How Relevant is Holocaust Revisionism?
Posted By admin on July 13, 2015
How Relevant is Holocaust Revisionism?
By Mark Weber January 7, 2009
For more than 30 years, writers and publicists who call themselves revisionists have presented evidence and arguments questioning generally accepted accounts of the Holocaust. Some of these researchers have shown impressive fortitude -- defying smears, abuse, physical violence, and worse. /1
In countries where Holocaust denial is a crime, skeptics have been fined, imprisoned or forced into exile for expressing dissident views on this issue. /2 These victims of what amounts to a blatant suppression of free speech include Robert Faurisson and Roger Garaudy in France, Siegfried Verbeke in Belgium, Jrgen Graf and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz in Switzerland, and Ernst Zundel and Germar Rudolf in Germany.
Revisionists have published impressive evidence, including long neglected documents and testimony, that has contributed to a more complete and accurate understanding of an emotion-laden and highly polemicized chapter of history.
I have played a role in this effort. In published writings, in lectures, and in courtroom testimony, I have devoted much time and work to critically reviewing the official Holocaust narrative, to countering Holocaust propaganda, and to debunking specific Holocaust claims.
But in spite of years of effort by revisionists, including some serious work that on occasion has forced mainstream historians to make startling concessions, /3 there has been little success in convincing people that the familiar Holocaust story is defective.
This lack of success is not difficult to understand. Revisionists are up against a well-organized, decades-long campaign that is promoted in the mass media, reinforced in classrooms, and supported by politicians. /4
Tim Cole, a history professor and prominent specialist of Holocaust studies, has written in his book Selling the Holocaust: From a relatively slow start, we have now come to the point where Jewish culture in particular, and Western culture more generally, are saturated with the 'Holocaust'. Indeed, the 'Holocaust' has saturated Western culture to such an extent that it appears not only centre stage, but also lurks in the background. This can be seen in the remarkable number of contemporary movies which include the 'Holocaust' as plot or sub-plot.
Between 1989 and 2003 alone, more than 170 films with Holocaust themes were made. In many American and European schools, a focus on the wartime suffering of Europe's Jews is obligatory. Every major American city has at least one Holocaust museum or memorial. The largest is the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, which is run by a taxpayer-funded federal government agency, and draws some two million visitors yearly.
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How Relevant is Holocaust Revisionism?
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