Are you serious? Vlaams Belang is a collection of several groups of people but the average voter is certainly no nazi, just like Pim Fortuyn. And what about Geert Wilders ? He wants to restrict immigration and is often called Nazi, but he is Jewish. We have to vote soon, I still have no idea, but it will be somewhere in the right.
Holocaust Denial.
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Are you serious? Vlaams Belang is a collection of several groups of people but the average voter is certainly no nazi, just like Pim Fortuyn. And what about Geert Wilders ? He wants to restrict immigration and is often called Nazi, but he is Jewish. We have to vote soon, I still have no idea, but it will be somewhere in the right.
senorpogo
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I'm sure someone (many ones?) have already mentioned this book.
Denying history : who says the Holocaust never happened and why do they say it? by Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman ; foreword by Arthur Hertzberg
A very nice introduction into the holocaust deniers and general CT thought. Many of the tactics they use mirror those of 9/11 deniers and other CTs.
Denying history : who says the Holocaust never happened and why do they say it? by Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman ; foreword by Arthur Hertzberg
A very nice introduction into the holocaust deniers and general CT thought. Many of the tactics they use mirror those of 9/11 deniers and other CTs.
Your conclusion's certainly correct, of course, but the web site you quote is that of David Irving, who was proven, in court, to be an holocaust-denying racist antisemite. To take seriously what he says about the holocaust is about as credible as taking seriously what the KKK says about Martin Luther King Jr.
Going out a bit on a limb here: I presume you had a vague recollection of Auschwitz photos being 'doctored' in textbooks for didactic purposes (which is not impossible, of course), so, in order to find examples, googled something like "fake Auschwitz photographs" and Irving's site came up?
Parsman
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Grunion
You are right on a lot of the history there but in the 1890s Palestine was still part of the Ottoman Empire. However the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine did come to the fore in the time of British control between 1917 and 1948. A lot of the problems in the area were caused by the way the UK governement flipped and flopped between Jewish and Arab interests depending on their own geo-political requirements throughout that period.
You are right on a lot of the history there but in the 1890s Palestine was still part of the Ottoman Empire. However the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine did come to the fore in the time of British control between 1917 and 1948. A lot of the problems in the area were caused by the way the UK governement flipped and flopped between Jewish and Arab interests depending on their own geo-political requirements throughout that period.
Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
*waves hands vaguely in front of firecoins face*
This is not the thread you're looking for...
senorpogo
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And someone beat me too it.
And I practically restated their entire post.
Nice.
Its also worth adding that there a quite a few myths about the Holocaust that many people pass off as facts which aren't proven, such as mass production of soap made from the fat of murdered jews. Since there's no proof of such mass production and since many people don't know this yet continue to repeat it, deniers cite this as an example of an insideous plot of disinformation and lies. If one thing people about the Holocaust is wrong then it all must be wrong!
Also - they don't usually deny that Jews died or were killed by the Third Reich. Rather, they say that some died under the natural stresses of capitivity or at the hand of Nazis not acting under orders. Thus they question the official number of deathes and deny that the Third Reich held an official policy of extermination towards the Jews.
grunion
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I seem to remember 1897 as the date of the First Zionist Congress, which meant that they had gained some momentum by then. And you're right, I do recall now that it was essentially the huge losses and treaties of World War I that led to the collapse of the Ottomans and leaving a weakened British Empire in control of the region. They had promised a Jewish Homeland in Palestine in 1917 (Balfour Declaration) but never did anything to make it happen until 1948 when they became the first government to recognize the State of Israel (politically expedient at the time since the world was reeling from the discoveries of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism was in abeyance.) Between India, Palestine and China, "the sun never sets on the British Empire" became just a distant memory in the time right after WW II.
So all this is to challenge the statement that Zionism had "nothing to do with the Holocaust." The fact is that it was the aftermath of the Holocaust that drove Western sympathies to support and recognize Israel (aside from the obvious geo-political advantages of a "client state" in the region) has become the basis for alot of the Denier conspiracy theorizing that Jews concocted the Holocaust to bolster the goals of Zionism.
Here's a wiki article about the Nazi euthanasia program called Action T4. Reading about the euthanasia program, I can see that it was very similar to the Holocaust in its stated goal of "racial hygiene". The euthanasia project exterminated tens of thousands of people, but these were German citizens, many of them children. How hard is it to believe the Holocaust could not happen when the Nazis were willing to commit mass murder against their own people?
G-K-4
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Not quite right. Your timing is off.
Herzl was promoting the idea of Zionism in the 1890's. Part of the reason was the Dreyfus Affair. They didn't necessarily decide on Palestine at first. They even thought of a couple of places in Africa. (!)
But after World War One, the Ottoman Empire broke up. Britain took Palestine only then.
Edited to add:
Argh, I see someone has beaten me to it. Sorry.
Peephole
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The party pretty much is.
Foolmewunz
Grammar Resistance Leader, TLA Dictator
Surely this is one of those "fingers are quicker than the brain" errors? I realize there had been an election at one point, but I've rarely seen Nazi Germany referred to as a democracy.
That hardly makes the nazi government that perpetuated the holocaust a western democracy.
Although democracies have certainly committed genocides. For example, the United States and indigenous Americans.
SwissSkeptic
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Hitler wasn't elected, he was appointed as Chancellor by President Hindenburg.
ETA: IIRC the NSDAP got somewhere around 35% of the votes in 1932, I wouldn't call that a massive majority.
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OK. Like I said it's been a long time since my history lessons. But I think Australia claims the dishonour of the most successful attempt at genocide. Tasmania doesn't have a lot of Aboriginal people these days.
Foolmewunz
Grammar Resistance Leader, TLA Dictator
Nor are there a lot of Algonquin Indians on the New York City Council, nor Mohawks in the Quebec Parliament. The North Americans (nee French and British) did a pretty thorough job on their own. As did the Chileans, and quite a few others.
Heck, we're coming up to American Thanksgiving. Those lovely school plays the kids put on about that first Thanksgiving feast, with the friendly Indians helping to save the settlers? They neglect to mention that within a single generation, about 25 years, they'd wiped out the tribe in question!
yodaluver28
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While it's true that the Zionist movement had existed since the end of the 19th century and had gained some measure of political support, there's no denying that the Holocaust provided the US and Britain with a sense of immediacy that the Jewish people were in desperate need of a homeland where they could attempt to recover their population and culture after all the trauma that they'd just suffered. Even back in the 1880's, Palestine was the obvious choice for religous Zionists who couldn't imagine a Jewish homeland anywhere but Palestine/Israel-Judea/Canaan. These Zionists received some sizable support, even then, from American Protestants. The bulk of the movement however were secularlists who felt that a homeland was needed in light of growing anti-semitism in Europe and Russia. They weren't as married to the idea that the new nation had to be Palestine, although they appreciated the historical significance of the area to their people. Among the other places considered were Argentina and Uganda. Uganda was even considered as a possible temporary safe haven for Jews eager to leave an increasingly hostile Russia until a permanent homeland could be chosen.
As annoying, offensive, and generally childish as most CTs are, Holocaust denial is just a whole league of it's own. Only a demented mind can ignore so much evidence, so coldly, and then turn around and callously blame the victims as the masterminds.
As annoying, offensive, and generally childish as most CTs are, Holocaust denial is just a whole league of it's own. Only a demented mind can ignore so much evidence, so coldly, and then turn around and callously blame the victims as the masterminds.
Peephole
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Well, I meant Germany was a democracy when they elected the nazis.