First, check out The Daily Show‘s take on the Holocaust denial conference, with goodies like Revision Quest and Just Say No. It’s the show that characterizes the “question” being discussed at the conference as: Was the entire Holocaust an elaborate episode of Punk’d? Best line: David Duke, he’s like the Flock of Seagulls of hate. Or maybe the one about the neo-Nazis who are publishing a book about the Holocaust entitled If We Did It…
But, believe it or not, I’ve found a take on the Holocaust denial convention, parts of which may be even funnier than The Daily Show, and it comes from a Holocaust denier himself. You see, I had been wondering where arch anti-Semite and Holocaust denier Michael A. Hoffman II was during all this. I would have expected that he would have been on the short list of deniers to be invited, but, as far as I could tell, he wasn’t in Tehran last week. Certainly he would have gotten along very well with the ultra-orthodox Jews known as the Neturei Karta, who, although not Holocaust deniers themselves, share Hoffman‘s hatred of the State of Israel and belief that “Zionists” (the word Holocaust deniers use when they want to claim they aren’t anti-Semites) exploit the Holocaust to justify repression of the Palestinians. On the other hand, maybe they wouldn’t given the way that Hoffman labeled these orthodox rabbis who opposed the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem as having a reputation of “molesting boys (and each other in ritual baths)” (although it appears to be a different bunch of orthodox rabbis Hoffman was labeling hypocrites and child molesters).
Apparently Hoffman has a sense of humor, too. Well, no he doesn’t, but he has written something of which parts are so unintentionally hilarious that I couldn’t resist quoting him. What’s so hilarious? Easy, Hoffman praises the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran as upholding the principles of the Enlightenment (also found on the white power ranger website National Vanguard). Most of his article is the standard Holocaust denier jargon about “no gas chambers,” rants against Jewish conspiracies, but it’s bookended by two real howlers:
Iran’s “Holocaust” conference opens today and in spite of some imperfections, it marks an historic event, the first time any government in the world has sought to examine the Allied claims about mass execution gas chambers allegedly used by the Germans at Auschwitz.
I’ll agree that it represents an “historic event”–an historic event in the annals of stupidity, hate, and conspiracy-mongering. From this point on, it will probably serve as the gold standard in anti-Semitic conspiracy-mongering wingnuttery against which all other wingnuttery will have to be measured–until someone tops it. But the real hilarity is the conclusion of Hoffman’s article:
For some of us, the word of “The Holy People” about “The Holocaust” is not enough. It has been a truism since at least the Enlightenment that without the right to question a holy dogma, even one alleged to have been proclaimed by heaven or Christ’s “vicar on earth,” or Calvin in the “holy citadel of Geneva,” knowledge and human advancement are not possible.
When James Macpherson, a Scottish Nationalist, purported in the 18th century to have discovered epics and sagas in Gaelic, these were rapturously received by the British public. However, “mean-spirited” intellectuals such as Samuel Johnson challenged Macpherson to provide the original documents upon which he based his claims. Johnson told Macpherson, “I thought your book an imposture from the beginning and what I have heard of your morals disposes me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what you can prove.” Macpherson blustered but never produced the evidence.
We have the right to declare to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Yad Vashem museum, the US State Department and Congress, Tony Blair, Koffi Annan, the governments of Germany and Israel and Zionists everywhere, your morals dispose us to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what you can prove. According to revisionist “heretics,” about the execution gas chambers, the Judaics and their allies have thus far proved nothing.
It’s remarkable that it is the Iranians with their revisionist conference in Tehran who are the contemporary guarantors of Enlightenment principles, while the post-modern West lies submerged in the darkness, superstition and self-protective inertia of the religious fundamentalism that is Holocaustianity.
Of course, it’s all a crock of B.S. that there is no evidence for mass executions of Jews and others that the Nazis considered “undesirable” using gas chambers, and all of the canards Hoffman uses have been thoroughly debunked at sites like The Holocaust History Project and Nizkor and at blogs like this one, Flavor Country, Holocaust Controversies, and Holocaust Denial Absurdities. Hoffman’s lies and the lies and abuse of the scientific method and history scholarship by the Holocaust deniers at the Tehran conference makes Hoffman’s claiming the mantle of the Enlightenment for this endeavor so utterly ridiculous that I think you’ll have to excuse me while I go and vomit.
ADDENDUM: While we’re at it for vomit-inducing quotes, get a load of this one:
A BRITISH rabbi who angered fellow Jews by speaking at a “Holocaust denial” conference in Iran now says millions did die in gas chambers but may have deserved it.
Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from Greater Manchester and a leading member of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement, sparked new controversy on his return from Tehran by suggesting that God would have saved the victims of the Nazis if they had deserved to live.Cohen, whose house in Salford was pelted with 1,000 eggs last year because of his extremist views, told The Sunday Times: “There is no question that there was a Holocaust and gas chambers. There are too many eyewitnesses.
“However, our approach is that when one suffers, the one who perpetrates the suffering is obviously guilty but he will never succeed if the victim did not deserve it in one way or another.
“We have to look within to improve and try to better ourselves and remove those characteristics or actions that may have been the cause of the success of the Holocaust.”
Yep, according to Rabbi Cohen, God didn’t protect the victims of the Holocaust from the Nazis because they deserved their deaths and suffering.
No wonder Holocaust deniers like these Neturei Karta Jews enough to invite them to the Tehran conference.
