Guest post: On Holocaust Denialism

This is a guest post by my good friend Gene Burmington. I wanted to diversify my blog content a little, and we arrived upon the horrible subject of holocaust denialism; I forget whether he offered or I asked, but regardless, here’s what he sent me, in full and unedited, save for a few spelling fixes (because those red underlines bug me). (Obligatory disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed in the guest post content are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect my own. Though, considering I accepted to show this on my blog with my recommendation, they tend to align.)

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Unidentified painting of internees at a labor camp

Holocaust Revisionism is defined as any definite action to either deny or curb the seriousness of the event everyone understands as the Holocaust.

This is an important thing to bear in mind because there are few events in history that should not be diminished in meaning and scope, and the holocaust is one of them. It is a black mark on history to remind all of us that horror and cruelty is entirely possible even in civilized countries.

Before world war two, Germany was just as industrialized a nation as any other country in Europe. Sure, they were reeling from the consequences of the Great Depression, but overall Germany was held on par with France and Britain as far as sophistication was concerned even despite the fact that there was much blame on Germany for starting the first war.

That aside, yes, this was the proof that not merely lawless countries can perpetrate genocide. Thanks to the wonders and organization of bureaucracy, though, the process of killing people was made much simpler and organised-sort of how we slaughter cattle nowadays, unfortunately.

The problem is that this system of death was so efficient that deniers claim that if the Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews as soon as possible, then there would be none left. By that logic, there was no Holocaust because the Nazis did not do so, so genocide was not their final solution.

I'm sorry to say that this is incorrect; If German bureaucracy was so efficient, it would have all the supplies and fuel that Rommel or Paulus needed and they could keep on pushing the Allies back. Fortunately, Germany only lost because they didn't know how to allocate their resources or how to use them. If Germany had focused on building fighter planes instead of bombers or V-1 rockets, there would be no Battle of Britain and the Nazis would control all the islands of the U.K..

There have been a number of different arguments used by revisionists, but they all fall into the same cache; the Holocaust either didn't happen or wasn't as bad as people portrayed it to be. Here's a question-why are there no revisionists claiming that the Holocaust was WORSE than it was, or claiming that Sudan is perpetrating a modern Holocaust?

You notice how skewed this is and that's because persons with racist inclinations are trying to get people to forget the events of the past under the guise of scholarship.

Your scholarship does not hide your immaturity or crybaby behavior. Just as teabaggers bawl over the new health care bill, revisionists whine about how their rights are being violated and that people should be allowed to question everything no matter how taboo.

The sad fact is that if these people truly wanted to be taken serious as intellectuals instead of thoughtful bigots, they should follow a few major points of historical truth:

Don't pretend that certain facts which contradict your argument don't exist. They are there, and you look like a retard for not addressing the fact that you have a big zombified elephant in your living room.

Don't quote out of context or misquote. This is particularly prevalent when they take tiny snippets of Holocaust historians, and rearrange them to make themselves sound right or the original author to appear to be delusional.

Don't attack the person. Politicians can get away with it, but this is a society of people who attempt to seek truth; not a playground of schoolchildren gossiping about who shit their pants that day.

Don't rearrange facts. Facts are there, deal with them. Attempting to use numbers and statistics by authoritative historians and trying to twist them around just doesn't work. "Hey, six million people died in the holocaust AND there were six million visas for displaced persons issued by the U.N.- I see a correlation of scandal!" No retard, you don't. If you think for one moment that America or anyplace else took on three million or something Jews, then have some immigration papers ready that correspond with a documented person killed in the Holocaust.

Finally, Don't advertise your agenda or your lack of authority on the subject. Most Holocaust revisionists who are well respected intellectuals are either notable racists, have a non-historian academic background/degree (or both in most cases). You want to believe someone, get someone who knows what their talking about. R Lee Ermey for military grade weapons would be a proper example.

Another issue of revisionists is that they claim their first amendment rights. So what do a lot of t.v. shows and news broadcasts do? They have them on the air. This isn't being equal or any right guaranteed a group! The first amendment declares that people have a right to their beliefs and may voice those beliefs in a media available to them personally.

If you own a t.v. station, you can say whatever you want. Own a radio station, you can say whatever you want. Own nothing? You can go to a street corner and say whatever you want.

Going on the news or other wide-cast social media is a privilege, not a right. No radio station or newscast is obligated to let you go on and talk about your beliefs. So anyone reading this who owns something like that, you don't have to cave into demands of 1st amendment for any group you don't like. They can go outside with a sandwich board and that's their right-thought they'd look a little stupid shouting about how the Holocaust was a hoax and all the footage was faked by the United States-WITH REAL FUCKING DYING PEOPLE!

Forgive the language, but this is an impassioned topic to be sure. In short, there is proof all around. We know slavery in America happened. No one denies that. Why? Well, if slavery didn't happen, it would be awfully hard to explain why we have so many black people here without, you know, a mass immigrant migration like with the Irish or Mexicans.