Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 10, 2022

On April 8, it was announced that Canada would soon be joining an illustrious club: the enlightened nations of the world that have elected to ban so-called Holocaust denial. Depending on how one interprets the law, there are currently 18 nations that either explicitly ban Holocaust denial (including Germany, Austria, France, Israel, Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Russia) or generically ban denial of genocide (Switzerland and Lichtenstein). Canada would then be the nineteenth nation in this honor roll of obsequiousness.

Canadas action comes not long after the UN General Assembly approved a related resolution, A/76/L.30, on 22 January 2022, condemning such denial. (The resolution was passed by consensus, meaning that no actual affirmative votes were cast. Evidently no country had the courage to demand a rollcall vote.)

The text of Canadas bill is apparently unavailableit seems that it will be buried in a larger spending billbut the UN resolution has some interesting remarks. It first defines the Holocaust as an event which resulted in the murder of nearly 6 million Jews, 1.5 million of whom were children. This is notable because it codifies in international law the infamous 6 million figurea number which is doomed to eventual collapse, given the dearth of evidence. Also, I know of no source for the 1.5 million children, but a lack of substantiation has never stopped our intrepid authorities in the past, and it surely wont here.

The resolution goes on to describe what it means by Holocaust denial:

Holocaust denial refers to discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during the Second World War. Holocaust denial refers specifically to any attempt to claim that the Holocaust did not take place, and may include publicly denying or calling into doubt the use of principal mechanisms of destruction (such as gas chambers, mass shooting, starvation, and torture) or the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people.

As usual, such wording is a combination of ambiguity and meaninglessness. First, no revisionist claims that the Holocaust did not take placeif by this we are to understand that no one, no Jews, actually died. No revisionist calls into doubt that mass shootings of Jews occurred, nor that many Jews suffered from starvation and torture. They do, however, specifically challenge the idea that homicidal gas chambers were used to murder masses of people, and they do question the actual intentionality of Hitler and other leading National Socialists to literally kill the Jews.

This requires a bit of elaboration. On the first point, Zyklon-B (cyanide) chambers as instruments of mass murder face a large number of major technical problems, including (a) infeasibility of rapid, mass gassing; (b) personal danger to the alleged gassers; (c) inability to remove gas and Zyklon pellets after gassing; (d) inability to remove gas-soaked corpses; and (e) inability to dispose of masses of corpses in any reasonable time. Worse still are the so-called diesel exhaust gas chambers, which are alleged to have killed some 2 million Jewstwice the number of the infamous Zyklon chambers. (If this is news to you, you need to do some research.) These chambers allegedly relied on captured Russian diesel engines to produce fatal carbon monoxide gas. However, (a) diesels actually produce very little CO, far too little to kill masses of people in any reasonable time; (b) diesel engines cannot pump exhaust gas into sealed, air-tight rooms; and (c) the corpses at those alleged camps showed no sign of CO poisoningnamely, a pink or bright-red coloration of the skin. If the traditional advocates of the Holocaust were serious about defending their view, they would start by addressing these obvious questions. Instead, they ignore them, and retreat to legal remedies.

On the question of intentionality, the actual words of Hitler, Goebbels, and others matter. They often spoke of the Vernichtung (destruction) or Ausrottung (rooting-out) of Jews, but these terms do not require the mass-killing of the people in question. We know this because, first, the Germans used these very terms for years, decades, in public, long before anyone claims that a Holocaust had begun; clearly, they meant little more than ending Jewish dominance in society and driving most Jews out of the nation. Secondly, the Germans consistently used other language that explicitly called for deportation, evacuation, and mass removal of Jewsethnic cleansing perhaps, but not mass murder. Thirdly, we have innumerable examples of other Western leaders, from Bush to Obama to Trump, who have similarly spoken publicly of destroying or annihilating their enemies (usually Arabs or Muslims) without implying mass murder. Tough talk has always played well for politicians, and the Germans were no different.

The UN resolution continues with some specifics on the definition of denial:

[D]istortion and/or denial of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:

(a) Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany,

(b) Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources,

(c) Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide,

(d) Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event,

(e) Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups.

Four of these pointsexcuse or minimize impact, blame the Jews, cast the Holocaust in positive light, and attempts to blur responsibilityare all but irrelevant to serious revisionism. Serious revisionists, including Germar Rudolf, Carlo Mattogno, and Jurgen Graf, among others, virtually never discuss such things. They focus on far more pragmatic matters: the infeasibility of the mass gassing schemes, the lack of corpses or other physical evidence, the absence of photographic or documentary evidence showing mass murder, and the many logical inconsistencies of witnesses and survivors. But our fine Holocaust traditionalists never raise these troublesome issues, because they know that they have no reply.

Of the five points, only (b), gross minimization of the number of victims, is relevantin other words, the questioning of the 6 million. But what counts as gross minimization? Does 5 million count? If so, noted (and deceased) orthodox researcher Raul Hilberg would be quickly tarred with the anti-Semite label; the fact that he hasnt suggests otherwise. What about 4 million? If so, then early researcher Gerald Reitlinger is in for trouble; he long advocated around 4.2 million Jewish deaths. Does 3 million count? Or 2 million? Or will we know it when we see it? For the record, serious revisionists today estimate that around 500,000 Jews died in total at the hands of the Nazismost of these due to typhus contracted in the various camps, many in assorted shootings at the Eastern front, and virtually none in homicidal gas chambers.

So what, exactly, does the UN want from the world? As we read in the text, the UN

Of course, if we wish to designate the loss of some 500,000 Jews as a holocaust, then we are welcome to do so. But we had best get our facts and arguments straight. To resort to legal prohibitions is tantamount to admitting defeat.

None of these points were lost on a Jewish Boston Globe columnist, Jeff Jacoby. He was motivated to write a short op-ed entitled Its a mistake to ban Holocaust denial (24 April). He quotes Canadas public safety minister, Marco Mendicino: There is no place for antisemitism and Holocaust denial in Canada. Despite agreeing with this view, and despite despising Holocaust deniers, Jacoby opposes the pending law. And he explains whythough not before displaying an embarrassing ignorance and an appalling shallowness.

He first informs us that Holocaust deniers (never defined) are contemptible antisemites and brazen liars, overflowing with Jew-hatred and seeking to rehabilitate the reputation of Hitler. They attempt to refute the most comprehensively documented crime in history by insisting that it never occurred. Such people deserve all the obloquy and contempt that one can muster, he says. To call such claims unjustified and unwarranted is an understatement of the first order; the reliance here on ad hominem attacks is a sure sign of an impending vapidity of argumentation.

Still, Jacoby opposes anti-denial laws on two grounds. First, such laws run afoul of the spirit of the First Amendment (free speech and press). More broadly, he rightly notes that its dangerous to empower the state to punish ideas. Indeed, any government that can criminalize Holocaust denial this week can criminalize other opinions next week. Left unspoken, though, is a key point: How is it that in Canada, a 1% minority of Canadian Jews are able to push through a law that specifically benefits them? One would think that, in Canada, a 1% Jewish minority would have, say, half the clout of the 2% minority of American Jews. But clearly not. Canadian Jews are about to prevail yet again.

Jacobys second reason for opposing such laws is that, as I noted above, they amount to intellectual surrender. He quotes Holocaust scion Deborah Lipstadt to the effect that such laws imply that one is unable to construct a rational argument in defense of the traditional view. And this, in fact, is true. Just look at any traditionalist account of the Holocaust, even by the most learned academician. Look at any commentary on Holocaust denial. None will address the basic issues that I cited above. None will mention a single recent revisionist book, or a single active researcher, such as Rudolf, Mattogno, or Graf. None will examine or refute a single relevant revisionist argument. None will provide a breakdown, by cause, of the infamous 6 million deaths. These are telling facts.

For his part, Jacoby obviously has no answer. All he can do is make flat and baseless assertions: never was a genocide more meticulously recorded by its perpetrators or more comprehensively described by scholars and survivors; an immense ocean of evidence attests to the horror of the Holocaust. Unwisely, he attempts to use General Eisenhowers visual evidence of starvation, cruelty, and bestiality to defend his point. But this fails; as he likely is unaware, Eisenhowers 550-page postwar memoir, Crusade in Europe (1948), has not a single reference to any Holocaust, gas chambers, or Auschwitz. A single paragraph in the book (p. 439) states only that the Jews had been beaten, starved, and tortured. One finds absolutely no mention of mass murder, extermination, gassing, crematoria, or the like. Eisenhower is hardly a good witness for the defense. (For what its worth, neither Churchills nor De Gaulles postwar memoirs had any mention of Auschwitz, gas chambers, or extermination either. Ike was no anomaly.)

But does all this really matter? Whats the big deal about the Holocaust? some may say. In fact, it is hugely important. The Holocaust is the lynchpin of Jewish power. It is the raison detre of the state of Israel. It is the number one guilt-tool used against Whites everywhere. And it is the embodiment of Jewish narcissism. When that story crumbles, the whole Judeocratic edifice may well fall, too. We should never underestimate the power of Holocaust revisionism; the Jews certainly dont.

A final thought: Im happy to hear that Jeff Jacoby believes in free speech. Its too bad that he doesnt have equally strong feelings about openness and honesty, about the many problems with the Holocaust story, and about a global Jewish Lobby that is able to pass laws, ban books, and impose a cancel culture on anyone that it doesnt like. Now, that would be an op-ed worth reading.

Thomas Dalton, PhD, has authored or edited several books and articles on politics, history, and religion, with a special focus on National Socialism in Germany. His works include a new translation series of Mein Kampf, and the books Eternal Strangers (2020), The Jewish Hand in the World Wars (2019), and Debating the Holocaust (4th ed, 2020). Most recently he has edited a new edition of Rosenbergs classic work Myth of the 20th Century and a new book of political cartoons, Pan-Judah!. All these are available at http://www.clemensandblair.com. See also his personal website http://www.thomasdaltonphd.com.

Original post:

Denying Holocaust Denial, by Thomas Dalton - The Unz Review

Category: Holocaust Denial
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