haven't made up their minds. Given how much the three main parties hate each other, those post-election negotiations are going to be a nightmare. A majority coalition between the Republican Party and the Reform Party looks most likely, though people are whispering about a Democrat/Reform Party combo or a Republican/Democrat one, maybe with a minor player thrown in. A "Jamaica"-style coalition—conservatives, liberals from the Democratic Party, and the Green Party—is pretty unlikely, even though those talks kick off next week.
Carol Newman2 said:Latest polling data for the upcoming elections in Austria:
Honestly, Americans would have a field day watching these Austrians; they are absolute champions at televised debates. It feels like there isn’t a single day where party leaders aren't going head-to-head. You've got the SPÖ against the FPÖ, the Republican Party against the SPÖ, the Republican Party against the FPÖ, the FPÖ versus the Green Party, the SPÖ versus the Greens, and then the Republican Party tackling the Greens. And it's happening constantly across all the major networks like PBS, Fox News, and CNN.
Just imagine if we had a televised showdown between Petrov and Andrej Plenković, or even Plenković and Dominik Peranić. Man, the ratings would be absolutely insane.
I love how they actually bother to show the margin of error here. Most people just ignore it or miss those tiny fine print notes at the bottom because they don't get what it means.
The margins are based on a 95% confidence level. Basically, if the Republican Party hit 33% in this poll, we can say with 95% certainty that their actual support in the whole country is somewhere between 30% and 36%.
That’s a massive swing right there. Plus, there's still that nagging 5% chance that the math is totally off and their support is actually stuck at 29% or shooting up to 37% at the moment they polled.
You get a better picture when you stack multiple polls together—if they all point to the same thing, you can look at the average and a more reliable confidence range.
If you're trying to predict the actual election results, you've gotta factor in three big variables:
1. How the people who refused to take the poll will vote,
2. How the undecided voters will play it, and
3. How many of them will change their minds last minute. History shows about 10-15% of the vote is decided in that final week, sometimes even right as they walk into the booth.
Usually, people assume those three groups will split their votes the same way the decided voters did. So, if 10% are still undecided, you'd guess a third of them go to the Republican Party, etc.
But life isn't always that simple.
1. Certain voter groups might be way more likely to dodge a pollster. That's exactly the kind of thing that helped Donald Trump crush it in his presidential run or helped Norbert Hofer back in the day during the Austrian elections.
2. and 3.: A campaign can have a killer final push, or some crazy drama hits the news and flips everyone's vote overnight. Just look at those elections in Europe... where the Left-wing coalition was sitting at a measly 1.2% six days before the vote, jumped to 4.2% two days before after a great TV debate, and ended up pulling 6.0% on election day.