Deniers are often so eager to create a Straw Man that they inadvertently expose their idiocy in the process. Here's a classic example. Deniers would like us to believe that, at Auschwitz, "According to the storyline, children, the sick, and the elderly were immediately 'gassed'". However, in the same article, they then reprint Soviet propaganda photographs showing Jewish children who were liberated at Auschwitz.
These Conspiraloon deniers therefore fabricate hoaxers who were both so impossibly clever that they could conceal their forgeries and machinations for over 60 years, and so improbably stupid that they would publish photographs of child survivors when they were in the process of creating a narrative in which the Nazis killed every child on arrival. In their desperation to create Straw Man history in which a genocide can only occur when there are no survivors, deniers thus prove that no such narrative was being constructed by the allies in 1945. The true narratives of the period were created by history itself, which is always complex and which rarely allows the schemes of tyrants to succeed without exceptions and ambiguities, necessitating that some survivors will indeed be left behind. In the case of Auschwitz, testimony shows that these exceptions came from the arbitrary power exercised by Mengele and other selectors, combined with the camp personnel's need for errand boys, sexual playthings, experimental subjects, and Kapo companions. Once again, in its ignorance of this history, we witness the unbearable stupidity of the Cesspit.
Note: Thanks again to KentFord9 of RODOH for help with source material.
Showing posts with label Conspiracism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conspiracism. Show all posts
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Conspiracism Is A Circular Firing Squad
Over at Screw Loose Change, the premier blog for debunking 9/11 Truther Woo, they've lately had something of a coup. The organiser of a forthcoming "9/11 Accountability Conference", featuring all the leading names of the 'Truth Movement', just so happens to be a Holocaust denier.
Not, mind you, that Eric D Williams is much of a name in denial circles. Indeed, his contribution is so inept that it would embarrass even Hannover for its clumsiness. His website features a PDFed 'book' detailing Williams' visit to Auschwitz which relies almost purely on argument to incredulity and long-debunked denier canards. Needless to say, Williams denies being a denier, but then they all do that, don't they?
The brouhaha in 9/11 Truther circles is worth following over at SLC, especially since CNN ran a story exposing the antisemitism of many in the 'Movement', which has lead one gaggle of Woos to suggest forming a Jewish 9/11 Truth group to act as a decoy in order to distract attention from the fact that many among the movement's researchers and sources - Eric Hufschmid, Christopher Bollyn, the American Free Press - are proven conspiracist antisemites.
Predictably, Truther footsoldiers have been flooding the SLC blog's comments threads with complaints that pointing to Eric Williams' Holocaust denial is a "smear". But as the story spreads, more and more Truthers seem to be dropping out of the conference or trying to put clear blue water between themselves and Williams, which strongly suggests that even conspiraloonies know that some of their kind peddle ideas that are too toxic for the wider world to swallow. Then again, other conspiraloonies have evidently been moved to read Williams' screed or come out of the closet as "Holocaust sceptics" themselves (all the while denying that they are antisemites, just "anti-Zionists") - scroll down to the comments of this post to see a classic example in the shape of 'Swing Dangler'.
But what is the overlap between the two forms of denial? There are few if any Holocaust 'revisionists' known to us at RODOH or elsewhere who vocally advocate the MIHOP lunacies of 9/11 denial; conversely, the majority of 9/11 Woos are desperate to distance themselves from Holocaust deniers, even as they rely on the AFP coterie for a significant proportion of their sources. You can even find complaints that "Holocaust deniers push hoaxes that sabotage 9/11 Truth Movement" on Truther-leaning sites.
It's fair to say that the leaders of both fringes - Dylan Avery on the one hand, Bradley Smith on the other - would probably be highly embarrassed by the antics of the segment of their audiences that overlaps. Well, tough cookies, deniers. If your audience are all morons, then expect them to do moronic things. If you peddle conspiracy theories to the gullible, then don't complain when they integrate yet another theory into their lunatic worldviews.
All of which goes to show that conspiracism, whether it espouses MIHOP views on 9/11, or claims without any proof or basis in fact that the Holocaust was a 'Hoax', eventually forms a circular firing squad.
Bwahaha.
Not, mind you, that Eric D Williams is much of a name in denial circles. Indeed, his contribution is so inept that it would embarrass even Hannover for its clumsiness. His website features a PDFed 'book' detailing Williams' visit to Auschwitz which relies almost purely on argument to incredulity and long-debunked denier canards. Needless to say, Williams denies being a denier, but then they all do that, don't they?
The brouhaha in 9/11 Truther circles is worth following over at SLC, especially since CNN ran a story exposing the antisemitism of many in the 'Movement', which has lead one gaggle of Woos to suggest forming a Jewish 9/11 Truth group to act as a decoy in order to distract attention from the fact that many among the movement's researchers and sources - Eric Hufschmid, Christopher Bollyn, the American Free Press - are proven conspiracist antisemites.
Predictably, Truther footsoldiers have been flooding the SLC blog's comments threads with complaints that pointing to Eric Williams' Holocaust denial is a "smear". But as the story spreads, more and more Truthers seem to be dropping out of the conference or trying to put clear blue water between themselves and Williams, which strongly suggests that even conspiraloonies know that some of their kind peddle ideas that are too toxic for the wider world to swallow. Then again, other conspiraloonies have evidently been moved to read Williams' screed or come out of the closet as "Holocaust sceptics" themselves (all the while denying that they are antisemites, just "anti-Zionists") - scroll down to the comments of this post to see a classic example in the shape of 'Swing Dangler'.
But what is the overlap between the two forms of denial? There are few if any Holocaust 'revisionists' known to us at RODOH or elsewhere who vocally advocate the MIHOP lunacies of 9/11 denial; conversely, the majority of 9/11 Woos are desperate to distance themselves from Holocaust deniers, even as they rely on the AFP coterie for a significant proportion of their sources. You can even find complaints that "Holocaust deniers push hoaxes that sabotage 9/11 Truth Movement" on Truther-leaning sites.
It's fair to say that the leaders of both fringes - Dylan Avery on the one hand, Bradley Smith on the other - would probably be highly embarrassed by the antics of the segment of their audiences that overlaps. Well, tough cookies, deniers. If your audience are all morons, then expect them to do moronic things. If you peddle conspiracy theories to the gullible, then don't complain when they integrate yet another theory into their lunatic worldviews.
All of which goes to show that conspiracism, whether it espouses MIHOP views on 9/11, or claims without any proof or basis in fact that the Holocaust was a 'Hoax', eventually forms a circular firing squad.
Bwahaha.
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