Brass Monkey

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

So what is your beef here? The facts and history of the Holocaust, which you admit knowing very little about, are not based on the Nuremberg Trials! If you have a beef with those then I suggest you stick to that instead of falsely generalizing whatever injustice you perceive to have happened 60 years ago onto all the evidence that has since been compiled and accepted as fact. You say it took sixty years to fabricate the Holocaust story, but that is a baseless assertion founded on a circular argument -- i.e. they didn't have the evidence in 1945, and there may have been some bullshit involved, therefore everything that's been learned since must be a fabrication (regardless of the high scholarly and scientific standards that have since been applied.) In other words point to one area of suspicion, somewhere in the long history of the issue, in order to call the entire field of study into suspicion without examining it. That is one of the major disinformation techniques, and it is the MAIN technique used by Holocaust deniers. You have also still not explained how the Great Conspiracy (Jewish or otherwise) that has to be at the root of it has managed to dominate and control the entire field of Holocaust research and historiography without a single prominent scholar even being conscious of such control mechanisms. It would take a lot more than anti-hate laws to achieve such effective thought control... something more akin to mass hypnosis! Any theories on that you'd like to share? Come on, think it through and spell it out. I'm dying to hear your rationalization.  (Feb 15, 2008 | post #155)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

Contrarian, None of these silly or inaccurate methods you describe invalidate the substantial evidence for the gas chambers, except perhaps in the mind of someone fully committed to not believing in them no matter what evidence is given (you even admit that you haven't read the conventional history). You mention stupidity as a reason for people being so deluded. Are you therefore claiming that the entire world of academic history and science is "stupid" ? Oh yeah right, it's the Jewish conspiracy to brainwash everyone and control public opinion, to reverse the laws of chemistry and turn nonsense into fact, that's really behind it. Yet you avoid admitting that you believe in such a conspiracy theory. Why? because you know it is barmy? But your whole argument is predicated on it. Bear in mind two important things. 1) The evidence of gas chambers is not based on victim testimony alone, but on diaries of SS officers and on physical evidence. There is also, nevertheless, a great amount of corroboration and consistency between the witnesses on gas chambers. But, as usual, the "revisionist " method is to COMPLETELY IGNORE all this (as you too are doing) in favour of some weakness or inconsistency somewhere else in the record -- to divert away from the real wealth of information in favour of marginalia, presuming that the latter disqualifies the former (which can only be done by ignoring the former). 2) The Nazis did many experiments in killing people in large numbers before arriving at the system they are most notorious for. So there may be some truth to these apparently ridiculous testimonies. You've also ignored all my points about shooting as a method of mass extermination. I did not mention water tables. The ground in which thousands of courpses were initially buried literally turned to an open-air swamp of putrifaction. There are only so many bodies you can burry in a limited space. And there was limited space for the numbers they had in mind. Yeah, the Nazis discovered that limitation, as no-one in history had ever done. I also mentioned the Human factor: that soldiers employed to do the shooting could and did become traumatized, especially from shooting civilians. Bear in mind that the majority of victims of such mass murder were children and old people, immediately after getting off the train, and women as much as men at any other time. Now can you picture this: taking children and their grandparents off the trains and immediately marching them to open pits to mow them down, panicing and still clinging to eachother? The fact that you recommend such a technique as the "most efficient" way of killing, without considering the complications and the stress placed on the gunmen, only shows that you haven't given much thought to the whole thing. Obviously a more detached method had to be developed and was. It didn't happen over night either. That's one other key thing that the deniers fail to grasp: that the final solution evolved its techniques and hardware over a span of years. Thus, holding up differences in how things were done in 1940 does not contradict how they were done in 1944. You invoke "Occam's Razor." what a laugh! That logical principle only holds up when you actually know something of what you talk.  (Feb 14, 2008 | post #153)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

I should also add that German soldiers had become traumatized by massive shootings of prisoners early in the war (they were human beings after all, even if some of their leaders were not), another reason for the development of industrial techniques of mass slaughter and disposal run by slave labourers and technicians. Read the history.  (Feb 13, 2008 | post #148)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

By context with WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution, do you mean the Jewish conspiracy that some nut-cases believe was at the base of them? Just wondering. You admit you haven't read much Holocaust "revisionism, " but you obviously haven't read much of the established Holocaust story either, judging by the shallowness of your questions. You have it exactly backwards about efficiency. Killing hundreds of thousands of people with bullets would have required many guns and bullets and soldiers, at a time when there was a growing scarcity of each. Remember the Final Solution was not implemented until 1942 or something, after it had become clear that the Nazis were losing the war. The Final Solution was run out of an industrial work camp system where everything was integrated for maximum efficiency of input and output -- towards the disposal of inmates who'd already been worked and starved half to death and could put up little resistance if they tried. The Cyanide was manufactured within the same camp system, and the slave labour to dispose of the bodies was also on sight. Conventional methods of shooting and hanging were used early in the war and before the war, but when the extermination program went into high gear with the Final Solution, more efficient methods had to be developed and were. Your suggestion that dropping the bodies into a pit and bulldozing it would have sufficed shows again that you haven't read the history. The mass burial sights that were used early on became a big problem because of the putrid gas they produced and the risk of disease. In some cases entire mass burials had to be disinterred, in advanced stages of putrifaction, to be burned and buried somewhere else. The crematoria were developed in response to these problems. But don't take my word for it, go to the library and get some qualified books on the subject. That is, if you really care about the truth and are not just shooting your mouth off for a dubious cause. I have seen many "revisionist " works pulled apart by qualified critics, and I've seen responses by the "revisionists " to these criticisms. In every case it is clear which side is well informed, balanced and logical, and which side is full of sh*t. The arguments and explanations speak for themselves. You just have to read them.  (Feb 13, 2008 | post #147)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

And what do you base these "logistical " assessments on? The ravngs of crackpots and amateurs, of hardcore antisemites and neo-nazis? "Problems of handling cyanide gas"? But nobody denies that they used it for delousing clothing, which actually requires MORE gas than is needed for killing people (lice/insects are harder to kill with airborne poisons than people or large mammals, which breath deeply and frequently.) The physical evidence is all there and makes perfect sense if you'd care to look at it, which you obviously never have and never will. The Nazis bombed the gas chambers and crematoria before fleeing Auschwitz, but the blueprints have survived. Deniers ignore these blueprints and focus entirely on the lack of evidence on the ground, which even then they have to exaggerate. It is a thoroughly corrupt methodology with no scholarly merit at all.  (Feb 12, 2008 | post #136)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

Huh? Is it a premise that ALL Germans and guards etc. had to know about it? Like I said, many were in denial of what little they did see. And surely most saw little or nothing. But more importantly, and for the umpteenth time now, evidence for the Holocaust is based on the many many direct accounts, from survivors as well as Nazis directly involved, not on what "every German" knew or thought they knew. Why does this key argument I'm making keep falling through the cracks with you? That is Holocaust denial methodology in practice. Ignore ignore ignore the mountain of SOLID evidence... then exaggerate exaggerate exaggerate the flaky indirect stuff, along with the provenly false "scientific " claims. There is a mental glitch at the core of Holocaust "revisionism, " just as there is at the core of all crazy conspiracy theories and ideologically fanatical thought. I certainly do not believe that you, or any of these "Revisionists ," are motivated by idealism about freedom of speech.  (Feb 12, 2008 | post #135)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

A lot of what you're doing is blurring the lines between scholarly merit, which is not censorship when it is rejected for publication, and a real political motive for banning something. The latter tends to follow the former when there is a valid political reason for the ban. So the banning of holocaust denial literature is based on a combination of factors, namely that the claim or the work in question has no scholarly merit, which is certainly true in every case I've looked at, combined with the argument that it's dissemination can have harmful repercussions on an identifiable group. I.e. that it contributes nothing positive but only sows confusion, and in so doing helps support harmful doctrines of hatred, i.e. that the Nazis were not such bad guys and "the Jews" are the main villains of history for falsely incriminating them. I've mainly been focusing on the lack of scholarly merit. If there was scholarly merit for these arguments surely there would be dissident historians within academic departments complaining about the censorship, just as there are dissidents, or "contrarians, " within other disciplines complaining about censorship of other claims that are controversial, such as the ones you mention. As it is, every Holocaust revisionist I know of is a dedicated antisemite and/or a practicing neo-nazi, and their view of history is totally driven by pre-conceived outcomes. That is the antithesis of scholarly research. And typical of Holocaust deniers, like all adherents to a bankrupt formulaic argument, you ignore the key points of my argument, just as you ignore the key evidence for the Holocaust.  (Feb 12, 2008 | post #134)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

Why the circumlocution? What you're implying is that Jews control university history departments and governments. If that is the case, why do no professional historians complain that their research and writing is being censored? What? with all the politcs and controversy going on in liberal arts departments nowadays? Not one complaint from a qualified scholar! The only people who do complain of censorship are the AMATEUR historians at the Institute of Historical Review, who all just happen to be dedicated antisemites and card-carrying neo-nazis.  (Feb 11, 2008 | post #122)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

He was not directly involved with the extermonations, so why should he have been informed about them? It is well understood by people studying the Final Solution that the Nazis involved with it used euphemisms and covert language and veiled the whole thing in secrecy. The first Holocaust deniers were the Nazis themselves. So why should a guard at a work camp be privy to such knowledge, especially when he was a Nazi himself and probably as much in denial then as he is now? It was not uncommon for German citizens and soldiers to deny the rumors they heard and even censor their own observations. But we don't look to them for proof one way or the other now do we? So why should the opinion of a man who saw nothing knew nothing trump the eye-witness testimony of inmated who did see things, and did things, and the diary writings of top SS officers who gave orders? That is why this so-called "revisionism " is not revisionism at all but denial. There are scholarly standards for what qualifies as a revision. Pig-headed refusal to acknowledge a vast archive of direct evidence that says one thing, in favour of a few questionable sources and discredited scientific claims that say the opposite, is not revising the record. It is denying the record. It is denying the facts.  (Feb 11, 2008 | post #121)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

What the heck are you on about? Are you inferring that I'm a Jew? The Zionists over on the Palestinian Territories topix would be very amused to hear that. They've actually called me a Nazi and an antisemite for criticising Israel. Life is so complicated. LOL! And Christopherson is most definitely a fool to suggest that gas chambers never existed at Auschwitz just because he hadn't heard about them while imprisoned in a different camp. What arrogant stupidity! Like anyone else, he can examine the eye-witness accounts of the people who actually did see them in action, for example the people who carried the bodies. And by the way, the Holocaust "revisionists " have lost their cause a long time ago. All they do is repeat the same old discredited lies and nonsense in the hope that naive new-comers will be taken in by it. That is why they are not given any respect. They don't deserve any. And it is most indecent of them to keep pushing their agenda in the complete absence of any credibility.  (Feb 10, 2008 | post #112)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

And how representative are they of the issue? Do they control the universities and governments? You're grasping at straws now.  (Feb 10, 2008 | post #109)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

So what? The Nuremberg Trials were not about whether the Holocaust happened, but who did what, who gave the orders, etc. Of course eye-witness testimony is the only kind of evidence for such a trial.  (Feb 10, 2008 | post #107)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

I'm familiar with this story. Thies Christophersen is a fool. You say he was at a "satellite " (i.e. slave labour camp) of Auschwitz. That is the key point. Of course he didn't hear about or see direct evidence of mass killings, gas chambers, etc. That was done elsewhere, and the Nazis went to extraordinary lengths to keep their methods secret and to deceive even their victims. Hence the ruse of using "showers " as gas chambers. Christophersen's "experience " is insignificant, especially when there are thousands of people with more direct experience that say there were gas chambers and mass exterminations. That is the method of Holocaust denial: try to argue that thousands of eye-witness accounts are flawed and worthless, while elevating ONE PERSON'S contrary experience, in this case an unqualified experience, as being the final word. Perfect evidence of a corrupt mentality. And why do you say "Jewish thugs" are the ones "silencing " Holocaust deniers? Do you suggest that the universities and courts and governments of Europe and the Americas are controlled by a Jewish conspiracy?  (Feb 10, 2008 | post #106)

Activism

David Suzuki says he wants anti-Kyoto politicians thrown in jail.

I think Al Gore should be thrown in jail for promoting individualist solutions and letting corporations off the hook.  (Feb 9, 2008 | post #9)

Activism

Canada's Human Rights Beef With Catholics

Furthermore on the label "Holocaust denier" versus "revisionist. " These people try to gain respect by calling their literature historical revision, but then the very same people turn around and say things like the Holocaust is a "hoax." The Holo-Hoax. The Hollow Cause. Etc. Now, aside from being crude and vulgar, is calling an entire historical event a "hoax" revision, or denial? Can't have it both ways. Hoax also evokes conspiracy theory, as I've explained above.  (Feb 9, 2008 | post #102)