Everything = "Holocaust Denial"

i've noticed a striking pattern in political discussions about extreme cruelty or evil. It's an argument that appears to string together several fallacies.

Suppose I claim that the ongoing oppression of Native Americans is the greatest atrocity in history, or dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were among the greatest war crimes ever committed.

1. In many cases, someone will bring up the Holocaust. They'll claim the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history, and the Nazis were therefore the most evil people who ever lived.

2. They'll often go one step further and claim ALL Germans were brutal murderers because they didn't speak out (even though individuals who DID speak out often paid with their lives).

Here's where the argument gets especially interesting:

3. If you suggest that a particular crime (e.g. Native American oppression or slavery) was as bad as or worse than the Holocaust, then they say you're trivializing or denigrating the Holocaust.

4. Then they take it one step further, claiming you're guilty of "Holocaust Denial." This makes no sense, because few people deny there was a Holocaust. They may not agree with the official accounts, and they may not consider it the worst atrocity of all time, but they don't "deny" there was a Holocaust.

5. At the same time, you're likely to be labeled "anti-Semitic," which is also bizarre. I researched that term and discovered that Semites include Arabs! Even Encyclopedia Britannica calls the term antisemitism "a misnomer."

So it looks like there are at least five fallacies (or other types of deception) at work here. If my question is too overwhelming, then I'd like to focus on #4, which strikes me as the weirdest fallacy of all.

1) Non sequitur. If we accept that the Holocaust was the worst atrocity in human history, it does not follow that those who served in the regime who carried out the atrocity were the worst people. In fact, social psychologists Philip Zimbardo and Stanley Milgrim demonstrated unequivocally how good people can do horrible things given certain social pressures and under the certain conditions.

2) This would simply be factually incorrect.

3) A Non sequitur again. If someone claims that A is worse than B, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are suggesting B wasn't as bad as it actually was. They could equally be saying that A was much worse than it is perceived to be.

4) Could be a strawman , but I would refer you to the wikipedia page . It appears that "denial" is more associated with the established facts of the Holocaust and not necessarily the event itself. So if one says that only a few hundred thousands Jews were killed, this could reasonably be considered "Holocaust denial."

5) Sounds like Jumping to conclusions. But this one is tricky. Because "anti" anything could also mean being against the group or the group's views in some way (although this understanding is less common, and very misleading when confused with having a hatred for the group.) So for example, if group A says that the earth is 6000 years old, and you say that it is 4.6 billion, you can be seen as "anti-group A," because your views are against theirs. This doesn't mean you hate them, of course.

I will assume that your main conclusion is that the greatest atrocity in history is the ongoing oppression of native Americans.

1. I smell red herring, his response changes the argument from what is the worst atrocity to who are the worst people.

2. Same as 1, doesn't address the worst atrocity question but simply attacks the Germans. Regardless, the claim that the people who did not speak out are murderers is problematic in itself, when evidence exists that they had self preservation in mind and weren't just tacitly abetting murder.

3. Non sequitor, Doesn't follow that if you think there were worse atrocities than the holocaust that you are minimizing the holocaust.

4. Ad hominem, clearly calling someone a holocaust denier is an attack on you and not your argument.

5. Same as 4, no need to research anti Semitic, you are being attacked!