Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!newsfeed.bofh.team!paganini.bofh.team!not-for-mail From: JohnN Newsgroups: soc.culture.israel Subject: The Case for Open Debate Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2024 20:46:57 -0400 Organization: To protect and to server Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2024 00:47:01 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: paganini.bofh.team; logging-data="502069"; posting-host="/DqMQqWZfnO60D86FqgHyw.user.paganini.bofh.team"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@bofh.team"; posting-account="9dIQLXBM7WM9KzA+yjdR4A"; User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.3 Content-Language: en-US Bytes: 9578 Lines: 157 THE HOLOCAUST CONTROVERSY The Case for Open Debate THE CONTEMPORARY ISSUE Is asking questions a crime? If you develop doubts about the Holocaust, isn’t the only way to get rid of these doubts by asking questions? A lot of individuals and groups are enraged by those who ask critical questions about the Holocaust. Every other historical issue is debated as a matter of course, but influential pressure groups have made the Holocaust story an exception. Anyone should be encouraged to investigate critically the Holocaust narrative in the same way they are encouraged to investigate every other historical event. This is not a radical point of view. It is just plain reason. THE HISTORICAL ISSUE National Socialists saw Jews as being an influential force behind international communism and finance. During World War II, Jews were considered to be enemies of the German State and a potential danger to its war efforts, much like the Germans, Italians, and Japanese were viewed in the U.S. Consequently, Jews were stripped of their rights, forced to live in ghettos, conscripted for labor, deprived of their property, deported, and otherwise mistreated. Many tragically perished. In contrast to establishment historians, revisionists claim that the German State had NO policy to exterminate the Jewish people (or anyone else) in homicidal gas chambers or by killing them through abuse or neglect. Revisionists also maintain that the figure of six million Jewish deaths is an irresponsible exaggeration, and that no execution gas chambers existed in any camp in Europe which was under German control. Fumigation gas chambers, both stationary and mobile, did exist to delouse clothing and equipment in order to prevent disease at POW, labor, and concentration camps and at the fighting front. It is highly likely that it was from this life-saving procedure that the myth of extermination gas chambers emerged. Revisionists generally hold that the Allied governments, and in particular the Soviets, decided to carry their wartime “black which at the end were mainly used to support the Soviet revolution in Russia. On 22 March 1916, that is during the First World War, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph published an article falsely claiming that the Germans had murdered 700,000 Serbs in gas chambers. On 25 May 1942, that is during the Second World War, the same newspaper reported that the Germans had murdered 700,000 Jews in Poland in gas chambers. In 1944, the British Government asked the British media and churches to help spread anti-German propaganda, which it had been putting out already for a while, in order to distract from the atrocities it expected to be committed by the Soviets as soon as they invaded Germany. In its circular, the British government expressed its regret that, after the exposure of WWI propaganda lies, greater efforts would be necessary to make people believe it. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS AND REVISIONISM Many people are bewildered when they first hear Holocaust revisionist arguments. The arguments appear to make sense, but “How is it possible?” After all, the whole world believes the orthodox Holocaust narrative. It’s just not plausible that the truth could have been suppressed for so many decades. To understand how it could have happened, one needs only to reflect on the intellectual and political dogmas of medieval Europe, of National Socialist Germany, or of the Communist-bloc countries. In these societies, the great majority of scholars were caught up in the existing political culture. Committed to a prevailing ideology, these scholars and intellectuals felt it was their right and duty to protect that ideology. They did so by oppressing “evil” dissidents who expressed “offensive” or “dangerous” ideas. In those societies, scholars became the “Thought Police.” In our own society, in the debate over the question of political correctness, there are those who deliberately attempt to trivialize the issues. They claim that there is no real problem with freedom of speech in our society, and that all that is involved with political correctness are a few rules which allegedly protect minorities from those who would otherwise hurt their feelings. There is, of course, a more serious aspect to the problem. In American society today, there is a wide range of ideas and viewpoints which the mass media will not allow to be discussed openly. Even obvious facts and realities, when they are politically unacceptable, are denied and suppressed. One can learn much about the psychology and methods of the Thought Police by watching how they react when just one of their taboos is broken, and Holocaust revisionism is given a public forum. First they express outrage that such “offensive” and “dangerous” ideas were allowed to be expressed publicly. They avoid answering or debating these ideas, claiming that to do so would give the revisionists a forum and legitimacy. Then they make vicious personal attacks against the revisionist heretics, calling them political names such as “hater” or “denier,” even suggesting that they are potential mass murderers. They publicly accuse the revisionists of lying, but they don’t allow these dissidents to face their accusers so that they can answer this slander. Revisionists are frequently accused of being hate-filled people who are promoting a doctrine of hatred. But revisionism is a scholarly process, not a doctrine or an ideology. If the Holocaust promoters really want to expose hatred, they should take a second look at their own doctrines, and a long look at themselves in the mirror. Anyone who invites a revisionist to speak publicly is himself attacked for being insensitive. When revisionists do speak publicly, they are regularly shouted down and threatened. Libraries and bookstores such as Amazon face threats and intimidation when they offer Holocaust revisionist materials. All this goes on while the majority of library, media, college, and university administrators stand silently by, allowing political activists to determine what can be said in the media and read in libraries. Next, the Thought Police set out to destroy the transgressors professionally and financially by “getting” them at their jobs or concocting lawsuits against them. It is sometimes often deceptively claimed that revisionist scholarship has been proven false during a trial, though courts of law can never decide any scholarly debates; they can only impose dogmas. Finally, the Thought Police will inevitably “straighten out” that segment of academia or the media that allowed the revisionists a forum in the first place. Some administrators in academia hold that university administrations should take action to rid the campus of ideas which are disruptive. This is an open invitation to tyranny. It means that any militant group with “troops at the ready” can rid the campus of ideas it opposes. Timorous administrators might find it much easier and safer to rid the campus of controversial ideas than to face down a group of screaming militants. But it is the duty of university administrators to insure that our universities remain a free marketplace of ideas. When ideas cause disruptions, it is the disrupters who must be subdued, not the ideas. CONCLUSION The influence of Holocaust revisionism is growing steadily both here and abroad. In the United States, revisionism was launched in earnest in 1976 with the publication of the book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Prof. Dr. Arthur R. Butz. Today, revisionism is presented in many university-style studies of serious scholarship. Those who take up the revisionist cause, represent a wide spectrum of political and philosophical positions. They are certainly not the scoundrels, liars and demons the anti-revisionists try to make them out to be. The fact is, there are no demons in the real world. People are at their worst when they begin to see their opponents as an embodiment of evil, and then begin to demonize them. Such people are quite prepared to harm their opponents. The logic of their argument is that you can do anything you want to a demon. We should not allow such a logic to prevail. Those wishing to verify the truthfulness of the statements made here are invited to visit our website www.HolocaustHandbooks. com where you can watch thoroughly researched documentaries and download free of charge most of our (soon) 50 meticulously documented studies on various aspects of the Holocaust.