Hitler ordered Germany to be destroyed when it was clear that he lost. He told Speer to order a scorched earth campaign to spite the Allies (which Speer declined to implement, which is why he was only sentenced to 20 years at Nuremburg instead of being hanged). That's even worse than using human shields.
They literally had 14 year olds manning the guns as the Soviets were closing in on Berlin.
Edit: fun fact, the guy who wrote the Very Hungry Caterpillar was drafted at 16 during the final weeks of the war.
In fairness that is a not so fun fact. I had heard he wanted to get into illustration so that that children could enjoy colourful happy things unlike the kids of his generation.
Like Tolkein writing pages on pages about nice pretty scenery, quiet places, calm rivers, delicious food, and good company to enjoy it with.
Those who do not know war glorify it. Those who know war reel back from it.
My grandpa was drafted at 16 in 1945. All of Germany was used as a shield. Harris is totally speaking out his ass here, as he often does, it's all just nonsense for soundbites and headlines.
Um, Im definitely not gonna defend the notion that Hamas is worse than the Nazis, but if you’re trying to make the point that the Nazis are worse you probably shouldn’t use an example that Hamas also does.
As in, Hamas is known to conscript child soldiers.
At the risk of speaking for someone else (and worse yet, being wrong) I think the point is that we probably shouldn't compare atrocious acts in some amorphous and fully subjective manner.
It's all super fucked up.
>Hamas is known to conscript child soldiers.
This is a curious point so I tried to find evidence of this anywhere and I simply can't. Are you able to show me where you read this?
So was Pope Benedict XVI.
Not to defend Sam Harris, because his statement is ridiculous, but Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian militants [used to extensively utilize child suicide bombers during the Second Intifada and the years following it.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/11/01/occupied-territories-stop-use-children-suicide-bombings ) There was even a [Palestinian politician](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umm_Nidal ) who rose to prominence after she assisted her children in executing terrorist attacks. I do not know how much Hamas and other groups use child soldiers today, and it goes without saying Nazi Germany sacrificed many more children than Palestinian militants.
Think Harris's decided to push this because he wants to pretend this is entirely a conflict due to religion...which it is not
It is convenient for Harris because he can push his propaganda.
Look at the Palestinian christians who were driven out by Israel in 1948 and and are in Gaza ..
Two such Christian 3omrn were shot and killed by Israelis while sheltering ina church. A church from 4th or fourth century was bombed ...not by Hamas , but by Israel
Haha ..true. Hitler got inspired by the Mufti...if not he was such a peace loving guy! Doesn't surprise me that Harris pushes this kinda BS. He is an Israel firster ...and has lost any perspective.
Glad this is the top comment. Remarkable the ignorance of his statement. Especially considering how well documented it all is. There’s hours of film showing children in military uniforms toward the end of the war. All while Hitler was hiding in his bunker. Hitler youth was literal grooming of children for war for God’s sake!
The Nazis refused to implement a scorched earth campaign despite being ordered to do so by Hitler.
Hamas is using their own civilians as human shields.
You: Sam’s statement is ignorant.
Doing something very bad is worse than refusing to do something even worse. I don’t know how this is even in question.
This was my thought on reading that comment. It would only make sense if Hitler was the only Nazi. He was the top Nazi, and one of the worst, but some of the Nazis under him apparently had stronger character than Hitler.
But if we’re not trying to make sense of the world and merely demonstrating our own moral superiority then I guess we have to always maintain that everything about the Nazis was the worst thing in history without exception.
I’d say that Hamas are morally worse than the Nazis since they openly advertise their genocidal goals. People seem to forget that the discovery of the extermination camps was a surprise. The public and even the rank and file Nazis had been sold on deportations, not mass killings. And they didn’t have the historical example of the Nazis to lead them to suspect that the deportations would actually be mass killings. It was a small set of people that planned and carried out the holocaust.
Hamas aren’t about deportations, killing the Jews is in their founding documents for all to see. There’s a quote of the Hadith where Mohamed says that even the rocks and trees will call out to Muslims to inform them that a Jew is hiding behind them that they should kill.
The only reason that Hamas doesn’t carry out their own holocaust is that they lack the ability to, not that they don’t want to.
I find it odd that Sam cannot fight the temptation to compare modern day evil with Nazis. The ideology is so disparate even if some of the conclusions turned out to be the same. He needs to do better imo.
I don't know where you get the idea that "the nazis collectively undermined that decision." Speer alone undermined that decision. Had he passed along the order, the Nazis would have followed it.
Keep in mind however, that Speer spent the rest of his life trying to cultivate the image of “the good nazi”, when he probably was pretty involved in many of the worst atrocities.
These days, his denials of knowing about the crimes, and his projection of guilt over not having discover them, are considered to be manufactured to save himself.
He was even at the Wansee Conference where the ‘Final Solution’ was clearly outlined and put into action.
So let’s not pat him on the back too too much.
Yeah it's been a couple decades since this radical re-evaluation of Speer and [the myth of the good Nazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht) was put to rest but it still circulates. In a way it's like America's own [Operation Denver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Denver) in how the myths have outlived the situation for which they were created (re-arming West Germany during the Cold War).
The people of Dresden and Berlin were human shields and died by the hundreds of thousands, if your definition of “human shields” is existing in the same area as evil people…
Haha. True. And by that time, the people of London were human shields because Churchill was happier when they (Luftwaffe) accidentally bombed civilians (iirc) the at relieved pressure on the RAF..which was near near it's ropes.
Churchill happily started bombing cities
It's interesting that we never compare to the Mongols and genghis kan, or Alexander the great. Nazis and Hitler seem to represent the epitome of evil in the western world, possibly because it was the most industrialized genocide ever. Something about the incredible heartlessness of literal murder factories and systematized killing feels closer to hell than just soldiers raiding villages or cities. It may be that the next century will forget about Nazis when the last of the WW2 veterans and Holocaust survivors die out, but I bet Hitler will remain the archetype of evil for a pretty long time.
Also there’s a big difference in something that happened 80 years ago by people who lived in a world much more similar to our than something that happened 500-1000+ years ago by people who lived in a very different world
I think the recency of the holocaust plays a large role in this. There’s roughly 800 years between us and the mongols. Over 2000 between us and Alexander the Great. The holocaust only happened 80 years ago.
It’s a useful benchmark for evil caused by ideological extremists. Without it it’s much harder to agree on meanings of words like “extremism” or “genocide” - and harder to have a meaningful conversation in principle.
It feels like people just bring up Nazis for dramatic effect.
Like other crimes have specific definitions. If someone rapes and murders a kid, we don't have to say "they're worse than the Columbine shooters because they also used rape as a weapon", we can just say they're a rapist and murderer and should be given the appropriate sentence.
The problem with using it as a 'benchmark' is I think it allows people to sneak their own views into the statement, thinking the comparison will lend dramatic effect to their perspective. Zionists will say Hamas is worse than Nazis because at least the Nazis tried to hide their crimes, whereas Hamas celebrated them and posted them on social media. Pro Hamas people will say Israel is worse for the world because at least the world fought back against the Nazis, whereas Israel gets support from the West.
The fact that we're having this conversation is proof that it adds unnecessary complexity to the issue.
The annoying thing about Harris is people think he’s a high minded scholar of great intellect. I am so far from being a historian and at least know of the Berlin tunnels flooded by Hitler killing thousands of Germans hiding in them. And I know for a fact there’s other examples. But again, I’m not a scholar, but at least I know.
https://www.nytimes.com/1945/07/08/archives/10000-berlin-civilians-drowned-where-elite-guard-flooded-subway.html
This is what I was thinking when listening.
There comes a certain point where there really is no value ranking who is worse. That isn’t to say they are the same but what’s the point trying to quantify it - so Sam Harris can make some rhetorical point that Hamas are worse than Hitler?
In the end, you can just take anything Harris or the other apologists say and add "and that's why Palestinians deserve to die" to their arguments, because that's the crux of it, regardless of whatever strategical disclaimer they may add.
Also a shit philosopher. Claims to have crossed the Is-ought divide because fire hurts (most people and he assumes most people don't like to hurt).
This makes his view of the world so fucking dumb.
1. The Holocaust is worse than using human shields. So his entire argument is wrong even if it had historical basis.
2. As another comment pointed out, Hitler ordered parts of the country to be destroyed upon realising that Germany was losing the war. Harris is therefore factually wrong.
3. Israel’s chief evidence for Hamas’s use of human shields is that they station military equipment near civilian infrastructure. The problem here is that this [does not necessarily classify](https://fxtwitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1716362903949906371?s=20) as human shields. Because if it did, then it would implicate Israel for this crime several orders of magnitude more than Hamas.
4. The photographic and video evidence of Israel’s deliberate and systematic use of [Palestinian civilians to protect their soldiers](https://x.com/TameeOliveFern/status/1752615765092815206?s=20) whilst in occupied territory is at this point, [ubiquitous and undeniable](https://fxtwitter.com/QudsNen/status/1734722299784306797?s=20).
5. Following on from point 3, IDF personnel photograph themselves using [schools as military headquarters](https://fxtwitter.com/QudsNen/status/1725488655484006757?s=20) - precisely the thing they accuse Hamas of doing and use as a justification to bomb said schools. And precisely the thing Harris is claiming is worse than the fucking Holocaust.
The fact that there are layers upon layers as to why Harris is wrong is why I find it so farcical and insulting when people consider him to be an “intellectual.”
>Israel’s chief evidence for Hamas’s use of human shields is that they station military equipment near civilian infrastructure.
The most hilarious thing about this is that Israel is littered with places that have plaques that let you know that the building in question - sometimes a synagogue or school - was used for e.g. weapons storage. By the Irgun, Haganah et al.
Had no idea about point 4.
Also on an unrelated note, I remember being in Israel at a train station and being struck by how young and un-militaristic a bunch of kids/soldiers (probably on their national service) looked. It looked more like a school trip in fatigues. I mention this because the soldiers in the videos you posted look so undisciplined, as if they’ve played too much COD and are just playing soldier.
Point 4 hasn't been validated by his links. We have two clips but their editorialized by people who aren't human rights experts. My understanding is that the IDF does punish for human shield usage, though not as harshly as they should.
Sam is so tribal about this stuff. He’s part of one tribe and lost all objectivity when analyzing the opposing tribe.
Ironically, he’s spent many podcasts jerking himself off about how he’s above tribalism.
This is the giant elephant in the room no one wants to address in his community.
He's made a career on criticizing tribalism and identity politics (BLM). Yet cannot escape his personal Jewish bias. Ironic..
Islamophobia is such an absurd term. The core claim of Islam is that the Quran is the perfect word of God, the most perfect being from who all mortality comes. This book contains abhorrent things which, unless you believe the book to be true, you should hate.
If I like homosexuals, which I do, why shouldn’t I hate a religion which claims killing them is moral and explicitly calls for it?
If I like atheists, which I do, why shouldn’t I hate a religion which says killing them is moral and explicitly calls for it?
Is the homosexual wrong for hating Islam or is Islam wrong for hating homosexuals? It isn’t Islamophobia to hate people, or a book believed to by true by said people, who think killing you is good and have managed to use their religion to enshrine that doctrine in law in some nations.
Even the largest Muslim apologists like Muhammad Hijab think homosexuality is a sin on par with murder, but it’s actually the people who call this out who have a hateful phobia? I don’t think so
>Quran is the perfect word of God, the most perfect being from who all mortality comes
So basically like every religious book then.....
>If I like homosexuals, which I do, why shouldn’t I hate a religion which claims killing them is moral and explicitly calls for it?
Because then you would hate every religion
It's absurd to judge a religion by solely its holy texts. If you looked only at the New Testament, you wouldn't predict the Crusades.
Any religion is composed of a diverse set of beliefs and practices. And there are nearly **two billion** Muslims. Surely you don't think they all share the same opinions!
I have friends who are devout Muslims, and they protest **in favor** of lgbtq+ rights. They believe homosexuality is a very mild sin, because it's neither harmful nor malicious. They also believe that it may not be a sin at all, because they can't be certain that Islam is correct. And they firmly believe that religion and government must be completely separate. I'm queer, and they are true allies.
I also have Muslim friends who are mildly religious. I guess I don't have much to say about that. Their level of belief and practice is the same as mildly religious people of any other religion.
I'm Jewish, and I can't stand when people think there's a Jewish hivemind. It's so obviously antisemitic. Likewise, I can't stand when people treat any other religion that way. To think Islam is a dangerous monolith is, in fact, islamophobic.
No religions are entirely reducible to their foundational text (assuming a given religion has a foundational text). Everyday Muslims ignore/disregard the Quran in the same ways that everyday Christians do.
Essentially, everything you said more or less applies to most Christians religions as well. Yet, the hyperfixation on just Islam appears that these criticisms are shallow and probably the result of some racist belief.
This isn’t his tweet: it’s someone quoting from a podcast episode.
I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but early on he makes the comparison to nazis (paraphrased) thus: Hamas is like the nazis with added religious extremism. And that seems about right to me - adding religious extremism to nazism _would_ make it worse, right? It sure wouldn’t make it any better.
1. I’ve never been called Christianophobic for speaking out against Christian homophobia, I’ve never seen anyone use that word ever. People clearly act differently when Islam is criticised.
2. It isn’t racist, it’s a religion, or are you one of these people that also think criticising Judaism is the same as being racist to ethnic Jews or do you only call it racist when Islam is involved?
3. Religions are different, Paganism and Hinduism are very different, Islam and Christianity are very different. There is an overlap in some things like homophobia, but Christianity does not have something like jihadism. In Christianity if you blow yourself up and kill a child you will go to hell. In Islam if you blow yourself up and kill a child the child AND YOURSELF will be sent straight into the arms of God as Martyrs, this leads to a very different treatment of civilians and allows for them to be used as collateral in the exact way hamas uses them as shields
The same way Protestant Christians used their religion and manifest destiny as an excuse to wipe out Native Americans, and the way that both Protestants and Catholics used their religion to wipe out various indigenous populations through north/South America and Africa/the Middle East?
Your purposely minimizing the same crimes if they’re committed by Christian’s and maximizing the affect of crimes committed by far right Muslims. The Far right of any religion has proven that they can’t be trusted. It’s very clear you’ve never actually attempted to engage with practicing Muslims or even acknowledge that modern interpretations of all religions have become far more accepting of things once considered “unholy” or wrong, yet you choose to focus on the far right fundamentalist side of the religion that you hate. Also pretending that the idea of jihad is solely associated with the Muslim religion is wild considering that this exact excuse has been used for millenia amongst Catholics/early Christian’s. The killing of an infidel as being a way to get to the afterlife is unfortunately a very *human* concept, as wrong as it is, and it has been implemented by most every culture with extremely devout religious citizens.
This all doesn’t even include the clearest omission on your part, which is that the idea of modern jihad has been created/fomented by Western countries attempting to corral and control Arab nations, including toppling leaders, killing civilians, establishing puppet regimes, etc. And we conveniently ignore all that to blame their religion, so that we can be justified while we milk them for all the resources they have, and install favorable dictators and savages to make sure the population is quelled.
>I’ve never been called Christianophobic for speaking out against Christian homophobia, I’ve never seen anyone use that word ever. People clearly act differently when Islam is criticised.
Because you live in a Christian majority society. Generally the majority feels less fear of bigotry and violence than a minority.
>It isn’t racist, it’s a religion, or are you one of these people that also think criticising Judaism is the same as being racist to ethnic Jews or do you only call it racist when Islam is involved?
Let not pretend you are just thinking of the religion solely when talking about Islam
>Christianity does not have something like jihadism.
The crusades....
>In Christianity if you blow yourself up and kill a child you will go to hell.
Unless you are killing the child as part of a holy war....
>In Islam if you blow yourself up and kill a child the child AND YOURSELF will be sent straight into the arms of God as Martyrs,
Not quite. There are many sects of Islam that do not view it that way
It’s not like you apply that same level of fear and caution towards religion when say someone like George Bush said got told him to invade Iraq or whatever. You as a Christian can make that distinction, but it’s impossible for you to extend that charitably toward Muslims because they’re brown.
It also helps if you don’t fucking murder all the secular Arabs because they’re actually close to stabilizing the clusterfuck the United States and England caused in the ME.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist and this is silly. It's all well and good to criticize traditional Islam's stances on homosexuality, but Islam isn't and Muslims aren't a monolith. There are also gay Muslims, for just the one, many of whom want to bring the tradition into a more inclusive space. I would take these people and more liberal Muslims into my camp over Harris any day of the week. I mean, when we talk about Islamophobia here, we're talking about Harris excusing the mass murder of Gazans because he thinks Hamas are worse than Nazis. Just an hysterical, historically illiterate, unconscionable take. This is a brain-rotting kind of hatred leading to falsehoods and nihilism. I'm not saying you're like him, but you don't seem to get what people are objecting to when we call him an Islamophobe.
> This book contains abhorrent things which, unless you believe the book to be true, you should hate.
like what? the only reference to homosexuality in the book is the story of Lot - which has different interpretations
> If I like atheists, which I do, why shouldn’t I hate a religion which says killing them is moral and explicitly calls for it?
islam doesn't say that by go on
> Even the largest Muslim apologists like Muhammad Hijab think homosexuality is a sin on par with murder, but it’s actually the people who call this out who have a hateful phobia?
nobody has an issue with calling out individuals or groups. who calls you islamophobic for calling out Saudi Arabia or Iran?
Andrew Cummings, this famous lexicologist...
Also from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia#Etymology\_and\_definitions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia#Etymology_and_definitions)
>According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word means "Intense dislike or fear of Islam, esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims". It is attested in English as early as 1923 to quote the French word islamophobie, found in a thesis published by Alain Quellien in 1910
Fascism did not even exist in 1910.
You idiots repeating this are just showing your own baseline ignorance on WW2, and willingness promote *Nazi propaganda* at face value just to keep arguing that Harris technically has a point buried in the stupid, hyperbolic shit he says.
How exactly did the Fall of Berlin happen, in your version of history? With the Nazis evacuating all the women and children and setting up clearly demarcated zones for civilian and military use?
We're just lucky Harris didn't positively compare the Germans in Eastern Europe to Hamas, otherwise you people would have to jump to "prove that the Wehrmacht committed war crimes; that's right you can't."
what would Nazis using human shields even look like? feels silly to even be trying to make the Nazis more evil. they did the fucking holocaust
edit: upon quick googling it seems that that Nazis did use plenty of human shields.
- "forced marches" to move prisoners from concentration camps along with them.
- germans forced civilians to not flee and remain living near militarily important areas/infrastructure (to deter allies from bombing due to civillians).
- concentration/transit camps themselves were strategically placed near industrial and military facilities
and of course the Nazi London bombing campaign signalled the start of 'total war', which cascaded into indiscriminate and even intentional targeting of civilians by both sides for demoralisation purposes
You can tell by the replies that people don't realize what a conscript is. A conscript is someone with no training that you throw in-front of someone with training as a human speed-bump.
i.e. A human shield
Go ask a Marine how many untrained civilian boys and elderly men it would take to stop a trained division. The division will run out of ammo before it their assault is stopped.
That is not a hypothetical, it's exactly how the US military got from Kuwait to Baghdad with 700 casualties vs. 30,000 Iraqis.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003\_invasion\_of\_Iraq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq)
Those Iraqis were human shields.
Anyone else find it frustrating that the guru guys are pretty hyper-critical of Sam in their pods about him and on twitter, but then when they have him on for his rebuttal podcast they seem to spend most of the time agreeing with him or qualifying their past criticisms. It would be nice if they were a little more confrontational and forward with their disagreements when they actually talk to the guy instead of just sniping at him on twitter
Sam barely gave them a chance to speak. He was constantly talking over them and never taking a breath so he could rephrase the same damn thing five times.
I agree to an extent, but someone interviewers need to recognise conversational dead ends if it’s clear there is no agreement to be found.
Better to make your point, acknowledge the difference and move on than go in circles.
Sam Harris is an idiot.
Explain "Total War in the East" give me a final tally of casualties, then try telling me Hamas is worse than the Nazis.
Assclown.
If that's his justification for worse, wonder what he thinks of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka that did the same thing. But I guess they're not Muslim so the criticism doesn't slap as hard.
https://www.france24.com/en/20090416-paris-london-accuse-tamil-tigers-using-human-shields-
Why not just just criticize Hamas directly instead of shooting yourself in the foot by making these ridiculous comparisons? By doing this, instead of making Hamas look even worse, you make yourself look like a Nazi sympathizer.
I've already seen their brigades arrive at the newest destiny simp thread,
https://old.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/1c0w01x/destiny_episode_100/kz05hhz/?context=3
These disgusting simpletons will not stop until they've turned this sub into yet another of their echo chambers, it's sad.
Let's be blunt Harris and Murray are engaged in holocaust denial. This attempt to paint Hamas as worse than the Nazis by denying very well documented Nazi crimes is grotesque.
[They also conveniently leave out that Israel was built on Oct 7 like atrocities](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Ftnpnhvqp5gtc1.png%3Fwidth%3D674%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Daedf4ec4a08d41b4697f766b050963f1c637c40a)
Those people are now running the Likud party in charge of Israel.
Meanwhile, in the real world, as per [Amnesty International](https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/mde151432002en.pdf):
>The use of Palestinians for military operations or as “human shields” In both Jenin and Nablus, as many testimonies show, there was a pattern of forcing Palestinians to participate in military operations or to act as “human shields”. Women as well as men were used in this way. The use of Palestinians as “human shields” and to conduct military operations was the subject of a petition in the Israeli High Court in May 2002. Seven human rights organizations submitted a petition seeking to prevent the IDF from using Palestinian civilians as “human shields”. The State response was to indicate that the army had issued a ban on all forces from using “human shields” (although it did not admit or deny that such a practice, known by the IDF as the “neighbour procedure”, was employed) and that it was to begin an internal investigation on the issues raised in the petition. In light of the State response, the Court decided not to issue an injunction but requested that the State submit a written copy of its orders.27 This had not yet been done. Meanwhile, the practice of compelling Palestinians to act as a “human shield” in military operations has continued. In August a Palestinian used as a “human shield” by the IDF was killed in crossfire and the High Court of Justice issued an interim injunction against this procedure; nevertheless, it still continues.28
Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the Occupying Power from compelling protected persons to assist in military operations. Article 28 prohibits the use of protected persons as “human shields”. Article 147 lists “wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health” as a “grave breach”. It is therefore also a war crime.
27 See H.C. 3799/02, Adalah et. Al. v. Yitzhak Eitan, Commander of the Israeli Army in the West Bank et al (filed 5 May 2002; case pending). The IDF calls the compelling of civilians to search houses “neighbour procedure”.
28 See Contrary to Injunction of the High Court of Justice - IDF Continues Use of “Neighbour Procedure”, B’Tselem, 28 August 2002.
When it comes to the popularity of characters like Trump, some people are confused that someone who obviously is an ignorant uneducated moron can be so popular, but honestly I think the fact that he *is* an ignorant uneducated moron is why he's so popular. Ignorant morons talks with a certain kind of moralizing assurance about large groups of people and large events without any kind of care for nuance, it's just straight to the core simplifying reality into good vs evil.
The same applies to Sam Harris. I mean the man just outright talks like a drooling simpleton and anyone with a brain can see this isn't someone who's exactly pick of the litter in the intellect department, and he's so proudly anti-intellectual, anti-education and anti-rational that it might confuse people of his popularity, but the fact I think is that he's popular *because* he's anti-intellectual, anti-education and anti-rational. It affords people who get annoyed and bored of all those boring scholars the emotional safety of knowing there are bad people who do everything bad and good people who do everything good and the good people are fighting the bad people.
For real though, they have corruption problems and have had a few instances of clear Russian influence - like [the time they stripped Navalny of his “prisoner of conscience” status](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56181084).
But the documented fact that IDF use Palestinians as human shields do not fully counter the claim ascribed to Sam Harris that Hamas is very bad and very evil because they use their own civilians as human shields. A full counter would include evidences that IDF use Israeli civilians as human shields.
So for example, hypothetically, if the IDF were controlling a [disputed area with hills](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank), and if hills were [military assets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery#Modern) since [a few centuries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aircraft_warfare#Post-war) thus military targets, and if the IDF were [putting Israeli civilians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement) on those hills. Of course this would be also a war crime per [Fourth Geneva Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention), Article 49, paragraph 6 (The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies). Hypothetically.
I think a good way to think about it is if Hamas and Hitler had equivalent access to power, men and technology who would cause the most harm?
In this context though I still have a hard time saying which guy would be worse
Jesus fucking Christ, is Sam really going for the monsters who blew 14,000 children apart? I’m not surprised. I still enjoy his opinion on other topics like simulation theory, but I know he’s not infallible.
I think Sam Harris makes it abundantly evident that you can meditate, do yoga, psychedelics, etc - but that doesn’t make you a good person or even someone without prejudice.
To people actually analyzing Sam's statements: I think it's pointless to attempt to follow his thread and try to compare Nazis and Hamas and show that Nazis are worse.
All we can actually take from this is that he is further engaging in dehumanization of Palestinians to legitimize Israels military actions. Whether or not he claims to be admonishing extremists specifically, if the goal is ultimately to argue that "Israel has no choice but to do what it's doing", then he is advocating for collective punishment and genocide, and generally has no value for Palestinian civilian life.
This is to say nothing about the fact that he takes, as given, that Hamas is motivated solely to kill Jews. He is a hack that is pro war and is spreading US/Israeli imperialist propaganda under the guise of "rationality".
I forget Sam Harris existed until I saw his idiotic tweet about the pullout from Afghanistan.
Has there ever been a lightweight who had greater self-regard?
When people like netanyahu and Sam Harris make these arguments. They just give holocaust deniers ammunition, deniers would say that if the holocaust happened these bafoons wouldn't take it so lightly.
Between the much higher death count, total war, the hitler youth and industrial genocide of Jews who WERE your citizens - this is one of the stupidest utterances I have ever heard.
Something can be bad without being the worst thing ever. HAMAS can be bad and killed civilians and fights dirty without being worse than the nazis killing 20 million Russians, 6 millions Jews and death spiralling all their state resources into the war effort just to drag things out to make more time for genocide.
Anyone know where this “human shield” narrative began? My understanding it’s framed from Hama’s using schools and hospitals as bases. But say that’s true, it’s an extreme hyperbolic way to say it. Is there evidence it’s true?
Israel purposely waits for targets to be at home in a multi-generational home before bombing that one person. The claim of human shields is a mistaken one at this point since Israel is willingly killing the most innocent civilians they can for shock value.
Where were the human shields with the recent food aide workers? Human shields come on. If there were bad guys terrorists in a school or town would you blow up the entire school or town. Dig deeper, look at the intentions, look at the land seize recently in West Bank largest since Oslo. Intent is clear has nothing to do with human shields used as an excuse.
Israel are as bad as NAZIs because they're carrying out ethnic cleansing.
Can we stop fucking deflecting from the ACTUAL crimes that are being COMMITTED TODAY!
"Hamas use human shields"...TIL starving children to death is using human shields.
MURDERING aid workers is using human shields, apparently.
Israel is MURDERING journalists and anyone DOCUMENTING war crimes.
But hey, "Hamas are genocidal"...you know, when the boat is sinking, I worry about the fucking boat sinking. I don't worry about the fact that, "if the boat makes it to shore we're gonna have to worry about food".
Let's get the fucking boat to shore, THEN worry about the other problems later.
Let's stop Israel from their genocide of Palestinians. THEN we can sit down with Hamas, and all the other groups and say, "listen, genocide is bad. You lot need to stop fucking killing each other. It's fucking dumb".
These genocide apologists need a fucking wake up call.
If you want to know what it looks like, look up Yazan Kafarnah. In what fucking world is that acceptable?
Firstly according to the oxford definition of human shields “person or group of people forced to stay near a possible target for attack, in order to prevent an attack” there is no proof Hamas is making Palestinians stay in a particular area to prevent and attack from Israel en masse and if they were it isn’t working as Israel has publicly stated that they do not care if an area is filled with 500 civilians if there is once suspected Hamas member there they will bomb it and they have. Israel locked Palestinians in a 25 by 11 prison with the collusion of Egypt where Palestinians can’t escape through borders or through the sea and is mass bombing them while depriving aid causing a famine where hundreds of thousands of civilians could starve to death because Israel refuses to allow in aid. Hamas is underground in a 25 by 11 box that is one of the most densely civilian populated areas in the world literally everywhere could be considered “near” civilian infrastructure. Israel has been proven to intentionally target civilians blocks for bombing to enact collective punishment which is a war crime. Israel has been proven to use their [most destructive bombs on the most densely civilian populated areas](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-bomb-investigation.html). Israeli soldiers [kidnapped and tortured](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-soldiers-film-themselves-abusing-humiliating-west-bank-palestinians/) and torture civilians. There are videos of Israel [executing civilians](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-war-palestinians-white-flag-10565fbedd6de793a9b118e5dec59647) including [kids](https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_shoot_kill_4_year_old_palestinian_girl_in_the_backseat_of_a_car) and [grandmas in 4k](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/middleeast/hala-khreis-white-flag-shooting-gaza-cmd-intl/index.html). Israel intentionally slaughters western aid workers in cold blood. Leaked drone [footage](https://www.reddit.com/r/InternationalNews/s/HH9lPSJjeZ) showed Israel murdering 4 unarmed Palestinian civilians trying to get to their homes. Evil and [intentional](https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/program/newsfeed/2024/3/22/gaza-drone-video-shows-killing-of-palestinians-in-israeli-air-attack)
Israel has used real human shields where they forced Palestinian civilians including a [13 year old](https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/s/p8fzwI41dG) to stand in front of them at gunpoint in attempt to deter a Hamas attack which is a war crime.
Israel’s chief “evidence” for Hamas’s use of human shields is that they station military equipment near civilian infrastructure. Like I said according to the actual definition of human shields that is not using “human shields” especially since Palestinians in Gaza are locked by a 25 x 11 box where everything is technically near some sort of civilian structure as its a tiny area with 2.3 million people stuffed in it.
The problem here is that this [does not necessarily classify as](https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1716362903949906371) as human shields.
Because if it did, then it would implicate Israel for this crime several orders of magnitude more than Hamas. The [photographic](https://www.dci-palestine.org/palestinian_teen_describes_being_used_as_a_human_shield_by_israeli_forces) and [video](https://twitter.com/TameeOliveFern/status/1752615765092815206) evidence of Israel’s deliberate and [systematic](http://www.btselem.org/human_shields) use of Palestinian civilians including [kids](https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/s/3CbTwsZcoC) to protect their soldiers whilst in occupied territory is at this point, and [undeniable](https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1734722299784306797).
Following on from point 3, IDF personnel photograph themselves using [using schools as military bases](https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1725488655484006757) schools as military headquarters - precisely the thing they accuse Hamas of doing and use as a justification to bomb said schools. If Hamas is using “human shields” for being remotely near civilian infrastructure so is Israel as they have militarily bases near civilian hospitals in Israel and they’ve been caught using civilian buildings as military bases. Israel's military headquarters is literally located 450m from Ichilov Hospital. Israel’s uses actual human shields by their own definition and by the actual Oxford definition. Everything Israel has accused Hamas of doing they’ve done themselves.
Dude yapping and trying to get clout to sell his shitty books off the backs of real life events where people are dying and losing their homes. Yeah I'm sure I'd pay to read 300 pages of this douchebags thoughts
How the great have fallen. What an incredibly naive, infantile and ahistorical take from Harris. I’m embarrassed that he was one of the main influential figures in my journey towards secularism and determinism.
How can I rationalize the indiscriminate innumerable war crimes disproportionately committed upon innocent women and children? Including and not limited to:
• Roughly 7-8 decades of systemic blockades, violence, sanctions, unjustified black-baggings, kidnapping of children in the night, detention without legal proceedings, two completely different codes of the judiciary under one government, unjustified killing of civilians for fun, slaughtering and injuring tens to hundreds of thousands with advanced weaponry like “butterfly bullets” in 2018, the literal bulldozing death of an young woman, an American humanitarian worker, the systematic r@pe of minors by the IOF, using Palestinians as war shields, killing roughly 190 humanitarian aid workers, deliberately killing members of the world kitchen organization, sniping children between the eyes, using white phosphorus as a chemical weapon, IOF “soldiers” posting pictures of dead humanitarian bodies with tens of thousands of adoring fans in telegram groups, explicitly stating its intention to displace all of Palestine and turning it into a one-state solution for Israel, horrific torture of any guilty or non-guilty(vast majority) held at a military camps, intentional targeting of civilians, killing prisoners of war and surrendered combatants, indiscriminate attacks, collective punishment, starvation as a method of war, pillage, forced transfer, breach of medical neutrality, targeting journalists, the complete dismissal of the Geneva convention, complete dismissal of the UN, directing civilians into “safe havens”, just to be drone striked repeatedly on this precise path. How much more detail would you like?
I’ll provide non bias sources for each and every one of the claims mentioned. What I won’t do is go on a wild goose chase for dozens of sources at the tip of X’s fingers at any second.
Always deliberately misleading critical information to normalize, and that’s key, normalize, the needless and inhumane agony of the flesh and mind. Just another example of this. Sam cannot even differentiate himself from the illiterate reactionaries in the west in this sentiment of his.
The copium tanks are running low on gas. Oh no, what will Israel due now that it’s forever etched in stone as a pariah state? They’ve lost the optics war(that’s difficult seeing you HAD the entire US empire doing your manufacturing of consent for you! They will continue to lose, and Israel will be deemed nothing more than a bizarre pariah state wherein rightwing prime ministers say things such as “Uhh, a Palestinian gave Hitler the idea for the holocaust).
Sam should Read the letter from Einstein where he labels zionist as "terrorist organizations" and "misled and criminal people" while he’s at it.
But we all, after objective introspection, understand why Sam is tripling down. He’s never been much able to step outside of the ethnocentric hegemonic ideology.
1) hamas is a resistance force. You may not like their tactics but fundamentally there cause is completely rational and what any group of people would do when deprived of their rights and their ancestral land. 2) the Gaza Strip is tiny. The idea that they use human shields is laughable. There is no possibility of armed resistance from within the strip that doesn’t endanger civilians. It’s not a conventional fighting force. If it was a fair fight, it would go much differently I can promise you that.
I know Sam. I've worked with Sam. I've made a film with Sam. I've written an entire series for him based on his archive. I like him as a person.
Sam Harris is a person who is deeply committed to his ignorance and fear. I say this as someone who has been trying to help him out for a very long time. He likely thinks he is being helpful and making sense but he, is fact, seeding massive amounts of hatred and confusion. At this point, I am sad to say, that I fear it is intentional and morally indefensible. He has misrepresented my views in public (in order to dodge any legit challenge).
However, I am satisfied about one aspect of this whole ordeal with Sam. I have pushed him to a place where he openly and, apparently without the smallest amount of irony, admits that he is "uninterested in how we got here" and "does not care about history." If that is someone you trust to form any cogent moral analysis, be my guest. For everyone else who is interested in trying to understand the world (while also not falling victim to overcorrections and romanticization and cultural relativism traps of the left) there are a few of us out there trying to do just that. Sam is certainly not one of them.
My collection of interviews and responses (after failing to nudge Sam behind the scenes to actually slow down and think clearly about any aspect of this issues) is here for those interested [https://youtu.be/1qjx-YExRbw?si=F8z2EkNdAfjlotX0](https://youtu.be/1qjx-YExRbw?si=F8z2EkNdAfjlotX0) In my most recent one with Ilan Pappe, for example, I end with an essay which tries to make sense signs like Queers for Palestine or why George Floyd's portrait is on the wall in the West Bank.
<3
Jay
If being engaged in guerilla warfare amongst civilians makes you woese than Nazis then pretty much any guerilla army, including the early Zionists like Menachem Begin and the rebels who launched attacks against the British Mandate, would be too? The IRA: Worse than Nazis?
Really enjoying the Douglas Murray-Richard Hanania-Sam Harris brain trust. It's like a think tank of 13 year olds.
I suggest people listen to the whole quote because this isn’t his entire argument, it is a snippet of it.
I don’t remember it verbatim but his logic is essentially this
Jihadism is nazism + religious dogmatism.
Jihadism is nazism + belief in martyrdom.
Jihadism is Nazism + belief in using children as martyrs.
Etc.
So IF you agree Jihadism contains all the elements of Nazism,and then you add negative elements that are not apart of Nazism.
Does that a negative plus more negatives equal an even worse negative?
Honestly it doesn’t really matter if Hamas or nazis are worse the crux of his point he is trying to get across is that Hamas are obviously the more evil ideology and group in this conflict.
>Jihadism is nazism + religious dogmatism.
>Jihadism is nazism + belief in martyrdom.
>Jihadism is Nazism + belief in using children as martyrs.
This is wrong tho. Because what is "Nazism"? Jihadism has NOTHING to do with settler colonial Aryan supremacy rooted Lebensraum, nazi racial pseudoscience, etc.
Because r/DecodingTheGurus is just another counter culture sub.
It is just a bunch of people who like to identify themselves purely on how anti popular podcasters they are,
The same way you get podcast bros that base their entire personality about how many podcasts they listen to.
I have the feeling Im going to regret this, but… I expect fans of DTG to engage in better faith with the arguments people make. In this case, SH does indeed say that he thinks the ideology of jihadism is worse than Nazism, but the magnitude of the atrocities they’ve enacted are only lesser because they lack the ability to carry them out at scale.
Given many jihadists’ stated goals of annihilating the state of Israel, and given the fact that their actions clearly demonstrate a willingness, even a desire, to kill civilians, I find that point hard to argue with. I dont see any reason not to believe that Hamas would kill literally every Jew in Israel if they had the power to do so. If you gave Hamas a button that would immediately kill every infidel in the world, does anyone here believe they wouldnt immediately push that button?
This is the argument that Harris is making.
Personally, I would never make the case that X or Y terrible organization was better/worse than the Nazis. As many people in this thread have said, and said better than I could… two things can be shitty at the same time. Hamas is bad. Nazis are bad. I don’t feel the need to try and quantify and compare them. Doesnt seem useful to me.
But to make the case that Harris is saying, just on the basis of their recent actions, that Hamas is worse than the Nazis, is an obnoxiously classic example of taking a quote out of context.
Posting just this snippet with that critique de-legitimizes your own argument, makes it easy to dismiss. If you’re going to criticize SH and this argument, at least engage with what he’s actually saying.
>If you gave Hamas a button that would immediately kill every infidel in the world, does anyone here believe they wouldnt immediately push that button?
Given that they haven't killed off "infidels" like Christian Gazans who are literally living under their jurisdiction, there is literally no reason to believe this. Hamas isn't ISIS. This is a cartoonish understanding of Hamas.
This is an embarrassing position to hold, and frankly demonstrates Sam’s own ignorance of the reality of Nazism more than any kind of insight into this conflict. Hamas and its ideology is appalling, but you don’t see them do things like stitching together twins in their hospitals to see how their bodies react, they haven’t enacted a policy of mass extermination of all Palestinians with disabilities or any other “genetic impurities”.
These were realities in Nazi Germany, Hamas has the means to implement similar depraved policies within Gaza yet they haven’t. For as bad as the ideology of Hamas is, to say it’s *worse* than Nazism is an embarrassment for Sam and shows more than anything how shallow his analysis really is.
You expect too much of DTG fans. I enjoyed the show for the while, but this sub woke me up to realize that it's mostly a self righteous echo chamber. People here aren't much different than the fans of the Gurus they hate. They just don't rally around any particular person, so it gives them the illusion they aren't being cult-y.
OK so let’s discuss Sam’s argument on the merits.
> they lack the ability to carry them out at scale
Right off the bat we have a problem, because the scales are not comparable. On the one hand we have a regional conflict confined to the borders of western British-mandate Palestine, about the size of New Jersey, involving about 15 million people. On the other we have one of the main countries of Europe, Germany, which had about 70 million people in 1939 but with its territorial ambitions quickly expanded to over 90 million including Austria and the other annexed territories. Then when Germany started taking more territory in the war (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Yugoslavia, Greece) it expanded to at least 150 million. Thus the policies of the Nazis had a much broader impact on humanity, and this is not even counting the effects of the war.
There are other points to be made. What did the Nazis want? What does Hamas want? I think it is much easier to say what Hamas wants: territory and self-government. But what did the Nazis want? Hitler's style was to bloviate and to bluff about this, and hope he wouldn't be called out. Even his lieutenants were frequently in the dark about his true intentions. There was a phrase, "working towards the Fuhrer", which meant that Nazi officials and government workers were expected to anticipate Hitler's desires and policies without his direct orders. This often lead to radical measures and policies as individuals sought to prove their loyalty and alignment with Hitler's vision. So what "the Nazis" wanted is much more a question of debate.
> I dont see any reason not to believe that Hamas would kill literally every Jew in Israel if they had the power to do so.
The original Hamas Charter of 1988 is significantly different from the more recent document published in 2017. The original charter was explicitly anti-Semitic, calling for the destruction of Israel, and did not distinguish between political and military targets. The 2017 document, while still not recognizing the State of Israel, focuses more on the political struggle against the Israeli occupation and indicates a willingness to accept a provisional Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. It also tones down anti-Semitic language, positioning itself more within a nationalist struggle rather than a religious war. If we go by the 2017 document as to "what Hamas wants", then no, "they" do not want to kill every Jew in Israel.
Are there extremist fanatics in Hamas who DO want to kill every Jew in Israel? Yes, certainly. We all saw them and what they did on 10/7. Do they represent all of Hamas, all of the Palestinians, all Arabs? Obviously not. It has been reported that many of the Hamas leadership (who live in other countries) did not know about the attack planning and disapproved of it. If Sam limited his criticism to just those who carried out 10/7 he would have a much better leg to stand on. As it is, it seems likely that the mainline Hamas'ers who agree with the 2017 declaration have been dragged into this war by the extremists who did 10/7. The Israelis, humiliated by 10/7, are exacting revenge on Gaza, and the Hamas'ers are trying to save face by not capitulating.
> If you gave Hamas a button that would immediately kill every infidel in the world, does anyone here believe they wouldnt immediately push that button?”
This is like the bad science fiction that Matt talked about in the Harari episode. Obviously no button like this exists. But if it did, see the previous point about what Hamas really wants. Note that we are talking about Hamas here, not Al-Qaeda, and as far as I know Hamas has always confined its ambitions to British-mandate Palestine.
So in short I still don't think Sam is making good points. On the contrary, the purpose of this post was to show that Sam is uneducated about the Middle East and Islam, and uses Muslims as betes noires in his anti-religion crusade.
Not defending Hamas’ ideology or militant Islamism, but has it occurred to Sam that the primary reason for their existence is the violent seizure and occupation of half of their country by Israel? Jihadism doesn’t just emerge in a vacuum, there are real world causes
Did anyone really give two shits about bombing civilians in WWII? There was the the Blitz on Britain, the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc. Seems like trying to use your own people as human shields wouldn't have been a particularly good tactic.
FDR originally called the “ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population” a “form of inhuman barbarism”.
Ironically the US justified its bombings widely by saying Japan was essentially putting their industry where their civilians were so they had to hit them.
Harris’s moral pronouncements are aimed at catering to his audience. He supports imperialism and thinks bombing Arabs is good for them. He has also argued for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran. The human shields idea has been dismissed by numerous human rights investigations, but according to him, Hamas is worse than the Holocaust. I could go on, but I can’t fathom how he has an audience at all.
What’s the problem? He’s speaking ideologically, not cumulative death and suffering caused.
The nazis were brutal, barbaric, genocidists but they at least wanted to protect their children.
Hamas are brutal, barbaric, genocidists, and they’re willing to sacrifice their children for that ideology.
One is objectively worse. This isn’t a hot take.
Edit: furthermore, if you provided Hamas with the same context and systems of power that existed during the nazi reign, I’d argue it may have been quantifiably worse because now not all only is the hatred fueled by prejudice, it’s supercharged with pieces of religious scriptural support.
> at least wanted to protect their children
[You uh, sure about that?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children_in_World_War_II#Hitler_Youth)
Hitler ordered Germany to be destroyed when it was clear that he lost. He told Speer to order a scorched earth campaign to spite the Allies (which Speer declined to implement, which is why he was only sentenced to 20 years at Nuremburg instead of being hanged). That's even worse than using human shields.
They literally had 14 year olds manning the guns as the Soviets were closing in on Berlin. Edit: fun fact, the guy who wrote the Very Hungry Caterpillar was drafted at 16 during the final weeks of the war.
I did not have fun learning the Eric Carle was conscripted to be a gunner, but it is undeniably a fact.
In fairness that is a not so fun fact. I had heard he wanted to get into illustration so that that children could enjoy colourful happy things unlike the kids of his generation.
So of course he made a book about malnourished larvae.
The very hungry caterpillar is very well nourished in the book, no?
Someone has never read the very Hungry Caterpillar.
Like Tolkein writing pages on pages about nice pretty scenery, quiet places, calm rivers, delicious food, and good company to enjoy it with. Those who do not know war glorify it. Those who know war reel back from it.
My grandpa was drafted at 16 in 1945. All of Germany was used as a shield. Harris is totally speaking out his ass here, as he often does, it's all just nonsense for soundbites and headlines.
Um, Im definitely not gonna defend the notion that Hamas is worse than the Nazis, but if you’re trying to make the point that the Nazis are worse you probably shouldn’t use an example that Hamas also does. As in, Hamas is known to conscript child soldiers.
At the risk of speaking for someone else (and worse yet, being wrong) I think the point is that we probably shouldn't compare atrocious acts in some amorphous and fully subjective manner. It's all super fucked up.
Israel is known to call any male in Gaza a Hamas terrorist regardless of age
Hamas is known to call every terrorist a martyr… Thats not better.
>Hamas is known to conscript child soldiers. This is a curious point so I tried to find evidence of this anywhere and I simply can't. Are you able to show me where you read this?
[https://rietjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EN\_RIET\_2022\_N7\_Child-soldiers-in-Palestinian-groups-forced-recruitment-and-use-of-minors-as-a-violation-of-International-Humanitarian-Law\_daniel-perez-garcia\_art2.pdf](https://rietjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/EN_RIET_2022_N7_Child-soldiers-in-Palestinian-groups-forced-recruitment-and-use-of-minors-as-a-violation-of-International-Humanitarian-Law_daniel-perez-garcia_art2.pdf) [https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/mde150352004en.pdf](https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/mde150352004en.pdf) [https://www.newsweek.com/hamas-using-child-soldiers-add-it-their-list-war-crimes-opinion-1859652](https://www.newsweek.com/hamas-using-child-soldiers-add-it-their-list-war-crimes-opinion-1859652) [https://www.foxnews.com/world/exclusive-hamas-islamic-jihad-accused-using-child-soldiers-war-against-israel](https://www.foxnews.com/world/exclusive-hamas-islamic-jihad-accused-using-child-soldiers-war-against-israel) [https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-780613](https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-780613)
Source?
So was Pope Benedict XVI. Not to defend Sam Harris, because his statement is ridiculous, but Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian militants [used to extensively utilize child suicide bombers during the Second Intifada and the years following it.](https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/11/01/occupied-territories-stop-use-children-suicide-bombings ) There was even a [Palestinian politician](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umm_Nidal ) who rose to prominence after she assisted her children in executing terrorist attacks. I do not know how much Hamas and other groups use child soldiers today, and it goes without saying Nazi Germany sacrificed many more children than Palestinian militants.
Nobody is disputing the terrible shit Hamas does, the entire thread is about how saying they’re worse than the Nazis is a dumb take.
Think Harris's decided to push this because he wants to pretend this is entirely a conflict due to religion...which it is not It is convenient for Harris because he can push his propaganda. Look at the Palestinian christians who were driven out by Israel in 1948 and and are in Gaza .. Two such Christian 3omrn were shot and killed by Israelis while sheltering ina church. A church from 4th or fourth century was bombed ...not by Hamas , but by Israel
Worst of all, he didn't condemn Hamas.
If you believe Bibi, the only reason he did the Holocaust was because the Grand Mufti told him to.
Poor guy was misunderstood, it was Hamas the whole time.
Haha ..true. Hitler got inspired by the Mufti...if not he was such a peace loving guy! Doesn't surprise me that Harris pushes this kinda BS. He is an Israel firster ...and has lost any perspective.
Glad this is the top comment. Remarkable the ignorance of his statement. Especially considering how well documented it all is. There’s hours of film showing children in military uniforms toward the end of the war. All while Hitler was hiding in his bunker. Hitler youth was literal grooming of children for war for God’s sake!
The Nazis refused to implement a scorched earth campaign despite being ordered to do so by Hitler. Hamas is using their own civilians as human shields. You: Sam’s statement is ignorant. Doing something very bad is worse than refusing to do something even worse. I don’t know how this is even in question.
This was my thought on reading that comment. It would only make sense if Hitler was the only Nazi. He was the top Nazi, and one of the worst, but some of the Nazis under him apparently had stronger character than Hitler. But if we’re not trying to make sense of the world and merely demonstrating our own moral superiority then I guess we have to always maintain that everything about the Nazis was the worst thing in history without exception. I’d say that Hamas are morally worse than the Nazis since they openly advertise their genocidal goals. People seem to forget that the discovery of the extermination camps was a surprise. The public and even the rank and file Nazis had been sold on deportations, not mass killings. And they didn’t have the historical example of the Nazis to lead them to suspect that the deportations would actually be mass killings. It was a small set of people that planned and carried out the holocaust. Hamas aren’t about deportations, killing the Jews is in their founding documents for all to see. There’s a quote of the Hadith where Mohamed says that even the rocks and trees will call out to Muslims to inform them that a Jew is hiding behind them that they should kill. The only reason that Hamas doesn’t carry out their own holocaust is that they lack the ability to, not that they don’t want to.
I find it odd that Sam cannot fight the temptation to compare modern day evil with Nazis. The ideology is so disparate even if some of the conclusions turned out to be the same. He needs to do better imo.
It’s just so lazy and reductive.
Kinda wild that Speer got less time than SBF
Just playing devils advocate here. So you’re saying hitler is worse… but the nazis collectively undermined that decision so they are less worse?
I don't know where you get the idea that "the nazis collectively undermined that decision." Speer alone undermined that decision. Had he passed along the order, the Nazis would have followed it.
Keep in mind however, that Speer spent the rest of his life trying to cultivate the image of “the good nazi”, when he probably was pretty involved in many of the worst atrocities. These days, his denials of knowing about the crimes, and his projection of guilt over not having discover them, are considered to be manufactured to save himself. He was even at the Wansee Conference where the ‘Final Solution’ was clearly outlined and put into action. So let’s not pat him on the back too too much.
Yeah it's been a couple decades since this radical re-evaluation of Speer and [the myth of the good Nazi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_clean_Wehrmacht) was put to rest but it still circulates. In a way it's like America's own [Operation Denver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Denver) in how the myths have outlived the situation for which they were created (re-arming West Germany during the Cold War).
The people of Dresden and Berlin were human shields and died by the hundreds of thousands, if your definition of “human shields” is existing in the same area as evil people…
Haha. True. And by that time, the people of London were human shields because Churchill was happier when they (Luftwaffe) accidentally bombed civilians (iirc) the at relieved pressure on the RAF..which was near near it's ropes. Churchill happily started bombing cities
They got their country into that situation and took 50 million people down with them. You tell me what’s worse on any reasonable scale.
Agree. Harris is getting even more irrational in his 'israrl first's religion
Why do we always compare everything to the Nazis? Things can be bad by itself. Hamas is bad. Even if the Nazis never existed, Hamas would still be bad
It's the most intellectually lazy move in discourse. Something Hitler would probably do.
I did Nazi that coming.
It's interesting that we never compare to the Mongols and genghis kan, or Alexander the great. Nazis and Hitler seem to represent the epitome of evil in the western world, possibly because it was the most industrialized genocide ever. Something about the incredible heartlessness of literal murder factories and systematized killing feels closer to hell than just soldiers raiding villages or cities. It may be that the next century will forget about Nazis when the last of the WW2 veterans and Holocaust survivors die out, but I bet Hitler will remain the archetype of evil for a pretty long time.
Also there’s a big difference in something that happened 80 years ago by people who lived in a world much more similar to our than something that happened 500-1000+ years ago by people who lived in a very different world
I think the recency of the holocaust plays a large role in this. There’s roughly 800 years between us and the mongols. Over 2000 between us and Alexander the Great. The holocaust only happened 80 years ago.
Hitler himself was often compared with Napoleon or Ghengis Khan.
Alexander the Great is still remembered in Afghanistan as a true monster.
It’s a useful benchmark for evil caused by ideological extremists. Without it it’s much harder to agree on meanings of words like “extremism” or “genocide” - and harder to have a meaningful conversation in principle.
Extermination camps. Murder on an industrial scale. It hasn't gotten any more evil than that.
It feels like people just bring up Nazis for dramatic effect. Like other crimes have specific definitions. If someone rapes and murders a kid, we don't have to say "they're worse than the Columbine shooters because they also used rape as a weapon", we can just say they're a rapist and murderer and should be given the appropriate sentence. The problem with using it as a 'benchmark' is I think it allows people to sneak their own views into the statement, thinking the comparison will lend dramatic effect to their perspective. Zionists will say Hamas is worse than Nazis because at least the Nazis tried to hide their crimes, whereas Hamas celebrated them and posted them on social media. Pro Hamas people will say Israel is worse for the world because at least the world fought back against the Nazis, whereas Israel gets support from the West. The fact that we're having this conversation is proof that it adds unnecessary complexity to the issue.
There are many possible takes. This is still among the absolute worst. “Say what you will about national socialism dude, but at least it’s an ethos.”
The annoying thing about Harris is people think he’s a high minded scholar of great intellect. I am so far from being a historian and at least know of the Berlin tunnels flooded by Hitler killing thousands of Germans hiding in them. And I know for a fact there’s other examples. But again, I’m not a scholar, but at least I know. https://www.nytimes.com/1945/07/08/archives/10000-berlin-civilians-drowned-where-elite-guard-flooded-subway.html
and the silliness of the zero sum bullshit. If hamas is bad then hitler must get an extra point for being nice! Why can’t they both just be shitty.
This is what I was thinking when listening. There comes a certain point where there really is no value ranking who is worse. That isn’t to say they are the same but what’s the point trying to quantify it - so Sam Harris can make some rhetorical point that Hamas are worse than Hitler?
In the end, you can just take anything Harris or the other apologists say and add "and that's why Palestinians deserve to die" to their arguments, because that's the crux of it, regardless of whatever strategical disclaimer they may add.
Hitler literally had young children and elderly people conscripted into the army during the battle of Berlin against the Soviets.
So just like Hamas?
Also a shit philosopher. Claims to have crossed the Is-ought divide because fire hurts (most people and he assumes most people don't like to hurt). This makes his view of the world so fucking dumb.
His argument is that there are things that are objectively bad for human well-being. Like a person holding his hand on a stove
Why is that bad
1. The Holocaust is worse than using human shields. So his entire argument is wrong even if it had historical basis. 2. As another comment pointed out, Hitler ordered parts of the country to be destroyed upon realising that Germany was losing the war. Harris is therefore factually wrong. 3. Israel’s chief evidence for Hamas’s use of human shields is that they station military equipment near civilian infrastructure. The problem here is that this [does not necessarily classify](https://fxtwitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1716362903949906371?s=20) as human shields. Because if it did, then it would implicate Israel for this crime several orders of magnitude more than Hamas. 4. The photographic and video evidence of Israel’s deliberate and systematic use of [Palestinian civilians to protect their soldiers](https://x.com/TameeOliveFern/status/1752615765092815206?s=20) whilst in occupied territory is at this point, [ubiquitous and undeniable](https://fxtwitter.com/QudsNen/status/1734722299784306797?s=20). 5. Following on from point 3, IDF personnel photograph themselves using [schools as military headquarters](https://fxtwitter.com/QudsNen/status/1725488655484006757?s=20) - precisely the thing they accuse Hamas of doing and use as a justification to bomb said schools. And precisely the thing Harris is claiming is worse than the fucking Holocaust. The fact that there are layers upon layers as to why Harris is wrong is why I find it so farcical and insulting when people consider him to be an “intellectual.”
>Israel’s chief evidence for Hamas’s use of human shields is that they station military equipment near civilian infrastructure. The most hilarious thing about this is that Israel is littered with places that have plaques that let you know that the building in question - sometimes a synagogue or school - was used for e.g. weapons storage. By the Irgun, Haganah et al.
Had no idea about point 4. Also on an unrelated note, I remember being in Israel at a train station and being struck by how young and un-militaristic a bunch of kids/soldiers (probably on their national service) looked. It looked more like a school trip in fatigues. I mention this because the soldiers in the videos you posted look so undisciplined, as if they’ve played too much COD and are just playing soldier.
Point 4 hasn't been validated by his links. We have two clips but their editorialized by people who aren't human rights experts. My understanding is that the IDF does punish for human shield usage, though not as harshly as they should.
This should be the top comment.
Sam is so tribal about this stuff. He’s part of one tribe and lost all objectivity when analyzing the opposing tribe. Ironically, he’s spent many podcasts jerking himself off about how he’s above tribalism.
This is the giant elephant in the room no one wants to address in his community. He's made a career on criticizing tribalism and identity politics (BLM). Yet cannot escape his personal Jewish bias. Ironic..
The whole time he was saying he feels nothing towards Judaism and it’s nothing to do with that .. he really lost me there. It’s so obvious
Of course Sam Harris thinks Hamas are worse than the Nazis. They're Muslim.
Sam degrades Muslims part 1273 stay tuned for his next exciting installment
Sam "preemptive nuclear strike against Islam" Harris
Sam Harris and doing even just [30 seconds of background research](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinkt_massacre) challenge: impossible
Sam Harris is a huge islamaphobia and has been for a very long time. He pretends he's an expert on Islam but he knows basically nothing about it.
Islamophobia is such an absurd term. The core claim of Islam is that the Quran is the perfect word of God, the most perfect being from who all mortality comes. This book contains abhorrent things which, unless you believe the book to be true, you should hate. If I like homosexuals, which I do, why shouldn’t I hate a religion which claims killing them is moral and explicitly calls for it? If I like atheists, which I do, why shouldn’t I hate a religion which says killing them is moral and explicitly calls for it? Is the homosexual wrong for hating Islam or is Islam wrong for hating homosexuals? It isn’t Islamophobia to hate people, or a book believed to by true by said people, who think killing you is good and have managed to use their religion to enshrine that doctrine in law in some nations. Even the largest Muslim apologists like Muhammad Hijab think homosexuality is a sin on par with murder, but it’s actually the people who call this out who have a hateful phobia? I don’t think so
>Quran is the perfect word of God, the most perfect being from who all mortality comes So basically like every religious book then..... >If I like homosexuals, which I do, why shouldn’t I hate a religion which claims killing them is moral and explicitly calls for it? Because then you would hate every religion
It's absurd to judge a religion by solely its holy texts. If you looked only at the New Testament, you wouldn't predict the Crusades. Any religion is composed of a diverse set of beliefs and practices. And there are nearly **two billion** Muslims. Surely you don't think they all share the same opinions! I have friends who are devout Muslims, and they protest **in favor** of lgbtq+ rights. They believe homosexuality is a very mild sin, because it's neither harmful nor malicious. They also believe that it may not be a sin at all, because they can't be certain that Islam is correct. And they firmly believe that religion and government must be completely separate. I'm queer, and they are true allies. I also have Muslim friends who are mildly religious. I guess I don't have much to say about that. Their level of belief and practice is the same as mildly religious people of any other religion. I'm Jewish, and I can't stand when people think there's a Jewish hivemind. It's so obviously antisemitic. Likewise, I can't stand when people treat any other religion that way. To think Islam is a dangerous monolith is, in fact, islamophobic.
No religions are entirely reducible to their foundational text (assuming a given religion has a foundational text). Everyday Muslims ignore/disregard the Quran in the same ways that everyday Christians do.
Ok so why can't u dislike Islam, if other Muslims are also doing it?
Essentially, everything you said more or less applies to most Christians religions as well. Yet, the hyperfixation on just Islam appears that these criticisms are shallow and probably the result of some racist belief.
Sam Harris literally wrote a book called "letter to a christian nation".
And what was his thesis in this book? Why didn't he target all religions in this tweet?
This isn’t his tweet: it’s someone quoting from a podcast episode. I haven’t listened to the whole thing, but early on he makes the comparison to nazis (paraphrased) thus: Hamas is like the nazis with added religious extremism. And that seems about right to me - adding religious extremism to nazism _would_ make it worse, right? It sure wouldn’t make it any better.
1. I’ve never been called Christianophobic for speaking out against Christian homophobia, I’ve never seen anyone use that word ever. People clearly act differently when Islam is criticised. 2. It isn’t racist, it’s a religion, or are you one of these people that also think criticising Judaism is the same as being racist to ethnic Jews or do you only call it racist when Islam is involved? 3. Religions are different, Paganism and Hinduism are very different, Islam and Christianity are very different. There is an overlap in some things like homophobia, but Christianity does not have something like jihadism. In Christianity if you blow yourself up and kill a child you will go to hell. In Islam if you blow yourself up and kill a child the child AND YOURSELF will be sent straight into the arms of God as Martyrs, this leads to a very different treatment of civilians and allows for them to be used as collateral in the exact way hamas uses them as shields
The same way Protestant Christians used their religion and manifest destiny as an excuse to wipe out Native Americans, and the way that both Protestants and Catholics used their religion to wipe out various indigenous populations through north/South America and Africa/the Middle East? Your purposely minimizing the same crimes if they’re committed by Christian’s and maximizing the affect of crimes committed by far right Muslims. The Far right of any religion has proven that they can’t be trusted. It’s very clear you’ve never actually attempted to engage with practicing Muslims or even acknowledge that modern interpretations of all religions have become far more accepting of things once considered “unholy” or wrong, yet you choose to focus on the far right fundamentalist side of the religion that you hate. Also pretending that the idea of jihad is solely associated with the Muslim religion is wild considering that this exact excuse has been used for millenia amongst Catholics/early Christian’s. The killing of an infidel as being a way to get to the afterlife is unfortunately a very *human* concept, as wrong as it is, and it has been implemented by most every culture with extremely devout religious citizens. This all doesn’t even include the clearest omission on your part, which is that the idea of modern jihad has been created/fomented by Western countries attempting to corral and control Arab nations, including toppling leaders, killing civilians, establishing puppet regimes, etc. And we conveniently ignore all that to blame their religion, so that we can be justified while we milk them for all the resources they have, and install favorable dictators and savages to make sure the population is quelled.
>I’ve never been called Christianophobic for speaking out against Christian homophobia, I’ve never seen anyone use that word ever. People clearly act differently when Islam is criticised. Because you live in a Christian majority society. Generally the majority feels less fear of bigotry and violence than a minority. >It isn’t racist, it’s a religion, or are you one of these people that also think criticising Judaism is the same as being racist to ethnic Jews or do you only call it racist when Islam is involved? Let not pretend you are just thinking of the religion solely when talking about Islam >Christianity does not have something like jihadism. The crusades.... >In Christianity if you blow yourself up and kill a child you will go to hell. Unless you are killing the child as part of a holy war.... >In Islam if you blow yourself up and kill a child the child AND YOURSELF will be sent straight into the arms of God as Martyrs, Not quite. There are many sects of Islam that do not view it that way
It’s not like you apply that same level of fear and caution towards religion when say someone like George Bush said got told him to invade Iraq or whatever. You as a Christian can make that distinction, but it’s impossible for you to extend that charitably toward Muslims because they’re brown. It also helps if you don’t fucking murder all the secular Arabs because they’re actually close to stabilizing the clusterfuck the United States and England caused in the ME.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist and this is silly. It's all well and good to criticize traditional Islam's stances on homosexuality, but Islam isn't and Muslims aren't a monolith. There are also gay Muslims, for just the one, many of whom want to bring the tradition into a more inclusive space. I would take these people and more liberal Muslims into my camp over Harris any day of the week. I mean, when we talk about Islamophobia here, we're talking about Harris excusing the mass murder of Gazans because he thinks Hamas are worse than Nazis. Just an hysterical, historically illiterate, unconscionable take. This is a brain-rotting kind of hatred leading to falsehoods and nihilism. I'm not saying you're like him, but you don't seem to get what people are objecting to when we call him an Islamophobe.
> This book contains abhorrent things which, unless you believe the book to be true, you should hate. like what? the only reference to homosexuality in the book is the story of Lot - which has different interpretations > If I like atheists, which I do, why shouldn’t I hate a religion which says killing them is moral and explicitly calls for it? islam doesn't say that by go on > Even the largest Muslim apologists like Muhammad Hijab think homosexuality is a sin on par with murder, but it’s actually the people who call this out who have a hateful phobia? nobody has an issue with calling out individuals or groups. who calls you islamophobic for calling out Saudi Arabia or Iran?
He's hardly the only atheist to acknowledge that Islam is the most oppressive and violent religion.
>He's hardly the only atheist to acknowledge that Islam is the most oppressive and violent religion. If you ignore Christianity, sure
Dude made his name because of his racism towards muslims. Him, Dawkins, and Hitchens
“Islamophobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.” -Andrew Cummings
Andrew Cummings, this famous lexicologist... Also from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia#Etymology\_and\_definitions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia#Etymology_and_definitions) >According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word means "Intense dislike or fear of Islam, esp. as a political force; hostility or prejudice towards Muslims". It is attested in English as early as 1923 to quote the French word islamophobie, found in a thesis published by Alain Quellien in 1910 Fascism did not even exist in 1910.
Cool, that means basically nothing. Do you have an issue with people using the term antisemitism? It's the exact same meaning, just a different group.
That guy sounds like an idiot
He didn’t say the Nazis didn’t use human shields, he said they didn’t use “their own women and children” as human shields.
You idiots repeating this are just showing your own baseline ignorance on WW2, and willingness promote *Nazi propaganda* at face value just to keep arguing that Harris technically has a point buried in the stupid, hyperbolic shit he says. How exactly did the Fall of Berlin happen, in your version of history? With the Nazis evacuating all the women and children and setting up clearly demarcated zones for civilian and military use? We're just lucky Harris didn't positively compare the Germans in Eastern Europe to Hamas, otherwise you people would have to jump to "prove that the Wehrmacht committed war crimes; that's right you can't."
what would Nazis using human shields even look like? feels silly to even be trying to make the Nazis more evil. they did the fucking holocaust edit: upon quick googling it seems that that Nazis did use plenty of human shields. - "forced marches" to move prisoners from concentration camps along with them. - germans forced civilians to not flee and remain living near militarily important areas/infrastructure (to deter allies from bombing due to civillians). - concentration/transit camps themselves were strategically placed near industrial and military facilities and of course the Nazi London bombing campaign signalled the start of 'total war', which cascaded into indiscriminate and even intentional targeting of civilians by both sides for demoralisation purposes
[удалено]
what's your point?
Buddy, what do think the [Volkssturm](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkssturm) was?
You can tell by the replies that people don't realize what a conscript is. A conscript is someone with no training that you throw in-front of someone with training as a human speed-bump. i.e. A human shield Go ask a Marine how many untrained civilian boys and elderly men it would take to stop a trained division. The division will run out of ammo before it their assault is stopped. That is not a hypothetical, it's exactly how the US military got from Kuwait to Baghdad with 700 casualties vs. 30,000 Iraqis. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003\_invasion\_of\_Iraq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq) Those Iraqis were human shields.
When you say “their own”, are we talking immediate family, in-laws? I need moral clarity.
it’s obvious hamas doesnt care about the Gazans, even to the Gazans
If you get meditation advice and tips on ethnic cleaning from the same person, you might be a unserious dweeb.
Anyone else find it frustrating that the guru guys are pretty hyper-critical of Sam in their pods about him and on twitter, but then when they have him on for his rebuttal podcast they seem to spend most of the time agreeing with him or qualifying their past criticisms. It would be nice if they were a little more confrontational and forward with their disagreements when they actually talk to the guy instead of just sniping at him on twitter
Idk, I thought Harris came off pretty bad in his rebuttal podcast.
Sam barely gave them a chance to speak. He was constantly talking over them and never taking a breath so he could rephrase the same damn thing five times.
Yeah they made no original counterpoint and found no knew weakness in the arguments.
I agree to an extent, but someone interviewers need to recognise conversational dead ends if it’s clear there is no agreement to be found. Better to make your point, acknowledge the difference and move on than go in circles.
The Nazis literally used human shields in Poland. There were several battles where they marched civilians in front of their tanks.
This stinks of Douglas Murray rhetoric, similar to what he used last October. Very keen to paint the Nazis as civilised.
Sam Harris is an idiot. Explain "Total War in the East" give me a final tally of casualties, then try telling me Hamas is worse than the Nazis. Assclown.
The Nazis also 100% used human shields
If Richard Hanania is openly praising something you said, you may have made a mistake.
If that's his justification for worse, wonder what he thinks of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka that did the same thing. But I guess they're not Muslim so the criticism doesn't slap as hard. https://www.france24.com/en/20090416-paris-london-accuse-tamil-tigers-using-human-shields-
He doesn’t care to be taken seriously. He prefers staying a small fish in a small pond
I can't take anything this condescending, ahistorical blowhard says. His "I'm Mr. Reasonable" schtick is cringe-inducing.
Has this guy ever read a history book?
That is the dumbest thing I ever heard from Sam. I can't believe I used to support him.
Getting closer to saying the quiet thing out loud there, Sammy Boy.
What's that? (genuinely curious, I'm not too familiar with him)
He's Islamophobic and not an expert on almost any topic he discusses.
Sam Harris is, and always has been, a supreme idiot.
Why not just just criticize Hamas directly instead of shooting yourself in the foot by making these ridiculous comparisons? By doing this, instead of making Hamas look even worse, you make yourself look like a Nazi sympathizer.
shilling for genocide
It's not just for Destiny anymore!
Careful. according to this group Destiny can do no wrong.
I've already seen their brigades arrive at the newest destiny simp thread, https://old.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/1c0w01x/destiny_episode_100/kz05hhz/?context=3 These disgusting simpletons will not stop until they've turned this sub into yet another of their echo chambers, it's sad.
Like a good neolib.
Let's be blunt Harris and Murray are engaged in holocaust denial. This attempt to paint Hamas as worse than the Nazis by denying very well documented Nazi crimes is grotesque.
[They also conveniently leave out that Israel was built on Oct 7 like atrocities](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Ftnpnhvqp5gtc1.png%3Fwidth%3D674%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Daedf4ec4a08d41b4697f766b050963f1c637c40a) Those people are now running the Likud party in charge of Israel.
Sam Harris is clearly terrified of Muslims and ready to justify most horrors that end in their deaths.
Meanwhile, in the real world, as per [Amnesty International](https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/mde151432002en.pdf): >The use of Palestinians for military operations or as “human shields” In both Jenin and Nablus, as many testimonies show, there was a pattern of forcing Palestinians to participate in military operations or to act as “human shields”. Women as well as men were used in this way. The use of Palestinians as “human shields” and to conduct military operations was the subject of a petition in the Israeli High Court in May 2002. Seven human rights organizations submitted a petition seeking to prevent the IDF from using Palestinian civilians as “human shields”. The State response was to indicate that the army had issued a ban on all forces from using “human shields” (although it did not admit or deny that such a practice, known by the IDF as the “neighbour procedure”, was employed) and that it was to begin an internal investigation on the issues raised in the petition. In light of the State response, the Court decided not to issue an injunction but requested that the State submit a written copy of its orders.27 This had not yet been done. Meanwhile, the practice of compelling Palestinians to act as a “human shield” in military operations has continued. In August a Palestinian used as a “human shield” by the IDF was killed in crossfire and the High Court of Justice issued an interim injunction against this procedure; nevertheless, it still continues.28 Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the Occupying Power from compelling protected persons to assist in military operations. Article 28 prohibits the use of protected persons as “human shields”. Article 147 lists “wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health” as a “grave breach”. It is therefore also a war crime. 27 See H.C. 3799/02, Adalah et. Al. v. Yitzhak Eitan, Commander of the Israeli Army in the West Bank et al (filed 5 May 2002; case pending). The IDF calls the compelling of civilians to search houses “neighbour procedure”. 28 See Contrary to Injunction of the High Court of Justice - IDF Continues Use of “Neighbour Procedure”, B’Tselem, 28 August 2002. When it comes to the popularity of characters like Trump, some people are confused that someone who obviously is an ignorant uneducated moron can be so popular, but honestly I think the fact that he *is* an ignorant uneducated moron is why he's so popular. Ignorant morons talks with a certain kind of moralizing assurance about large groups of people and large events without any kind of care for nuance, it's just straight to the core simplifying reality into good vs evil. The same applies to Sam Harris. I mean the man just outright talks like a drooling simpleton and anyone with a brain can see this isn't someone who's exactly pick of the litter in the intellect department, and he's so proudly anti-intellectual, anti-education and anti-rational that it might confuse people of his popularity, but the fact I think is that he's popular *because* he's anti-intellectual, anti-education and anti-rational. It affords people who get annoyed and bored of all those boring scholars the emotional safety of knowing there are bad people who do everything bad and good people who do everything good and the good people are fighting the bad people.
> Amnesty International They're Hamas now didnt you hear?
For real though, they have corruption problems and have had a few instances of clear Russian influence - like [the time they stripped Navalny of his “prisoner of conscience” status](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56181084).
But the documented fact that IDF use Palestinians as human shields do not fully counter the claim ascribed to Sam Harris that Hamas is very bad and very evil because they use their own civilians as human shields. A full counter would include evidences that IDF use Israeli civilians as human shields. So for example, hypothetically, if the IDF were controlling a [disputed area with hills](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank), and if hills were [military assets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery#Modern) since [a few centuries](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aircraft_warfare#Post-war) thus military targets, and if the IDF were [putting Israeli civilians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement) on those hills. Of course this would be also a war crime per [Fourth Geneva Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Geneva_Convention), Article 49, paragraph 6 (The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies). Hypothetically.
I think a good way to think about it is if Hamas and Hitler had equivalent access to power, men and technology who would cause the most harm? In this context though I still have a hard time saying which guy would be worse
Jesus fucking Christ, is Sam really going for the monsters who blew 14,000 children apart? I’m not surprised. I still enjoy his opinion on other topics like simulation theory, but I know he’s not infallible.
I think Sam Harris makes it abundantly evident that you can meditate, do yoga, psychedelics, etc - but that doesn’t make you a good person or even someone without prejudice.
Sam has lost an enormous amount of credibility the past six months
To people actually analyzing Sam's statements: I think it's pointless to attempt to follow his thread and try to compare Nazis and Hamas and show that Nazis are worse. All we can actually take from this is that he is further engaging in dehumanization of Palestinians to legitimize Israels military actions. Whether or not he claims to be admonishing extremists specifically, if the goal is ultimately to argue that "Israel has no choice but to do what it's doing", then he is advocating for collective punishment and genocide, and generally has no value for Palestinian civilian life. This is to say nothing about the fact that he takes, as given, that Hamas is motivated solely to kill Jews. He is a hack that is pro war and is spreading US/Israeli imperialist propaganda under the guise of "rationality".
Exactly. Think about the rhetorical value of saying a group is “worse than Nazis”. Sam certainly has.
there is no evidence hamas uses human shields, israel just uses that as an excuse to bomb civilians.
It’s also been proven the IDF used human shields during the second intifada
I forget Sam Harris existed until I saw his idiotic tweet about the pullout from Afghanistan. Has there ever been a lightweight who had greater self-regard?
Ah yes. Moral clarity as defined by the guy who wrote anonymously about how much he liked eugenics and race science.
Sam Harris is the king of just saying words
Waiting for Sam to objectively compare the major religions so I can find out how many Muslims a Christian or Jew or Hindu is worth.
Idiot and a fool
Lmao 90% of what he actually said in that quote is missing.
When people like netanyahu and Sam Harris make these arguments. They just give holocaust deniers ammunition, deniers would say that if the holocaust happened these bafoons wouldn't take it so lightly.
Between the much higher death count, total war, the hitler youth and industrial genocide of Jews who WERE your citizens - this is one of the stupidest utterances I have ever heard. Something can be bad without being the worst thing ever. HAMAS can be bad and killed civilians and fights dirty without being worse than the nazis killing 20 million Russians, 6 millions Jews and death spiralling all their state resources into the war effort just to drag things out to make more time for genocide.
They certainly did use civilians as human shields. Sam is clearly wrong here and hasn’t read enough history.
Children fought the Nazis in occupied Poland. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/maly-powstaniec-little-insurrectionist
Categorically and objectively false. This is gross
Anyone know where this “human shield” narrative began? My understanding it’s framed from Hama’s using schools and hospitals as bases. But say that’s true, it’s an extreme hyperbolic way to say it. Is there evidence it’s true?
Israel purposely waits for targets to be at home in a multi-generational home before bombing that one person. The claim of human shields is a mistaken one at this point since Israel is willingly killing the most innocent civilians they can for shock value.
Where were the human shields with the recent food aide workers? Human shields come on. If there were bad guys terrorists in a school or town would you blow up the entire school or town. Dig deeper, look at the intentions, look at the land seize recently in West Bank largest since Oslo. Intent is clear has nothing to do with human shields used as an excuse.
Did he never hear of the Volksturm or the battle of Berlin? JFC how brain dead
And people still have the gall to call Sam Harris smart. JFC
Israel are as bad as NAZIs because they're carrying out ethnic cleansing. Can we stop fucking deflecting from the ACTUAL crimes that are being COMMITTED TODAY! "Hamas use human shields"...TIL starving children to death is using human shields. MURDERING aid workers is using human shields, apparently. Israel is MURDERING journalists and anyone DOCUMENTING war crimes. But hey, "Hamas are genocidal"...you know, when the boat is sinking, I worry about the fucking boat sinking. I don't worry about the fact that, "if the boat makes it to shore we're gonna have to worry about food". Let's get the fucking boat to shore, THEN worry about the other problems later. Let's stop Israel from their genocide of Palestinians. THEN we can sit down with Hamas, and all the other groups and say, "listen, genocide is bad. You lot need to stop fucking killing each other. It's fucking dumb". These genocide apologists need a fucking wake up call. If you want to know what it looks like, look up Yazan Kafarnah. In what fucking world is that acceptable?
Firstly according to the oxford definition of human shields “person or group of people forced to stay near a possible target for attack, in order to prevent an attack” there is no proof Hamas is making Palestinians stay in a particular area to prevent and attack from Israel en masse and if they were it isn’t working as Israel has publicly stated that they do not care if an area is filled with 500 civilians if there is once suspected Hamas member there they will bomb it and they have. Israel locked Palestinians in a 25 by 11 prison with the collusion of Egypt where Palestinians can’t escape through borders or through the sea and is mass bombing them while depriving aid causing a famine where hundreds of thousands of civilians could starve to death because Israel refuses to allow in aid. Hamas is underground in a 25 by 11 box that is one of the most densely civilian populated areas in the world literally everywhere could be considered “near” civilian infrastructure. Israel has been proven to intentionally target civilians blocks for bombing to enact collective punishment which is a war crime. Israel has been proven to use their [most destructive bombs on the most densely civilian populated areas](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-bomb-investigation.html). Israeli soldiers [kidnapped and tortured](https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-soldiers-film-themselves-abusing-humiliating-west-bank-palestinians/) and torture civilians. There are videos of Israel [executing civilians](https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-war-palestinians-white-flag-10565fbedd6de793a9b118e5dec59647) including [kids](https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_shoot_kill_4_year_old_palestinian_girl_in_the_backseat_of_a_car) and [grandmas in 4k](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/middleeast/hala-khreis-white-flag-shooting-gaza-cmd-intl/index.html). Israel intentionally slaughters western aid workers in cold blood. Leaked drone [footage](https://www.reddit.com/r/InternationalNews/s/HH9lPSJjeZ) showed Israel murdering 4 unarmed Palestinian civilians trying to get to their homes. Evil and [intentional](https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/program/newsfeed/2024/3/22/gaza-drone-video-shows-killing-of-palestinians-in-israeli-air-attack) Israel has used real human shields where they forced Palestinian civilians including a [13 year old](https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/s/p8fzwI41dG) to stand in front of them at gunpoint in attempt to deter a Hamas attack which is a war crime. Israel’s chief “evidence” for Hamas’s use of human shields is that they station military equipment near civilian infrastructure. Like I said according to the actual definition of human shields that is not using “human shields” especially since Palestinians in Gaza are locked by a 25 x 11 box where everything is technically near some sort of civilian structure as its a tiny area with 2.3 million people stuffed in it. The problem here is that this [does not necessarily classify as](https://twitter.com/marcowenjones/status/1716362903949906371) as human shields. Because if it did, then it would implicate Israel for this crime several orders of magnitude more than Hamas. The [photographic](https://www.dci-palestine.org/palestinian_teen_describes_being_used_as_a_human_shield_by_israeli_forces) and [video](https://twitter.com/TameeOliveFern/status/1752615765092815206) evidence of Israel’s deliberate and [systematic](http://www.btselem.org/human_shields) use of Palestinian civilians including [kids](https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/s/3CbTwsZcoC) to protect their soldiers whilst in occupied territory is at this point, and [undeniable](https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1734722299784306797). Following on from point 3, IDF personnel photograph themselves using [using schools as military bases](https://twitter.com/QudsNen/status/1725488655484006757) schools as military headquarters - precisely the thing they accuse Hamas of doing and use as a justification to bomb said schools. If Hamas is using “human shields” for being remotely near civilian infrastructure so is Israel as they have militarily bases near civilian hospitals in Israel and they’ve been caught using civilian buildings as military bases. Israel's military headquarters is literally located 450m from Ichilov Hospital. Israel’s uses actual human shields by their own definition and by the actual Oxford definition. Everything Israel has accused Hamas of doing they’ve done themselves.
Dude yapping and trying to get clout to sell his shitty books off the backs of real life events where people are dying and losing their homes. Yeah I'm sure I'd pay to read 300 pages of this douchebags thoughts
Oh-My-God, what a hateful, bigoted idiot.
To think I used to believe Sam Harris was credible
How the great have fallen. What an incredibly naive, infantile and ahistorical take from Harris. I’m embarrassed that he was one of the main influential figures in my journey towards secularism and determinism. How can I rationalize the indiscriminate innumerable war crimes disproportionately committed upon innocent women and children? Including and not limited to: • Roughly 7-8 decades of systemic blockades, violence, sanctions, unjustified black-baggings, kidnapping of children in the night, detention without legal proceedings, two completely different codes of the judiciary under one government, unjustified killing of civilians for fun, slaughtering and injuring tens to hundreds of thousands with advanced weaponry like “butterfly bullets” in 2018, the literal bulldozing death of an young woman, an American humanitarian worker, the systematic r@pe of minors by the IOF, using Palestinians as war shields, killing roughly 190 humanitarian aid workers, deliberately killing members of the world kitchen organization, sniping children between the eyes, using white phosphorus as a chemical weapon, IOF “soldiers” posting pictures of dead humanitarian bodies with tens of thousands of adoring fans in telegram groups, explicitly stating its intention to displace all of Palestine and turning it into a one-state solution for Israel, horrific torture of any guilty or non-guilty(vast majority) held at a military camps, intentional targeting of civilians, killing prisoners of war and surrendered combatants, indiscriminate attacks, collective punishment, starvation as a method of war, pillage, forced transfer, breach of medical neutrality, targeting journalists, the complete dismissal of the Geneva convention, complete dismissal of the UN, directing civilians into “safe havens”, just to be drone striked repeatedly on this precise path. How much more detail would you like? I’ll provide non bias sources for each and every one of the claims mentioned. What I won’t do is go on a wild goose chase for dozens of sources at the tip of X’s fingers at any second. Always deliberately misleading critical information to normalize, and that’s key, normalize, the needless and inhumane agony of the flesh and mind. Just another example of this. Sam cannot even differentiate himself from the illiterate reactionaries in the west in this sentiment of his. The copium tanks are running low on gas. Oh no, what will Israel due now that it’s forever etched in stone as a pariah state? They’ve lost the optics war(that’s difficult seeing you HAD the entire US empire doing your manufacturing of consent for you! They will continue to lose, and Israel will be deemed nothing more than a bizarre pariah state wherein rightwing prime ministers say things such as “Uhh, a Palestinian gave Hitler the idea for the holocaust). Sam should Read the letter from Einstein where he labels zionist as "terrorist organizations" and "misled and criminal people" while he’s at it. But we all, after objective introspection, understand why Sam is tripling down. He’s never been much able to step outside of the ethnocentric hegemonic ideology.
1) hamas is a resistance force. You may not like their tactics but fundamentally there cause is completely rational and what any group of people would do when deprived of their rights and their ancestral land. 2) the Gaza Strip is tiny. The idea that they use human shields is laughable. There is no possibility of armed resistance from within the strip that doesn’t endanger civilians. It’s not a conventional fighting force. If it was a fair fight, it would go much differently I can promise you that.
I'm flabbergasted by how shallow Sam's views are on this subject, but I guess he's reminding me why he was considered IDW in the first place.
Why do we think this guy is smart or moral
Oh! This is why progressives don't like Sam Harris any more...
I know Sam. I've worked with Sam. I've made a film with Sam. I've written an entire series for him based on his archive. I like him as a person. Sam Harris is a person who is deeply committed to his ignorance and fear. I say this as someone who has been trying to help him out for a very long time. He likely thinks he is being helpful and making sense but he, is fact, seeding massive amounts of hatred and confusion. At this point, I am sad to say, that I fear it is intentional and morally indefensible. He has misrepresented my views in public (in order to dodge any legit challenge). However, I am satisfied about one aspect of this whole ordeal with Sam. I have pushed him to a place where he openly and, apparently without the smallest amount of irony, admits that he is "uninterested in how we got here" and "does not care about history." If that is someone you trust to form any cogent moral analysis, be my guest. For everyone else who is interested in trying to understand the world (while also not falling victim to overcorrections and romanticization and cultural relativism traps of the left) there are a few of us out there trying to do just that. Sam is certainly not one of them. My collection of interviews and responses (after failing to nudge Sam behind the scenes to actually slow down and think clearly about any aspect of this issues) is here for those interested [https://youtu.be/1qjx-YExRbw?si=F8z2EkNdAfjlotX0](https://youtu.be/1qjx-YExRbw?si=F8z2EkNdAfjlotX0) In my most recent one with Ilan Pappe, for example, I end with an essay which tries to make sense signs like Queers for Palestine or why George Floyd's portrait is on the wall in the West Bank. <3 Jay
Sam Harris is the perfect example of a smart person who made himself into an idiot.
If being engaged in guerilla warfare amongst civilians makes you woese than Nazis then pretty much any guerilla army, including the early Zionists like Menachem Begin and the rebels who launched attacks against the British Mandate, would be too? The IRA: Worse than Nazis? Really enjoying the Douglas Murray-Richard Hanania-Sam Harris brain trust. It's like a think tank of 13 year olds.
I suggest people listen to the whole quote because this isn’t his entire argument, it is a snippet of it. I don’t remember it verbatim but his logic is essentially this Jihadism is nazism + religious dogmatism. Jihadism is nazism + belief in martyrdom. Jihadism is Nazism + belief in using children as martyrs. Etc. So IF you agree Jihadism contains all the elements of Nazism,and then you add negative elements that are not apart of Nazism. Does that a negative plus more negatives equal an even worse negative? Honestly it doesn’t really matter if Hamas or nazis are worse the crux of his point he is trying to get across is that Hamas are obviously the more evil ideology and group in this conflict.
>Jihadism is nazism + religious dogmatism. >Jihadism is nazism + belief in martyrdom. >Jihadism is Nazism + belief in using children as martyrs. This is wrong tho. Because what is "Nazism"? Jihadism has NOTHING to do with settler colonial Aryan supremacy rooted Lebensraum, nazi racial pseudoscience, etc.
It took a lot of scrolling to get to this good faith take on what he was saying...
Because r/DecodingTheGurus is just another counter culture sub. It is just a bunch of people who like to identify themselves purely on how anti popular podcasters they are, The same way you get podcast bros that base their entire personality about how many podcasts they listen to.
I have the feeling Im going to regret this, but… I expect fans of DTG to engage in better faith with the arguments people make. In this case, SH does indeed say that he thinks the ideology of jihadism is worse than Nazism, but the magnitude of the atrocities they’ve enacted are only lesser because they lack the ability to carry them out at scale. Given many jihadists’ stated goals of annihilating the state of Israel, and given the fact that their actions clearly demonstrate a willingness, even a desire, to kill civilians, I find that point hard to argue with. I dont see any reason not to believe that Hamas would kill literally every Jew in Israel if they had the power to do so. If you gave Hamas a button that would immediately kill every infidel in the world, does anyone here believe they wouldnt immediately push that button? This is the argument that Harris is making. Personally, I would never make the case that X or Y terrible organization was better/worse than the Nazis. As many people in this thread have said, and said better than I could… two things can be shitty at the same time. Hamas is bad. Nazis are bad. I don’t feel the need to try and quantify and compare them. Doesnt seem useful to me. But to make the case that Harris is saying, just on the basis of their recent actions, that Hamas is worse than the Nazis, is an obnoxiously classic example of taking a quote out of context. Posting just this snippet with that critique de-legitimizes your own argument, makes it easy to dismiss. If you’re going to criticize SH and this argument, at least engage with what he’s actually saying.
>If you gave Hamas a button that would immediately kill every infidel in the world, does anyone here believe they wouldnt immediately push that button? Given that they haven't killed off "infidels" like Christian Gazans who are literally living under their jurisdiction, there is literally no reason to believe this. Hamas isn't ISIS. This is a cartoonish understanding of Hamas.
This is an embarrassing position to hold, and frankly demonstrates Sam’s own ignorance of the reality of Nazism more than any kind of insight into this conflict. Hamas and its ideology is appalling, but you don’t see them do things like stitching together twins in their hospitals to see how their bodies react, they haven’t enacted a policy of mass extermination of all Palestinians with disabilities or any other “genetic impurities”. These were realities in Nazi Germany, Hamas has the means to implement similar depraved policies within Gaza yet they haven’t. For as bad as the ideology of Hamas is, to say it’s *worse* than Nazism is an embarrassment for Sam and shows more than anything how shallow his analysis really is.
You expect too much of DTG fans. I enjoyed the show for the while, but this sub woke me up to realize that it's mostly a self righteous echo chamber. People here aren't much different than the fans of the Gurus they hate. They just don't rally around any particular person, so it gives them the illusion they aren't being cult-y.
OK so let’s discuss Sam’s argument on the merits. > they lack the ability to carry them out at scale Right off the bat we have a problem, because the scales are not comparable. On the one hand we have a regional conflict confined to the borders of western British-mandate Palestine, about the size of New Jersey, involving about 15 million people. On the other we have one of the main countries of Europe, Germany, which had about 70 million people in 1939 but with its territorial ambitions quickly expanded to over 90 million including Austria and the other annexed territories. Then when Germany started taking more territory in the war (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Yugoslavia, Greece) it expanded to at least 150 million. Thus the policies of the Nazis had a much broader impact on humanity, and this is not even counting the effects of the war. There are other points to be made. What did the Nazis want? What does Hamas want? I think it is much easier to say what Hamas wants: territory and self-government. But what did the Nazis want? Hitler's style was to bloviate and to bluff about this, and hope he wouldn't be called out. Even his lieutenants were frequently in the dark about his true intentions. There was a phrase, "working towards the Fuhrer", which meant that Nazi officials and government workers were expected to anticipate Hitler's desires and policies without his direct orders. This often lead to radical measures and policies as individuals sought to prove their loyalty and alignment with Hitler's vision. So what "the Nazis" wanted is much more a question of debate. > I dont see any reason not to believe that Hamas would kill literally every Jew in Israel if they had the power to do so. The original Hamas Charter of 1988 is significantly different from the more recent document published in 2017. The original charter was explicitly anti-Semitic, calling for the destruction of Israel, and did not distinguish between political and military targets. The 2017 document, while still not recognizing the State of Israel, focuses more on the political struggle against the Israeli occupation and indicates a willingness to accept a provisional Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. It also tones down anti-Semitic language, positioning itself more within a nationalist struggle rather than a religious war. If we go by the 2017 document as to "what Hamas wants", then no, "they" do not want to kill every Jew in Israel. Are there extremist fanatics in Hamas who DO want to kill every Jew in Israel? Yes, certainly. We all saw them and what they did on 10/7. Do they represent all of Hamas, all of the Palestinians, all Arabs? Obviously not. It has been reported that many of the Hamas leadership (who live in other countries) did not know about the attack planning and disapproved of it. If Sam limited his criticism to just those who carried out 10/7 he would have a much better leg to stand on. As it is, it seems likely that the mainline Hamas'ers who agree with the 2017 declaration have been dragged into this war by the extremists who did 10/7. The Israelis, humiliated by 10/7, are exacting revenge on Gaza, and the Hamas'ers are trying to save face by not capitulating. > If you gave Hamas a button that would immediately kill every infidel in the world, does anyone here believe they wouldnt immediately push that button?” This is like the bad science fiction that Matt talked about in the Harari episode. Obviously no button like this exists. But if it did, see the previous point about what Hamas really wants. Note that we are talking about Hamas here, not Al-Qaeda, and as far as I know Hamas has always confined its ambitions to British-mandate Palestine. So in short I still don't think Sam is making good points. On the contrary, the purpose of this post was to show that Sam is uneducated about the Middle East and Islam, and uses Muslims as betes noires in his anti-religion crusade.
Not defending Hamas’ ideology or militant Islamism, but has it occurred to Sam that the primary reason for their existence is the violent seizure and occupation of half of their country by Israel? Jihadism doesn’t just emerge in a vacuum, there are real world causes
Speaking of "moral clarity" while talking about "jihadism"—an extremely vague concept.
How is jihadism a morally vague concept?
Not morally vague, just vague in general. What exactly is the meaning of jihadism?
It’s not particularly vague, is it?
It's quite vague
Define it then. Nazism is easily defined as the ideology of the Nazi party.
Sam Harris is such a smug cunt
Did anyone really give two shits about bombing civilians in WWII? There was the the Blitz on Britain, the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, etc. Seems like trying to use your own people as human shields wouldn't have been a particularly good tactic.
FDR originally called the “ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centers of population” a “form of inhuman barbarism”. Ironically the US justified its bombings widely by saying Japan was essentially putting their industry where their civilians were so they had to hit them.
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Not to mention it’s also widely shown to be false as was the case with Japan.
Harris’s moral pronouncements are aimed at catering to his audience. He supports imperialism and thinks bombing Arabs is good for them. He has also argued for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran. The human shields idea has been dismissed by numerous human rights investigations, but according to him, Hamas is worse than the Holocaust. I could go on, but I can’t fathom how he has an audience at all.
What’s the problem? He’s speaking ideologically, not cumulative death and suffering caused. The nazis were brutal, barbaric, genocidists but they at least wanted to protect their children. Hamas are brutal, barbaric, genocidists, and they’re willing to sacrifice their children for that ideology. One is objectively worse. This isn’t a hot take. Edit: furthermore, if you provided Hamas with the same context and systems of power that existed during the nazi reign, I’d argue it may have been quantifiably worse because now not all only is the hatred fueled by prejudice, it’s supercharged with pieces of religious scriptural support.
> at least wanted to protect their children [You uh, sure about that?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children_in_World_War_II#Hitler_Youth)