Holocaust denial
oracknows | August 30, 2007Vacation time! While Orac is off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on February 2, 2006. Enjoy!
It had to happen sooner or later. I'm only surprised that it's taken so long.
What is it?
Well, finally, Orac has attracted a Holoaust denier in the comments of his last post on David Irving, Holocaust denier extraordinaire (spelling errors not corrected):
There is much that can be said about Irving, I…
oracknows | August 21, 2007My regular readers here know to what lengths I go to combat Holocaust denial on the Internet. It's a fairly regular topic on this blog, as is rebutting the lies Holocaust deniers routinely spout. Not surprisingly, Holocaust deniers like to try to portray me as either Jewish or somehow in the thrall of the ADL, much as alternative medicine aficionados like to try to paint me as being a shill for big pharma. (Hey, big pharma and all you Jews out there controlling the New World Order, where are my checks? You guys owe me several years of back payments for my online efforts to undermine the…
oracknows | July 26, 2007Until the other day, it had been a long time since I had indulged my interest in World War II history. Not surprisingly, a certain anti-Semitic troll appeared out of the woodwork, thus amazing me with persistence, given that it's been at least two months since I've even mentioned the topic. That's a long time to have to wait for an opportunity to leap into the comments here and rail against "Jews" and Zionists while I've been dishing out the usual commentary on alternative medicine, science, clinical trials,
Since he/she/it's here again, I thought I'd mention a story that's cropped up over…
oracknows | May 23, 2007Well, well, well.
Remember about a year ago, when Libertarian wingnut Vox Day shot himself in the foot big time by using a warped logic to argue that because it was "possible" for Hitler to round up six million Jews in four years then it's not "impossible" for us to round up 12 million illegal immigrants, a contention that I had a great deal of fun royally fisking (as did Sergey over at Holocaust Controversies) and that was so bad that it was apparently deemed too offensive even for WorldNet Daily, which edited it to water down Vox's horrible historical analogy? (If not, please check out my…
oracknows | May 19, 2007Let's face it. By their very belief in Holocaust denial, Holocaust deniers demonstrate day in and day out that they aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer (or the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, pick your simile). However, occasionally, I come across Holocaust denial that brings stupid to a whole new level, and I was made aware of a couple of such examples last week. Naturally, I could not resist sharing them with you, my readers.
First, Larry Fafarman makes his case for the prize of Stupidest Holocaust Denier Statement, with such gems (excerpted from his "article") as:
"Who in the…
oracknows | April 28, 2007After the Virginia Tech shootings, as you may recall, a lot of people started using the shootings as a convenient excuse to start pontificating about their favorite cause or to attack their most hated enemy, be it secularism or even vaccines. In fact, politicians, pundits, and just plain annoying whackjobs are blaming the rampage on so many different hobbyhorses, that there's even a blogger keeping a running tally, which is up to 72 so far.
A few days ago, I thought I had uncovered the lowest of the low, where a white nationalist besmirched the name of one of the heroes of that horrible day,…
oracknows | April 23, 2007A while back, I posted about news reports that teachers in the U.K. were reluctant to teach about the Holocaust because of fears of offending the sensibilities of certain parts of the population. The subtext, of course, was that Muslims were the ones who would be offended. I lamented that such sensitivity might be causing teachers in the UK not to teach the Holocaust properly, much as sensitivity to the religious beliefs in the US lead to teachers not teaching evolution. I wasn't alone in making this connection. Both PZ and the Bad Astronomer made similar comments.
It turns out that perhaps I…
oracknows | April 22, 2007Ever since the Virginia Tech shootings a week ago, there's been a lot of playing of the blame game in the blogosphere over who or what was to blame for Cho Seung-Hui's deadly rampage. A few days ago, I mentioned one bright spot of heroism among the carnage, where a faculty member, Professor Liviu Librescu, barred the door to his classroom to the gunman, buying his students precious time to escape. He was apparently shot multiple times through the door.
Librescu ended up giving his life so that a few more students could jump out of the windows of the classroom. As it turned out, he was also a…
oracknows | April 3, 2007One of the consistent themes of this blog has been combating Holocaust denial and, as a subtext, another consistent theme has been that passing laws to criminalize Holocaust denial (or, as has been attempted recently, criminalize "genocide denial") or throwing Holocaust deniers like David Irving into jail is about as ill-advised an approach to fighting this particularly odious form of racism and anti-Semitism as I can imagine. It makes Holocaust denial the "forbidden fruit" and at the same time facilitates the truly disgusting spectacle of Holocaust deniers donning the mantle of free speech…
oracknows | March 26, 2007Ever since arch Holocaust denier David Irving was released from prison in Austria after being convicted of denying the Holocaust, I've been wondering how long it would take for him to reveal his true stripes and be up to his old tricks again.
The answer, not surprisingly, was: Not long. Witness this story:
ROME -- British historian David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for questioning the Holocaust, visited the Auschwitz death camp and renewed his claim that there was no proof it had gas chambers during an Italian TV program aired Friday.
In the Sky TG24 documentary program "Controcorrente…
oracknows | March 24, 2007Here's wishing a belated blogiversary to Holocaust Controversies! On its first blogiversary, Nick has posted a cautiously optimistic analysis on the reason why Holocaust denial is losing its potency and increasingly being abandoned, even by the far right, as the completely ludicrous lie that it is.
I have no illusions that Holocaust denial is going away any time soon, but it does seem to have lost some of its influence, and here's hoping that, as long as deniers spew their lies, Sergey, Nick, and Andrew over at Holocaust Controversies and organizations like The Holocaust History Project will…
oracknows | March 15, 2007You may recall Dr. Lorraine Day, the former Chief of Orthopedic Surgery at San Francisco General Hospital in the 1980's who, after developing breast cancer, became a consummate altie, selling various dubious "natural, alternative therapies for all diseases, including cancer and AIDS." Somewhere along the line, sadly, she also became a rabid anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. I've had an interest in her conspiracy-mongering for a while now, because she's the perfect storm of two of my biggest interests: "alternative medicine" and Holocaust denial. I used to refer to her as purveying both…
oracknows | February 3, 2007Remember how often I rail against misguided laws that seek to criminalize Holocaust denial, laws such as the one in Austria under which David Irving was imprisoned? I've referred to them more than once as "stomping free speech flat," and I still believe that's what they do. I've also pointed out the danger of a potential slippery slope, an assertion for which I've been criticized, sometimes vigorously. Well, take a look at this (via the History News Network):
PEOPLE who question the official history of conflicts in Africa and the Balkans could be jailed for up to three years for "genocide…
oracknows | January 27, 2007I'm reminded by this article that today is the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops advancing west towards Germany:
OSWIECIM, Poland -- As they do on every anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, witnesses to the Holocaust will gather Saturday -- growing older, frailer and fewer each year. After 62 years, the camp itself is also showing signs of aging under the pressures of tourism and time.
Its new director is searching for ways to preserve vital evidence of Nazi crimes and update the exhibits without chipping away at Auschwitz's authenticity…
oracknows | January 15, 2007Regular readers of this blog know that I have a particular dislike for Holocaust denial and that, indeed, I've tried to do my small part to counter the lies spread by Holocaust deniers, beginning on Usenet eight years ago. Regular readers will also know my opinion regarding laws in certain European countries such as Germany and Austria banning Holocaust denial upon pain of prison and other penalties. Although I can understand why such laws may have been necessary in the early postwar period, when the resurgence of Nazi-ism was a real danger, now, nearly 62 years after the end of the war, I…
oracknows | January 8, 2007White supremacist Kevin Strom is busted:
Jan. 4, 2007 -- A leader of the white supremacist movement was arraigned today on charges of possession of child pornography and witness tampering after being arrested by FBI agents Thursday night at his home in Charlottesville, Va.
Kevin Alfred Strom, founder of the National Vanguard white supremacist group, was considered the leading intellectual of the movement since the death of William Pierce, the author of the notorious "Turner Diaires."
Strom was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, charged with the two counts, and is currently…
oracknows | December 28, 2006While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I'm guessing that quite a few of my readers have probably never seen many of these old posts, most of which are more than a year old.) These posts will be interspersed with occasional fresh material. This post originally appeared on January 5, 2006.
Remember how I said yesterday that I was going to post something today that I had been planning since…
oracknows | December 23, 2006Take a look at this image:
At first glance, it looks as though it's supporting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, doesn't it? But it's not. Not really. If you haven't figured out why yet, you'll see below the fold:
From MSNBC:
COPENHAGEN - A Danish art group that pokes fun at world leaders targeted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday by placing an advertisement in a Tehran newspaper with an insulting hidden message.
Beneath a picture of the president, a series of apparently sympathetic statements were arranged such as "Support his fight against Bush" and "Iran has the…
oracknows | December 22, 2006Heh (I can't resist one last tweek):
Poor old David Irving, he must be kicking himself after being released early by the Austrian authorities.
Had the discredited Holocaust denier been set free just a few days earlier, he would have been able to shoot off for a few days to sunny Iran, in the company of David Duke and an assorted rag-bag of other dangerously deranged Jew-haters.
Of course, whether the anti-semitic revisionist would have taken centre stage or would have been forced into the shadows by the arguably more abhorrent Aaron Cohen of the Neturei Karta is a moot point.
But don't worry…