Thanks this blog for telling about his lies and hatred

As far as I can tell only the republican party has accepted “communist and socialist ideology about…class,” screaming “class war” anytime someone proposes a social program or a non-regressive tax. To suggest that progress in race relations is somehow accepting communism makes about as much sense as saying that it was Christ not Marx and Lenin who led to the creation of the Soviet Union. The civil rights movement progressed primarily due to the non-violent tactics of religious proponents, a far cry from the proletarian revolution espoused by communists. The end of Jim Crow also came without significant economic compensation for its victims, a distinctly anti-socialist phenomenon.

FDR, in my opinion, recognized the inevitable role for socialism in modern society. While he certainly did his best to limit it, the New Deal was essentially a socialist approach to ending the depression. Unfortunately, the McCarthy era (which happened after FDR was dead and the nazis defeated) set us back in terms of implementing the socialist programs that are essential for democracy in an industrial society.

“Questions” which have been answered time and again with documented evidence are no longer “reasonable.” Perhaps you are aware of some reason other than hate that someone would continue to repeat such questions without acknowledging the answers or the evidence. If so I would be interested in hearing your ideas.

How about you go talk to my (real-life) next door neighbor, Noam Chomsky. I’m sure you guys can discuss absolute free speech for hours.

Me, I’ll stand by good ol’ fashioned moderation of commentary.

Oh, and for the record, I never supported the removal of Pat Buchanon from the public arena. I just feel that MSNBC is a very silly place for him. There must be SOME OTHER intelligent conservatives out there who could take his place…

How about David Frum?

“I don’t think I’m being irrational whatsoever. The corollary of your statement ‘the implication of Holocaust denial is that Hitler and the Nazis didn’t actually do anything very bad’ is that if they had in fact committed the Holocaust then they would have been doing something very bad.”

Of course you don’t think you’re being irrational. But you are. The fact is that “they” did “do” the Holocaust, and it was indeed “very bad.”

“By the way, no one has explained my question from earlier in this thread, which is why did the Nazis do such a bad job trying to cover up the crime?”

Um, because they were fallible humans?

By the way, how’s the weather in Copenhagen?

i don’t know buddy i’m not on the right, and i’m not a republican. i’m an oddball independent, advocate of open debate on everything. splc and media matters and associated groups try to narrow the range of what is acceptable discourse in the media to exclude viewpoints they dislike but want to ban rather than argue against. attempting to get pat buchanan thrown off msnbc is good example.

but just to state the obvious, republicans think they’re being factual and logical and the other side is being irrational too.

What you must understand is that these people aren’t interested in history or the truth, and nor are they “asking questions.” They are making an assertion, that the Holocaust was a “hoax”(which requires a hoaxer), a conspiracy by the Jews against the “white race.” This is apparent by their writings and their associations. Sure, we will debate them, but typically they will deny or obfuscate, then change the subject only to bring up the same tired, refuted argument again later. This is why it’s called “denial”, and not revisionism. Revisionism is the so-called “functionalist” vs. “intentionalist” debate, where the revisionists on the side of the “functional” narrative “won.”

Now I have already answered your question about “why they didn’t cover it up so well” in a previous post, but let me point out that I could just as easily have posed the question, “Why did Nazi Germany go to war when only 10% of their army was mechanized?” Or perhaps “Why did they declare war on the USA when this would seal their fate?” You are making the mistake of using hindsight. The Nazi plan of extermination evolved and came together over time. They did not plan the whole thing out from beginning to end before they implemented it.

Why do you righties keep claiming we wish to supress you? I have stated time and time again that I very much desire a revitalized Republican Party, one based on facts and logic, rather than passion and religion.

I do not want the Right to go away: I merely wish the Right to rethink its current approach to realpolitik.

I don’t think I’m being irrational whatsoever. The corollary of your statement “the implication of Holocaust denial is that Hitler and the Nazis didn’t actually do anything very bad” is that if they had in fact committed the Holocaust then they would have been doing something very bad. Why would it have been bad? Because Jews would have been unjustly killed.

By the way, no one has explained my question from earlier in this thread, which is why did the Nazis do such a bad job trying to cover up the crime? As they realized the war would be lost (summer 1944 at the latest) why didn’t they execute the workers at the extermination camps involved in directly carrying out the exterminations so they would not be able to testify in post-war tribunals or if captured in war? or if they didn’t care about or didn’t anticipate post-war tribunals, why didn’t they do a more complete job of carrying out the extermination? for instance, why were there forced marches at the end of the war instead of mass executions?

i’m not questioning the historical record of what happened, and i’m certainly interested in what mainstream historians have to say in explanation. unfortunately, these sort of questions go unasked in an environment in which anyone who asks them has their motives questioned by people like Mitch, who sees fit to write to me “your ‘reasonable questions’ may well qualify as hate speech.”

sounds like the same repression you want the extreme right to face today. i, on the other hand, fully defend the right of obnoxious people, from leftists such as yourself to racists like Duke, to express their opinions and try to garner allies and supporters withou any fear of repression or stigmatization. We’re strong enough to allow it.

Fact is, lots of communist and socialist ideology about race and class that was considered beyond the pale before the great depression and the civil rights revolution of the fifties and sixties is now in the mainstream of public opinion.

from a speech by an old socialist at an SDUSA forum about ten years ago:

“Our impact was epitomized by Franklin D. Roosevelt who, after initiating the New Deal whispered to Norman Thomas ‘Norman, I stole your platform.’”

http://www.socialdemocratsusa......manny.html

“The implication of Holocaust denial is that if it had happened, it would have been a terrible crime. It is an affirmation of the right of Jews to live.”

No, the implication of Holocaust denial is that Hitler and the Nazis didn’t actually do anything very bad, that the strongest accusations against them are false and slanderous, and the war against them (pushed by the Zionist/Jewish bankers, of course) was the real criminal act. The argument is, therefore, inherently pro-Nazi and therefore anti-Semitic. (Unless you also want to deny, with equal irrationality, the abundant evidence of the Nazis’ fundamental anti-Semitism, concerning which see, for example, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/

“These countries don’t want these ideas becoming popular again.”

Best way to keep Holocaust denial from becoming popular is refuting their proponent’s arguments, rather than ignoring them and turning them into dissidents. Best way to keep extreme nationalism or fascism from becoming popular is for mainstream politicians to address concerns of the same bloc of voters that facists target, the working class whites. The same way that the Democratic Party in the United States adopted the more workable ideas of the socialists and communists during the 1930s and kept the American communists and socialists from moving into the mainstream.

My feeling is that if Holocaust denial would somehow become more accepted as truth, it would mostly threaten Zionism, rather than Jews per se. If you could prove that Holocaust did not happen or was substantially exaggerated it would undermine one of the main foundations of why there needs to be Jewish homeland. It WOULD NOT buttress the idea that Nazis have a right to kill Jews, that Jewish crimes are so terrible that Jews as individuals and as a people deserve to die. The implication of Holocaust denial is that if it had happened, it would have been a terrible crime. It is an affirmation of the right of Jews to live. Someone who thinks Jews should be eliminated from the earth should be a Holocaust defender, not denier. I’m always curious why hardcore antisemites don’t see this logic, accept the mainstream story given the evidence, and seek to justify it.

Also, there is absolutely nothing to question. How much more proof do you need?

What you are describing is willful self-delusion.

They believe that Jews were killed by disease. Not by Nazis. That’s what makes them deniers.

And yet Clinton was elected and enacted reforms which had grave impact on black communities. So what does it matter?

Vote occupy.

Duke is obviously being targeted for who he is and why he is there (without a doubt to raise money for himself and for the German extreme right).”

No, Duke broke a law. That is why he is being targeted. You might not agree with that law, but it doesn’t matter.

“the deniers searching for legitimacy beyond neo-nazis seem to admit about 1-1.5 million Jews died in the camps. That’s still about 3 million short since they don’t believe the extermination camps in Poland existed. Irving if I’m not mistaken goes higher since he acknowledges that some exterminations did occur.”

First of all when you admit they are deniers this removes all legitimacy. They want to be called revisionists but none of them are. Perhaps you can give us some examples of these “deniers” who don’t want neo-Nazi ties, because every major Holocaust denier out there has had well known ties with neo-Nazis, including David Irving.

And let’s talk about that 1.5 million. That number is close to the figure of those killed by the Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern front alone. This is verified by documents, eyewitnesses, perpetrators, and mass graves. So if “they”(who exactly) admit 1.5 million died in the camps, then they’ve already got 3 million. Is this supposed to change the way we look at the Holocaust?

But of course it’s never that simple with Holocaust deniers. It’s never about being concerned the number is too high. They are people who have a political agenda and believe that the Holocaust is a plot against their politics.

“do you believe that deniers are deliberately misleading others, or do you think that they actually believe that Jews were not gassed by the Nazis? I think they really believe what they are saying, and I therefore don’t think they deserve anything besides a factual refutation of their erroneous arguments”

Holocaust deniers have plenty of access to the facts, and many of them engage in open debates on forums like RODOH(Real Open Debate of the Holocaust). Many of them have displayed basic ignorance about key points of the Holocaust, usually because they spend so much time focusing on some detail such as a door or window that they fail to learn the whole story first.

“. If they are engaged in a deliberate effort at coverup, what evidence do you have this is the case? Have you heard them snicker amongst themselves?”

Actually I had a published Holocaust denier admit to me once that they had no satisfactory answer to Goebbels diary, for one. But it doesn’t matter if they are deliberately covering things up or if they believe their claims. It doesn’t make them right.

I for one believe(and I have direct experience with these people) that they have strong political views and they blame the Holocaust for supposedly making those views beyond-the-pale. Their need to explain away the Holocaust creates a strong confirmation bias.

“As a Jew who would be delighted to find out that millions of my brethren were NOT in fact deliberately murdered, I have looked at the revisionist argument with an open mind. And so far I have found it weak and unconvincing. They can explain away the post-war confessions, they can’t explain away the demographics of what happened to millions of Jews still alive in Poland in 1939.”

There is much more they cannot explain.

“That doesn’t mean deniers don’t raise some interesting questions that are hard for mainstream to answer. for one, why did the Nazis think they could get away with mass exterminations given the millions of German POWs held by the Allied Forces, given the Red Cross presence in the camps to enforce compliance with the 1929 Geneva Convention, given their estimation of the power and numbers of Jews in the Allied Countries, nations they never intended to completely conquer?”

Germany did not sign the Geneva convention, and this issue of the Red Cross has been answered before. I suggest you check sites like Nizkor and they will explain. Like with 9-11 conspiracy theories, many “holes” in the “official story” of the Holocaust aren’t holes at all when one knows all the details.

“second, why didn’t they try harder to cover up their crimes, particularly after the tide of war had completely turned?”

Seriously? Are you aware that the actually excavated entire mass graves and burned the bodies in an attempt to cover this up? They destroyed the gas chambers at Birkenau as well. They failed to destroy the one at Majdanek but this really isn’t surprising given the state of the German forces at that point in the war. From the end of 1943 throughout most of 1944, the Red Army unleashed roughly ten major offensives all across the Eastern front, driving beyond the borders of the USSR and forcing the Germans back in disarray.

” third, why are powers that be so AFRAID of the power of holocaust denial, given the weakness of the deniers’ arguments? these are reasonable questions and not an indication of hate.”

Who said they are afraid? These countries don’t want these ideas becoming popular again. Over 50 million people were killed in WWII. While many Western European countries didn’t lose many people in raw numbers, many suffered proportionately.

And there is nothing wrong with asking questions, so long as one accepts the evidence. Holocaust deniers don’t do this.

I suggest if you want to be open-minded, first, get all the facts about the Holocaust; don’t settle for pop-history which barely scratches the surface of significant historical events. Second, turn the question around on them. In other words, let’s imagine it is a hoax. Now imagine how this hoax would have to be planned.

1. In 1939 the hoaxers, working in concert in several countries, decide to frame Germany(this kind of thing would take time so 1939 is a realistic starting year). Somehow the hoaxers know that there will be a non-aggression pact between Germany and the USSR, but that Hitler will violate it and go east at some point(realistic, since he wrote about this). But here’s the thing. They KNOW that Hitler will refuse to accept the British demands on 3 September to halt military action in Poland and return to the negotiating table.

2. They know that Germany will invade and occupy the USSR, that the USSR will end up in an alliance with the UK and US(so they know the US will get involved in a European war, which they did because Hitler declared war on the US). They manage to make contacts in all these countries to plot the hoax.

3. They know that the war will turn against Hitler, and they know that Germany will get greater control over its Axis allies and get them to deport their Jews.

4. They know that the USSR will end up overrunning many of these countries, and that they will wind up behind an “Iron Curtain”.

5. They manage to maintain this entire hoax throughout all these highly variable events, without leaving a single scrap of paper or piece of evidence for the hoax.

6. They manage to maintain this hoax even after the USSR has a major political shift in 1956, and then again when the USSR collapses and its archives are open. Since 1991, not one person has come forward admitting to have taken part in fabricating a story about death camps as part of the hoax.

A hoax demands hoaxers. Where are they, who are they, and how do they maintain this hoax so long? THOSE are valid questions.

The “reasonable” questions you raise might cast some doubt if they were asked about reasonable human beings instead of ideologues who believed that any means were justified to achieve their desired ends. Perhaps, like many, you can’t imagine someone so convinced of the importance of ridding Europe of Jews (or gypsies or homosexuals or any object of hate you choose to name) that they would be willing to murder millions of human beings and not be deterred in the least by the danger this imposed on German POWs in allied hands. If this is the case I suggest you expose yourself to art and literature and try to develop an imagination and perhaps a little empathy. According to the New York Times the Red Cross inspected ONE concentration camp, Thereisenstadt. Do you have evidence of greater involvement? I believe the SPLC counts as hate speech the incessant repetition of lies that have been repeatedly disproven. Your “reasonable questions” may well qualify.

Yeah, I actually am in favor of Hate Speech legislation and that which denies the Holocaust. You right-wingers can keep playing the games of beating around the bush with ‘dog whistles’ about hot-button politics and other social issues, but you doing nothing right now but channeling a Henry Ford and Father Coughlin right now with this fluttering figure crap right now. I imagine you probably don’t even know who the hell the two people I just mentioned are or what they did, but the context of this forum and post ought to give you some ‘clue’…

If all those other nations can in-state and make it work to the effect of upholding order and equality, instead of this foolish, non-sensical and self-obsessed libertarian claptrap about being able to say what you want, when you want, as loud as you want with no sort of negative repercussions from the rest of us that have to deal with you, than we can here to. Americans are so deeply vain and narcissistic about being able to curse and stomp all over communitarian and collective values I’m surprised that it can actually call itself the most ‘Judeoo-Christian’ adhered nation on the planet, if only we actually knew and acted like the Bible actually convicted our own hypocrisy instead of the moral wrongs we point to in others!

YES, Holocaust Deniers REGULARLY snicker, and belittle and dehumanioze Jewish and all non-white racial minorities in writing, speech and in every collective activity of their existence with others of similar elk. Just go read David Duke’s ‘My Awakening’ or ‘Jewish Supremacism’ and try to find similarities betwee it and Hitler’s Mein Kampf, that alone ought to frighten and back you off from the sort of position you vehemently defending right now.

After that, if you decide to do so, read the forums over at Strofront.org, the world’s largest white supremacist/neo-nazi forum just to see how breathlessly similar some of your naive ‘logic’ and ‘legitimate’ questions sounds to the fire and brimstone rhetoric and worldview. The vast, SUPER-majority of white nationalists/supremacists/separatists are vehement anti-semites and Holocause deniers btw. They are not asking for legitimate discourse or revision to an established status quo, they are asking for an erasement from history and civil rights regulations that defends Jewish and all ethnic and religious minorities (one notable exception is Jared Taylor, whos’ the founder of the racist American Renaissance magazine). Just look at the SPLC profile ont he main page of April Gaede, Prussian Blue, David Duke, Tom Metzger and a majority of other Right Wing activists and extremists. If you had any comprehension of how much these ‘people’ detest and abhor your very human existence and that they breathe the same air, there is no way any thinking Jewish person such as yourself would find yourself calling out ‘intolerance’ against these ‘people’. (like the 9/11 hijackers were misunderstood outcasts as well that needed EXTENSIVE psychiatric help, too? PLEASE just THINK, for the love of God).

If they did prove that the Holocaust was a hoax (which they won’t), what’s next as far as their ‘solution’ to the Jewish question. Burning and vandalizing synagogues, lynch mobs, organized protests with vehemently false and anti-semitic billboard like those at the Tea Parties and the opportunits extremists in OWS? Revoking Civil, Voting and Fair Housing Rights laws that actually make it possible for you to have SOME sort of orderly and free existence in this country and elsewhere? Go research about and read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The Turner Diaries; and if you still believe these people and their beliefs to be totally benign in obsessively challenging our outright denying what was the greatest and most horrific genocide in modern history, well, that’s your choice and right. But don’t think for a second that should absolve you from the accusations of stupidity, racism and naked intolerance you apparently can only view on the so-called Left; miost of it is more than legitimate and warranted in the context of you ‘argument’…

Here’s the project with your logic: the deniers REFUSE to see any opposing opinions. They view them as lies and conspiracies. As such, they are not worth even engaging.

And as a Jew myself — and one whose families’ ancestral villages were completely wiped out during the war — I would very much like to believe the Holocaust never occurred. But that would be a lie, and I’m not a big fan of self-delusion.

And regarding Germany’s policies toward criminalizing denial, they have every right to do it. Considering what they went through, why should the German people ever have to be subjected to similar rhetoric ever again?

Ignoring the breathless hypocrisy and solipism of your screen name here (the American Right for the record, has proven no better than their opponents or even charmingly mediocre in the department of ‘tolerance’), you should realize that there are many hate speech/fighting words regulations (esp. Holocaust Denial enacted in several European nations, as well as in the Middle East and even some in Africa); You’ll also make note that these countries, althouygh no utopias themselves, don’t even have a fraction of the hate/nationalist groups and outspoken radical demagogue activity that happens here in the U.S. because of those very provisions (for further proof, see all the documentation adn reporting over @ the main SPLC site). To be fair much of this speech goes on in the anonymous corridors of the Internet, conspiracy-obsessed Right-Wing talk radio and private conferences or meeting, but that is no reason to revise, no RAPE objective historical events and call them ‘facts’. David Duke and the millions of far Reich-wingers and reactionaries who are ‘prophecing’ this distorted reality deserve the same respect and intellectual tolerance as people who still believe the Eart is flat, gravity isn’t ‘real’, and that global warming is a one-world order hoax (yet another hallmark of anti-semitic and fringe conspiracy theorists from the Left and Right but especiall the latter)…

Lastly, lets recall that First Amendment has a clause that doesn’t protect slander, libel and a vaguely defined fighting words/hate speech in any form. You can argue your hyperventilated emotions and personal prejudices until Christs’ second coming sincerely and and as loudly as you want, but that won’t make them any more true, PERIOD. The Right today get just as batshit crazy about school prayer, affirmative action, feminism, minimum wage, unions, environmnental causes, and social justice issue as any smearing sterotypes they have about the moderates and imaginary cabal of ‘radical lefties/politically correct police.’ Learn that these labels and ad hominems do not work on those with I.Q.’s above school zone speed limits…

We’ll never know for positively sure how many people (or Jews specifically) died in the Holocaust because so much, in fact ALL of it, happened in sealed locations and was done and over by the time the Axis Powers & their Fascist regimes were put to absolute defeat. Its not like anyone was ‘taking count’ or properly burying them,Sherlock; the point was the FINAL SOLUTION, meaning total eliminationism as if they were a cancer on the body politic.

Don’t play this game where you disguise some ugly ethnic or ‘reverse discrimination’ identity rhetoric (arguing how many of your people were were innocently elapsed from existence in the most inhumane way?) and call it subjective free thought. If your so set on that note, why don’t you send the weasel Sir Duke some bailout money and attend some of his thinly veiled Holocaust ‘Questioning’ conferences he holds the world over. I’m sure nothing would set his senses aflame like collaborating a Jew that agrees or insinuates that his race is the sum of the world’s problems!

We’ve got survivors, maintained death camps, and actual property evidence and photos of human remains and worse that all indicate that on the objective, non-partisan plane of the Real World, MILLIONS of Jews and others perished under the Nazi regime. Anyone who denies it shouldn’t be locked in an insance asylum, but anyone inciting hatred and violence promoting manifest LIES like this, SHOULD be. Kind of like how you tea baggers and right-wingers like to ‘retreat and reload’ and use guns as your ‘final solution’ to anyone with a dissenting and rational voice; sounds like the metaphor of a pot calling the kettle black never made it to the vast space between their ears? List something, anything GOOD that David Duke has contributed to America or the world in his miserable existence.

I find it absolutely fascinating when ethnic or racial minorities (particularly black and Jewish people, considering their historical malignment) find themselves defending white supremacists who would as likely spit in their face or lynch them if they were ever caught alone, but I guess it takes many different types to make up the whole world. That choice, or rather right, is yours to do so, and shouldn’t be stripped away within definitive bounds. But please don’t expect the rest of us with thinking minds to buy such BS unchallenged by reason and logic…

Duke is obviously being targeted for who he is and why he is there (without a doubt to raise money for himself and for the German extreme right).

the deniers searching for legitimacy beyond neo-nazis seem to admit about 1-1.5 million Jews died in the camps. That’s still about 3 million short since they don’t believe the extermination camps in Poland existed. Irving if I’m not mistaken goes higher since he acknowledges that some exterminations did occur.

mitch and aron,

do you believe that deniers are deliberately misleading others, or do you think that they actually believe that Jews were not gassed by the Nazis? I think they really believe what they are saying, and I therefore don’t think they deserve anything besides a factual refutation of their erroneous arguments. If they are engaged in a deliberate effort at coverup, what evidence do you have this is the case? Have you heard them snicker amongst themselves?

As a Jew who would be delighted to find out that millions of my brethren were NOT in fact deliberately murdered, I have looked at the revisionist argument with an open mind. And so far I have found it weak and unconvincing. They can explain away the post-war confessions, they can’t explain away the demographics of what happened to millions of Jews still alive in Poland in 1939.

That doesn’t mean deniers don’t raise some interesting questions that are hard for mainstream to answer. for one, why did the Nazis think they could get away with mass exterminations given the millions of German POWs held by the Allied Forces, given the Red Cross presence in the camps to enforce compliance with the 1929 Geneva Convention, given their estimation of the power and numbers of Jews in the Allied Countries, nations they never intended to completely conquer? second, why didn’t they try harder to cover up their crimes, particularly after the tide of war had completely turned? third, why are powers that be so AFRAID of the power of holocaust denial, given the weakness of the deniers’ arguments? these are reasonable questions and not an indication of hate.

Duke was arrested for violating visa laws; Holocaust denial isn’t the issue here. And for the record, you could say that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust is somewhere around 4.8 million(the lowest possible figure); but what the hell would that prove? The thing about Holocaust deniers is that they claim the whole event was part of an evil Jewish plot; they don’t just use low-end estimates or go a bit below them. You’re not going to find a Holocaust denier who just thinks that 4 million, as opposed to 4.8-6 million, were killed.

I would hardly call for laws banning hate speech. I would, however, laugh in your face if you were to ever make such a ridiculous claim.

Keep grasping for those straws!