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There was no Holocaust: Kevin Myers
Friday, 6 March 2009
Let me say from the outset; I'm with Bishop Richard Williamson on this.
There was no holocaust, (or Holocaust, as my computer software insists) and six million Jews were not murdered by the Third Reich. These two statements of mine are irrefutable truths, yet their utterance could get me thrown in the slammer in half the countries of the EU.
Why, they could in the right circumstances even get me extradited for trial in Sweden, a country which heroically kept the Third Reich supplied with iron ore, even as the last victims of the Nazi genocide were being murdered.
What? I admit that there was murder and genocide (or Genocide, as my spell-check wants me to call it) but almost in the same breath, insist that there was no holocaust? How is this possible?
Well, if you turn historical events into current political dogmas, (believed even by my computer) you are thereby creating a sort of secular, godless religion, which becomes mandatory for all who wish to participate in public life. Yet dogmas, by definition, are so simplistic and crude that they are usually not merely wrong, but are also probably so.
It is an offence in German law to say that six million Jews did not die in the holocaust. Very well then. I am a criminal in Germany. For efficient though the Nazis were, they were not so clinically precise as to kill six million Jews — not a Jew more, or not a Jew less.
As it happens, the figure ‘six million' was originally a round-estimate of the total numbers of concentration camp victims of the Third Reich: this was then turned by popular perception, aided by activists such as the Simon Weisenthal Centre, into the Jewish death toll.
However, there is not even a scientific or documentary basis for this number. Its enduring appeal — the digit six, with the six zeros which follow it — depends upon a fairly basic human predilection for numerological magic. It is, very likely, a subconsciously appealing version of the diabolical, 666.
Moreover, there certainly was no holocaust. For if the word is to have any literal validity at all, it must be related to its actual meaning, which comes from the Greek words holos, 'whole', and caust, ‘fire'. Most Jewish victims of the Third Reich were not burnt in the ovens in Auschwitz. They were shot by the hundreds of thousands in the Lebensraum of the east, or were worked or starved to death in a hundred other camps, across the Reich.
This programme was begun informally by Nazi armies in 1941, and only took organised form after the Wannsee conference in January 1942. Thus was born one of the most satanic operations in world history, in which millions of Jews were murdered. To be sure, you can use the term holocaust to describe these events, but only as a metaphor.
However, to turn that metaphor into a political dogma, a denial of which can result in imprisonment, is to create a religio-penal code of which Torquemada would have approved.
Now, I've done an extensive internet search on Bishop Williamson, and I truly have no idea what he actually said about the Third Reich; though he is everywhere called a ‘holocaust denier', as if this term has some universal meaning.
It hasn't. I'm a holocaust denier; but I also believe that the Nazis planned the extermination of the Jewish people, as far as their evil hands could reach. And because the Nazis lost, the free-speech party won. So, this means that the bishop can believe, and even publicly state, if he wants, that Auschwitz was an ice-cream parlour and the SS was a dance troupe.
That is the nature of free speech. Any one of us should be able to declare any old counter-factual and even offensive nonsense, without being sent to jail, provided we preach hatred for no one. It's a free and equal world.
Or is it?
Across Europe, there are countless Islamic madrasahs, in which imams regularly preach hatred for Jews, and where the holocaust is routinely denied. Which member-state of the EU will pursue such conveyors of hate, or seek the extradition of an imam who says that the holocaust was a Zionist hoax? None of them. We know this. For the EU has tolerated the creation of an informal historiographical apartheid. So, on the one hand, a single, eccentric (and possibly deranged) Christian bishop may be hounded for his demented historical beliefs: but on the other, there is a deafening silence over the widespread and virulent distortion of the ‘holocaust' by Islamic preachers.
If Bishop Williamson has an agenda, it is so bonkers as to rank alongside that of The Lunar Cheese Society.
Yet he, and other Christian cranks like him, could even be imprisoned for their stated beliefs, as other ‘men of God', working to an infinitely more sinister and far more politically inspired agenda, are simultaneously ignored.
This disparity is now effectively an EU policy.
You can reasonably call such double-standards many things, but the words ‘rational', ‘wise' or ‘consistent' are not among them. ‘Suicidal' and ‘insane', however, certainly are.
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Comments
39 Comments
No country locks anyone up because they make the absolutely crass point that 6 million didn't die because it couldn't have been that exact figure. Again a complete non point.
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An ill-informed point made by a holocaust-peddler.
The fact of the matter is that many people have spent or are spending time in jail because they have dismissed the official holocaust version of events.
As a young man, I'm not sure how things have changed over time, but we certainly live nowadays in an age of historical saturisation. The holocaust idea has been drummed into the brains of everyone from an early age.
Unfortunately, ignorance of the masses is used against the masses. Your stupidity and gullibility is their most potent weapon.
Posted by Jason | 05.04.09, 01:19 GMT
all truth passes through three stages:
first, it is ridiculed
second, it is violently opposed
third, it is accepted as self evident
Posted by Jason | 05.04.09, 01:05 GMT
Proof that access to wikipedia should be restricted.
Posted by Tristan McCorry | 16.03.09, 16:45 GMT
Y, as an '' illiterate, easily-led automaton'' I've difficulty understanding your illogical, irrelevant ad hominem argument based on the misuse of a selective quotation from my comments.
Posted by George | 10.03.09, 11:18 GMT
Ya R A disgrace to Europe trying to say there was not a holocaust thats so stupid
there is still a lot of people who have the scars of wot happend to them as we have scars of wot happend here its just an insult to the people who died in the Camps.
[Im Not Jewish im Catholic but Religion Shouldint Matter}
Posted by RJ {North Of Ireland} | 10.03.09, 09:11 GMT
A typical 'no-mark' trying to make a name for himself by trying to be what he seems as 'edgy'. What'll it be next week - that Jade Goody deserves to die (or has he done that one already?) Baffling that BT continue to publish his jaundiced views - yet ignore more intelligent efforts from members of the public (what hold has Kevin got over them, I wonder?)
Posted by Donegore | 10.03.09, 09:08 GMT
I never knew what a Troll was with regard to electronic publications ie blogs etc, until recently. Look it up Kevin Myers, because this risible defence of Bishop Williamson's "right" to deny the holocaust is the perfect example, and you are a Troll.
Noam Chomsky's talking dog could have written no worse. You are therefore cordially invited to join my own organisation: The Alien Spacegoat Causeway Creationists (as in Giant's Causeway)
Posted by plannisuarus rex | 09.03.09, 19:53 GMT
Y, as an'' illiterate,easily-led automaton'' I'm confused by your irrelevant and illogical ad hominem argument based on a selective quotation from my post.
Posted by George | 09.03.09, 16:47 GMT
"I was at Auschwitz/Birkenau three weeks ago and the atmosphere of evil was strongest in the execution area of the former Polish cavalry barracks."
George, stop confusing the way you "feel" with actual knowledge. It's precisely illiterate, easily-led automatons like you that Myers is attempting to jolt awake.
Posted by Y. | 09.03.09, 07:45 GMT
i think this guy is hitler re born, he would have made a good prison guard in one of the camps, where do these people come from. he needs a brain scan,if he has one.
frank
Posted by frank mc Cracken | 08.03.09, 23:29 GMT
In 1940 Stalin murdered over 14000 of Polands finest men and women, yet how many people of the world knows of that tragedy, and I bet that most of them were christians. My point is a lot of horrors were committed gainst all peoples by the Nazies and to focus only on the jewish people seems to be idiotic and down right selfish.
Posted by joe jurkiewicz | 08.03.09, 23:20 GMT
Mr Myers - I know you see the truth behind all the politically correct censorship in the British Isles. Thank you so much for having the courage to write the truth. Very few other than you and Conor Cruise O'Brien have had the objectivity to see things as they are, rather than interpreting events through a PC / populist glass. Thank you for your honesty.
Posted by Rab | 08.03.09, 22:59 GMT
Great article. Very brave and POLITICALLY INCORRECT: That's why I liked it very much. László from Hungary
Posted by László | 08.03.09, 21:38 GMT
Israel and the Jewish community around the world have been at the forefront of condemning genocide in Darfur. Chris, how come the Sudanese president describes criticism of his murderous regime as Zionist inspired?
Posted by Av | 07.03.09, 21:41 GMT
Kevin:
You are a **** journalist. The point you are trying to make is missed by the way you make it.
In simple terms, you just come over as a bit of a onanist.
Now let's see how long it is before this is deleted, or if it fails to appear in the first place, after all, on your piece about free speech, it says at the bottom of the page:
"Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP address logged and may be used to prevent further submissions. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by BelfastTelegraph.co.uk's Terms of Use. "
Posted by Claud Cockburn's restless ghost | 07.03.09, 17:20 GMT
I think you might find it helpful to study the history of the Holocaust denial movement and their core system of lies. You would discover just how dazzling silly your straw man is, and perhaps even how offensive it is for you to be larking about so blithely on the topic. He who forgets the past is doomed to say utter crap about it while trying to be clever.
Posted by David | 07.03.09, 15:43 GMT
What a pathetic, irresponsible piece of writing.
Posted by Charles Ward | 07.03.09, 13:03 GMT
Never heard of Kevin Myers maybe he is not as important as he seems to think
Posted by sydney graham | 07.03.09, 11:50 GMT
Kevin Myers, you are not very bright, are you?
Posted by Bernd Honk | 07.03.09, 11:38 GMT
I CANNOT believe a newspaper publishes such piece. And I'm a social scientist working on racism and anti-semitism. This article is utterly ambiguous and full of inaccuracies that would outrage any historian having researched this theme. It cannot conceal its anti-semitism either, for example in the implicit argument that Jews utilize the Holocaust. Holocaust is actually a religious term for a sacrifice by fire - is it the relevant point that Jews were rather shot, starved to death, and killed in gas chambers (a point the author of this paper decided to overlook)?
Posted by VAW | 07.03.09, 06:05 GMT
39 Comments