Talk:six million lies
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Is this an idiomatic, lexical item? I'm sceptical; it seems like just saying that 6 million Jewish deaths were lies, and the same collocation is found in reference to other sets of six million things someone considers fake/made-up, like:
- 1935, Common Sense
- “Six Million Peasants Die as Soviet Hoards Grain”—six million lies in single sentence. It matters nothing to Mr. Hearst. Nor does it matter to him that his correspondent, Thomas Walker, “who for several years has toured the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ...
besides there also being obviously SOP uses like
- 1905, John Ogden Murray, The Immortal Six Hundred: A Story of Cruelty to Confederate Prisoners of War, page 169:
- I do positively believe I had to tell my comrades six million lies about how I fell down in one of the cisterns that some one left open.
Meanwhile, many of the uses which are related to Holocaust denial are about about a specific song:
- Jack Levin, Gordana Rabrenovic, Why We Hate, Prometheus Books (→ISBN), page 120:
- And “Six Million Lies” by No Remorse contains the following Holocaust-denying lyrics: Did six million Jews really die, or was it just a Zionist lie? […]
(The form google books:"6 million lies" is also found, at least on a specific cloth left in a specific city.) But I'm not sure; it's arguable. What say you? - -sche (discuss) 19:30, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
- Do you think this is an occasionalism? Otherwise I see no problem. The use as graffiti may point to it being a stock phrase. Fay Freak (talk)
- I just don't see a reason to consider this lexically idiomatic. The evidence of use in references to other things, including other instances of six million deaths that the speaker likewise considers lies, shows it's not limited to the Holocaust. Even if it were, would that be evidence that it was a lexical term? When someone scrawls "Auschwitz lie" or "Zyklon B hoax" on a tombstone or otherwise uses that phrase, they almost invariably mean that they think the idea that Auschwitz was a death camp was a lie, and not e.g. that they think the idea that the town was destroyed by the Mongols in the 1200s was a lie, (or, respectively, they think the idea that people were gassed with Zyklon B was a lie, rather than something else,) but I don't think we need an entry for Auschwitz lie or Zyklon B hoax, do we? But I'm not sure; maybe you or someone else wants to make an argument for idiomaticity... that's one reason I've brought it up here, I want to know what everyone else thinks... - -sche (discuss) 16:09, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
- @-sche: Ok then, it is just as though one wrote “Auschwitz lie”, “Holo[caust] hoax” etc. Delete. Which however leads us to the question whether we should have an entry six million, conceptualized as a particular mythological number amongst some speakers. Fay Freak (talk) 12:59, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
- I'm not sure. I can see how it has more of a claim to idiomaticity. In #8:46 I mentioned a Jimmy Carr joke (for example) that relies on the reader hearing "six million Jews" and thinking of those murdered. And Granger found other collocations below. I wonder how many other casualty numbers are used in such ways... I see a few uses of "fifty-eight thousand (families|sons)", referring to the number of US deaths in Vietnam, but it seems much rarer / further from idiomaticity than "6 million". - -sche (discuss) 01:13, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
- My feeling is that six million is not an idiomatic phrase, but rather a well-known piece of numerical information. Like 365, 1492, or 93 million miles. —Granger (talk · contribs) 01:48, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
- I'm not sure. I can see how it has more of a claim to idiomaticity. In #8:46 I mentioned a Jimmy Carr joke (for example) that relies on the reader hearing "six million Jews" and thinking of those murdered. And Granger found other collocations below. I wonder how many other casualty numbers are used in such ways... I see a few uses of "fifty-eight thousand (families|sons)", referring to the number of US deaths in Vietnam, but it seems much rarer / further from idiomaticity than "6 million". - -sche (discuss) 01:13, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
- @-sche: Ok then, it is just as though one wrote “Auschwitz lie”, “Holo[caust] hoax” etc. Delete. Which however leads us to the question whether we should have an entry six million, conceptualized as a particular mythological number amongst some speakers. Fay Freak (talk) 12:59, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
- I just don't see a reason to consider this lexically idiomatic. The evidence of use in references to other things, including other instances of six million deaths that the speaker likewise considers lies, shows it's not limited to the Holocaust. Even if it were, would that be evidence that it was a lexical term? When someone scrawls "Auschwitz lie" or "Zyklon B hoax" on a tombstone or otherwise uses that phrase, they almost invariably mean that they think the idea that Auschwitz was a death camp was a lie, and not e.g. that they think the idea that the town was destroyed by the Mongols in the 1200s was a lie, (or, respectively, they think the idea that people were gassed with Zyklon B was a lie, rather than something else,) but I don't think we need an entry for Auschwitz lie or Zyklon B hoax, do we? But I'm not sure; maybe you or someone else wants to make an argument for idiomaticity... that's one reason I've brought it up here, I want to know what everyone else thinks... - -sche (discuss) 16:09, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
- Delete as not idiomatic unless somebody contributes quotations showing otherwise. Vox Sciurorum (talk) 17:31, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
- Doesn't seem idiomatic to me. Lots of phrases with "six million" can be found alluding to the Holocaust: "six million stories", "six million lives", "six million relatives", "six million hearts". —Granger (talk · contribs) 18:07, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
Delete. This is an allusion, not a lexically significant term. Do we need an entry for 365 because of all the books that reference the number of days in a year their titles? Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:47, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
- RFD-deleted. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:54, 4 October 2020 (UTC)