if i were told that the population of india doubled in two years, or something that conflicted with my notions of human biology, then yes, i would be skeptical.
and even if the figures seemed in conformity with scientific reality, i might want to enquire on how the census were carried out. i would not expect to be treated as a pariah for questioning a similar affirmation. i like questions, and defenders of all truths should welcome them.
Lets assume that we haven’t made claims about radical population growth, and let us assume that the statement that there are 1 billion alive in India does not conflict with your notions of the biology of individual humans, and hence you are not sceptical about the presence of 1 billion alive in India on such grounds; do you ‘welcome’ questions from someone who presently doubts the existence of 1 billion Indians ?
I am making a rhetorical point; of admittedly limited force, but I think it would help you understand the reason you may be perceiving dogmatism from some in the historic community (if not all). I also wonder, as someone so keenly interested in revisionism, what relations have you struck up with ‘old guard’ historians?, in a respectful yet questioning manner,…so as to test your ideas and independent scholarship on someone best capable of helping you test them?
if i were to question the methodology behind the one-billion-indians-claim, i could expect rational, non-hysterical answers, no jail sentences or fines. i’m not omniscient, nor do i expect this in experts. hence the need for a civil, non-dogmatic conversation; in which both parties can potentially learn.
this is not the case with this subject, which has been effectively locked down by special-interest groups. historians who stray off the path find out quick the price for dissent is extremely high: david irving destroyed a career as one of the preeminent wwII historians, and for dariusz ratajczak it ended up even worse.
old-guard historians only keep their positions as long as they stay keepers-of-the-faith. no media will touch this topic for obvious reasons. hence dissenters find themselves keeping some pretty ugly company - fancy having to go to tehran to have a conference. how does it look to find yourself tarred by association with ahmedenijad? not good. but that is purely a tactical response (mistaken in my view, as it only allows enemies to further demonize them), given the hostile environment in most western nations. many islamics have personal reasons to hate jews and would grasp at any straws to malign them; the holocaust hoax offers a tasty morsel. that said, just because i despise someone doesn’t mean i reflexively disagree with all his analyses.
as for hurt feelings, gimme a break. the israelis have no trouble negotiating with the “good” guy mahmoud abbas, notwithstanding his holocaust denial (he’s only a minimalist in the denial stakes). at least he’s not out of a job, or dead!
even those libertarians who stridently reject any debate on this subject can recognize similar rhetorical tactics used in a different debate where they probably find themselves cast as “denialists” - agw - those who do not agree on the scientific consensus are haters, scum, charlatans, lackeys of big oil. they do not deserve answers, the truth already having been “decided” by consensus.
nobody gags an idiot, gags are only used where there’s a risk of some inconvenient truth seeing the light.
n. joseph potts was quite adept at poking holes in the agw scam. but when he saw another scam and wrote about it…
People do gag idiots. Just imagine how people would respond to a scientologist going on about Xenu in a scholarly panel discussion. I’m not saying holocaust denialism should be gagged. But the desire among libertarians to gag it does not likely stem from worries that it might be true. It’s more likely revulsion at the bigotry that is perceived to be behind it, or embarrassment at having libertarianism be associated with it.
i wasn’t actually referring to libertarians, nor this website. i was refering to the criminalization of “holocaust denial” across many jurisdictions. i don’t try and understand what motivates libertarians, varied mob that they are. i think your analogy is rather patronizing, however. i don’t think asking for some sensible answers on a vast and complex subject matter, when the experts themselves disagree, is on the same level as talking about xenu.
as for bigotry, this is my two cents worth: if people are able to discuss things, prejudices may, on the odd occasion, give way to understanding. if discussion is closed down, that bigotry will not go away. closed mouths don’t translate to open hearts.
also, let me add another reason, apart from embarassment, as to why people might disassociate with the holocaust skeptics: fear of commercial retribution. anti-semitism is a kiss-of-death in america and much of the developed world. i’d refer you to the unhappy end of joe sobran. perhaps he should have stuck to shakespeare and not stuck his head out. or even better, concentrated on xenu.
"Thus Wiesel intones that the Holocaust “leads into darkness,” “negates all answers,” "lies outside, if
not beyond, history," “defies both knowledge and description,” “cannot be explained nor visualized,”
is “never to be comprehended or transmitted,” marks a “destruction of history” and a "mutation on a
cosmic scale."
the holocaust industry, norman finkelstein, p. 25
is this mumbo-jumbo that distant from xenu?
You may forgive the individual who has first hand experience of horror his effusiveness and poetry. The fact that you confuse hyperbole for factual claims is telling
newson, I wasn’t saying holocaust denial is on the same level as scientology. I was pointing out how you are incorrect in claiming that “nobody gags idiots”. Therefore the fact that there are those who would gag holocaust deniers is no badge of veracity (or non-idiocy) for the latter.
to lilburne:
yes, i agree.
to nirgrahamuk:
i can well understand the difference. the gratuitous inclusion of wiesel was just to show the uninitiated that denying certain aspects of the holocaust is not in the same league as discussing xenu. there’s nonsense said on both sides of this holocaust argument.
whilst on poetic license, it’s important to also consider many germans officials were put to death on the basis of similarly hyperbolic testimonies. the stories about jews being steamed like chickens, electrocuted en masse, turned into soap, lampshades etc., have all been totally discredited, but no “witnesses” were ever charged with perjury.
does anybody seriously hold the nuremburg hearings in any esteem these days? do we have any defenders of the likes of judge nikitchenko, notorious for his presiding over the stalin show trials? (who declared at the outset of the proceedings: “we are dealing here with the chief war criminals who have already been convicted". hmm, that’s reassuring).
the now acknowledged use of torture on prisoners? doesn’t that call into question some of the nazi defendents’ confessions? the gerstein report - some statement vaguely explaining the use of gas chambers for execution at belzec and treblinka - centrepiece of the whole story - the original never made available, and gerstein conveniently dead by suicide in 1945. fortunately we have eyewitnesses like wiesel who can fill in the missing gaps.
Smear tactic.
Where’s the smear tactic? I don’t think all Holocaust deniers are anti-semites. But, you and one particular poster on this topic quite clearly have it in for the Jews.
One of the concerns raised with the Holocaust argument is the emphasis put on Jews over other groups, as they have a special seat in history. Still, I must add whether or not anyone was actually slaughtered (through the use of gas chambers), it’s still questionable. Somehow, the deaths of Jews out weighs any deaths of innocent Europeans during the war.
War can be a horrible thing, all the more so when the draft is involved. What is so shocking about the holocaust is not just the sheer number of people that are alleged to have died but the idea of the mass extermination of the race. I think Nozick was being a little bit ridiculous when he said the Holocaust makes him ashamed to be a human being, but there is something sickening about the idea of Holocaust and indeed any sort of genocide
Jealousy has nothing to do with any hatred towards Jews. It’s on an entirely different spectrum. Whatever angst there is towards Jews has to do with them being foreign to whatever culture they are integrating to. People see Jewish integration into a culture as a parasite (in the most blunt way). That they feed off of (and control) the host culture/people. There are people who don’t feel at ease that a majority of the media outlets are in a minority of Jewish hands..
I said jealousy goes a long way in explaining hatred towards the Jews, not that it was the sole factor. I agree, xenophobia is also part of the story, and combined the the success of the Jews it led to years and year of Jewish persecution. As previously stated, I would also point to the fact that the Jewish people never had a state backing them up, which is why I’m an ardent supporter of Israel.
which is why I’m an ardent supporter of Israel.
That’s a 100% different argument. Israel as Israel is, is something that I could strongly do without, and that wouldn’t neccesarily be from an “anarchist” perspective either. If you would like to have a discussion about that, as I wouldn’t mind to know where you are coming from, say so and one of us could start another thread.
i’d make one point on the wave of anti-semitism that the nazis exploited in their rise to power. there’d been a communist revolution in hungary led by the bela kun (a jew) of whose thirty-two commissars, twenty-five were jewish. the london times characterized the regime as “the jewish mafia”.
the disproportionately heavy presence of jews in the soviet regime (well up until the first few years of israel’s life), both as commissars and officials of the secret police etc, certainly had not escaped many middle-class germans, clearly not enthused at the prospect of despoliation or worse. nor had the fact the the russian revolution had been funded by new york jewish money (jacob schiff and pals) gone unnoticed. the persecution of christians - worshippers and clerics - in the ussr heightened the real fear many germans had of a similar change in germany.
the spartacist uprising in germany, under rosa luxemburg and karl liebknecht, both jews, did nothing to help this popular image of radicalism having a strong jewish tone. indeed, even churchill wrote words in his newspaper article, “zionism versus bolshevism” that seem extraordinary today, but which did find a resonance in those turbulent times.
http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/newsround/zvb/zvb1.html
so it’s easy to see how innocent, non-policital jews got tarred by association with jewish firebrands by demagogues like hitler. the fact that the weimar republic inflation tended to benefit the entrepreneurial/wheeler-dealer over the salary-earner, and that jews had traditionally been involved in the money-game (historical reasons) many doing quite well out of the economic chaos (perfectly legitimate to benefit from the chaos caused by others) fed into the usual envy and hatred that the well-off suffer from the less well-off.
without the underlying political/economic tensions in the german society, mere hatred of jews for being different, successful etc, wouldn’t seem to me sufficient to explain the dramatic embrace of the nazis by the german middle-class. the broad and institutionalized mistreatment of jews was a twentieth century phenomenon, whereas anti-semitism goes back to time immemorial.
in summary, nobody benefits from a rendition of history that omits important context, even if it is in a good cause.
i should also mention that the jews were subject to racial laws in czarist russia, more evidence that the mixture of racism and statism is a dangerous brew that can have disastrous consequences.
Give us some examples.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire
This really isn’t that controversial. It did indeed happen.
Pogroms are carried out by mobs, but laws are passed by governments.
I know about the pale of settlement, but not about much else. I’m willing to learn more.