That was the sentence from Bradley Smith’s reaction to the shooting at D.C’s Holocaust Museum I found most interesting. It reminds me of the debate over desensitizing violent video games some years back. I believe the same arguments were made about pornography before my time. From what I’ve heard evidence (compiled by liberal academics who hate America, families and children in particular) does not support those theories. My own opinion is that weirdos are more likely to be drawn to holocaust denial in the first place, and Von Brunn in particular was a producer rather than a mere consumer of such literature.
Does one have a responsibility to watch what one says based on the reactions of the audience? In the main I agree with Stephan Kinsella’s take on the instigator of a riot in Causation and Aggression. I would say that goes beyond explicitly ordering people to go riot and would (if this actually happened) cover Jim Morrison’s use of crowd psychology to provoke concert-goers.
That covers people who deliberately seek to create such a reaction, what about a result that is not sought but was foreseeable as a likely cause of one’s actions? The law provides manslaughter and other crimes of recklessness which do not require mens rea intent. I think a similar idea applies here and is a reason to include disclaimers if you think listeners might get the wrong idea. All of us speak considering the consequences on our audience. Otherwise we wouldn’t even need to bother speaking the same language or explaining when a bit of technical jargon does not mean what they might assume it does.
Given the difficulty of establishing a causal link between the actions of a single person (out of an unknown number of people who may have heard the message) and what has been said, I don’t propose that we introduce anything to criminal or even tort law to cover dangerous publications. All the same, a legal fiction should not delude us into believing a phenomenon is fictitious.
Being the awful Hansonian reductionist that I am, I wish that Smith & co would “break it down” when it comes to their heretical thoughts. There is a constant conflation of holocaust denial (or revisionism, if you prefer) with matters pertaining to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, U.S foreign policy, whether the Nazis were worse than the Soviets and the related matter of whether racism/bigotry is more dangerous than blank-slatism along with a host of other things. Political ideologues group many seemingly unrelated issues together into one world view. If holocaust revisionists really want to be treated like intellectually honest historians it would help if they acted more like scientists seeking the truth regarding specific matters.
Perhaps Bradley really is a bleeding-heart liberal (The Man Who Saw His Own Liver depicts an anti-nuke tax protester during the Cold War) who just happens not to prioritize Darfur or Tibet (I don’t care about them much either, but I’m just generally uncaring), but plenty of White Nationalists who display thoroughly illiberal attitudes about exterminating groups they dislike simultaneously expect sympathy for Palestinians or the civilians fried at Dresden. Those are worthwhile issues to discuss but should preferably be kept distinct from others that might turn things into a victimology contest.
I admit that in my post on Charles Lindbergh I stated that part of the reason I thought it important to look askance at “the good wars” of the past was that they served to justify wars now. As I was saying earlier in the post, it does make sense to keep in mind the likely reactions to what one says and the connections people already make. At the same time the different wars are distinct and one could possibly support or oppose any combination of them, and so discussion of them may be sensibly kept separate.
Entitled to an Opinion 
June 15, 2009 at 2:32 am
If by “this stuff” you mean “novella-length text-wall paragraphs” and by “empathy and understanding” you mean “willingness to read this blog”, then yes.
Please try to be a bit more succinct, and easier on the eyes. Your writing is not so dense that it cannot be concentrated.
June 15, 2009 at 7:04 pm
You must be a fan of very minimalist novellas, as those are actually rather short paragraphs by my standards, but I broke them up just the same.
June 15, 2009 at 7:41 am
[…] has some insightful comments here: “If too much of “this stuff” takes away our empathy and understanding that this is a […]
June 15, 2009 at 12:11 pm
The sentence you cite is actually from Richard Widmann, editor of CODOHweb and “Inconvenient History.” Widmann is a solid guy.
I’ll have more to say on the substance of your post later.
June 15, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Does one have a responsibility to watch what one says based on the reactions of the audience?
A more provocative test case might be Charles Manson.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen unambiguous evidence linking words (or images) to any violent action, and the question is further complicated when you consider that there might also be those who are swayed against a particular violent act by the same words or images (as has often been argued wrt pornography). The issue came up with that godawful Oliver Stone flick, when a couple of teenage ne’er-do-wells went on a somewhat flubbed kill-spree that resulted in one death and at least one lawsuit against Stone, inter alia. If it had been against the law to release NBK, it certainly seems possible that one person might not have been murdered and that another person might not have been seriously wounded. But there might also have been a countermanding “catharsis effect,” leaving an offset of would-be thrill killers content to hit “rewind” and enjoy the Stone’s vicarious bloodshed rather than act it out. Without some predictable critical mass to shore up cause and effect, the empirical question will probably remain elusive.
I’m not saying there’s nothing to it. I think there could well be. I think it’s an open question. But then, I’ve always assumed that freedom entails risk, and that this risk is at least presumptively preferable to any alternative constraints, which, of course, will also entail risk. I want Times Square as a cesspit, even if that’s only a matter of personal aesthetics. Stirner would agree, no?
I think a similar idea applies here and is a reason to include disclaimers if you think listeners might get the wrong idea.
Disclaimers are for lawyers. Even if we assume that Von Brunn was influenced by something he read, do you think there is any reason to believe such a mind would be dissuaded by a tacked “don’t try this at home” signpost? Is there evidence for this? I’d be shocked if there were.
…a legal fiction should not delude us into believing a phenomenon is fictitious.
I agree with this. But let’s be clear about the case at hand. Von Brunn was a nutjob with a criminal history, and he was 88 fucking years old. If something he read caused him to open fire, I’d like to know what it was (unless the effect is so potent that I, too, would be moved to rampage).
I wish that Smith & co would “break it down” when it comes to their heretical thoughts.
I’m not exactly sure what this means. The strong revisionist — or “denialist,” if you prefer — position is pretty well summed up in a statement by Paul Grubach, when he writes:
“I am a revisionist because I maintain (1) There was no Nazi extermination policy in regard to the Jews; (2) The “Nazi gas chambers” and “Nazi gas vans” never existed; and (3) the claim of six million Jewish dead is an irresponsible exaggeration. I do believe, however, that there was a National Socialist deportation/ethnic cleansing policy in which a large number of Jews lost their lives due to starvation, disease, ad hoc atrocities, exhaustion, and executions on the eastern front during the German army anti-guerilla warfare campaign. As Professor Butz pointed out in his “Hoax,” the Jews may have lost up to one million dead. Of course, it is possible that the number of Jews killed may have been, say, 400,000.”
I’m not inclined to parse and defend this particular line, but I think it breaks things down neatly enough, into a falsifiable set.
I also think (along with Crowell) that even without the presumed element of intentional extermination, the Holocaust remains meaningful as a description of the effective destruction of a European people and their way of life under the yoke of virulent anti-Semitic policies. The most clear-cut evidence shows that Jewish people were forcibly transported to labor camps where many perished. No one denies this.
If holocaust revisionists really want to be treated like intellectually honest historians it would help if they acted more like scientists seeking the truth regarding specific matters.
Be specific, and don’t forget the laws.
I’ve wallowed in this mire for long enough, and I am reasonably confident that the serious “deniers” are doing just what you demand. It’s just that few people pay attention, unless they’re curiously obsessed, or unless there’s a legal case at bar. Revisionist arguments are not subject to the rigors of peer review because taboo — and laws — keep them at bay.
Look, Cole visited the camps, conducted interviews and wrote up reports. Leuchter, whatever his faults, has done decent science. Mattagno crunches numbers and cites reputable literature on cremation technology. Crowell spent long hours poring over German civil defense documents from the USHMM archives. And Bradley’s humane skepticism is well recounted in his intellectual memoirs.
If you want a fair sense of what revisionist positivism tastes like, you can read Rudolf’s stuff Here, and here.
Keep in mind that the man has been in jail for several years for writing this stuff. That’s not a minor detail.
…who just happens not to prioritize Darfur or Tibet
Priorities are subjective and one needn’t apologize. For me, HR/HD is fascinating because a.) the taboo that surrounds it is like nothing else, and b.) because the empirical arguments advanced by the best heretics seem rational and worthy of open debate in legitimate forums. I don’t doubt that the canonical Holocaust is used to legitimize and justify State violence, but I would be drawn to the texture of a taboo-shrouded mystery even if this weren’t so.
I’m not sure whether it fits, but Crowell recently directed me to a passage from C.S. Lewis that might somewhat re-frame the question of cause and effect in context. It’s from “Mere Christianity” and I’m going to play it as it lays:
“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”
June 16, 2009 at 7:27 pm
I didn’t think there was any doubt that Manson ordered the killings.
The specific case of Von Brunn is one thing, bur I was trying to get at a general issue.
I have heard of evidence for something like a “catharsis effect” for violent movies/pornography but that may actually be a “killing time” effect that disproportionately draws those who might otherwise engage in violence.
Grubach does do an admirable job of breaking it down. Asking him to assign probabilities to each statement might only be appropriate for Bayesian-wannabes.
I am admittedly much less knowledgeable about revisionists. To show that I’m not just talking out of my ass though, Mark Weber of IHR recently said the holocaust revisionism was pointless and that revisionists should instead concentrate their efforts on anti-Zionism. I acknowledge that cause has grown in popularity among leftists (or “progressives” if you prefer) but it’s a completely distinct issue which predates the holocaust (or “alleged holocaust” for pedantic revisionists). That sort of thing would lead one to conclude that Weber doesn’t actually care that much about whether the holocaust actually happened.
June 17, 2009 at 12:45 am
I think the Manson case remains an interesting test because it provides us with a situation where the mere words of a diminutive, poorly educated failed folk singer are readily assumed to have incited violent acts by adults, most of whom were college dropouts. Yet Manson held no legal authority over these people, nor was he a hypnotist, nor did he hold a gun to anyone’s head. If I tell you to kill, say, Glen Beck, and you do — I’m I then responsible for your crime? I think it’s a good question that few people paused to consider in the hysteria that prevailed.
I think your take on Mark Weber’s statement may be less than totally accurate (if anyone’s interested, the text of Weber’s essay is here), but as I wrote in my first “H-Bomb” post at The Hoover Hog, I think Weber’s call to “struggle against Jewish-Zionist power” says more about his own political and ideological priorities than it does about Holocaust revisionism, which remains a positivist and skeptical method pursued in critical response to an entrenched and often legally enshrined consensus view of specific historical events. My mild opposition to Zionism is nothing more than an offshoot of my general antipathy toward all strains of nationalism, which is a matter apart. One could be as hardcore as Hertzle and still be a gas chamber skeptic. The perceived contradiction is rhetorical, or associational. The fact (at least I’m pretty sure it’s a fact) that most HBD “realists” oppose affirmative action doesn’t mean that such a political view follows from the science. The sociology may change in time, but Weber’s struggle is not my struggle. I worry about “Jewish-Zionist power” as often as I worry about rampaging elephants.
The McMartin panic got me to wondering about the Nazi gassing claims. I knew there was a dissident line and I looked into it. I came away a skeptic. I can’t speak for others and their noisy agendas. But for me it was just that simple.
June 17, 2009 at 9:08 pm
If you read the Kinsella paper, he takes on the notion that there is some sort of fixed amount of responsibility so that to blame Manson we must absolve those who carried out his orders. It makes more sense to say they all are complicit, though a mailman who unwittingly delivers a mail-bomb would not be.
Weber said “some revisionists insist that their work is vitally important because success in exposing the Holocaust as a hoax will deliver a shattering blow to Israel and Jewish-Zionist power”. He rejects that view and concludes that effort should be shifted away from revisionism. It is not a stretch to conclude that he once believed otherwise and that motivated his revisionism. Nor is Weber only speaking for himself as I’ve heard other denialists/revisionists explicitly tie the issue to the ones I’ve mentioned (though not affirmative action, as far I can recall). I engaged in tasteless Armenian genocide denialism a while back precisely to highlight that we do not see nearly so much of it elsewhere (except among select groups like Turks). That to me serves as more evidence of the importance in those motivating factors.
I’m not familiar with the McMartin panic.
June 16, 2009 at 10:06 am
There’s a ‘James Von Brunn As I Knew Him’ thread on a forum that I have the dubious honor of owning.
From the perspective of that vantage point, it’s difficult to connect anyone questioning the holocaust’s history with what Von Brunn did or credit historians who beg to differ with the official version, with influence Von Brunn.
He was an anti-semite, and holocaust museums are religious institutions.
From his actions, one might deduce that the financial crisis combined with the loss of his pension, exacerbated his insanity.
The Jews were to blame for everything in his mind, so to die acting against their general society was more likely his intention.
If it was conclusively proven that the six million were really gassed into lampshades, the knowledge would increase, not diminish a man like Von Brunn’s respect for the Nazis and hatred of the Jews.
June 16, 2009 at 7:30 pm
I’m puzzled by the bit about his Social Security being cut. I was under the impression that the paychecks just went on forever and one was one of the most well-run aspects of our government (that from James Q Wilson’s Bureaucracy). I invite readers who know how the system works to lend their insight.
June 16, 2009 at 6:07 pm
As an excerpt from a comment I made to Bradley Smith has kicked off this entire thread, I think it is of value to make my opinion on this matter clear.
The tragic shooting of June 10th at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has resulted in various commentators and organizations suggesting that the belief system of Holocaust revisionism can lead to violence. The murder of Stephen Johns, a guard at the USHMM by a deranged gunman should be condemned by all thoughtful people.
Revisionism is at its heart a peace movement. Revisionism is not about hate nor is it about violence. Revisionism is intended to arrive at the facts about various historical events in light of a more objective attitude.
The Holocaust itself can be and has been used as an ideological weapon. A proper understanding of what did and did not happen during this tragic time in our history should lead to a better understanding between peoples and nations.
June 16, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I’m sympathetic to peace advocacy, which leads me to listen to those with a skeptical take on various “good wars” of the past. But declaring revisionism to be a “peace movement” seems just the sort of thing I’m complaining about. To take Von Brunn for example, he wasn’t a peaceful fellow but I think it would be silly to make “no true revisionist” statements about him. Merely being a pro-historical accuracy movement should be enough, and if a broader acceptance of revisionism leads to more peace (personally I’m skeptical of whether ideas really matter) then lucky for that.
June 20, 2009 at 9:44 am
Revisionism is however a “peace movement.” From its start it was focused on the revision of the “Treaty of Versailles” with the intent that revising certain passages would prevent a subsequent war from occurring. Although the Revisionists of WWI were not successful with their calls to revise the Treaty, they were rather successful getting their ideas into the mainstream. Of course, these had little positive impact on preventing subsequent wars — so your comment about ideas really mattering may come with some weight.
To suggest that Von Brunn was a “true revisionist” is certainly unfair. That people may be drawn to ideas even such disorganized ideas as revisionism does not make them adherents of the principles of such ideas or of the primary representatives of such a movement. If for example someone shoots up an abortion-clinic, can we properly call them a Christian? Even if they attended Church regularly?
Von Brunn had many influences in his long life apparently including the military, various anti-Semitic and racist organizations and we have learned recently child pornography. That Von Brunn declared the Holocaust a “hoax” does not make him a revisionist anymore than watching “The Ten Commandments” makes someone a Jew.
June 20, 2009 at 10:02 am
I should not have written “watching ‘The Ten Commandments'” but rather reciting the Ten Commandments.
June 20, 2009 at 10:37 am
You are making a “no true Scotsman” argument. If someone claims to believe in Christ and accept him as their savior, goes to church and is considered a Christian by other Christians as well as non-Christians, their anti-abortion violence does not revoke their Christianity unless they disavow it.
June 17, 2009 at 11:43 am
On second reading, Von Brunn was in actuality only facing a reduction of his state allowance.
June 17, 2009 at 8:53 pm
There are state allowances in addition to social security? I hoped there would be more of a race-to-the-bottom effect with our federalist system.
June 17, 2009 at 11:01 pm
I guess the inset reply option stops at a certain point?
Anyway. I’ll read the Kinsella paper. Thanks for the reminder.
It is not a stretch to conclude that he once believed otherwise and that motivated his revisionism.
I absolutely agree. I think Weber’s motivations are pretty damn transparent, if you look at his work over the years. He had a political agenda and viewed HR/HD as a means to an end. And yes, he’s far from alone. I’m under no illusions about this, and I got what you were doing with the Armenian genocide thing. I thought it was clever.
But here’s the thing. IF there really are serious problems with the received Holocaust story — problems that go to the core of what is said to be uniquely atrocious or “evil” — then I don’t think anyone should be surprised that politically interested unseemlies would gravitate noisily to the cause. And IF points of empirical contention are not, by dint of social decorum and status-guarding and taboo, open to traditional venues of scholarly discourse, and IF it is in fact illegal to discuss key points critically in many Western democracies, it seems even less surprising that the crankily motivated should be left to do most of the yelling.
The story really is about free speech and free inquiry, in a deeper sense than is generally recognized. I suspect there a lot of closeted skeptics.
Dubious motives surely inform and distort certain arguments, but kooks will be more likely to exploit a good argument that they see as being advantageous to their goals. Weber saw diminishing returns and shifted gears. And fuck him. To my mind, he made his bad reasons clear enough long ago, and my honest hope is that similarly motivated revisionists/deniers will follow him in his anti-Zionist crusade all the way. It’ll be a useful culling, and revisionism will be strengthened for it.
McMartin was the most notorious pre-school in the Satanic abuse panic that played out during the 80s and early 90s. I followed the story closely at the time.
June 18, 2009 at 7:00 pm
If insets kept continuing the width would shrink too much for it to be readable. I think the way they have it set up is good.
Strength through purity has a nice sound to it, but how many revisionists would be left? The holocaust does have a decent leg-up in mind-share relative to your run-of-the-mill genocide, but taking the “outside view” the dearth of revisionists in the western world for all the others suggests to me that the Von Brunns play at least a significant catalytic role.
I remember going to the IHR website a while back thinking that it would be worthwhile if there was actually a journal dedicated to revisionist history. What I found was like the caricature of the History channel (“all Hitler all the time”). I think they might have also had “They Were White and They Were Slaves”. Eliezer Yudkowsky pledged to say nothing for a year of the Subjects Not To Be Named when he started LessWrong (a good idea in my view, even if I still prefer OB). A journal of historical review that began (I do think there’s some value in re-examining WW2 generally and the holocaust more specifically) with the same policy toward WW2 would be an interesting thing, but I doubt it would get off the ground. I’ve got the same gripe about NGO Watch*: it seems like a good idea generally but the people involved chose to only focus on one controversy and I don’t bother reading anything they say.
*I decided to look them up again in the course of writing this comment and found that NGO Watch does have a general focus, I had them confused with NGO Monitor.
Regarding closeted skeptics, I wonder if there are some poll numbers on the idea. I often hear of similar ones for people who think the moon-landing was faked, 9/11 was an inside job, Oswald being a patsy.
June 18, 2009 at 5:51 am
I’ll break it down for you …
1. The Nazis did not intend or attempt to exterminate the European Jews.
2. The ‘gas chambers’ are a hoax, there were no gas chabmers.
3. The six million figure is pure phantasmagoria, unsupported by any evidence.
For a brief intro, with pictures, see …
http://history1a/tripod.com/hh/
BTW, I’m a denier, and I liked your little write up, especially the “(deniers) expect sympathy for Palestinians or the civilians fried at Dresden. Those are worthwhile issues to discuss but should preferably be kept distinct from others that might turn things into a victimology contest.” It is a victimology contest, I suppose, but that ain’t the point.
June 18, 2009 at 5:53 am
Oops … bad link… correct link is …
http://history1a.tripod.com/hh/
June 18, 2009 at 3:06 pm
To clarify, when mentioning “state allowance” I was referring to a social security facetiously.
June 18, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Thanks for clearing that up.
June 19, 2009 at 1:43 pm
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