If we’re insisting on making these comparisons, yes. Just to give one of the most direct comparisons, Unit 731 did “experiments” in which they observed the spread of syphilis, injecting it into male captives and then forcing them to transmit it viaremoved. Mengele sewed twins together to make them artificially-conjoined, which resulted in death by gangrene.
They both did a lot of different things that are bafflingly cruel, and so did the rest of the SS, and the respective fascist armies in general (see Nanjing)
I’d also bring up Pinochet, whose government did many different type of tortures as well, the most infamous of which (besides dropping people from helicopters) is training a dog toremoved women.
Yes, American blacksites have also done elaborate and sadistic things to their captives.
Like, don’t get me wrong, the anglo colonizers were dreadful people and it’s deeply wrong what they did, death to America, etc., but the Nazis and Imperial Japan created “playgrounds” of industrialized torture of the sort that is difficult to explain except by saying that some people seemed to do their best to be as sadistic as possible, keeping prisoners alive only to prolong their suffering for very little reason beyond the suffering itself, as the “data” produced by the “research” programs among these was obviously methodologically unsound, and other instances lacked even that pretense.
I’m sorry for bringing this up; As you might guess from a communist who has suffered through endless litigations on Stalin and Mao, I don’t like atrocity contests, it just really rubbed me the wrong way seeing the Nazis characterized the way Awoo did and I think it had a serious lack of perspective. Even on sheer numbers of humans killed, if anyone wanted to bring that up, I think America is probably still behind Nazi Germany, which is behind Britain, which killed over a hundred million people in India alone over its centuries of occupation, mostly through malnutrition (whether resulting in starvation or fatal infection or otherwise), and it did much else besides. Spain is probably third (behind Britain and Nazi Germany), almost entirely from its extensive killing of indigenous populations. These are just among cases I have at least some familiarity with. I will leave it up to someone else to decide how to consider the various pre-RoC forms of China, because I know almost nothing about that and also I’m just really sick of this subject.
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any point in comparing atrocities because there shouldn’t be a “winner” and the outcome is always just reducing the perceived impact of something horrible. I should’ve worded my reply better; I wasn’t trying to imply that plague blankets were worse, just that it seems like the early settlers get somewhat of a pass due to recency bias and the lurid nature of what some Nazis did.
extreme SV
If we’re insisting on making these comparisons, yes. Just to give one of the most direct comparisons, Unit 731 did “experiments” in which they observed the spread of syphilis, injecting it into male captives and then forcing them to transmit it viaremoved. Mengele sewed twins together to make them artificially-conjoined, which resulted in death by gangrene.
They both did a lot of different things that are bafflingly cruel, and so did the rest of the SS, and the respective fascist armies in general (see Nanjing)
I’d also bring up Pinochet, whose government did many different type of tortures as well, the most infamous of which (besides dropping people from helicopters) is training a dog toremoved women.
Yes, American blacksites have also done elaborate and sadistic things to their captives.
Like, don’t get me wrong, the anglo colonizers were dreadful people and it’s deeply wrong what they did, death to America, etc., but the Nazis and Imperial Japan created “playgrounds” of industrialized torture of the sort that is difficult to explain except by saying that some people seemed to do their best to be as sadistic as possible, keeping prisoners alive only to prolong their suffering for very little reason beyond the suffering itself, as the “data” produced by the “research” programs among these was obviously methodologically unsound, and other instances lacked even that pretense.
I’m sorry for bringing this up; As you might guess from a communist who has suffered through endless litigations on Stalin and Mao, I don’t like atrocity contests, it just really rubbed me the wrong way seeing the Nazis characterized the way Awoo did and I think it had a serious lack of perspective. Even on sheer numbers of humans killed, if anyone wanted to bring that up, I think America is probably still behind Nazi Germany, which is behind Britain, which killed over a hundred million people in India alone over its centuries of occupation, mostly through malnutrition (whether resulting in starvation or fatal infection or otherwise), and it did much else besides. Spain is probably third (behind Britain and Nazi Germany), almost entirely from its extensive killing of indigenous populations. These are just among cases I have at least some familiarity with. I will leave it up to someone else to decide how to consider the various pre-RoC forms of China, because I know almost nothing about that and also I’m just really sick of this subject.
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any point in comparing atrocities because there shouldn’t be a “winner” and the outcome is always just reducing the perceived impact of something horrible. I should’ve worded my reply better; I wasn’t trying to imply that plague blankets were worse, just that it seems like the early settlers get somewhat of a pass due to recency bias and the lurid nature of what some Nazis did.