You can tell a lot about people from the company they keep. Out beyond theJuly 7 London Bombings: Obvious inside job fringes of sane political debate, where Bilderbergers and Illuminati run the Zionist Occupation Government with the help of mind control and black helicopters, far right and far left come full circle and eventually meet somewhere round the dark side of the moon. Generally, it doesn’t do to expose the cranks to the bright light of public scrutiny; it is, after all, what they secretly crave. But sometimes it’s necessary; sometimes it must be done.

And so it is with one Nicholas Kollerstrom, 9/11 “truther” and conspiraloon, who manages to combine the earnest belief that the World Trade Center was brought down in a US Government “false flag” operation with a thriving line in writings on astrology and crop circles, and still finds time to hold down a research fellowship at University College London, one of the UK’s top universities. So far, so harmless; British academia has its share of fruitloops. A little more troubling is that Kollerstrom is a self-described Holocaust denier who pops up on websites like that of the “Committee For Open Debate On The Holocaust” with gems such as this plea for “balance” in teaching about the events of 1939-45:

Let us hope the schoolchildren visitors are properly taught about the elegant swimming-pool at Auschwitz, built by the inmates, who would sunbathe there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons while watching the water-polo matches; and shown the paintings from its art class, which still exist; and told about the camp library which had some forty-five thousand volumes for inmates to choose from, plus a range of periodicals; and the six camp orchestras at Auschwitz/Birkenau, its theatrical performances, including a children’s opera, the weekly camp cinema, and even the special brothel established there. Let’s hope they are shown postcards written from Auschwitz, some of which still exist, where the postman would collect the mail twice-weekly.

The investigative blogger “Unity”, at the website Ministry of Truth, has a full rundown on Kollerstrom’s writings and, in particular, his consistent citing of anti-Semitic sources such as Simon Sheppard, who was expelled from Britain’s far-right BNP for being too right-wing (!), or the website “Judicial, Inc.”, which peddles the splendid theory that Hezbollah is an Israeli front to justify continued military activities against Arabs. (“Who is dumb enough to fire some useless rockets...?”). As an alternative to sifting through the dross of the primary sources, it is valuable stuff, and we should be grateful to Unity for getting his hands dirty in a sewer that most of us would not wish to trawl ourselves; it is thankless work.

What I find interesting about characters like Kollerstrom, though, is not so much what they believe, which is common or garden lunacy, at once remarkably nuanced and depressingly one-dimensional; rather, it is the utterly predictable way that these disparate fringe beliefs always seem to join up so seamlessly, despite their ragged edges. 9/11, 7/7, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, the Holocaust (or rather the “Holocaust”) and much more besides --- all are connected in a tapestry far too densely woven for Occam’s famous razor ever to unpick, and all, needless to say, lead back to one particular group of people. (A hint: their name starts with "J.") There are many scholarly volumes, you imagine, to be written on the particular brand of credulousness that leads people to embrace such outlandish belief systems; indeed, I imagine there are plenty out there already.

It should be noted that, while he is happy to aver his denial of the so-called Holocaust, Kollerstrom denies any involvement with far-right groups; his political affiliations are to the Greens and --- of course! --- George Galloway’s ‘Respect’ Party. Like I said; if you head far enough to the left, you’ll eventually emerge on the far right, as anyone old enough to have played Pac-Man will tell you. One wonders if his outlandish views raised any eyebrows at the political meetings of the so-called “anti-racist” Respect Party he attended. One fears they did not.

Some limited good may come of all this. The forum at the centre of much of the conspiraloon discussion of 9/11 in Britain, nineeleven.co.uk, has now announced a blanket ban on discussion of the Holocaust on its messageboards (much to the vitriolic rage of its regular posters) --- though the day when they realise that they’re all wasting their lives is, you suspect, a long way off. For their part, UCL appear to be entirely blameless in all of this; they have been alerted to the presence of a self-confessed Holocaust denier on their research staff, and action may well be under way to address the situation. But episodes like this remind us that the Truthers are out there. Keep watching the skies...

Genocide denial is an ugly subject. I wrote a post about a recent variant a few months ago, relating to Ed Herman, one-time collaborator of Noam Chomsky. Herman has devoted himself in recent years to rubbishing the notion that 8,000 Bosniaks were massacred at Srebrenica. In an article last October entitled "Genocide Inflation is the Real Human Rights Threat: Yugoslavia and Rwanda", published in the far-left Z Magazine, he went one better, and insisted: "To an amazing degree, the Western media and NGOs swallowed the propaganda line and lies on Rwanda that turned things upside down."

I was reminded of this monstrous article and of Herman's fellow-travellers when reading this post on the Counterknowledge blog of Telegraph journalist Damian Thompson. It refers to one Robin Philpot, a Canadian journalist and a denier of the Rwandan genocide, whom I had mentioned as one of Herman's sources.

What Bosnian genocide?: Far left Chomsky collaborator Edward HermanThis is the first of two or three posts I shall write about recent instances of genocide denial. I do so to illustrate two points. First, the methods of genocide denial are consistent across time and place. The denial of the Srebrenica massacre really does employ the same methods as Holocaust denial. My second point is that genocide denial is politically heterogeneous. You find it on the Left as well as the far Right, though these tendencies have much in common with each other.

I first came across the phenomenon, in its most notorious and extreme form of Holocaust denial, in my teens. My languages teacher, who had been a child refugee from Nazism and whose parents had died in the camps, told me of an incident that happened when she had been introducing a travelling exhibition about Anne Frank. A prominent local member of the National Front (this was in Leicester, where the organisation received a substantial vote at that time) came up to her afterwards, introduced himself, and handed her a pamphlet. I can't remember it, but I'm certain this pamphlet would have been one called "Did Six Million Really Die?", under the pseudonymous authorship of a "Richard Harwood".

Harwood's real name was Richard Verrall. Verrall was editor of the National Front journal Spearhead. His was the first popular exposition published in English of the notion that the Holocaust was a hoax perpetrated by international Jewry. Over the years I've acquired Verrall's pamphlet and a small library of the main pseudo-scholarly works advocating this view (though if you visit my house, you will not find them on open shelves). These are all either in French or in English; for obvious reasons, this sort of material doesn't get disseminated in Germany.

I give no link, but Verrall's pamphlet is now also widely distributed on the Web on far-right and Islamist sites. Its concluding section begins:

"Without doubt the most important contribution to a truthful study of the extermination question has been the work of the French historian, Professor Paul Rassinier. The pre-eminent value of this work lies firstly in the fact that Rassinier actually experienced life in the German concentration camps, and also that, as a Socialist intellectual and anti-Nazi, nobody could be less inclined to defend Hitler and National Socialism. Yet, for the sake of justice and historical truth, Rassinier spent the remainder of his post-war years until his death in 1966 pursuing research which utterly refuted the Myth of the Six Million and the legend of Nazi diabolism."

Extraordinarily, in a polemic that sets a methodological standard for lying about history, this paragraph includes an important truth. It's not often realised that (as Paul Berman rightly notes in his Terror and Liberalism) Holocaust denial began on the French Left. The first person systematically to advance the proposition that the Holocaust was a hoax perpetrated by international Jewry was Paul Rassinier, a French Socialist and Resistance fighter who had indeed been imprisoned at Buchenwald. There is a fine biography of him by Nadine Fresco, Fabrication d'un antisémite, 1999. As the title implies, Rassinier became an embittered antisemitic crank. He died in 1967 (not 1966 as Verrall/Harwood claims), having acquired a handful of followers. Rassinier's principal disciple, Robert Faurisson, is very much with us.

Noam Chomsky famously provoked controversy by coming to Faurisson's defence in 1981 - ostensibly on grounds of free speech, but in fact with other remarks attached. During the controversy, Chomsky insisted to one critic (for sources, see here): "I see no hint of antisemitic implications in Faurisson's work." Chomsky is not a Holocaust denier, and no serious critic accuses him of being an antisemite. But Chomsky's defence of Faurisson is not the libertarian one, which I agree with, of the right to free speech for Holocaust deniers. He clearly defends the legitimacy of Faurisson's views though not their factual accuracy. If you doubt this, consider Chomsky's remark on the masthead of this site and similar sentiments about far greater men than I, such as Vaclav Havel and the late Abba Eban. In Chomsky's universe, "tacit acquiescence to horrendous crimes" is done by liberals and moderate left-wingers. Faurisson genuinely is a racist who does acquiesce in the greatest crime of our age, by denying it even took place. Yet you won't find Chomsky describing Faurisson in the terms he uses to describe, well, me.

The proponents of genocide denial are not a weighty force, and some of them are very trivial indeed. But there are reasons for refuting them.

First, while I don't wish to sound melodramatic, once you let go by default the arguments of Herman and others, you have in effect granted the legitimacy in debate of the equivalent methods of reasoning of Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial, pace Chomsky's frivolous and absurd remarks, necessarily has malevolent implications.

Secondly, it's surprising how some of the propositions of genocide deniers can insinuate themselves into respectable forums without their being recognised as such. I noted an example last year when the novelist Kurt Vonnegut died. In his best known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut directly relies on the discredited claims of my reader David Irving concerning the death toll at Dresden. Portraying the Allies as war criminals while downplaying the crimes of the Nazis is one the techniques of Holocaust deniers such as Irving.

Thirdly, there is matter of honour. It is plainly not logically impossible that fewer than 8,000 men and boys were murdered by Bosnian Serbs at Srebrenica; but the means by which Herman and his followers advance that conclusion are a violation of the methods of critical inquiry. That's what is wrong with genocide denial - not that it's an offence to our feelings, but that it's an offence against historical truth.

Fourthly, while the proponents of genocide denial are on the fringes of Western intellectual life, this is not necessarily true elsewhere. Holocaust denial has gained ground in the Muslim world. In particular, it's espoused by the puppet-president of a state that seeks a nuclear capability and anticipates the extinction of the Jewish state.

So here's the promised update on the panel discussion on genocide denial that took place Thursday night at UCLA. Commenter Micromike wonders whether anything was accomplished. I frankly don't know.

The discussion was interesting. Professor David Myers drew incisive connections between the experience of the Armenian and Jewish communities; Professor Richard Hovanessian gave a fascinating talk on the rhetorical moves deployed by genocide deniers; I argued that while issues such as those are complex enough to support endless academic study, the moral contours of this situation are very stark—one needn't consult scholars to know that Jewish orgs ought not support a campaign of genocide denial. Then Aram Hamparian placed all this in the context of his work as head of the Armenian National Committee, and also made some very kind and encouraging comments about Jewcy.

Phantom says he hopes the experience was meaningful for me, and yes, absolutely it was. Having a chance to sit next to, and engage with, David Myers, Richard Hovanessian, and Aram Hamparian, was as edifying as it was flattering.

But of course that's entirely irrelevant. There are cheaper and easier ways to edify and flatter ourselves than to hold a genocide denial panel discussion at UCLA. There were people who flew across the country for this discussion (afterward, one person came up to me and said she flew in from Chicago, and another said that he came from Arizona; Mr. Hamparian flew in from DC): presumably, they weren't there just to hear interesting or stirring things. They must have hoped that something significant was actually going to come out of it.

On my end, there's one preeminent criterion by which I'll judge whether the event was a success: did it do anything at all that will make genocide denial a less acceptable political manuever to leaders of Jewish-American orgs such as the AJC (David Harris) and the ADL (Abraham Foxman). Will it cause anything to happen that in turn causes people lower down in these organizations to say to these men, "I understand how simple-minded and Polyanna-ish this sounds, but I really think we need to consider the idea that supporting a genocide denial campaign is really just deeply problematic, political considerations aside."

If that's too much to hope, then I'd be satisfied if supporters came to them and said, "listen, this isn't just some bullshit about 'morality' or 'the memory of the Holocaust'—it's actually serious. People out there are saying all kinds of damnfool things about our supporting Turkey's campaign of 'genocide denial,' and it could turn out to have very negatives consequences for this organization."

If that happens--if one person in either of those organizations can muster up the conviction to say either of those things to Abraham Foxman or David Harris--I'd call the event a success. But maybe I'm more easily satisfied than people who flew across the country hoping to witness some progress in ending denial of their family/community's systematic murder, I don't know.

In an interview published October 26, 2007, Ami Eden of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked Abraham Foxman whether he had been wrong to refuse to describe the WWI-era systematic murder of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks--an event known to historians as the Armenian Genocide--as a "genocide." Foxman replied,

"We said it is a massacre, an atrocity, we’ve said it for 40 years. The Armenians wanted us to say genocide. To me it was sufficient for us to say I’m not a historian we don’t adjudicate all the issues...

"I respect the Armenian community for wanting their memory, their pain, their suffering to be recognized globally in the most sensitive way or the most meaningful way. So we said it is an atrocity and it is massacre, but we just don’t think that Congress should [describe it as a genocide]."

Foreign relations Committee calls WWII Killing of Jews "Genocide."

On Wednesday, September 23, The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 27 to 21 to condemn as genocide the mass killings of Jews in Germany during World War II. New Germany reacted angrily, recalling its ambassador from Washington and threatening to withdraw its support for the continuing War on Terror.

"America has crossed a line with this resolution," Foreign Minister Helmut Gottschalk said. "Petty domestic politics has trumped American national interests. The New German people can only take so much insult. We will see our next steps."

It was a harsh rebuke from one of America's closest allies, and sent shock waves through the White House. The resolution comes at a time when the United States is actively drumming up support for the War on Terror, and two deputies in the State Department departed for Berlin immediately after the vote in an attempt to forestall a diplomatic disaster. At home, Secretary of State Candid Price called the resolutionStill Waiting for Recognition: For the few remaining survivors of the Jewish tragedy, this year's resolution may be the last chance "irresponsible."

In a Rose Garden press conference President Hernandez acknowledged the Jewish tragedy, but sternly warned against the resolution. "This is not the right time or the right place for this kind of resolution," Hernandez said.

Jews, along with the large majority of historians outside New Germany, say that from 1939 to 1945 the German Nationalist Socialist Party carried out a systematic campaign to kill as many as six million Jews in Europe. They claim the killings amounted to "genocide," a term that the New German government fiercely rejects.

New Germany acknowledges that between 1 and 1.6 million Jews died during the war, but contends that a vast majority of those deaths occurred in the throes of war when disease and starvation was widespread. According to New Germany the intent to exterminate Jews is historically unfounded. "There was a context for these events. Many Germans died and suffered as well, far exceeding the number of Jews. These were the sad unintended consequences of war."

Since the establishment of New Germany, the influential Jewish American lobby has sought acknowledgment of their ancestors' suffering. The authors of the resolution are from heavily Jewish districts in California and Florida and New York. They note that the United States must recognize the Jewish tragedy while the few remaining survivors are still alive.

Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Gregory Demerdjian, a descendent of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, said, "These events must be characterized for what they were: genocide. It is well documented in our own national archives that genocide of Jews occurred during the Second World War. This is merely an acknowledgment of America's own understanding of the events during that time. None of this should be construed to mean that New Germany is in the least responsible for these deaths." Demerjian said that he would soon introduce a resolution reinforcing America's strong and lasting relationship with the New Germany.

The Jewish tragedy is a sensitive issue in New Germany. Under a progressive movement called "Identity Reformation," the New Germans have radically reconsidered what an older generation had taken for granted. Historians in New Germany argue that between the First and Second World War Germany was caught between JewishTaking Pride in Our Past: The New German government has insisted that the alleged genocide is simply not consistent with the nobility of German history industrialists and Jewish socialists intent on overthrowing the German state. "They wanted to destroy the country from within," said New German Ambassador Norbert Sommer. "It was a difficult time. Everyone regrets the death of Jews, but wartime choices had to be made to save Germany's very existence."

Today, New Germany rejects the verdicts of the Nuremberg Trials that found members of the Nazi party guilty of war crimes, pointing out that Germans admitted to those crimes under duress from the prosecuting Allies. "No document has ever been produced that shows that Hitler ordered the extermination of Jews," Sommer said. "Indeed, many attempts were made by Germans at the time to find a safe harbor for Jews, including some negotiations with Zionists in Europe. It is a total fallacy that there was anything resembling genocide."

Continue reading...

Unbelievable! Remember Andrew Tarsy, the ADL regional director for New England who was booed out of the Watertown City Council for defending the ADL's Ahmadinejad-esque position that it can neither confirm nor deny an Armenian Genocide took place?

Well, the Boston Globe reported today that at an emergency meeting Tarsy and the rest of his regional board voted to break ranks with the national office of the ADL.

"I strongly disagree with ADL's national position," Tarsy said in an interview with the Globe, declining to explain his change of stance. "It's my strong hope that we'll be able to move forward in a relationship with the Armenian community and the community in general."

Then, twenty minutes ago, the Globe confirmed what a commenter said several hours ago in the comment thread to our petition: Andrew Tarsy has been fired.

Continue reading...

A 22-year-old mental patient was arrested for assaulting Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel at a San Francisco hotel earlier this month.

The assailant, Eric Hunt, a Holocaust denier, might also be held up on charges of "attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and committing a hate crime."

San Francisco police knew Hunt had cash and was using a credit card, and they tracked him to the Carrier Clinic in Belle Mead. Hunt's mother had helped him check into the facility, which is about 60 miles from his home, investigators said. San Francisco police alerted their counterparts in Montgomery Township, N.J.; they arrested Hunt on Saturday afternoon.

"He had admitted himself there for some type of treatment,'' Montgomery Township police Sgt. Guy Fillebrown said. "He was very polite, docile -- there was no resistance,'' he added. "We simply transported him to jail.''

Hunt is a Holocaust denier who in recent weeks traveled to Florida in an unsuccessful attempt to confront Wiesel at a conference there, said Lt. Dan Mahoney, head of special investigations for San Francisco police. Hunt began following Holocaust denial organizations after graduating from college, and although he used the Internet to spread his beliefs, authorities believe Hunt acted alone.

"He appears to be what we call a lone wolf,'' Mahoney said.

Five days after Wiesel was attacked, a man identifying himself as Hunt posted a detailed account of the crime on several anti-Semitic and anti-Israel Web sites. That account matched a description of the attack police provided a few days later. In the online post, Hunt said he cornered Wiesel, the author of more than 40 books based on his Holocaust experiences, to force him into admitting that the Holocaust never occurred.

Here's a creeptacular ending to the work week: Elie Wiesel was forcibly dragged from an elevator in the Argent Hotel in San Francisco by an apparent Holocaust denier:

In a posting Tuesday on the anti-Zionist Web site ZioPedia, a writer using the name Eric Hunt takes credit for the attack: “After ensuring no women would be traumatized by what I had to do (I had been trailing Wiesel for weeks), I stopped the elevator at the sixth floor. I pulled Wiesel out of the elevator. I said I wanted to interview him.”

Wiesel grabbed at his chest and yelled for help, according to the posting. “I told him, ‘Why don’t you want people to know the truth?’ His expression changed, and he began screaming again. …” the posting reads.Police reported that the suspect tried to force Wiesel into one of the rooms, but ran away when Wiesel started yelling.

A cartoon which depicts a silent Rabbi watching a swatstika transform into a Star of David is circulating throughout Iran. The 56-second clip is currently airing on MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, whose president had this to say of the cartoon:

"The idea the that they are trying to show is that Zionism [the worldwide Jewish movement that resulted in the creation of Israel] comes out from the seed of Nazism. They're saying that it is the technical Jew who nurtures it and who plants it and who grows it and who irrigates it and all that," Carmon said.

Tired of being the primary source of Nazi propaganda rhetoric, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now has someone in his pocket to espouse his dirty thoughts. Mohammad-Ali Ramin, Chief Aide to the President confirmed Ahmadinejad's claim that Hitler was a Jew, himself, and this explains his animosity towards his own people:

A top advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed in an interview with Iranian website Baztab that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's parents were both Jewish and that Hitler himself was one of the founders of the State of Israel.

In the interview, translated by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) Mohammad-Ali Ramin, a chief aide to Ahmadinejad, told Baztab that Hitler's paternal grandmother was a Jewish prostitute and his father even kept his Jewish name until finally changing it to Hitler when he was 40.

Ramin also claimed that the reason Hitler developed such an aversion to Judaism was because his Jewish mother was a promiscuous woman. Hitler therefore, says Ramin, tried to escape his religion.

Ramin cites a 1974 book by Hennecke Kardel titled 'Adolf Hitler: Founder of Israel', which alleges that Hitler strived to create a Jewish state as a result of being influenced by his Jewish relatives and his cooperation with Britain – which also wanted to drive the Jews out of Europe.

Who could have known that Hitler was a latent self-hating Jew? We might have guessed based on some of the tell-tale signs, like his over-compensation by slaughtering six million of us, and his conspiring with the French. Let's just hope the U.N. starts taking some serious action soon against Iran's nuclear bullying and its implicit WWIII ramifications.

Emory University will be translating their Holocaust Denial site into Farsi and Arabic in an effort to educate Muslim countries on Holocaust history. Professor Deborah Lipstadt, who runs the site, stated that last week's show of support at Iran's gathering of Holocaust deniers was further testament that these anti-semitic ideas are gaining ground.

Lipstadt, who was sued in 1994 for libel in her book "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory" said:

I'm convinced that there are people in predominantly Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East, who are being inundated with Holocaust deniers' claims and don't know that the deniers are fabricating and distorting.

Kathy, a 24-year-old PhD student/Valley girl/Gemini (born in the year of the Dog) probes the Holocaust. Ripping a line or two from the Judith Regan "cabal" of thought, below are some of the insights this curious hybrid breeds:

i don’t like jews for a lot of reasons, like, because they lie a lot. so if a jew says something, it’s a lie! so if they said that there was a holocaust, then that means there wasn’t a holocaust. so, that’s the proof!

There's more...

so, it was a long long time ago, like maybe 1970 or something – when the jews were being, like REAL pains in the ass of europe, and until I wrote that last sentence, i didn’t even know that europe HAD an ass. but Europe HAS TO have an ass because the jews were such pains in it. they were like european hemorrhoids. eurohoids! and the holocaust was like preparation-h to get rid of the eurohoids. (not that i would know about preparation-h. that’s the kind of shit my dumb-ass grandparents use!)

And for the grand finale:

and after that so-called “holocaust”, the jews then started murdering palestinian babies to drink their blood for their holiday rituals. and then they would sit in their zionist jewish centers tearing the raw flesh of palestinian babies with their devil-claws while plotting to destroy the whole world with their network of world slavery and global capitalism. like, redundant? slavery and capitalism? jew and imperialist murderer? so science once again proves that the holocaust didn’t happen and that the jews are a bunch of trouble-fucks.

Tee Hee. I think the irony in the humor was lost somewhere before the E.E. Cummings style of diahrretic stream-of-consciousness exploded onto my screen.

Anne Applebaum sees Tehran's own version of "realism" Iran's Holocaust Denial Conference:

Of course, Holocaust denial also has broader roots and many more adherents in the Middle East, which may be part of the point: Questioning the reality of the Holocaust has long been another means of questioning the legitimacy of the state of Israel, which was indeed created by the United Nations in response to the Holocaust, and which has indeed incorporated Holocaust history into its national identity. If the Shiite Iranians are looking for friends, particularly among Sunni Arabs, Holocaust denial isn't a bad way to find them.

No, it isn't, although it is an excellent way to moot of one of the ISG's vaunted recommendations: putting the mullahs on the spot by engaging them diplomatically, or at least trying to. If they refuse to negotiate in time-honored pragmatic terms then so much the worse for "world opinion" of them. (Niall Ferguson, citing his latest biographical subject Henry Kissinger, recently applauded this logic of the Baker-Hamilton commission.)

I have to say, I love the idea that world opinion of the Islamic Republic could remain neutral or positive after its capital city hosts an international gathering of Holocaust "skeptics" and deniers. This is a provocation, I hope you'll agree, a few shades darker than even vowing to wipe Israel off the map.