Oliver Stone's comments about WW2 deaths

I was asked to repost this here rather than discuss it in the official Oliver Stone thread:

Reactions to the whole Oliver Stone holocaust comments controversy?

I don't see how what he said is that offensive. I think he definitely could have taken care to mention that the other reason the holocaust deaths get more mention than the Russian front deaths is because of the horrific mechanized organized nature of those killings, but otherwise he basically was just stating facts (IMHO)

Also, Russians were our enemies for most of the 20th century, and I think there was probably a reluctance to highlight events that would have made necessary a sympathetic portrayal of the Russian people

No doubt that Stalin killed more people than Hitler, when you add it all up.

However, I think that Stone was clearly referring to the deaths on the Russian front that resulted from the German invasion. These included soldiers killed by Germans, civilians killed by Germans (either on purpose or with indiscriminate bombing) and deaths from starvation/cold/disease

Thank you, I do appreciate that.
All good points, and I think that people assume (because of the "conspiracy theorist" label which has stuck to him since JFK) that he was talking about some organized global zany zionist plot. Instead, I assume that he was just factually mentioning that given their heritage, many of the people who make and produce films have a vested interest in the events of the holocaust. This has perhaps lead to those events being over represented when it comes to movies about "Bad shit that went down in WW2"

Reading some of the reactions to Stone's rather innocuous comments (innocuous to a student of history) has been heart breaking. Stone is one of the greatest/most influential film makers (and American thinkers, IMHO) of the 20th century.... and when he makes a factual statement about WW2 deaths, this is what gets written on HUFFPO:
Here is the link to that blog entry... but you don't need to go read it. That was the entire entry. That's all the guy had to say

I couldn't agree with you more, Mr Dickson. I remember when DOWNFALL was released, all sorts of Israeli government types were saying that the very idea of a film that portrays a human Hitler was abhorrent and people should "vote with their feet and not see the film". Hitler WAS human, and to pretend otherwise is to excuse our complicity in his crimes. Pretending he was some sort of monster (though his actions were monstrous) is letting Germany, and the world, off the hook.

If he were an anti-semite I doubt NIXON would have been filled with so many unflattering scenes of Nixon and his aides saying horrible things about Jewish people. If Stone shared those sentiments, he'd either have swept that stuff under the rug or portrayed it in a more flattering light

I think he's just an American who, in his words, feels that Israel has "ruined America's foreign policy". Plenty of other Americans would agree with that, and it has nothing to do with "anti-semitism"

What happened to the Chinese at places like Nanking was very much an extermination. If you were going to draw a historical parallel between the holocaust and other mass death events in WW2, you could do worse than the rape of Nanking. Just because there were more Chinese than Jews, and therefore the number of Chinese deaths was smaller when compared to the overall population of Chinese people, does not mean that the atrocities in China were not committed out of a nazi-like sense of racial and cultural superiority that viewed everyone else as less than human

(And I say that as someone who is famous for their criticism of China around here)

It's not a perfect match for the holocaust, but then again Japan was basically a homogeneous population and their reach and influence (which depended on the number of soldiers they had in the field) made the kind of extermination that the Jews faced impossible. I'm sure if they'd won the war though you'd have seen a "final solution to the Chinese problem" at some point or another.

I think that judging the horror of these events by the percentage of an ethnic population they effected is not really a good way of rating these things. I'm sure if you asked a citizen of Nanking whether what they went through was a kind of holocaust, they might well be inclined to agree it was.

One has to consider the spirit in which these crimes were carried out, and then consider it in the light of the difference in circumstances. This is why there are still a bajillion Chinese people, but Germany managed to pretty throughly wipe out the Jews of Europe

Oh... and, if we're going to use ratios to determine what the worst mass murder was, then I think we need to consider the fate of the American Indian. Too often people turn a blind eye, or make excuses, when in fact their population suffered a 1000/1 decimation. Stone has always stood up for them in his films, and I admire that greatly

As I outlined earlier in the thread, it's not just some "battle" that claimed russian lives. They were starved to death, civilians and soldiers alike. Civilians were purposely targeted in bombing campaigns as well, and often executed outright.

The nazi war machine's cruelty was fully directed at the Russians, because like the slavs, Hitler viewed them as part of an inferior race (plus, he hated commies). The treatment they saw was far worse than anything faced by the populations of most western european nations

I've come to the conclusion that it has nothing to do with the content of Stone's comments*. The fact that people could use this to smear him as anti-semitic was seen as a great opportunity. Stone's courageous stand against Israel has marked him as a target to bring down, at least with the AIPAC people. This provided them with fodder with which to smear him as racist and defuse his legitimate criticisms of Israel... cause remember, if you don't support Israel 100% in everything, then you are racist. Sorry!


*or at least extremely little