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神聖な神話と教義としてのホロコースト（前半）
イランのホロコースト会議の跡を追う最終的反省
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http://www.codoh.com/viewpoints/vppgsacred.html
The Holocaust as Sacred Myth and Ideology:
Final Reflections in the Wake of the Iran Holocaust Conference
By Paul Grubach 2007
I. The Specter
A specter is haunting Western Civilization. It is the specter of Holocaust revisionism. The power elites of Europe, the United States and beyond have entered into holy alliance to exorcise this specter: Pope and US President, British and Canadian Prime Minister, French and Russian Foreign Ministers, German Chancellor and Justice Minister, international Zionism and the Western mass media. The list goes on and on.
In December of 2006, a watershed event took place in the history of Holocaust revisionism, the historical discipline that states there was no Nazi plan to exterminate Europe's Jews, the "Nazi Gas Chambers" never existed, and the number of Jews killed during WWII is grossly exaggerated. On December 11 and 12, 2006, the Islamic Republic of Iran hosted an international conference during which different viewpoints about the Holocaust and the issues that surround it were presented.
One of the very few, evenhanded descriptions of the conference was put forth by an unlikely source, the influential business and finance publication, Investor's Business Daily. "The avowed enemy of Israel," they rightly pointed out, "hosted a two-day conference for Holocaust skeptics, at which attendees expressed doubts that the Nazis exterminated 6 million Jews during World War II."1 It is important to add there were speakers and attendees that accepted the traditional view of the Holocaust. This was the first time in history, however, that a sovereign government hosted a conference in which Holocaust revisionist viewpoints were welcomed.
In general, world reaction was both swift and highly negative. Leaders in Washington, London, Berlin, Paris, Ottawa, Moscow and numerous other capitols put forth harshly worded condemnations. A Dec. 13, 2006 Yahoo news missive stated: "Israel spearheaded the international outcry over the meeting."2 Indeed, the ensuing international reaction unfolded like the outcome of a secret plan formulated in the inner sanctums of the Israeli Knesset.
According to news sources, the highest echelon of the Catholic Church, the Vatican, called "the Holocaust an 'mmense tragedy' for all humanity, in a statement admitting of no doubt that the mass murder took place."3 The White House said in a press statement on Dec. 11 that the Holocaust gathering in Iran is an "affront to the entire civilized world, as well as the traditional Iranian values of tolerance and mutual respect."4
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair called the Iranian conference "shocking beyond belief." German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed outrage: "I would like to make clear that we reject with all our strength the conference taking place in Iran about the supposed nonexistence of the Holocaust." Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper alleged that "the conference hosted by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with the sole purpose of denying the Holocaust is an offence to all Canadians." French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy complained that "The conference represents a resurgence of 'revisionist' theories which are quite simply not acceptable." The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a declaration, saying that "Russia shares the determination of the UN general assembly not to allow the denial of the Holocaust."5
Here, the international Holocaust lobby made a mass "appeal to authority." They prodded numerous governments to make these public condemnations because they know full well that large numbers of people will blindly believe the claim"The Holocaust happened"--if people in positions of authority say it is "true," irregardless of how flimsy and weak the evidence for the Holocaust doctrine may be. As a matter of fact, it is a very easy task to show how questionable the traditional view of the Holocaust really is.6
II. The Weakness of the Holocaust Doctrine
Expressing the etched-in-stone official truth, the New York Times declared: "The two day-meeting included no attempt to come to terms with the nature of the well-documented Nazi slaughter, offering only a platform to those pursuing the fantasy that it never happened."7
This is false on two counts. First, there were speakers who accepted the traditional view of the Holocaust, and disputed the revisionist viewpoint. For example, a December 13, 2006, article in their own newspaper (!) pointed out that an Iranian scholar insisted that certain aspects of the Holocaust are well documented.8
Second, it is very easy to show that the alleged Holocaust is not well-documented. To put it mildly, it is based upon highly questionable speculations. Consider just a very small sample of the evidence a revisionist could muster. These are not even the best examples, just the simplest to explain in a short amount of space.
Holocaust historian Leon Poliakov pointed out decades ago that there are no documents to prove that the Nazis ever had any plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe: "[T]he campaign to exterminate the Jews, as regards its conception as well as many other essential aspects, remains shrouded in darkness. Inferences, psychological considerations, and third- or fourth-hand reports enable us to reconstruct its development with considerable accuracy. Certain details, however, must remain forever unknown. The three or four people chiefly involved in the actual drawing up of the plan for total extermination are dead and no documents have survived; perhaps none ever existed."9
In short, the "evidence" that "proves" the existence of an alleged Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews is simply the guesswork of Holocaust historians. Hard documentary proof is missing.
One of the foremost Holocaust historians, Raul Hilberg, admitted that scientific proof for the existence of the "Hitler gas chambers" is missing. No authentic and genuine autopsy report exists to show that Jews were killed with poison gas. No one has ever produced any photographs of Jews being gassed.10
As the late Jean-Claude Pressac (widely considered to be an authority on the alleged Auschwitz gas chambers) was forced to admit, in the blueprints, construction documents and work orders that trace the construction and subsequent use of the buildings that allegedly housed the "Auschwitz gas chambers," there is no explicit reference to the use of gas chambers or Zyklon B for homicidal purposes.11
Holocaust historian Robert Jan van Pelt conceded that the "evidence" for the mass killings of Jews at Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec -- here allegedly millions were murdered--is sparse at best. In reference to these three camps, he wrote: "There are few eyewitnesses, no confession that can compare to that given by [Auschwitz commandant Rudolf] Hoss, no significant remains, and few archival sources."12
Dr. van Pelt also admits that the wartime claims that Jews were electrocuted en masse in "electrocution chambers" at Belzec and on "electric conveyor belts" at Auschwitz are also falsehoods.13 If the evidence that "proves" that Jews were electrocuted en masse is bogus, isn't it also possible that the "evidence" that "proves" that Jews were murdered in "gas chambers" is also bogus, or at least very suspect?
Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt conceded that the story that the Nazis made soap from Jewish corpses is apparently another war time falsehood. She also pointed to evidence that leads one to believe that the eyewitness testimony that forms most of the "proof" of the traditional view of the Holocaust is unreliable.14
Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer admitted that the formerly "etched-in-stone-fact" that four million souls were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz was a deliberate myth created to serve an ulterior political agenda. This shows that conspiracy (premeditated distortions introduced for political ends) was involved in the shaping of the Holocaust doctrine.15
The list of highly questionable claims, falsehoods, contradictions, and absurdities in the traditional Holocaust doctrine is seemingly endless.16
III. Media Responses
Condemnations of the conference coming from mainstream media sources in the West were similar to government condemnations. The editorial that appeared in Forward, perhaps the US's most important Jewish newspaper, was typical. Entitled "The Conclave of Hate," it stated; "[T]he Iranian regime may have done the world a favor when it decided to host this week's international gathering of Holocaust deniers. By rolling out the red carpet for the ugliest gathering in recent memory of frauds, nutballs, white racists and unreconstructed Nazis from every dark corner of the world, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his bully boys have made plainer than ever the sort of people they are. Their bizarre festival of hate has driven home to the world community, in a way that nothing else could do, just who it is that sits in Tehran and schemes to build a nuclear bomb."17
The pattern of Western news accounts and editorials about the conference were remarkably similar. They simply condemned those who attended with derogatory epithets. They stated that the traditional view of the Holocaust is an indisputable fact. They refused to fairly examine the alternative viewpoint, the case for Holocaust revisionism. And finally, they promoted outright lies about the conference. These are stock-in-trade tactics as to how mainstream Western news sources deal with Holocaust revisionism, and as we shall see, are comparable to the propaganda techniques used by totalitarian regimes to control the thinking of the masses. Only on rare occasions were there fair and honest reports and blurbs about the Iranian meeting.
IV. Mass Propaganda and the Holocaust Ideology
The Jewish owned New York Times is the most important newspaper in the United States, and most certainly is among the world's most respected news sources. For the United States at least, it is "the paper of record," and to a large extent, all news in the nation, particularly foreign, is what the Times calls news. The Times not only reflects and mirrors what many power elites are thinking, they create said thinking. With few exceptions, how the Times dealt with the Iran Holocaust conference illustrates how the mainstream Western media in general dealt with the conference.
In his recently published book, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, historian Jeffrey Herf brought attention to the mass propaganda techniques and the "basic laws" of mass influence that were advocated by certain German National Socialists. They are: "intellectual simplification, limitation to a few key points, repetition of those points, focus on one subjective standpoint to the exclusion of others, and appeal to the emotions and to stark contrasts between good and bad or truth and lies, rather than to nuances or shades of gray."18
With these "basic laws of mass propaganda" in mind, let us examine a good portion of what the Times published about the Iran Holocaust conference.
The first article, before the conference began, was somewhat balanced and fair. It was entitled "Iran Invites Scholars to Assess Holocaust as History or Fiction." Here are some excerpts: "[T]he conference to be held in Tehran?ould include more than 60 scholars from 30 countries and would examine a range of issues, including whether the gas chambers were actually used."19 The article further points out that Iran's president Ahmadinejad stated on several occasions the Holocaust is exaggerated or it is an outright myth, and it has been used as a propaganda tool to promote Israe's interests.
The Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi was quoted as saying the conference would "provide the opportunity for scholars from both sides to give their papers in freedom and without preconceived ideas." Apparently, here is where objective reporting on the conference ends. The ensuing articles I have examined are, for the most part, a mirror image of the mass propaganda techniques of a controlled media.
The news report on December 12 begins with these words: "Iran held a gathering that included Holocaust deniers, discredited scholars and white supremacists from around the world on Monday under the guise of a conference to 'debate' the Nazi annihilation of six million Jews."20
This is grossly inaccurate. They failed to point out, for example, that the conference attendees included leftist scholars, like France's Serge Thion, a respected sociologist. Nor did they note that long-time American free speech advocate, Bradley Smith, was a speaker. Smith's wife is of Mexican descent, and his ex was Jewish -- hardly the "right stuff" for the "white supremacist" mold.
Furthermore, author, newspaper correspondent, and radio talk show host Michael Collins Piper, who was present at the conference, pointed out that there were a considerable number of non-European intellectuals present, thus falsifying the Timess insinuation that it was a "gathering of white supremacists." He wrote: "[T]he conference was a diverse and eclectic gathering which not only featured a group of anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish rabbis but also included Black speakers from the African continent, as well as Palestinian Muslim attendees and European academics who insisted the Holocaust, as it is popularly remembered, did happen, and that it was a major tragedy in which many millions of Jews were deliberately exterminated."21
Elsewhere Piper wrote that many speakers were "people of color from Africa and Asia and throughout the Middle East. The Iran conference was hardly the so-called 'white supremacist or 'racist conclave that the American media falsely portrayed."22
While noting that former Ku Klux Klan leader Dr. David Duke attended, they made a demonstrably false claim about his speech. They charged that Duke said "the gas chambers in which millions perished actually did not exist." This is blatantly false, and the reader is encouraged to listen to or read Duke's speech in total. Nowhere does he say that the "gas chambers" did or did not exist. He simply argued for free enquiry on this issue.23
Let us move onto the Dec. 13 article. It states: "Despite promises of open-mindedness, when one participant talked about the scholarship confirming the Holocaust, his views were quickly dismissed. That speaker, an Iranian historian, Gholamreza Vatandoust, from Shiraz University, said, 全ome facts about the Holocaust have been documented. But he was criticized immediately by Robert Faurisson, a French academic, who said he had never found documents to support the Holocaust."24
The Dec. 13 article continues: "One of the few ultra-Orthodox rabbis at the conference, Moshe Ayre Friedman from Austria, said, 'I am not a denier of the Holocaust, but I think it is legitimate to cast doubt on some statistics."
What this suggests is that the Conference was not a "gathering of Holocaust deniers and white supremacists," as was stated at the beginning of the article. There were indeed attendees who challenged the revisionist view of the Holocaust, and there were also Jewish people present who are not "white supremacists."
As previously stated, attendee Michael Collins Piper pointed out that there were quite a few speakers who accepted the traditional view of the Holocaust. In his own words: "Many [speakers] took the position that the basic story of the Holocaust, as it has been told in the media, was essentially what happened, but that whatever happened -- to whatever degree -- did not justify Israel's ongoing treatment of the Palestinian people."25
Here is the most important observation. The Times made no attempt in any of their articles to list the arguments and evidence of the Holocaust revisionists, and then objectively examine them. Specifically, they made no attempt to fairly examine the arguments and evidence in the presentations of Dr. Robert Faurisson and Dr. Frederick Toben.26
This is a mass propaganda tactic of a totalitarian regime. They focused on one subjective viewpoint, their traditional view of the Holocaust, and excluded the revisionist arguments and evidence. As Jeffrey Herf pointed out, this was a major feature of National Socialist mass propaganda: the focus on one subjective viewpoint and the exclusion of others.
Let us now move on to the December 15, 2006, editorial. It begins: "This week's conference in Iran of Holocaust deniers and racists was, predictably, a circus of Holocaust denial and racism argued by discredited scholars and even the former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke."27
This is proven wrong by their own articles. In the December 13 article we learned that there were people present who accepted the traditional view of the Holocaust and challenged the revisionist view, and that there were Jewish rabbis present. Furthermore, as attendee Michael Collins Piper pointed out, there were scholars and intellectuals present from Asia and Africa, thus falsifying their insinuation that it was conference of " white racists."
The editorial continues: "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran apparently believes his claims that the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis is a myth ginned up to justify the creation of the state of Israel. This is frightening enough. Couple that with his calls to wipe Israel off the map"
They say that it is "frightening" if someone does not believe that the Nazis killed six million Jews. Yet, according to their morality, it is not "frightening" for them to sympathetically review a book that claims a belief in God and religion is a dangerous illusion. In the October 22, 2006, issue of their New York Times Book Review, there was a long and calm discussion of the anti-Christian/anti-Muslim, atheistic tome of scientist Richard Dawkins.
Why is it "frightening" to believe that the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis is a myth, yet it is not frightening to argue that God and all religion are one big delusion? What the Times choose to label as a "frightening belief" tell us more about their ulterior Jewish-Zionist double standard than about reality.
Furthermore, it is totally false that Ahmandinejad called for "Israel to be wiped off of the map." According to University of Michigan Professor and Middle East scholar, Juan Cole, what he did say is this: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."28
Ahmadinejad further clarified what he meant at the close of the conference: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom." He also called for elections among "Jews, Christians, and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."29
President Ahmadinejad proposed that the Zionist state be replaced by a democratic state where the different ethnic groups would function as social and political equals. This is what he meant when he said that Israel would disappear as the Soviet Union disappeared. Yet, the distortion that he said that "Israel should be wiped off the map," thus implying that the Israeli people should be destroyed, is a lie that was repeated over and over again by mainstream media sources and influential groups.30
As Professor Arthur Butz noted, one of the major implications of his revisionist classic, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, is that "the media in the western democracies are exposed as constituting a lie machine of vaster extent than even many of the more independent minded have perceived."31 The manner in which the New York Times covered the Iran Holocaust conference seems to confirm this viewpoint.
V. God, Religion, Science, and the Holocaust Ideology
Future historians will find it utterly ironic that the reactions to the conference on the part of Western governments and mainstream media sources actually vindicated the now famous observation of Iran痴 President Mahmoud Ahmandinejad, the very man and viewpoints who these power elites want to ostracize, demonize and condemn.
In reference to political Zionism and certain Western governments, President Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying: "They have fabricated a legend under the name of Massacre of the Jews, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves. If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody denies the myth of the massacre of the Jews, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream."32
This was a statement "heard around the world." It sometimes takes a critic outside of a particular culture to bring to the world's attention the hypocrisy and cant that is corrupting said culture. By making the preceding statement, President Ahmadinejad has done such a service to both Western society and the world at large, for he has exposed the hypocrisy and double standard that plagues Western society -- society that claims it supports freedom of speech and has no state enforced religions.
In the late 1960s, Jewish intellectual Hugh Schonfeld published a book entitled The Passover Plot, its thesis being that Christianity is one big, bald faced lie. According to Schonfeld, Jesus Christ planned his own arrest, crucifixion and resurrection. He arranged to be drugged on the cross, simulating death so that he could later be safely removed and thus bear out the Messianic prophesies. Schonfeld was never censored by publishers, the mass media or publicly condemned by Western governments, nor was he deported from his home in London to a prison cell for his anti-Christian writings.33
His book was published by a respected, United States mainstream publisher (Bantam Books) and sympathetically reviewed and discussed in respected mainstream US media outlets.34
In the early 1970s, University of Manchester intellectual John Allegro published his The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. The book's thesis is that Christianity is one big fraud, and the concept of the Christian God is a drug-induced hallucination. The man we know as Jesus Christ was the illusory personification of a fertility cult based on the use of a psychedelic drug. Allegro's book was published by respected mainstream publishers in the United States (Doubleday, Bantam), and discussed in respected US media outlets.35 Once again, Allegro was never publicly condemned by Western governments, censored by mainstream publishers, and then deported to a prison cell for his anti-Christian writings.
Consider the case of Dr. Michael Shermer, a boring and intellectually mediocre atheist that bolstered his career by promoting the Holocaust ideology.36 Shermer, founder of Skeptics Society, has a long track record of attacking religion and the concept of God. Shermer suffers no persecution or harassment. Quite the contrary! He is a recognized figure in academic circles and is also a media celebrity.
Just recently, the renowned evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, had his atheistic, very anti-religious book, The God Delusion, published by the respected and mainstream publishing houses, Houghton Mifflin and Bantam Press. Dawkins was given time to present his atheistic viewpoints to millions of listeners in his British Broadcasting Corporation documentary. His arguments were given serious consideration in the October 22, 2006, New York Times Book Review and Britian's September 23, 2006, Guardian Unlimited . The book is openly promoted and sold at large book dealers throughout the US and Great Britain. Western government and mass media reaction were similar. Western governments were silent, and mainstream media sources promoted it.
In March of 2007, the popular Discovery Channel featured a documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which attacked the fundamental tenets of the Christian religion. It claims that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, fathered a child, and never rose from the dead. That this is offensive to millions of Christians goes without saying.37
The case of French high school philosophy teacher and author, Robert Redeker, illustrates the hypocrisy and double standard most clearly. In a newspaper commentary in the French newspaper, Le Figaro, he made a scathing attack upon the Prophet Mohammed and the Islamic religion. He wrote that Mohammed was a "a merciless warlord and looter, a mass-murderer of Jews and polygamist," and he labeled the Koran "a book of incredible violence." After receiving death threats, including one from an online Islamic forum, he went into hiding under police protection.38
The French government came to the defense of Mr. Redeker. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called the threats "unacceptable." He then added this most blatant lie: "We are in a democracy. Everyone has the right to express his views freely, while respecting others, of course."39
That this is an outrageous lie is demonstrated by the case the Holocaust revisionist scholar, Dr. Robert Faurisson. According to the European Jewish Press, he "was removed from his university chair on the basis of his [Holocaust revisionist] views under the Gayssot Act, a French statute passed in 1990 that prohibits Holocaust denial." Furthermore, French President Jacques Chirac ordered a probe into the revisionist comments made by the intrepid revisionist scholar at the Iranian Holocaust conference, with the possibility being that the French government could bring new charges against him for "Holocaust denial." He was already given a three-month suspended jail term for Holocaust revisionist remarks he made on Iranian television in October 2006.40
- (後半)：Re: 神聖な神話と教義としてのホロコースト 木村愛二 2007/4/24 16:48:44
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- Footnotes ：Re: 神聖な神話と教義としてのホロコースト 木村愛二 2007/4/24 16:52:38
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- Footnotes ：Re: 神聖な神話と教義としてのホロコースト 木村愛二 2007/4/24 16:52:38
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