I cannot pretend to have read NickTerry’s long, long, long list. I am not sure what its point is. Ahmadinejad was not complaining that revisionists cannot get library cards. I don’t know offhand if any European revisionists have complained that a denial of access to archives has been a crucial handicap. They complain generally because they cannot publish their findings without going to gaol or losing their livelihood. That sort of thing, obviously, is what Ahmadinejad has in mind in the clips I was attempting to paraphrase. He was addressing Europeans, especially Germans. It is no answer to say “anyone in Germany is perfectly free to visit any archive and write what they like – just as long they they do not print things we do not like, just as long as they do not try to found specialist journals we do not like, just as long as they do not organise specialist conferences we do not like.” Research can go nowhere without publications that propagate its findings; in fact research without publication can hardly be said to exist.
It is totalitarian casuistry to argue that censorship is not an impediment to research.
Despite the ready availability of numerous options for research, revisionists haven't actually done very much of it. This holds true whether one looks at continental revisionists, or whether one is talking about Anglo-American revisionists. And that's the problem with complaining about censorship on the continent: it does not, cannot, affect Anglo-Americans.
The guy that truly amazes me in this regard is undoubtedly Faurisson. He was supposedly working on the Holocaust for a decade or more before he went public, yet all he could muster was some feeble drool that wasn't actually that much more sophisticated than Butz. Great eye for a newspaper clipping, though, like a hundred cranks before him.
Faurisson traipsed around the US giving talks to the National Alliance and IHR, yet never thought to stop off at NARA - at any point? He was, after all, visiting the US repeatedly for IHR conferences so there can be no question that he was able to enter the country.
When the Gayssot law was passed, instead of testing the waters with his long-awaited magnum opus and publishing a thorough monograph (or even something like Butz), he gave an intemperate interview to a magazine and got himself martyred. Since when was a magazine interview "research"?
Can you please spell out the details of the charges Faurisson faced for writing in revisionist journals and books since 1990?
Here's the French Wiki entry on him. I can't seem to detect any charges ever brought against Faurisson for writing any articles for the Journal of Historical Review or Viertelsjahreshefte fuer freie Geschichtsforschung - did these get edited out by Zionist moles or was Faurisson in fact allowed to drone on endlessly about Pressac and whoever else he took a dislike to?
Revisionists haven't lacked for outlets for their publications over the years. JHR, The Revisionist, The Barnes Review, Inconvenient History; Theses & Dissertations Press; TBR Books; Historical Review Press; Caste Hill Publishers.... there's
always been an outlet for publication, even if only on CODOH website.
The thing that no one will own up to is that those publications have been extraordinarily shoddy, the quality of research minimal, and much of the content given over to endless whining, navel gazing and victory dancing.
Time and again, instead of actually spending serious time doing the work, deniers have rushed into print with little more than antisemitic drivel gussied up with some citations plagiarised from the previous guy, and wondered why they are laughed at in one part of the world, and prosecuted in another.
Rudolf supposedly completed the first draft of Vorlesungen zur Zeitgeschichte within about 18 months of becoming a revisionist. The bibliography doesn't even vaguely match the actual citations, and seems to have been lifted wholesale from Staeglich. The sole archival research he did for it was to write to the state attorney's office in Frankfurt and get sent a few copies of statements from the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. That was all. Within 3-4 years of becoming a revisionist, this guy had written two books, edited another with numerous major contributions from him, and produced several articles, along with various pamphlets, including of course a notorious case where one sockpuppet of Rudolf interviewed Rudolf. Or maybe it was two sockpuppets. It's hard to keep track.
Now, I know that some people think history is a subject you can master in three minutes, but don't you think that this was all a bit, well, rash? That someone who wishes to seriously engage with a subject should spend a decent amount of time mastering it? And you know, do some research?
Before they try to get themselves into hot water?
On the other hand, if you're a revisionist in Germany in the early 90s, then maybe you notice that most of your comrades are now getting on a bit, the world is changing, and there's a bit of urgency to the whole thing. And indeed, quite a few authors who contributed to Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte were dead within five years. Of natural causes.
I do have to laugh at the idea that there were actually any revisionists left in Germany by the mid-2000s who were interested in historical or other research. No, the few deniers left were all bleating and blethering about how
they had already won. No more research necessary, just pump uo the volume on the ol' propaganda.
Please, tell me with a straight face that Horst Mahler was planning some kind of serious scientific research on the Holocaust.
