Those who call themselves “Holocaust revisionists” do not make use of the accepted canons of historical research and analysis — they distort physical evidence (for example, by claiming that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were not used for the murder of human beings) and misuse documentary evidence (for example, by misquoting sources or using partial quotations of German documents that refer to the mass murders of Jews). It is thus very appropriate to call them deniers and not mere “revisionists.”It's satisfying to see my response to his nonsense in print.
“Revisionist conclusions are despised” not because they contradict the “Holocaust story” but because they are false and tendentious misreadings of history. Those who engage in such “revisionism” are motivated by virulent anti-semitism, as one can tell by inspecting the Web sites of Holocaust deniers such as Ernst Zundel or the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. Hidden behind the letter's anti-Israel claims is a typical anti-semitic contention — that unchecked Jewish power forced the U.S. to invade Iraq. This letter deserves to be dismissed by the intelligent readers of The Ithaca Journal.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Reply to McGowan
The The Ithaca Journal just published my letter in reply to McGowan, I'm happy to say.
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A very articulate reply. It is so sad, in this modern age, where so much documented information is available at the click of a mouse, that there are still people like him. I'm sure he'd be even more shocked to learn that the Nazi's didn't actually come up with the Final Solution by themselves. It was a concept which was born from a sector of the American & British intellectual elite in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries based on a misguided interpretation of Darwin's theory of evolution. It's all documented in Edwin Black's excellent book, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. Someone ought to send him a copy so he can really know the truth and learn a lesson about how idealogical-driven ignorance can be a dangerous thing.
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