Glad not to be ….. in the PSC
Dr. Elias Akleh is a Palestinian. In 1948 and again in 1967 his family were displaced, and like millions of other Palestinians, he now finds himself living outside of his homeland. It is perhaps fortunate that he did not move to the UK and join the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, because after their AGM on Saturday, he would most likely by now be facing moves to expel him from the same campaign that seeks to liberate him.
I say this after reading his recent article The Brainwashing of the Jews, in which he makes a number of strong claims about the Judaic religion and the role it has played in shaping Jewish Identity. In exploring his theme, he draws entensively on the work of Jewish writers Nurit Peled-Elhanan and Lillian Rosengarten, and also cites Atzmon approvingly. But, it is the inclusion of the latter which I think would have necessitated the PSC Star chamber to be reconvened.
Also fortunate not to be members of the PSC are Richard Falk and Prof. Mearsheimer, both of whom not only endorsed Atzmon’s book The Wandering Who?, but went on to refuse to withdraw their endorsements when their ‘mistakes’ were pointed out to them. Tony Greenstein would surely have no compunction in denouncing them to the PSC as anti-semites.
The thought that, had they been members, the PSC might have taken action against a Palestinian and two influential figures in the Palestinian solidarity discourse because they dared to suggest that Jewish ideology is a subject that can and should be debated, is especially ironic when you consider how Ben Cohen bemoans the fact that Jewish Power has failed to damage Mearsheimer, despite even the intervention of the mighty Dersh.
The fact that a controversy did not erupt, that the endorsement of a Holocaust revisionist by a prominent professor at a major university did not lead to calls for his dismissal or resignation or even a chin-pulling symposium in the pages of the New York Times’s “Sunday Review,” represents an important shift in the privileges that anti-Semites and their sympathizers enjoy.
Later he claims:
The truth is that the rising fixation with Jewish power in our time has unwittingly revealed Jewish emasculation instead. Jews do not control the discourse; rather, the discourse controls them.
I think Cohen, in highlighting how this is a struggle for control of the discourse, is dead right. His angle is that as the victim of anti-semitism, Jews should be able to decide what anti-semitism is, -and that that decision should not be challenged. So naturally, he is troubled that an increasing number of Jewish voices are vocally expressing dissent and insisting on opening up the discourse, because, as is clear, there cannot be an easily accepted definition of anti-semitism, when there is disagreement within the group said to be the real victims..
As a Palestinian Dr. Akleh welcomes the fact that more Jewish voices are speaking out against the ideology which with they have been ‘brainwashed’. As a Jew, Cohen wants those voices stopped, and punished.
Now, which side has been taken by the PSC?
In both Cohen and Akleh there are ideas worth considering, ideas which examine the question of anti-Semitism from opposite ends of the spectrum, and I would urge people to read them for themselves. And, if you’re worried about the PSC exec finding out you’re reading Akleh, why not do it under the bed-covers with a flashlight, in the early hours?
You should be safe…… for now.
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So then am I to take it that this site-let is not only obsessed with Jewish machinations in general, but with Tony Greenstein’s in particular?
And that it represents the Atzmon-ite wing of the anti-Zionist movement – the one that sees no reason to avoid open anti-Semitism and is annoyed to the point of sophomoric sarcasm that the PSC decidedly disagrees?
What shall we call this site, then? “Peace Palestine Part Two” perhaps? “Palestinian Think Tank Part Two”?
And you, Bard – ready yet to acknowledge that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz? As I recall, you were reluctant to actually address that question head on the last time you were asked.
Didn’t you forget about 22,000,000 Ethnic Germans and all the Millions that Stalin eliminated? Of course, they are the “Chosen” ones.
So many questions spiff, and we haven’t even been introduced.
If you have a look at the banner, I think you’ll see that we call it ‘deLiberation’.
I have no idea what happened at Auschwitz. It was somewhat before my time, and I’ve never been there.
“I have no idea what happened at Auschwitz. It was somewhat before my time, and I’ve never been there.”
I was with you until you wrote that.
Of course we have a good idea of what happened at Auschwitz.
However, the point is that the Holocaust fundamentalists (including the “marxist” / “dialectical materialist” Greenstein) want to seal the subject off from serious research and debate, as this might undermine their religion.
This is like Creationsists wanting to stop scientific research in case it undermines what is written in Genesis.
So then the answer is, no, Roy Bard – defender of Holocaust deniers, and now on this site comrade of Holocaust deniers – can’t quite bring himself to say that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz.
Those who followed the Atzmon debate on Indymedia, and Roy Bard’s battle to make Indymedia UK Jew-hater-friendly won’t be even slightly surprised that this is where he ends up – the proudly anti-Semitic wing of the anti-Zionist movement.
Ed: “Of course we have a good idea of what happened at Auschwitz.”
There was a time that I would have said that Jews were turned into soap and lampshades, and gassed at Dachau. Because I believed those were facts. I would also have agreed that Jewish suffering was exceptional, that votes could be used to change the world for the better and that the media reported events as accurately as possible. I’ve grown somewhat more sceptical since then.
So, as I’m not an historian and I haven’t spent time studying what people say happened at Auschwitz, I am not prepared to jump through the hoops that some hostile entity calling itself Spiff tells me to. Same as I don’t jump when cops order me to.
Spiff duly came along and demonstrated that it is a close-minded entity that is here to collect ammo for its smear campaign.
TBH, I’m more interested in the outrage and disgust that people have when anyone examines the matter critically than I am in the Holocaust itself.
(edited for typo)
I don’t think it is fair to denigrate Roy for his truthful answer regarding the gassing of jews in Auschwitz – it simply highlights the problems raised when reasoned debate and study is disallowed on key historical events.
Why is it that questioning the events of ‘the holocaust’ cannot be tolerated? Why are people that were not present at the time forbidden to question what has been taught and properly examine the scientific evidence that exists?
Could it be that we have not been told the full truth about what occurred and the causes for it? One is forced to wonder?
Shorter Bard: ‘what’s a few million dead jews plus or minus, as long as I’m not lifting a finger to fight neo-Nazi lies, and as long as I’m doing what I can to make the left safe for Holocaust denial?’
It may not be any skin off your nose one way or another whether the figure of Jews killed is six or three million, but anyone who gives a damn about telling the truth isn’t going to do what you do, which is to through personal laziness spread the neo-Nazi lie that the six-million figure is somehow historically unsupported, and that the existence of Auschwitz gas chambers is somehow less than proven.
No anti-racist is going to be comfortable with the position ‘I am going to treat it as a real historical possibility that three million Jews faked their own deaths in a massive conspiracy.’ Roy Bard is apparently so comfortable with this position, and so comfortable with those who promote it, that he is also comfortable at attacking anyone who calls it out for the nonsense it is.
Bard, sooner or later you much choose. You must decide whether you are an accidental anti-Semite who accidentally enables Holocaust denial, or whether you are going to do so consciously and with full intent.
Aah spiff, I’m still not going to jump your hoops.
And I think your claim that you give a “damn about telling the truth” is laughable, when faced with this:
“No anti-racist is going to be comfortable with the position ‘I am going to treat it as a real historical possibility that three million Jews faked their own deaths in a massive conspiracy.’ ”
Jeez but you have one ugly mind. For your next trick no doubt you’ll be flying round the net claiming I said that. What I remember saying was that I’ve not studied the matter, and therefore am unable to confirm or deny it, in light of the fact that previous things I believed to be true about the Holocaust (and which btw had a major impact on me) proved to be untrue. Furthermore I said that I no longer accept the idea that Jewish suffering is exceptional, because I think there is a racist slant to the whole idea that other deaths are less significant.
Compare and contrast what I have said with the position you claim I am “so comfortable” with and consider whether it sits comfortably with your claim to “give a damn about the truth”.
I have been thinking about Ed’s comment ““Of course we have a good idea of what happened at Auschwitz.”
and it raises the immediate question, where does that “good idea” come from? You are of course aware that I have been with Indymedia Uk for quite a while. I joined that project precisely because I do not trust the mainstream media to tell me what is really going on. However it too has it own problems and is a limited forum for any kind of meaningful discussion
What I like about this site is that it makes you think for yourself. And that doesn’t mean that you have to agree with everything, or indeed anything that is said.
But the way to deal with disagreements is to present a counter-argument in such a manner that people might feel inclined to engage with it. And if you’re not sure what is meant, you can ask.
If the conclusions that people who have spent time looking into the Holocaust narrative look similar to the conclusions of Nazi sympathisers, then I can think of a few competing explanations:
1) They are nazi sympathisers (In the case of people like Paul and Francis I discount this, based on the fact I have engaged with them and find them to be warm, caring people who want people to think for themselves and reach their own conclusions. I can’t see either of strutting their stuff in jack boots or saluting Fuhrers. It certainly isn’t them trying to shut the conversation down or demanding that we no platform people or just accept the party line.)
2) The paucity of debate means that there isn’t any decent alternative material to draw on, so in this matter the neo-nazi viewpoint is over-represented and dominates the enquirly.)
3) Not everything the neo-nazis claim is wrong.
There may be others – I’d welcome suggestions.
Now if you want to have a discussion, why don’t you present a compelling case for why questioning the narrative is anti-semitic (and lets use the ADL definition for this ie “The belief or behavior hostile toward Jews just because they are Jewish.”) or racist – and here I’d welcome a suggestion for a definition from you. If you’re going to say you aren’t my librarian then I’ll settle for this from Wikipedia:
“Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term “racism” is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature (i.e. which harms particular groups of people), and which is often justified by recourse to racial stereotyping or pseudo-science.”
On the other hand you can just continue to be rancid and nasty and I’ll not bother with you any more.
The fourth possibility you exclude, presumably intentionally, is that an anti-Semite of the left can decide to embrace the anti-Semitic nature of Holocaust denial not because they are pro-Nazi but because they are anti-Jew. That is, they are willing to spin the anti-Jewish side – Lying Jew-led press! International Jew conspiracy! Massive Jew fraud! – because that’s the side that matches their mindset. And only reluctantly, and after much pressure, will they acknowledge that, yes, they are siding with David Irving and the neo-Nazis when it comes to, say, the existence of the gas chambers, but that isn’t what motivates them.
You keep insisting that you refuse to have someone else circumscribe what you can or cannot read, what you can or cannot think about. Yet your position is one of absolute studied ignorance about the actual historical fact of the Holocaust. When asked about Auschwitz directly, all you can choke out is ‘dunno, wasn’t there.’ Apparently in your eyes history itself begins with the birth of Roy Bard.
And there is a very simple way to test your sincerity. And that is to see whether you are more interested in actually investigating the evidence of the Holocaust or in castigating those who you claim are trying to prevent that very investigation.
The evidence for the existence of the homicidal gas chambers is both overwhelmingly substantial and easy to locate. But are you interested in weighing it? There is nothing in this thread that suggests that you are – because otherwise you wouldn’t be waiting for me to serve it up to you on a plate.
So, as option 4, you offer us racist left-wingers who dishonestly embrace right wing lies because it feeds their leftist racist mindset? Even though to do so gives the lynch mob sufficient grounds to kick up a major shit-storm, designed to completely destroy their reputation, and the reputation of anyone who doesn’t accept that their motivation is racism, and cites them approvingly?
These people, who shoot themselves in the foot, by embracing controversial material that they don’t agree with, because somehow it furthers their aims, sound extremely perfidious. Almost like a mirror image of those who are said to have ‘conspired to fake the deaths of 3 million Jews’* for their own political ends. If option 4 is accurate, and includes a fair number of Jewish anti-semites, then somehow what is said, by some, to be an anti-semitic characterisation of Jews (as mendacious ) is inadvertantly raised.
I don’t however see that you have presented “a compelling case for why questioning the narrative is anti-semitic” or racist. If I missed it, can someone outline how I did.
What I am trying to understand here is the moral outrage that is used to justify the demonisation and attempted silencing of these people.
Before I respond to the point about how I can prove my sincerity, and the other points that you’ve raised, I’d like to try and gain an understanding of why exploring the ‘Holocaust narrative’ so quickly draws accusations of anti-semitism or racism (as defined in my previous post) ie what is it about the Holocaust narrative that links it directly to race and and anti-semitism?
* In your own words: “three million Jews faked their own deaths in a massive conspiracy”
‘So, as option 4, you offer us racist left-wingers who dishonestly embrace right wing lies because it feeds their leftist racist mindset? Even though to do so gives the lynch mob sufficient grounds to kick up a major shit-storm, designed to completely destroy their reputation, and the reputation of anyone who doesn’t accept that their motivation is racism, and cites them approvingly?’
You need to grow up a little, Bard, and open your eyes a bit. In whose idealized glitter-world is it impossible for a leftist to be anti-Semitic? Only someone so blinded by what he *wishes* the world to be like could see that the world isn’t like that at all.
Instead, you bellow that such a thing is simply impossible, that a racist leftist is like a square circle, simple can’t be, simply can’t, simply can’t be. And then you do a full Odysseus, tying yourself to the mast and putting wax in your ears to guarantee that you do not have to confront any evidence that you’re wrong.
Instead, you argue – and I’m not kidding, this really is your argument – that, well, being a leftist anti-Semite would be *irrational*. As if anti-Semites regularly win awards for their notable rationality.
And then you go on the attack, attacking as zionst anyone who says the simple truism: “the left is not as free of anti-Semitism as it would like to be, even though the PSC deserves great credit for distancing itself from the ‘what’s-so-wrong-with-a-little-Holocaust-denial-here-and-there’ league, which has you all screaming and weeping that the PSC – for a simple act of true anti-racism – is really in The Zionists’ Pocket, a position remarkable for both its innate idiocy and, frankly, its comedy.
What the PSC decided is that people like you, in your zeal to run interference for Holocaust denial, do more damage to the cause than help, and that they are better off without you. They are right.
So now your micro-groupuscule, in exile from the Palestinian solidarity movement, has created your little ‘I was right damn it’ site, attracted the Holocaust-denial-friendly Eisen, Atzmon, Lawson, and you have all gleefully checked yourself into your little self-created ghetto.
“You need to grow up a little, Bard, and open your eyes a bit.”
Insult #1
“In whose idealized glitter-world is it impossible for a leftist to be anti-Semitic?”
Strawman #1 – I haven’t said it is – but I also don’t think it is automatic.
“Only someone so blinded by what he *wishes* the world to be like could see that the world isn’t like that at all.”
Ad hominem #1
“Instead, you bellow that such a thing is simply impossible, that a racist leftist is like a square circle, simple can’t be, simply can’t, simply can’t be.”
Strawman #2 (who is bellowing?) I haven’t argued this either.
” And then you do a full Odysseus, tying yourself to the mast and putting wax in your ears to guarantee that you do not have to confront any evidence that you’re wrong.”
Ad hominem #2
“Instead, you argue – and I’m not kidding, this really is your argument – that, well, being a leftist anti-Semite would be *irrational*. As if anti-Semites regularly win awards for their notable rationality.”
Strawman #3
having written “If the conclusions that people who have spent time looking into the Holocaust narrative look similar to the conclusions of Nazi sympathisers, then I can think of a few competing explanations:” I offered 3, you offered number 4. The context is nothing to do with the irrationality of being “a leftist anti-semite”
“And then you go on the attack, attacking as zionst anyone who says …..
failure to address the question for the second time/ attempt to change the focus of the discussion/
I’ll not be responding to you again unless you want to address the question – because ad homs/strawman arguments/insults and changing the subject do not get us anywhere – and essentially just wastes our time.
Heres the question again (from the last 2 posts):
“Now if you want to have a discussion, why don’t you present a compelling case for why questioning the narrative is anti-semitic”
“I’d like to try and gain an understanding of why exploring the ‘Holocaust narrative’ so quickly draws accusations of anti-semitism or racism (as defined in my previous post) ie what is it about the Holocaust narrative that links it directly to race and and anti-semitism?”
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Am I reading you right, Bard? I think you’re simply failing to understand just how extreme and indefensible your position really is.
Do you really not understand the connection between Holocaust denial and far-right anti-Semitism?
Do you really believe there is any serious historical controversy – as distinguished from the squeakings of anti-Semitic fringes – over, say, whether or not Jews were gassed at Auschwitz, whether the Nazis murdered six million Jews, whether Hitler ordered genocide?
Do you really believe ‘were Jews gassed at Auschwitz?’ is any more serious a question than ‘was there a moon landing in 1969?’
“Am I reading you right, Bard?”
No
I’ll not be responding to you again unless you want to address the question – because ad homs/strawman arguments/insults and changing the subject do not get us anywhere – and essentially just wastes our time.
Heres the question again (from the last 2 posts):
“Now if you want to have a discussion, why don’t you present a compelling case for why questioning the narrative is anti-semitic”
“I’d like to try and gain an understanding of why exploring the ‘Holocaust narrative’ so quickly draws accusations of anti-semitism or racism (as defined in my previous post) ie what is it about the Holocaust narrative that links it directly to race and and anti-semitism?”
Oh, now I get it. You really, honestly, don’t see that I’ve already answered your question more than once. Your grip on how discussion works is actually that weak. Surprising, but there we are.
Okay, I’ll try it again, this time with smaller words.
What you call ‘questioning the narrative’ is actually ‘repeating neo-Nazi lies’. If you knew more about the Holocaust denial movement, you would see that the questions Atzmon and Eisen are posing came from people who thought the Nazis were slandered, accused of a crime they did not commit.
Surprise me and show a little intellectual initiative. Read up on the history of the Holocaust denial movement, and its origins on the Jew-hating Hitler-loving far-right. You will find that what I’ve said is quite true. Every time you ask ‘what’s so wrong with denying the Holocaust’ you are carrying water for the stormtrooper set. And you’re yet too stubborn, and too self-satisfied, to discover this for yourself.
“What you call ‘questioning the narrative’ is actually ‘repeating neo-Nazi lies’.”
So, asking questions about historic events makes one a Nazi? Trying to make sense of something that happened in WW2 makes one a Nazi?
“Read up on the history of the Holocaust denial movement, and its origins on the Jew-hating Hitler-loving far-right.”
Questioning historic events from WW2 makes a person a Hitler lover?
“Every time you ask ‘what’s so wrong with denying the Holocaust’ you are carrying water for the stormtrooper set.”
Questioning events surrounding WW2 and the Nazi regime means one is carrying water for Nazis?
I don’t think so. And all of you accusations of Nazi and Hitler-lover are just attempts at controlling the holocaust narrative and it’s interpretation. The only time historic events have a required interpretation is when they are canonized and codified as religious dogma. It is religionists and rabid idealists that demand that events be seen a certain way. Religionists have a long history of persecuting people who did not accept hair-brained religious concepts. The Nazis, Bolsheviks, and now many Jews also demand complete obedience to their orthodox interpretation of the Holocaust Industries required script. It has become religious dogma, and religionists will use any threat, violence, or stigma to enforce their narrow world-view on others.
When you throw out curses like “Hitler-Lover, anti-Semite and racist at people who do not accept the mythterpritation of your religious dogma, you are attempting to control them; you are not the least bit interested in the truth of any one historic event, you want to control for the sake of control. Many Jews have a huge investment in their victim-mythology; it is the backbone of Jewish ethos — that belief that they are the world’s singular victims. That singular victimhood-mythology is the mortar in the ghetto wall, and without it, their superiority bubble would burst. The holocaust has become the most important aspect of Jewish self-identity; they must believe they are superior, and being superior victims is part and parcel of that need.
There is nothing wrong with attempting to clarify historic events in the context of changing times. All people have a right to search for understanding from our collective past, and only those with a nefarious agenda will try and stop historic inquiry. All people should question all holocausts. They should study them, weigh them, dissect them and question them from every angle possible. How else can we learn from those terrible u=human tragedies. But historic events should never enter the realm of religious dogma. For then they will only be questioned, disbelieved, or ignored.
And you really should stop spanking people with your Hitler doll. It makes you look like a child throwing a tantrum.
The PSC’s paranoia derives from its desire to prove it’s not anti-semitic, which is a display of weakness, which is why it has failed; contrast anti-apartheid, which had no concern about being ‘anti-white’.
Spiff,
Please tell us in no uncertain terms (1) that you believe that the Palestine-Nakba is an attested historical fact and (2) that you are not a Nakba-denier.
if you can’t or don’t then please stop throwing stones at the Jewish-Holocaust deniers who want to discuss the evidence for your Holocaust “facts.”
Now Answer This: Given all the fabricated lies that float around us today, can we really say that we know who the real Hitler was? who the real Herzl, Ben Gourion, Churchill, Nasser, Arafat, or Khaddafi were? I personally don’t. Except perhaps for Nasser and Arafat for I was there and remember all the lies and fabrication that were told about them, the Egyptians, and the Palestinians.
Hi Roy, like the site. Not sure but I think it was mr Greenspam (@look it up) who gave me and others the heads up to this site during a bun fight on indy uk last week. I only knew of Gilads site – which for me has been an educational healing therapy (not too keen on jazz though – but me mam is) I’ve come here to learn, share and discuss things.
Anyways, hello everybody
Welcome to deLiberation
I’m interested to know what leads you to the conclusion that Look It Up is our Tone?
I look forward to some more comments from you.
@Roy Bard
”I’m more interested in the outrage and disgust that people have when anyone examines the matter critically…”
Yeah, but when you start, it’s an under the cover kind of thing.
Someone who I respected passed a ‘comment’ to me one night years ago, he was an old gentle guy who was a scholar of Chinese. I thought the comment a bit strange coming from him and let it go. 2 years later whilst reading a book in the local ref library I came across some info which made me remember his comment. The duvet came out and the agony and the ecstasy began. It’s like finding out your adopted and yer dad was Ed Gein!
Anyway, to cut it short, when I got some confidence up to air my thoughts, I thought I’d try sharing things. A post came up on indy asking people to visit the Jewdas site, so I did. I did some posts and enjoyed it. But it wasn’t long before some posters started with the superiority trip (even though I said I was learning about the ‘jew thing’) I must confess I was impressed with mr Greenspam’s jewish knowledge on Jewdas, but now I know better….
I never really had anything to do with Jewdas, but it looks as if it might have run out of steam.
hmm, wasn’t too sure it was Tone, but he uses the ‘anti-racist’ tag and this line ‘Anyone who’s a genuine anti-racist, rather than a lip-service anti-racist, should be deeply troubled by that…’ got me spider senses tingling – plus the exaggerated feigned offence taken by someone genuinely trying to understand the topic. Do you think he’ll sue me?
On that post @confused mentions ‘jesse’ and coincidently I’d posted as jesse on another indy thread:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/01/491137.html?c=on
Yeah my last post on Jewdas was biggin’ up Gilad’s book, I was trying to egg ‘em on to have a big discussion about it, no one took me up on it. Sometimes it’s hard not to take it personal, it’s like your being froze out for saying the wrong thing. I don’t think that was the case, but it’s disappointing when you go there on an invite and they don’t respond.
A bit like on this one, when I thought it was going ok. I’d be interested in what anyone thinks. I’m robert red
http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/jewish-comedy-in-retreat/
http://www.jewdas.org/2009/09/masa/
Shit, it’s confession time, after robert red, I came back as tim and dropped a few shaloms here and there to get more attention, it kinda worked for a bit.
ha ha ha it’s just occurred to me with all these posts, I could tick the box for ‘obsessed’.
“Sometimes it’s hard not to take it personal, it’s like your being froze out for saying the wrong thing.”
I thought Jesse descibed it very well.
Yes the gassing and torture of six millions Jews was terrible. But, the millions killed by Jewish communists in the Gulags was also a crime and the fact that Jews committed genocide in the Gulags is never mentioned as the Nakba is never mentioned. we only get half of the story. Every race has the potential for violence and Jews are no different.
To all the Holocaust rabbis here, the question is not whether we deny or approve any historical fact but whether the past should be subject to scrutiny, debate and revision…
Also ‘denial’ is a religious notion and cannot be attributed to a historical chapter. You can deny the existence of God but you cannot deny a historical narrative (you can debate its validity though..)
What a load of nonsense. How is ‘denial’ solely a ‘religious notion’? “They are in denial about the weight they’ve gained”, “Do you deny you were at the scene of the crime”, “I am a Climate Change denier”.
As usual, the great intellectual has the choir to praise him, but the ideas he puts forward are just straw men…with an added reference to Jews/Rabbis/the Talmud for no apparent reason but to cause gratuitous offence.
Me thinks it might be you with the straw man. Obviously denying you’ve gained weight or denying being at the scene of the crime are not the same as denying Climate Change – Climate Change deniers is more ike a religion though and in order to deny it, you have to deny conventional wisdom. I think Naomi Klein explores their ideological reasons for so-doing quite comprehensively in her recent article.
So denying putting on weight because you want to eat cake, or denying being at a crime scene in order to get out of trouble is rather different to denying a conventionally accepted “fact” which is outside of your own personal experience. No great intellectual myself but I can see how Climate Change denial is an ideologically based belief system.
Thank you, Bard, for refuting Atzmon’s little point.
Gilad says “only religious notions” can be denied.
You yourself agree that it’s possible to, e.g., deny you’ve gained weight. That shows that Atzmon is wrong.
If only you showed a quarter of that same intellectual initiative in examining the other crap he spews.
Naomi Klein’s use of psychoanalysis for ‘climate change deniers’ instead of physics, is an example of how the phrase ‘holocaust denial’ is leading to thought-policing in other areas.
Quite right.
An fabulously disingenuous answer, Atzmon. Like any good demagogue, you’re artful in your use of ambiguity. Yes, the past should be subject to scrutiny, but it should honest scrutiny, and that is where intentionally deceptive people like Paul Eisen – the self-proclaimed Holocaust denier you carry water for – fall down. But ‘scrutiny’ versus ‘honest scrutiny’ – that is a distinction too fine for you to bother to make.
Yes, there should be debate, but again, it should be honest debate. Because you are unwilling to admit the neo-Nazi origins of the stance you want debated, and you are unwilling to acknowledge the abundant evidence that refutes that stance, the ‘debate’ you call for is not an honest one. And again, ‘debate’ versus ‘honest debate’ – you consistently run from the latter as soon as you recognize you’re arguing with someone who cares about documented fact and not sermonizing speculation.
Yes, there should be revision, but only when the evidence calls for it. Yesterday I read about someone obsessively trying to prove that Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’ was secretly Kubrick’s confession about having helped NASA fake the moon landings. His ‘evidence’ is the same kind of evidence that Holocaust deniers use: handwaving, conclusion-jumping, and raw fantasy-driven speculation. Nobody serious would ‘revise’ our understanding of Kubrick based on that. Yet it is exactly the same kind of ‘reasoning’ that you’re saying should ‘revise’ our understanding of the Holocaust.
So, let’s put this point blank, Atzmon, and see whether you can in fact answer a direct question with a direct answer.
Are you aware, or unaware, that the core of Holocaust denial is neo-Nazi in origin?
The original source of the statement that the Soviets murdered the Polish officers at Katyn was the Nazis. Therefore, it didn’t happen. That’s Spiff’s logic.
@ Roy Bard ”…Jewdas, but it looks as if it might have run out of steam…” or maybe because of these comments:
”…I’m sure it would be of interest to the police…”
”…comments have been reported to the Police under the Public Order Act.”
”Hopefully this sewer of a website will now be closed down.” here:
http://www.jewdas.org/2010/08/jonathan-hoffman-anti-zionist-hero/
@ alchemy – hi, I don’t think six million jews did get gassed and tortured. Do you mean, six million jews died and the majority were killed?
I agree with you about not getting ” the whole story”, but I think we get less than half of it.
As regards ”a race”, how can a Japanese jew be the same race as an African jew, or do you mean in a sort of spiritual sense, like a spiritual race? I found this jewish joke on the Jewlarious site
that kinda says it all, on many levels:
Joke: A Jewish American is in Tokyo, Japan on business. He is riding around the Ginza in a taxi when he suddenly realizes it’s Friday night.
He asks the cab driver if there’s a Jewish synagogue in Tokyo and the driver takes him to an unmarked building. The American enters and is surprised to find a Japanese-Jewish congregation with a Japanese-Jewish rabbi.
They are all wearing yarmukas (skull caps) and talaysim (prayer shawls). He participates in the service which is in Hebrew — the international Jewish language for prayer. At the end of the service, the rabbi walks up the aisle and spots the American. He approaches and says with his thick Japanese accent, “You … Jewish?”
The American replies, “Why yes I am”.
The rabbi looks at the American and says, “Funny… you no looka Jewish”.
Well when I decided to phone-in to Atzmon on Unity FM, Birmingham I asked him whether or not he stood by his holocaust denial comments. Response?
‘How do I know. I’m not a historian.’
Roy Bard aka free the peeps (ftp) is slightly more innovative:
‘I have no idea what happened at Auschwitz. It was somewhat before my time, and I’ve never been there.’
Theoretically it is of course possible to deny the holocaust without being anti-Semitic. One could of course be completely disinterested in the actors and solely interested in the evidence, or be based on some Pacific island where, for reasons unknown, the topic holds out some fascination.
But in the real world, denial of the holocaust is always anti-Semitic. Either directly – neo-Nazis trying to rewrite the past or those who allegedly support the Palestinians who believe that holocaust denial strengthens their case. In Europe the latter two merge, as Atzmon demonstrates with his friendship with the traditional medieval anti-Semite Israel Shamir.
But there are different types of holocaust denial – not merely neo-Nazi but those of a more depoliticised Arab reaction that says if Israel is legitimate because of the holocaust then denying the latter delegitimises the holocaust. The only problem with this is that the holocaust occurred.
Atzmon, Bard and others hide behind not being there, not being a historian or even the ‘fact’ that denial is a religious concept (Andrew C dealt with that well – denial crops up everyday as e.g. when Roy Bard denies he is anti-Semitic!).
I am all in favour of research on the holocaust. I research the record of the Zionists during the holocaust, which today they exploit. But holocaust revisionism/denial is not interested in research. It is a rejection of research. It has reached its conclusion already – there was no holocaust. This is not research.
Are we going to go back to the pre-Galilean/Copernicus period when another area of ‘research’ is whether in fact the sun and planets revolve round the earth? Is there nothing that can be accepted as a stepping stone towards the very research that people here talk about?
The holocaust happened, the slave trade happened, the Armenian, Cambodian and Rwandan genocides all happened although some people, e.g. the Turkish state, denies it.
Zionism of course exploits the very holocaust that they denied was happening whilst it was happening (yes they sat on a telegram from Switzerland from August to October 1942 revealing the Final Solution). Other time they preferred Nazi propaganda to what escapees were telling. But today Zionism is happy to exploit the holocaust and even happier that there are some who ‘deny’ it. The Eisens and Atzmons of this world just play into the Zionists’ hands. They want holocaust deniers and if they didn’t exist would have to invent them.
Not only did thousands of people survive the camps and are therefore witnesses (all of whom are discounted by the ‘revisionists’) but the documentation itself is copious. Situation Reports of the Einsatgruppen, railway timetables, the admissions of Nazis like Eichman. No Nazi denied the holocaust at Nuremburg, the evidence was too obvious and clear. Nor did Hoess the Commandant of Auschwitz who was taken back there to be hanged. That came in the late 1960′s as neo-Nazis regrouped.
Roy Bard may think he is being clever, in answer to the question as to whether it occurred:
‘I have no idea what happened at Auschwitz. It was somewhat before my time, and I’ve never been there.’
No quite. Everything is instaneous and if you can’t put your finger on it it isn’t real. So have you been to South Africa peeps? Did you actually witness apartheid? Did you witness the Nakba? So how come you know it happened or may be we should have a bit of research into it since the Zionists deny it in its entirety. And then you protest that I’ve called you anti-Semitic?
Indeed your whole contribution is one based on ignorance. You write that:
‘There was a time that I would have said that Jews were turned into soap and lampshades, and gassed at Dachau.’
The myth about the bodies of those murdered being used for soap was one that was very widespread in Poland at the time. It wasn’t put forward by Jewish groups. There were a few examples of particularly depraved Nazis who used those who had been murdered for lampshades but it is irrelevant.
No one has suggested that anyone was gassed at Dachau. Until relatively late Dachau didn’t have a gas chamber and as far as is known, it was never used. Dachau was a concentration camp for socialists, communists and other dissidents. It was the first one opened in 1933. It has a bloody record but was not an extermination camp. The problem with Bard is that he writes from total ignorance.
It may be a Zionist theme that Jewish suffering is exceptional, but that is because they wish to use it for political purposes. No Jewish anti-Zionists make such a claim. Many people have suffered – from the slave trade to the Belgian Congo when 10m Africans were killed. Yes Zionism misuses the Holocaust for the purposes of racism and dispossession. But why should we take our lead from Zionists? Atzmon might but why follow fools?
Because I believed those were facts. I would also have agreed that Jewish suffering was exceptional, that votes could be used to change the world for the better and that the media reported events as accurately as possible. I’ve grown somewhat more sceptical since then.
“denial crops up everyday as e.g. when Roy Bard denies he is anti-Semitic!”
Numerous people have accused you of anti-semitism recently, and of course you’ve denied it.
But the distinction is between denying stuff that is related to your experience, and stuff that isn’t – eg Climate change, the existence of Jesus or indeed aspects of a historical event.
Unlike the esteemed solidarity comrades in the PSC I like to examine all the evidence, and weigh it up for myself before I vote to kick someone in the teeth.
And I believe I already mentioned that I am far more interested in the moral outrage, witch hunts and lynch mob mentality that this matter exposes in the ‘left’ than I am in what happened at Auschwitz 70 years ago.
Tony – why are you here, in the very place where you keep telling ‘decent’ people that they shoudn’t be?
“So have you been to South Africa peeps? Did you actually witness apartheid?” Yes.
“Did you witness the Nakba? So how come you know it happened or may be we should have a bit of research into it since the Zionists deny it in its entirety.”
Go ahead. I have no problem with research into the Nakba.
In reply to Happy Camper – January 30, 2012 at 3:48 pm
Cheers you saved me a lot of bother and well put
Spiff said ” You really, honestly, don’t see that I’ve already answered your question more than once. ”
And heres the thing – I’m going to say it again.
You have not proved that it is racist to critically examine the ‘Holocaust narrative’ – history after all is interpretations of what happened – it isn’t fixed in stone – often new evidence comes to light and then it is revised, but it is never a full and accurate account of what happened. You have quite simply failed to justify the moral outrage by proving that there is a direct link to critical examination of the narrative and any ‘inherent trait’ in Jews so there is no evidence that it is racist.
Neither have you managed to show us that the motivation is automatically hatred of Jews “just because they are Jewish”, so you have failed to provide evidence of any direct link to anti-semitism either.
Sorry spiff – but quite simply, you failed.
You taught us a lot about your world-view in the process though – thanks for that.
‘You have quite simply failed to justify the moral outrage by proving that there is a direct link to critical examination of the narrative and any ‘inherent trait’ in Jews so there is no evidence that it is racist.’
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. I’ve given you plenty of references, but – because you are lazy and think granite-headedness is a virtue – you can’t be arsed to do even the slightest research, and then you complain that your stomach is empty because no one fed you. Oh look how they failed to feed me, failed to lift my fork-bearing arm to my mouth and feed me!
You’d rather stay stupid, complaining that others haven’t pre-chewed your meals for you, than actually actively seek to educate yourself.
As such, you are the perfect mark for people like Atzmon.
But, hey, let’s play the game your way a little bit. What, beforehand, would you consider to be proof that accepting and promulgating the claims of the Holocaust denial movement is, in and of itself, anti-Semitic?
Are you willing to put your stake in the ground?
“Are you willing to put your stake in the ground?”
You almost make it sound like you’re offering me a choice there spiffie. But its your stake and your ground and your game. I’ll sit this one out.
Enjoy
(It is you saying that any questioning of the narrative is racist and/or anti-semitic – therefore the onus is on you to prove that. If you cannot show the direct link then we can simply reject the charge)
Of *course* you weasel out. Of *course* you do. I’ll actually admit I expected better. But of *course* you’ll weasel out. Otherwise you might actually have to intellectually defend your position on Holocaust denial with actual facts rather than vapid handwaving, something you fight against with all your might.
Unlike you spiffie old boy, I do not claim to know the truth.
And with you and your mates standing there trying to drown out the discussion with cries of ‘Hitler!’ ‘Nazi!’ ‘Racist!’ ‘Kill!’ I doubt I ever will.
Do you want to have another go at explaining the links? If so, I’ll help you by suggesting the opening words for each argument:
1) It is racist to question the Holocaust narrative because ….
(here you need to show how it relates to inherent traits in the group that you say is the victim of the racism)
2) It is anti-semitic to question the Holocaust narrative because…
(here you need to demonstrate that it is “belief or behavior hostile toward Jews just because they are Jewish.”
a para on each should be sufficient if you sum it up succinctly.
Ta
@ Tony Greenstein
“No one has suggested that anyone was gassed at Dachau”
Ok, here’s the footage that causes the confusion, as it contradicts what you are saying. Yes, it’s terrible to watch, but watch it I did….. And yes, to see anybody, and that means any human being on this earth, in that state sickens and upsets me, to the my core.
For anyone interested in viewing the film in reference to what Tony is saying, it starts at 3.38 mins and finishes at 4.55 mins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evnx4oWle20&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL4B099787AEC20C37
Tony, please explain the contradiction in what you said and what I’ve just watched. I am, with respect, ready to listen and am open to what you have to say or anyone for that matter.
This is a quote from the holocaust memorial museum in america – (ushmm.org):
“There is no credible evidence that the gas chamber in Barrack X was used to murder human beings.”
A master class from ‘Happy Camper’ in duplicitous evasion.
Suppose you met a man arguing that the moon landings were faked. And suppose you told him that this was a ridiculous conspiracy theory, that there is simply far too much written evidence, too many witnesses, too much physical evidence. Would you be satisified with the response ‘So questioning American space policy makes one a conspiracy theorist?’
Yet that is exactly the kind of answer Happy Camper gives:
‘So, asking questions about historic events makes one a Nazi? Trying to make sense of something that happened in WW2 makes one a Nazi?’
And then, just to make sure you notice, he does it again:
‘Questioning historic events from WW2 makes a person a Hitler lover?’
And then he does it again:
‘Questioning events surrounding WW2 and the Nazi regime means one is carrying water for Nazis?’
And, amazingly, there are people on this board idiotic enough to lap it up.
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