wais: history: historical revisionism: holocaust: jews, gypsies, June 2005

Historical Revisionism: Holocaust: Jews and Gypsies and others

Christopher Jones commented on the posting about the Nuremberg trials: More and more, the PC US media return to the Nazi period as a cover for their own questionable policies. Some, not all Holocaust revisionists, raise valid questions that need answering; to simply ask for "belief" is tantamount to an Inquisition mentality. Not all "revisionists" are fringe lunatics -- the numbers, and the methods just do not add up. Cameron Sawyer comments:
I believe that there is a logical fallacy here. The arguments seems to go something like: the U.S. media are P.C. (certainly true to some extent, although the U.S. media are not nearly as monolithic as "revisionists" claim), and the freedom of speech of "revisionists" is infringed in Europe (definitely true), therefore the Holocaust is bogus or exaggerated.

The problem is that the fact that the opinions of "revisionists" is suppressed (by censorship in Europe and, to a lesser extent, political correctness in the U.S.), does NOT make those opinions true. Nor does the fact that the censorship imposed on "revisionists" is wrong make their opinions true. In fact, although one or another fact argued by "revisionists" might even be correct -- say for the sake of argument the victims of the Holocaust were five million or even four million instead of six million, say for the sake of argument that some or another gas chamber displayed to tourists at a former concentration camp is a fake -- these facts, even if they are true, would not change anything essential about the historical significance of the Holocaust, nor would such facts even come close to supporting the conclusions of the "revisionists", which are motivated exclusively -- and I challenge anyone to present a single significant counterexample -- by sympathy to National Socialism and/or White Power and/or anti-Semitism of a positively medieval flavor (complete with poisoned wells, curses in graveyards, blood libel, and Protocols of the Elders of Zion).

I say for the umpteenth time that none of this justifies censoring them, nor is there any justification for making the historical facts of the Holocaust into an undiscussable, undebatable holy cow. We need serious historians with a serious interest in the truth working on this, not wackos and neo-Nazis who just want to show that say there was one million victims more or less and therefore the whole Holocaust, far from being the genocide it obviously was, was just an abuse comparable to what happened at Abu Ghraib, which is obvious rubbish. But the truth is not served by censorship even of the false, with which we have to be prepared to deal intellectually.

In all this I have got to know and admire some of the work of one Ken McVay, a non-Jew and a somewhat odd but very intelligent Canadian who appears to devote most of his time to struggling intellectually with Holocaust "revisionists" through speechifying and through extensive writings published on his website called the Nizkor Project -- www.nizkor.org. McVay is deeply opposed to censoring Holocaust deniers, and his views have caught the attention of Germans -- see http://www.shoahproject.org/nocensor/nizkor/shnizkorart.htm (a republication of an article which originally appeared in Der Spiegel in 1996 or 1997). It is a significant sign of the absurdity of German censorship that McVay himself fears it. He says: "I often ask myself, whether the German government will go against us -- it seems to believe that one can censor all of the hate out of the world. This seems to me to be rather naive." (My translation, from op. cit.).

I commend www.nizkor.org to all WAISers, and see also their page on logical fallacies -- http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ -- extremely useful for this debate.

Another excellent site with a whole compendium of wacko material on the Internet, including not only Holocaust "revisionists" but also conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, skinhead groups, neo-Nazis, Afrocentrics, New World Order-ists, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, UFO devotees, and others, is Crank Dot Net, www.crank.net. It is extremely interesting to look at all of these movements in the context of each other, which allows one to see strong common threads. These movements seem to all be based on a kind of paranoid (I mean it in the clinical sense) rejection of reality, and the construction and defense of an alternative reality based on self-referring logical fallacies. Members of all of these groups have a striking pattern of behavior in common -- they cite as authorities other members of the same group, then dismiss contradictory information which almost everyone accepts as true as the product of a vast conspiracy. Have a look.

Cameron Sawyer wrote about revisionists: Say for the sake of argument that some or another gas chamber displayed to tourists at a former concentration camp is a fake -- these facts, even if they are true, would not change anything essential about the historical significance of the Holocaust, nor would such facts even come close to supporting the conclusions of the "revisionists", which are motivated exclusively --I challenge anyone to present a single significant counterexample -- by sympathy to National Socialism and/or White Power and/or anti-Semitism of a positively medieval flavor (complete with poisoned wells, curses in graveyards, blood libel, and Protocols of the Elders of Zion).

Christopher Jones replies:: This is a fairly easy challenge: Noam Chomsky, who can hardly be called a fringe "white supremacist" is very much on record defending Dr Faurisson's right to reply and actually said that there is nothing anti-semitic about his assertions. I suppose Cameron could throw Gore Vidal into the fire along with him. There is nothing at all "Neo-Nazi" to question the mechanics of the gassings nor is it inherently anti-semitic to deny that humans are capable of such things. That is a failure of logic. The Zionists have however equated the two. Cameron almost always follows a very predictable path of skewing anything that dares call into question the "official" version towards fringe lunacy and anti-semitism. Frankly, the devil is in the detail. If the gas chambers were faked or rebuiit we should know about it. To say shut up is easy and probably the best way to insure that it happens again. There is another problem with the word: "holocaust." Jews use the word "Shoah" to describe the "Holocaust of the Jews," but the gypsies and others who were murdered by the Nazis are not included in this term. This is real Holocaust Denial.

Cameron Sawyer says: So Christopher Jones now has me "throwing people into the fire"? One more time again: I do not deny anyone's right to say anything in the world, and I never, repeat never, have suggested that anyone should be silenced. No one said "shut up", and to argue as if I had said that is to misrepresent my position. I do assert my right to point out neo-Nazi sources of materials, where these exist, and particularly where these have been concealed. Chris is on record as supporting the idea that sources of ideas, statements, assertions, are relevant, so he may not complain on this point. I also reserve the right to point out that certain ideas or materials are foolish, while giving concrete evidence of this, and even, in some cases, perhaps, to make fun of particularly cranky ideas. None of that is equal to shutting anyone up.

As to questioning the "mechanics of gassing", and whether or not some gas chambers on display are reproductions of units destroyed by retreating Germans, by all means, this is a legitimate topic of discussion, and I never said otherwise. Truth is truth. But to deny that the gassings took place at all, or to deny that human beings are "capable of such things" flies in the face of thousands of eye-witness accounts and a huge weight of historical evidence, and is worthy, probably, of derision as well as refutation. Which again, does not mean that we should not discuss it. As I have said: We should all be ready to refute falsehood, and even foolishness, and to engage it intellectually, and not merely tell it to "shut up".

As to the attempt of anyone to suppress discussion of these questions -- as German law seems to do -- I am on record as being against this. Some "Zionists" might favor such suppressions, but I do not support them and suspect that any such people who do are a noisy minority. I would be grateful if one would refrain from associating me with this position.

One thing Christopher says is very true, and with which I agree wholeheartedly -- "To say shut up is easy and probably the best way to insure that it happens again." Well said indeed, and true and wise, and perhaps it would be churlish of me to point out that he means "ensure" and not "insure".

As to Gypsies or other victims being excluded from the definition of the Holocaust -- this is news to me. Gypsies (Sinti and Romani) were even sent to Jewish ghettoes, prior to being shipped off to be -- yes, Christopher, gassed. I have never heard anyone use either the term Holocaust or the term Shoa as referring exclusively to the destruction of Jews, who made up probably not more or not much more than half of the approximately 11 or 12 million victims, and Jewish sources on the Holocaust which I have seen cover the Romani-Sinti victims in great detail. I suspect that this is a red herring, but if by chance Christopher does have a source which excludes Gypsies from the definition of the Shoa, I would be grateful to him for pointing it out to me, so that I may have the pleasure of deriding it.

"Shoa", which means "calamity" in Hebrew, is an increasingly favored term because of the awkward religious associations of the Greek word "Holocaust" which means a sacrificial, burnt offering. Gypsies have their own word for the Holocaust -- the "Porajmos", which means "devouring". All these terms refer to the premeditated, systematic, efficient, massive destruction of whole nations or categories of people deemed by the Nazis to by unworthy of life: Jews, Gypsies, Poles, handicapped people, homosexuals, and Jehovah's Witnesses.

An excellent article on the Shoa or Holocaust (or Porajmos, if you like): http://copernicus.subdomain.de/The_Holocaust

The Nazi genocide against Gypsies is really ironic, underlining the idiotic nature of Nazi racial ideas, given the fact that the Gypsies are more "Aryan" than the blondest German -- they speak a language close to Sanskrit, and are direct descendants of the original Aryans (mixed with Dravidians, no doubt, given their swarthy coloring, but still more Aryan than the Germans). See: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/gypsies.html.

RH: Cameron is an unusually reasonable and well-informed person, and he should be treated with more than the usual WAIS respect.He does not tell people to shut up, which is unWAIS. However, some Jews insist that the Holocaust is a unique event. As for the gypsies, their language is close to Sanskrit, so linguistically they are Indo-European, but racially they picked up all kinds of strains on their way westward. What creates animosity against them, not just in Nazi Germany, is their unwillingness or inability to adopt Western work ethics and standards.

Ronald Hilton 2005

last updated: June 16, 2005