The holocaust and revisionists

birdiewhistler

Okay I am exactly one half Austrian jew. My family went to America in 1937. If the Holocaust never happened then maybe these "skeptics" can explain to me how 3,192 of my Austrian Jewish ancestors died between the years of 1939 and 1945? Just wondering....

Eriugena

birdiewhistler wrote:

Okay I am exactly one half Austrian jew. My family went to America in 1937. If the Holocaust never happened then maybe these "skeptics" can explain to me how 3,192 of my Austrian Jewish ancestors died between the years of 1939 and 1945? Just wondering....

Every week or so one comes across stories of families being re-united who had assumed that each branch had been killed during the war. People are discovering relatives who they assumed were dead. The first thing one should ask, then, is the obvious question: how do you know all these people died? Now doubt some of this number did die during the war. WW II was the most bloody and destructive conflict in human history and surely no family in Europe - even in neutral Ireland - was untouched.
Revisionism does not dispute that Jews were persecuted and suffered under the Nazis. What is contested is that there was a policy of extermination and that this was carried out using gas chambers etc.

There are now online databases of names hosted by various Jewsih organisations which have been very significant in bringing about family reunions of the kind I mentioned above. Have you looked at these? Perhaps you should enter all the names and details that you have. You may receive a pleasant surprise sometime.

Obni

I am deliberately trying to avoid arguments over killing numbers or methods relating to the holocaust, as we both know that that will not be resolved in these postings. Claim and counter-claim can be found on numerous sites elsewhere. The slugging-match of postings above has covered enough pages. You have your stance on those issues, and I have mine.

I just can't get my head around the practicalities of the holocaust as propaganda and how it can fit in with what I know of European politics since the war. I am still puzzled as to any possible motive for co-operative and concerted support for continuing such propaganda, amongst nations that have disagreed on so many issues since WW2.

Eriugena wrote:

The holocaust story I contend is similar in origin. The difference is that these stories continued and haven not been repudiated.

Propaganda, back to the crusades and beyond has been used to whip up support for military campaigns, and to encourage young men to enlist in the cause of the 'righteous' side. No-one would argue that point I'm sure.

If you contend that the holocaust story played a similar role, then why was it not used as propaganda until the camps were liberated, at which point the war in Europe was already lost by the Germans?
If the holocaust is nothing more than propaganda then why was it not used as such? Why for example did the Allies not use it as justification for the blanket bombing of German cities as the war drew to a close? "We may cause some incidental deaths among the civilian population, but they murder millions every year, etc..."

I'm not contesting your claims from some warm and fuzzy, liberal, middle-class agenda, and I have endeavoured to avoid questioning your agenda (which may simply be to express what you see as the truth). I've tried to come up with a question not driven by emotion or by political or national bias. So, here is the most non-PC question I have ever posed....

Anti-semitism was endemic in central and eastern Europe before and during the war, with little better treatment in the West; so in building, as you seem to suggest, a propaganda campaign to justify excessive punitive action against Axis nations and leaders following the war wouldn't the Allied goverment propagandists scout around for someone to whom the people of the West would be more receptive - such as raped Belgian nuns (again) or perhaps cherubic blonde-haired little girls in occupied Norway or simply base war crime trials on exagerrated tales of the mistreatment and torture of their own POWs held in Axis camps?

Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists...? Did some propagandist mix-up the focus-group lists and recommend fabricating myths about the people least likely to have universal appeal to public opinion in the late 1940's?

A claim of 'Aha! That's very the subtlety of their plan!' is not an answer.

Obni

birdiewhistler wrote:

Okay I am exactly one half Austrian jew. My family went to America in 1937. If the Holocaust never happened then maybe these "skeptics" can explain to me how 3,192 of my Austrian Jewish ancestors died between the years of 1939 and 1945? Just wondering....

In case Eriugena is the only person who answers this post, and you think he speaks for all of us, I will tell you how I think your relatives died. Some may have died due to the hardships of disease and starvation in forced-labour camps, but many were murdered in cold-blood by the design of an evil and shameful regime, which was a blight upon the history of mankind, and whose legacy we forget or deny at our peril.

Zombrex

Obni wrote:

If you contend that the holocaust story played a similar role, then why was it not used as propaganda until the camps were liberated, at which point the war in Europe was already lost by the Germans?

In fact it is worse than that. Reports and stories from service men of the holocaust were practically ignored by the US public and the military. They didn't want to know about it.

The idea that the holocaust was a propaganda tool by the allies is ridiculous. If it was it was one of the worst attempts at propaganda even devised.

Obni

Turley wrote:

If an event is not reported by the press, it "never happened." Conversely any event endlessly reported by the press "did happen." This is how the public "knows" reality.

99% of us 'public' types may believe 99% of what we're told, but that's not the same as saying that 99% of what we're told is lies. Most government officials and press hacks are too unimaginative, too lazy, and too damn busy to fabricate lies on a full-time basis. The world as presented by the press may be biased, may contain half-truths and even occassionally untruths, but much of the bs can be filtered by casting a critical eye over the news, trying to fathom the agenda a news source may have, and by not relying on a single source. I think my judgement on the press would be that most of what we read is mostly true.

Eriugena

Obni wrote:

I just can't get my head around the practicalities of the holocaust as propaganda and how it can fit in with what I know of European politics since the war. I am still puzzled as to any possible motive for co-operative and concerted support for continuing such propaganda, amongst nations that have disagreed on so many issues since WW2.

Its not quite as simple as that. There should be no suggestion of some kind of great conspiracy of the tin foil hat or Elders of Zion variety, ie. kook territory. I will elaborate below.

Propaganda, back to the crusades and beyond has been used to whip up support for military campaigns, and to encourage young men to enlist in the cause of the 'righteous' side. No-one would argue that point I'm sure.

Without a doubt. Its hard to imagine a single war that was not accompanied by attempts to depcit the enemy as devils or monsters of some kind.

If you contend that the holocaust story played a similar role, then why was it not used as propaganda until the camps were liberated, at which point the war in Europe was already lost by the Germans?

WW II from the propaganda perspective was not dissimilar to the recent Iraq war in at least two respects. The reasons and aims of the war kept changing and the emphasis on certain elements was also quite fluid. Saddam was depicted as posing an imminent threat to world peace with his mythical WMD's and little rubber-band gliders that were set to spray poison across America. As the war got underway, the emphasis changed to liberating the Iraqis from tyrrany, then we had the "rape rooms", mass graves and industrial paper shredders used by the sons as a method of killing people which were touted as evidence that he was a monster and this justified the war. Then this changed and we were told it was all about bringing freedom and democracy to the middle east starting with Iraq.
Whilst the allies did not exploit the gas chamber stories during the war, they did towards the end. The troops that arriving at camps like Dachau and Belsen believed that these were death factories and interpreted what they saw in those terms. Shortly after it became clear that they were not death camps. So it is not entirely true to say that this element was missing form war-time propaganda.

If the holocaust is nothing more than propaganda then why was it not used as such?

Shock value.

Why for example did the Allies not use it as justification for the blanket bombing of German cities as the war drew to a close? "We may cause some incidental deaths among the civilian population, but they murder millions every year, etc..."

Because they were getting ample mileage out of "Nazi tyrrany" as it was, save up the other stuff for afterwards.
It is interesting to note that neither Churchill, de Gaulle or Eisenhower ever mention gas chambers in their writings after the war. There is a fairly recent book by Donald Bloxham Genocide on Trial (here is a review: needless to say the book is from an exterminationist perspective) which pursues the thesis that the allies played down the phenomenon we call the holocaust at Nuremberg. You raise a very complex issue to which there is no short answer. The allied powers were anxious to blame the Germans for absolutely everything at the "high grade lynching party" that was Nuremberg and all the lesser trials. One of the major war aims, especially for Churchill, was to destroy Germany as a power once and for all. This is what he spent the 1930's lobbying for, rather like the war party in the Us who started lobbyong for war aganst Iraq in 1993. Goering's last letter is quite interesting in this respect as are many Churchillian declarations during the pre-war period.
The holocaust side of things (and this term really did not have wide currency until much later) became important for advancing Zionist aims with the allies and for extracting huge reparations from Germany for founding the new state of Israel.

The big change comes later. If you read Norman Finkelstein's excellent book The Holocaust Industry he talks about a major change that occured around 1967. Prior to that no-one was that interested. He talks about the general apathy that surrounded the issue, even amongst Jews. And I know from an Israeli connection personally, that in those days there was even hostility towards the people who had come from Europe after the war. They geenrally kept quiet and didn't speak about their experiences. 1967 changes everything because that is the year of the Six Day War in which Israel embarked on the conquest of territories in line with its expansionist aims. This was sold abroad, particularly in the US as a war of survival, David and Golaith etc. The eventual result of this was to turn US middle east policy towards Israel during the period 1967-73. The holocaust story was deployed during this time and grew as the relationship between Israel and the US developed into the unhealthy state that it is in now. America is bombarded daily with holocaustomania - museums and memorials everywhere, in schools, in the media. Holocaust studies courses and departments in virtually all the universities, thousands of publications, and endless claims against countries and institutions. A veritable industry as Finkelstein calls it. Abba Eban a former Israeli foreign minister once said "there is no business like Shoah business." Its functions at a number of levels: legitimation for the state of Israel; lucrative source of income for various organisations; provides careers for thousands of people. Finkelstein's mother who actually was in Dachau I think, when she saw how many survivors there were, said if all these people survived, who did the Nazis kill?

I'm not contesting your claims from some warm and fuzzy, liberal, middle-class agenda, and I have endeavoured to avoid questioning your agenda (which may simply be to express what you see as the truth).

I appreciate that very much.

I've tried to come up with a question not driven by emotion or by political or national bias. So, here is the most non-PC question I have ever posed....

Anti-semitism was endemic in central and eastern Europe before and during the war, with little better treatment in the West; so in building, as you seem to suggest, a propaganda campaign to justify excessive punitive action against Axis nations and leaders following the war wouldn't the Allied goverment propagandists scout around for someone to whom the people of the West would be more receptive - such as raped Belgian nuns (again) or perhaps cherubic blonde-haired little girls in occupied Norway or simply base war crime trials on exagerrated tales of the mistreatment and torture of their own POWs held in Axis camps?

Well there were elements of that as well. Bloxham's book in a way addresses that question. The allies were pinning everything on them, their alleged treatment of the Jews was just one plank in a wide raft of charges. If you were to believe holocaust propaganda of the last decade or so you would be forgiven for thinking that the experience of the Jews druing the war was central and the war was somehow about saving them. At the time though their experience did not dominate the spotlight by any means.
I wou hazard and say that without the Zionist factor, the holocaust story would have gone the way of all war atrocity propaganda in time.

The real history of the holocaust is not so much about what actually happened to the Jews during the period 1941-45 but is, rather, the history of how this story evolved into the monster that it has become.

KCF

Eriugena wrote:

The real history of the holocaust is not so much about what actually happened to the Jews during the period 1941-45 but is, rather, the history of how this story evolved into the monster that it has become.

Really?

Let's say that we were to leave our wits at the door and accept your theories about "holocaust propaganda". Are you really saying that the murder of millions of people as a consequence of a doctrine of hatred is a smaller story than a bit of spin? Or are you now saying that the Nazis didn't murder millions of jews and other inferiors?

Turley

Obni wrote:

99% of us 'public' types may believe 99% of what we're told, but that's not the same as saying that 99% of what we're told is lies.

You are right! Your thoughts are reasonable. I would agree that much of what we are told is true. But what is left out is what is often vitally important. Just like a magician shows you what he wants you to see. And you may use deductive reasoning with great skill. However, if you do not have all of the information you may reason from a false premise and your valid reasoning can deliver you to a false conclusion.

Obni wrote:

Most government officials and press hacks are too unimaginative, too lazy, and too damn busy to fabricate lies on a full-time basis.

You are right again! That is why they simply repeat the official "truth" like parrots.

Obni wrote:

The world as presented by the press may be biased, may contain half-truths and even occassionally untruths, but much of the bs can be filtered by casting a critical eye over the news, trying to fathom the agenda a news source may have, and by not relying on a single source.

This is where we differ. For deception to be successful, it must appear to be fair. The appearance of differences is not the same as actual differences. Obvious bias may help create the illusion of differences. But as long as significant events are unreported in ALL of the press, news suppression succeeds even if you read more than one source. Professional boxers can appear to be fighting even when the game is fixed.

Obni wrote:

I think my judgement on the press would be that most of what we read is mostly true.

The only way I know to get past this error is to uncover a news story of great importance that is ignored by the press. It takes a great deal of effort and the verification takes time. The task is subject to errors but the reward is great. The truth is a liberating experience! I will warn you the truth is not popular so your popularity and fortune may suffer. The path of truth is a lonely road with few travelers. Your family and friends will ignore you. You will be known as a "conspiracy nut." To remain popular stick with what you believe.

Eriugena

KCF wrote:

Really?

Let's say that we were to leave our wits at the door and accept your theories about "holocaust propaganda". Are you really saying that the murder of millions of people as a consequence of a doctrine of hatred is a smaller story than a bit of spin? Or are you now saying that the Nazis didn't murder millions of jews and other inferiors?

You would not ask irelevant questions if you read the thread properly.
There are two things going on here:
1. What actually happened with European Jewry between 1941-45.
2. What has happened since 1945 with the representation of these alleged events.

KCF

Eriugena wrote:

You would not ask irelevant questions if you read the thread properly.
There are two things going on here:
1. What actually happened with European Jewry between 1941-45.
2. What has happened since 1945 with the representation of these alleged events.

I am quite capable of reading thank you. You said:

The real history of the holocaust is not so much about what actually happened to the Jews during the period 1941-45 but is, rather, the history of how this story evolved into the monster that it has become.

Which unequivocally states that you think that 2. is the 'real history' rather than 1. I am wondering why you think so.

Is it because:
1. You think the murder of millions of jews, gypsies, communists, disabled folk and dissidents is not significant historically compared to 'holocaust propaganda'
2. You think that there was no murder of millions of inferior people by the nazis and that the holocaust is entirely made up
3. Something else (please explain)

I write this question in the full knowledge that you will not answer it.

Zombrex

What the holocaust deniers seem to claim is that yes the Nazi's transported millions of Jews from europe to camps in Poland and eastern europe. Yes the contained them in concentration and work camps. Yes many died due to over crowding, disease and fighting. But no they didn't transport them out there to kill them only to contain them and remove them from Germany and the German Empire.

This entire argument seems to be based around the idea that there were no gas chambers, which ignores the established facts that the Nazis still executed thousands of Jews with firing squads (the gas chambers were a response to the phycological damage this was having on the Nazi foot soldiers) and using other forms of gassing (CO2). They still worked to death thousands of Jews in the camps. Still raped and tortured thousands of Jews and others.

Even if the gas chambers didn't actually exist (unlikely) it is still highly probably that the Nazis killed millions of Jews in eastern europe.

When asked what happened to the 6 million unaccounted for Jews in Europe after the war, the claim is normally they are either still alive or were killed by Allied fighting or never existed in the first place.

Eriugena

KCF wrote:

I am quite capable of reading thank you. You said:

Which unequivocally states that you think that 2. is the 'real history' rather than 1. I am wondering why you think so

O.k., let's try again shall we?
There are two things here:
1. What actually happened to the Jews between 1941-45
2. The event that has come to be known as The Holocaust.

1. is a matter for proper and open historical research whilst 2. is a propaganda construct that provides an ideological fig-leaf for Zionism; a source of huge amounts of cash; a career opprotunity for thousands.
If you are serious about 1 it means questioning 2 and that will land you in big trouble with all those powerful vested interests.

I write this question in the full knowledge that you will not answer it.

You don't seem to know very much, do you?

KCF

Eriugena wrote:

You don't seem to know very much, do you?

Prediction: non-answering of question.
Conclusion: Predicted results observed.

Eriugena

Wicknight wrote:

What the holocaust deniers seem to claim is that yes the Nazi's transported millions of Jews from europe to camps in Poland and eastern europe. Yes the contained them in concentration and work camps. Yes many died due to over crowding, disease and fighting. But no they didn't transport them out there to kill them only to contain them and remove them from Germany and the German Empire.

That's a fair representation of the revisionist position except the figure would not be millions transported.

This entire argument seems to be based around the idea that there were no gas chambers, which ignores the established facts that the Nazis still executed thousands of Jews with firing squads

No becasue that too is in contention. The holocausters claim that c. 1.5 million Jews were shot in the Eastern territories.

(the gas chambers were a response to the phycological damage this was having on the Nazi foot soldiers) and using other forms of gassing (CO2).

That's part of the standard story alright [CO rather than CO2 and produced by diesel engines. Diesel engines do not produce lethal emissions for CO*] They still worked to death thousands of Jews in the camps.

Still raped and tortured thousands of Jews and others.

Where do you get the rape from? This is a new allegation. We have the records of the SS courts which severely punish any SS man for rape, and consenting relations with a Jewish person was a serious offence under the Nuremberg Laws.

Even if the gas chambers didn't actually exist (unlikely)

The gas chamber stories are not sustainable.

it is still highly probably that the Nazis killed millions of Jews in eastern europe.

"Highly probable" is not good enough. The evidence for the mass shootings of Jews as Jews at Nuremberg consisted of a bundle of reports which claim shooting tallies. These reports were "found" by the Soviets two years after the war in Gestapo HQ Berlin. Only copies were entered at Nuremeberg and no one has seen the originals. This is what the H industry has done. By the beginning of the 1990's it was clear the gas chamber stories were refuted beyond repair, they just don't acknowledge this of course. The emphasis of the historians has shifted over to these shootings.

When asked what happened to the 6 million unaccounted for Jews in Europe after the war, the claim is normally they are either still alive or were killed by Allied fighting or never existed in the first place.

How do you know there are 6 million Jews unaccounted for? The origin of the 6 million figure was three men from NY-based Jewish organisations who met Jackson the chief prosecutor at Nurmeberg according to his memoirs.
---
* The CO claims have an interesting history. Accoriding to the initial claims Treblinka had steam chambers as the rceord of Nurmeberg shows. Then they changed the claim to CO produced by diesel engines. Whatever genius dreamed that up clearly knew nothing about the properties of diesel emissions which are quite unsuited for killing anyone, even laboratory mice held out for hours. There are also stories about vacuum chambers and electrocution chambers. Then there is the air hammer, the pedal operated brain bashing machine (!) - they used that one to knock off 880, 000 Russian POW's in two weeks and other palpable nonsense all contained in the records of Nuremberg.

Eriugena

KCF wrote:

Prediction: non-answering of question.
Conclusion: Predicted results observed.

The questions have been dealt with. Are you really unable to read?

Obni

Turley wrote:

I will warn you the truth is not popular so your popularity and fortune may suffer.

That is presuming that I am at present in any way possessed of popularity or fortune.

Turley

Obni wrote:

That is presuming that I am at present in any way possessed of popularity or fortune.

This is true and it is reasonable to presume, given your thinking is consistent with what is the popular opinion. You did write:

"Most government officials and press hacks are too unimaginative, too lazy, and too damn busy to fabricate lies on a full-time basis. The world as presented by the press may be biased, may contain half-truths and even occassionally untruths, but much of the bs can be filtered by casting a critical eye over the news, trying to fathom the agenda a news source may have, and by not relying on a single source. I think my judgement on the press would be that most of what we read is mostly true."

If well documented evidence of serious corruption was reported in an obscure paper or at a website it would be discounted and ignored as long as the "acceptable" sources of news ignored that evidence.

Those who suppress news would have a vested interest to not report they were hiding the truth. So who would tell you that news was suppressed? Who would you believe? How would you know?

KCF

Turley wrote:

If well documented evidence of serious corruption was reported in an obscure paper or at a website it would be discounted and ignored as long as the "acceptable" sources of news ignored that evidence.

Those who suppress news would have a vested interest to not report they were hiding the truth. So who would tell you that news was suppressed? Who would you believe? How would you know?

Let me guess. I suppose you'd have no choice but to take the word of an anonymous ignoramus who almost certainly has a hate-filled racialist supremacist agenda on the internet?

Back in the real world, particularly among a group of people who identify as sceptics, the answer to your question is very easy. You rely on as scientific an analysis as you can apply. You examine the claims, place tentative value judgements on their plausibility. You examine the background of the people making the claims to attempt to figure out if they have an ulterior motive for making the claims. You examine the mechanisms by which they claim the truth is being suppressed and similarly attempt to apply rationality to them.

For example, when individuals promote creationism this analysis gives you the following results:
Plausibility: depending on how scientifically literate you are, you will arrive at the conclusion that creationism is immeasurably less plausible an explanation than the modern synthesis of natural selection and genetics.
Agenda: You will notice that, rather than being motivated by the thirst for knowledge, modern proponents of scientific creationism is well documented to be a 'wedge strategy' for introducing theism into scientific education. You will also notice that all of creationism's proponents have strong religious motivations for 'proving' their desired results.
Mechanism for Suppression: The creationsists explanations of why essentially every single working scientist rubbishes their claims generally resolve to some sort of atheistic or even diabolical influence. This explanation is poor.

When dealing with people who deny that there was a holocaust, you attain similar results:
Plausibility: Depending on how much you know about Germany in the 1930's, the anti-semitism, anti-communism, social darwinism and various other noxious, hate-filled ideas and the writings of the Nazi party leaders, in particular Adolf Hitler, you would have been surprised if the Nazi's hadn't done something like that if given the chance. If you know much about the history of the war years, you'll know that there are a large number of mass graves, confirmed concentration camps, huge numbers of 'disappeared' people, vast amounts of testimony from eye-witnesses all of which testify to the fact that a holocaust took place. On the other side of the coin, you have a few highly contested claims that there were no gas rooms and therefore (following the non-logic of wedge strategies) there was no holocaust.
Agenda: If you care to look at the details, you will very quickly come to realise that every single 'revisionist scholar' is also closely linked to the tiny and marginal neo-fascist political movement. The fact that these people are actually promoting the politics that culminated in the holocaust undermines their status as objective historians more than a tad.
Mechanism:Belief in the doctrines of holocaust denial demands that you believe that there is a global conspiracy involving literally hundreds of thousands of 'actors', virtually every single academic alive, the media and every government on the planet. Although the deniers can correctly point to interest groups that do attempt to influence scholarship in the area, their leap of logic into assuming that the existence of a 'jewish lobby' which attempts to influence debate is sufficent to explain a conspiracy of this magnitude leaves their explanation of the mechanism by which the truth is surpressed looking breathtakingly implausible.

Eriugena

KCF wrote:

Back in the real world, particularly among a group of people who identify as sceptics, the answer to your question is very easy. You rely on as scientific an analysis as you can apply.

Good so far.

You examine the claims, place tentative value judgements on their plausibility.

O.k., so if someone claims to have seen between 700-800 people crammed into a space measuring 5 x 5 metres and 1.8m metres height (28-32 person per sq. metre) you would pause at lending credence to such a claim? What about someone who claims that 880, 000 Russian POW's wre knocked off with a "pedal driven brain-bashing machine" in two weeks and all cremated in a mobile crematory you might have some "tenative value judgments on their plausibility"?

You examine the background of the people making the claims to attempt to figure out if they have an ulterior motive for making the claims.

Careful with that one - might turn into an argumentum ad hominem - on the other hand I think it is significant if the author of a set of claim is also the author of a known frame-up attempt and main organiser of the Moscow Show Trials, yes, I think some skepticism would be in order.

You examine the mechanisms by which they claim the truth is being suppressed and similarly attempt to apply rationality to them.

If they were to poin to all sorts of legal measures designed to suppress inquiry and which enforce a aprticular view of history, an honest, scientifically minded person who prides themselves on being such would cry foul.

For example, when individuals promote creationism this analysis gives you the following results:
Plausibility: depending on how scientifically literate you are, you will arrive at the conclusion that creationism is immeasurably less plausible an explanation than the modern synthesis of natural selection and genetics.

Another conclusion would be that the nature of human understading makes it impossible to adjudicate between these apparently conflicting claims and that it comes down to an existential choice.
One might be tempted to side with W. V. O. Quine when he says in his classic paper Two Dogmas of Empiricism;

"The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges."

Agenda: You will notice that, rather than being motivated by the thirst for knowledge, modern proponents of scientific creationism is well documented to be a 'wedge strategy' for introducing theism into scientific education. You will also notice that all of creationism's proponents have strong religious motivations for 'proving' their desired results.

Just as Darwinists might have strong scientistic motives for excluding it. But scientism is a fallacy:

Scientism, in the strong sense, is the self-annihilating view that only scientific claims are meaningful, which is not a scientific claim and hence, if true, not meaningful. Thus, scientism is either false or meaningless. This view seems to have been held by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-philosophicus (1922) when he said such things as "The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science..." He later repudiated this view.
http://skepdic.com/scientism.html

One belief system pitted against another except the religous one is more honest for it admits that it is based on faith. Quine also expressed how an honest believer in science should speak:

As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries -- not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits18b comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind.
http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html

Mechanism for Suppression: The creationsists explanations of why essentially every single working scientist rubbishes their claims generally resolve to some sort of atheistic or even diabolical influence. This explanation is poor.

There are plenty of scientists who believe that scientific explanation is not incompatible with the belief that God is the ultimate author of things through the intermediary of physical laws and the like.

When dealing with people who deny that there was a holocaust, you attain similar results:
Plausibility: Depending on how much you know about Germany in the 1930's, the anti-semitism, anti-communism, social darwinism and various other noxious, hate-filled ideas and the writings of the Nazi party leaders, in particular Adolf Hitler, you would have been surprised if the Nazi's hadn't done something like that if given the chance.

Says someone who by their comments reveals a striking gap between knowledge of those issues and belief shaped by a version of history that they have been brought up with.

If you know much about the history of the war years, you'll know that there are a large number of mass graves

And presuumably you have identified their location and have performed the necessary tests to confirm this statement? Or at least you can direct us to the source of such studies?

confirmed concentration camps,

That absoultely no-one contests . . .

huge numbers of 'disappeared' people

Vague assertion. Numbers please and demographic evdience for that one.

vast amounts of testimony from eye-witnesses all of which testify to the fact that a holocaust took place.

Again very vague. How many testimonies and what is "a holocaust"? Testimonies of what? Gas chambers? Post up some, or maybe I will.

On the other side of the coin, you have a few highly contested claims that there were no gas rooms and therefore (following the non-logic of wedge strategies) there was no holocaust.

If as it has been shown that the gas chamber claims defy what we know about the behaviour of certain gasses (HCN;CO content in diesel emissions) does not support the testimonies then as a scientifically minded person you have to go with the science.

Agenda: If you care to look at the details, you will very quickly come to realise that every single 'revisionist scholar' is also closely linked to the tiny and marginal neo-fascist political movement.

An outright lie. I gave you three names in response to your silly challenge and we are still waiting for your proof. I can give you more when your done with those.

Mechanism:Belief in the doctrines of holocaust denial demands that you believe that there is a global conspiracy involving literally hundreds of thousands of 'actors', virtually every single academic alive, the media and every government on the planet.

It involves nothing even remotely approaching this idiotic scenario.

Although the deniers can correctly point to interest groups that do attempt to influence scholarship in the area,

I see you have not lost all honesty . . .

their leap of logic into assuming that the existence of a 'jewish lobby' which attempts to influence debate

Do you deny the existence of the ADL? The B'nai Brith? The JDL? Do you deny the Jewish backing for the Fabius-Gayssot laws in France? Do you deny the existence of similar laws throughout most European countries including neutral Switzerland?

KCF

Eriugena wrote:

Do you deny the existence of the ADL? The B'nai Brith? The JDL? Do you deny the Jewish backing for the Fabius-Gayssot laws in France? Do you deny the existence of similar laws throughout most European countries including neutral Switzerland?

If you quoted the rest of the sentence then you could answer your own question. sheesh.

Eriugena

KCF wrote:

If you quoted the rest of the sentence then you could answer your own question. sheesh.

Although the deniers can correctly point to interest groups that do attempt to influence scholarship in the area, their leap of logic into assuming that the existence of a 'jewish lobby' which attempts to influence debate is sufficent to explain a conspiracy of this magnitude leaves their explanation of the mechanism by which the truth is surpressed looking breathtakingly implausible.

Perhaps you would like to spell out clearly what you have in mind here?

Zombrex

Eriugena wrote:

Where do you get the rape from? This is a new allegation.

Actually it is not. Jewish women were raped, or gave themselves up to German officers in attempts to spare there lives or the lives of their families. There have been numerious reports of such events.

From the Diary of Dr. Zygmunt Klukowski a Polish physician

October 21, 1942
"It was a terrifying day, I cannot describe everything that took place. You cannot imagine the barbarism of the Germans. I am completely broken and cannot seem to find myself.

"We received news of robberies increasing everywhere. During the last few weeks the incidence of rape has also increased. I have already examined many pregnancies. A few days ago the wife of a well-known farmer and later a young schoolteacher came in for examination."

We have the records of the SS courts which severely punish any SS man for rape, and consenting relations with a Jewish person was a serious offence under the Nuremberg Laws.

Romantic relations with a Jewish man/woman was a serious crime. Raping one was not. As Prof. Deborah Dwork explains, "During the Holocaust, which sits right in the middle of this century, rape certainly occurred. But it was not a means of having more Aryan children, because no Jewish woman could possibly produce an Aryan child."

Eriugena wrote:

The gas chamber stories are not sustainable.

That is simply not true. The Leuchter report is a joke, and the Polish Committee for Scientific Research showed ..

The present study shows that in spite of the passage of a considerable period of time (over 45 years) in the walls of the facilities which once were in contact with hydrogen cyanide the vestigial amounts of the combinations of this constituent of Zyklon B have been preserved. This is also true of the ruins of the former gas chambers. The cyanide compounds occur in the building materials only locally, in the places where the conditions arose for their formation and persistence for such a long time.

There is also a ton of Nazi documentation describing the gassing of Jews.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/19411025-wetzel-no365/
October 25, 1941: Letter from Wetzel to Lohse, recommending that the head of the euthanasia program should build "gassing devices" to eliminate the Jews.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/19420411-turner-wolff/
April 11, 1942: Letter to Himmler's staff describing how a "delousing van" - quote marks in the original - will be used to clear out a camp of Jewish women and children.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/19420326-rauff-sonderwagen/
March 26, 1942: Letter from Rauff to the Criminal Technical Institute, stating that "special vans" are needed at the Mauthausen concentration camp. Until they arrive, bottled poison gas must be used.

There is also evidence that they were cremating 80,000 Jews a month in Auschwits - http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/topf/ - If they weren't gassed they how did they die?

There is also documentation describing the gas chambers as "gassing cellers"
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/19430129-vergasungskeller/

Eriugena wrote:

"Highly probable" is not good enough. The evidence for the mass shootings of Jews as Jews at Nuremberg consisted of a bundle of reports which claim shooting tallies.

http://www.belembassy.org/uk/en/press/1086814800.html
The government of Belarus declared "Over 100 towns and villages of Belarus are directly linked to the tragic events of Holocaust. In Brest only, 26,000 Jews were shot by Nazis."

No gas chambers, they were shot in the city, in the streets. That is in one city.

Eriugena wrote:

By the beginning of the 1990's it was clear the gas chamber stories were refuted beyond repair, they just don't acknowledge this of course. The emphasis of the historians has shifted over to these shootings.

I assume you are talking about the Leuchter report, which is one of the biggest jokes in historical research ever made.

Eriugena wrote:

How do you know there are 6 million Jews unaccounted for? The origin of the 6 million figure was three men from NY-based Jewish organisations who met Jackson the chief prosecutor at Nurmeberg according to his memoirs.

The inital 6 million figure was, but a huge amount of research has gone into the figure and it still ranges between 4 and 6 million.

http://holocaust-info.dk/statistics/

Eriugena

Wicknight wrote:

Actually it is not. Jewish women were raped, or gave themselves up to German officers in attempts to spare there lives or the lives of their families. There have been numerious reports of such events.

From the Diary of Dr. Zygmunt Klukowski a Polish physician

What is the url source for this?

Romantic relations with a Jewish man/woman was a serious crime. Raping one was not.

No, it was a serious crime as the SS court records will show.

As Prof. Deborah Dwork explains, "During the Holocaust, which sits right in the middle of this century, rape certainly occurred. But it was not a means of having more Aryan children, because no Jewish woman could possibly produce an Aryan child."

So, because Dwork says so? I think not.

That is simply not true. The Leuchter report is a joke, and the Polish Committee for Scientific Research showed ..

The Leuchter Report is not a joke, it was a start in the right direction - much of it still valid but the real business which HHP would prefer you not to see is the Rudolf Report. Tomorrow moring I will post up the url to the report plus the HHP rebuttal and the counter-rebuttal from Rudolf.

There is also a ton of Nazi documentation describing the gassing of Jews.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/19411025-wetzel-no365/
October 25, 1941: Letter from Wetzel to Lohse, recommending that the head of the euthanasia program should build "gassing devices" to eliminate the Jews.

This document is NOT a letter
The document cited above is in fact NOT a letter, but a draft of a letter, one that shows no evidence that it was sent.
This document is NOT signed
This draft bears Wetzel's initials only.
The Lohse "documents" have a curious history: In 1945, a Jewish-American Sergeant attached to the U.S. 82nd AirborneDivision claimed to have found these documents among Alfred Rosenberg's files. The Sergeant's name was Szajko Frydman. These "documents" are unique in that they were "processed" at the Yiddish Scientific Institute (In New York City!), before they were sent on to Nuremberg, Germany. Mr. Frydman also has the distinction of serving as a staff member at the Yivo Institute both BEFORE and AFTER his service in the U.S. Army.
Much more could and perhaps should be said about this and other similar documents.
For an article on this document see;
http://www.corax.org/revisionism/misc/brack.html

I'll come back to the rest of the claims tomrrow morning.

Obni

Turley wrote:

The truth is a liberating experience! I will warn you the truth is not popular so your popularity and fortune may suffer. The path of truth is a lonely road with few travelers. Your family and friends will ignore you. You will be known as a "conspiracy nut." To remain popular stick with what you believe.

My reply about current my lack of popularity and fortune, without having tread the 'lonely road with few travelers', was intended as a gentle jibe at your rather romantic description of the fate of anyone with the courage to become a voice crying in the wilderness. Perhaps I should include smilies in future. Entering "government controlled media" into a search engine produces 3,210,000 hits: a fairly crowded wilderness.
I appreciate your trying to point out the dangers of accepting mass media output at face value, but I've slogged through enough Chomsky, Ignatieff, etc..., to need further enlightenment on that topic. With that in mind I would point out that Western society tolerates the diverse dissenting voices of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Russ Kick and Mark Thomas, and broadcasts the work of John Pilger and Adam Curtis on mainstream media, we are hardly at 1984 levels of mind-control ... just yet.

As for being branded a 'conspiracy nut' (or the wonderfully fluid 'conspiraloon') and losing friends and fortune, remember your Ecclesiates "the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard."

Turley wrote:

If well documented evidence of serious corruption was reported in an obscure paper or at a website it would be discounted and ignored as long as the "acceptable" sources of news ignored that evidence.

Those who suppress news would have a vested interest to not report they were hiding the truth. So who would tell you that news was suppressed? Who would you believe? How would you know?

I think KCF expressed it better than I could ..

KCF wrote:

You examine the claims, place tentative value judgements on their plausibility. You examine the background of the people making the claims to attempt to figure out if they have an ulterior motive for making the claims. You examine the mechanisms by which they claim the truth is being suppressed and similarly attempt to apply rationality to them.

If there is no guarantee of truth from any source, then you must simply rely on informed judgement and common sense.

KCF

Eugenics or something like that wrote:

An outright lie. I gave you three names in response to your silly challenge and we are still waiting for your proof. I can give you more when your done with those.

You claimed that Irving, Rassinier and Zundel are evidence that 'revisionist historians' do not show an extraordinary corelation with fascism. To be honest, I don't think that I have ever come across a more pathetic attempt at a rebuttal.

A few facts picked out of a very long list of evidence.

Zundel - publisher of a pamphlet entitled "The Hitler We Loved and Why" (is it possible be clearer than that?)
Zundel - Convicted by court on several occasions and jailed for publishing fascist hate literature.

Irving - Has spoken at several neo-nazi rallies, including ones by the US National Alliance, German Deutsche Volksunion and US Liberty Alliance.
Irving - Has been proven in court to be a liar, holocaust denier and fascist sympathiser as a consequence of his failed libel case against Deborah Lipstadt, and her publisher Penguin Books for her book Denying the Holocaust

Rassinier - I already pointed you to a long list of research debunking your claims, carried out by real historians with good reputations amongst their peers. If you don't speak French, I'll just translate a couple of the more obvious facts:

* En Allemagne, il fut publié par l'ancien SS et nazi fanatique Karl-Heinz Priester. Priester organisa à Rassinier une tournée de conférences en Allemagne devant des parterres d'anciens nazis, avec lesquelles Rassinier eut de nombreuses discussions... En 1961, Rassinier fit une tournée semblable en Autriche. A cette occasion il rencontra le frère d'Adolf Eichmann (dont le procès devait s'ouvrir deux mois plus tard en Israël), auquel il proposait d'adapter les mémoires d'Eichmann en français (Florent Brayard, Comment l'idée vint à M. Rassinier, Naissance du révisionnisme, Fayard, 1996, p. 370)

Translation

In Germany, he was published by the old SS man and fanatical Nazi, Karl-Heinz Priester. Priester organised a speaking tour for him in Germany, held in the homes of old nazis, with whom Rassinier had many discussions....In 1961, Rassinier made a similar tour in Austria, on which occassion he met Adolf Eichmann's brother (whose case was due to start two months later in Israel) and he proposed to him that he would publish Eichmann's memoirs in French. (Florent Brayard, How Rassinier came to the idea: Birth of revisionism, Fayard, 1996, p. 370)

Contributeur régulier à Rivarol, publié par le fasciste Bardèche ou l'antisémite Coston en France (Nadine Fresco, Fabrication d'un antisémite, Seuil, 1999.)

Translation

He regularly contributed material to Rivarol, published by the fascist Bardeche, and to the anti-semitic Coston in France (Nadine Fresco, The lies of an anti-semite, Seuil, 1999)

Eriugena

KCF wrote:

You claimed that Irving, Rassinier and Zundel are evidence that 'revisionist historians' do not show an extraordinary corelation with fascism.

No I didn't. You are lying now. The names I gave you were as follows: Paul Rassinier; Robert Faurisson; Carlo Mattogno.

To be honest, I don't think that I have ever come across a more pathetic attempt at a rebuttal.

Its your honesty that is now in question: you just shot yourself in the foot.
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2506639&postcount=179

KCF: I would be happy to look at a list of say the top 10 historians you claim support holocaust denial.

Eriugena: O.k. try these for starters - Paul Rassinier, Robert Faurisson, Carlo Mattogno. We can come back to some more later. Incidentally no one knows more about Auschwitz than Mattogno.

You dishonestly ignored the names I supplied you with settling instead for people that you brought into the discussion.

Incidentally I pointed out to KCF that Zundel is not a historian in any sense and does not claim to be one. Irving is not a holocaust revisionist, in fact he is on record as accepting a version of the holocaust making him a mild Functionalist.

Zombrex

Eriugena wrote:

What is the url source for this?

It is from a book called "Diary from the Years of Occupation 1939-1944"
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/poland.htm

Eriugena wrote:

The Leuchter Report is not a joke, it was a start in the right direction

Exactly, Leuchter had already made up his mind that he wasn't going to find any evidence for gas chambers when he went out there. And guess what, he didn't find any evidence. What a surprise. Never mind the fact that he had no formal training in chemistry but still passed himself off as an "expert". Or that fact that he constantly lied to the court about his qualifications to be an expert.

You seem perfectly happy to disreguard people with far more credability than Leuchter (Dwork, who actually is an expert in her field) but then think that Leuchter is a step in the right direction. Leuchter represents everything that makes me not believe the holocaust deniers.

Eriugena wrote:

Much more could and perhaps should be said about this and other similar documents.

Thats right .. they were all faked .. any historical record, scientific report, eye witness account that shows there were gas chambers, all faked or lies by the holocaust industry

And yet, for some reason we are supposed to believe some extreme, biased, pro-Nazi and right wing historians who claim the holocaust didn't happen.

Ummm....

Has it ever occured to you that maybe the holocaust deniers are distoring and mis-representing the facts to try and prove the holocaust didn't happen?

:rolleyes:

Eriugena

Wicknight wrote:

It is from a book called "Diary from the Years of Occupation 1939-1944"
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/poland.htm


Exactly,

Exactly what? I don't see any agreement here.

Leuchter had already made up his mind that he wasn't going to find any evidence for gas chambers when he went out there.

According to who?

And guess what, he didn't find any evidence.

He gathered plenty of evdience. He took wall samples from a number of locations around the complex which were sent off to a laboratory.

What a surprise. Never mind the fact that he had no formal training in chemistry

No, but that was not his task. Germar Rudolf on the other hand is a chemist and I notice you steer clear of him.

but still passed himself off as an "expert".

He is an expert on execution technology and has acted as a consultant to various US penal institutions in this respect. He is one of the few people around who actually knows something about the technicalities of homocidal gassing.

Or that fact that he constantly lied to the court about his qualifications to be an expert.

No he didn't lie. Check that again rather than taking the Nizkorites word for it. Look at the transcripts of the court on that. It is not unlawful to describe yourself as an engineer even if you lack formal qualifications, its just not permitted to give expert testimony a court case. If he lied then he would have been charged with perjury which he was not, he was just barred from giving expert testimony.

You seem perfectly happy to disreguard people with far more credability than Leuchter (Dwork, who actually is an expert in her field)

Dwork is an associate of van Pelt who is a religous maniac who's work on Auschwitz has not withstood the attention of people who do know what they are talking about.

Leuchter is a step in the right direction.

Yes indeed I do think that. What is needed is a full scale independent analysis by international experts of every aspect of these gassing claims; for my part I am happy enough with the results of Rudolf's analyses.

Leuchter represents everything that makes me not believe the holocaust deniers.

You should be wary of relying on HHP and Nizkor alone for your information about this topic.

Thats right .. they were all faked .. any historical record, scientific report, eye witness account that shows there were gas chambers, all faked or lies by the holocaust industry

All faked? I never said that and neither does anyone else. Some documents can be shown to be Soviet forgers or falsifications of real documents, others, indeed most, are genuine.
And yet, for some reason we are supposed to believe some extreme, biased. Scientific report? Like what? Eye witness accounts of gas chambers? There are very few indeed and none of them cohere with each other on important details. We can look at some of them here if you like.

pro-Nazi and right wing historians who claim the holocaust didn't happen.

Careful you don't end up like KCF with this one. Which pro-Nazi historians are you thinking of? (rule out Irving; he is not an expert on this topic nor does he claim to be; and Zundel is not a historian full stop.) The only one I knwo for sure who fits that description is Friedrich Berg, the expert on diesel engines. However invoking his political views wont help you in assessing his work.

Has it ever occured to you that maybe the holocaust deniers are distoring and mis-representing the facts to try and prove the holocaust didn't happen?

:rolleyes:

Has it ever occured to you that something that needs legal protection and the weapons of smear and slander is somethig that cannot stand the light of free inquiry? Speaking for myself now, I cannot give credence to the received story based on my own fairly detailed studies of the evidence - mostly documentary - much of which is available online (e.g. you will find most of the Nuremberg transcripts which include most of the documents usd by historians. For example, the Soviet Commission report on Auschwitz is co-authored by some of the same people who authored the attempted frame-up of the Germans for the Katyn massacre. These same authors were key figures in the Moscow Show Trials of the late 1930's. Now tell me how extreme suspicion is not justified in this case.

Zombrex

Eriugena wrote:

You should be wary of relying on HHP and Nizkor alone for your information about this topic.

And instead I should rely on VHO.org? :rolleyes: