I think the main reason for the discrepancy is that Nazis were active in Europe, which was culturally much closer to the US than East Asia.
For example, we have a lot more literature about the Holocaust than about Japanese atrocities in the Far East. One of the reasons is that the European population of the 1940s had much higher literacy levels and so there were enough people to actually write their experience down.
But it is also way easier to translate from, say, German or Dutch into English, than to do the same for Tagalog or Burmese.
? You do not end up killing millions of peoples without systemic targetting and industrialized organisation. The fact that it might be called genocide or democide or something else is semantic ...
Anyway my point (albeit unclear) was more that you are arguing the premise of the parent post : "Germany and Japan committed roughly equivalent atrocities" which I believe is quite difficult and in a way reinforce the parent since he appears to believe there is a systemic diabolisation of the Nazi as way to target by proxy the white (anyway that's how I interpret: "great punching bags by proxy for what the what the author really wants to say")
Instead of arguing his association : "you'd expect that there would be a roughly equivalent denunciation in our literature." which I believe is way easier to refute and in the specific case of this movie the choice of the nazi might be easier to explain with the director parent history and not an hidden agenda.
> ? You do not end up killing millions of peoples without systemic targetting and industrialized organisation.
No, they do. That's how any war runs. Countries don't start wars with plans on for wiping out the citizens in the most efficient way.
If a massacre happens, then it's something more spontaneous, happening on the spot.
> The fact that it might be called genocide or democide or something else is semantic ...
No, it's a significant difference in intention and execution. Germany had an elaborated logistic for transporting their victims through the country and continent. They had death camps with full planning on how to kill people. They even started the war with the side-intention to "cleaning the world".
Japan, like every other invader did nothing like this. They started wars and accepted that people will die, but this was not their goal. And neither were the massacres and other crimes their goal, it just something that happened along the way.
> Anyway my point (albeit unclear) was more that you are arguing the premise of the parent post : "Germany and Japan committed roughly equivalent atrocities" which I believe is quite difficult and in a way reinforce the parent since he appears to believe there is a systemic diabolisation of the Nazi as way to target by proxy the white (anyway that's how I interpret: "great punching bags by proxy for what the what the author really wants to say")
Sure, but your reasoning is wrong. Japan did bad things, but they are just one of many evil empires in history. It's not exceptional unique in what they did. But the Nazis were unique and exceptional. That's where your argument fails. Japan is just one of many, and people denounce those many equally, more or less. But there was just one event on the scale of the Nazi-Crimes.
> with atrocities which are not well known to western audiance
You say that as if this is a position the west found itself in rather than put itself in. Westerners generally aren't interested in Chinese corpses except as a justification for making more of them.
