A post on David Stein/Cole's book Republican Party Animal, or rather on the historical appendix to it in which he explains his views on the Holocaust.
Short intro: Cole used to be a hardcore Holocaust denier in the early 1990s, shot a comical video about Auschwitz which became a hit among the deniers (the deceptions of this video are fully exposed here). He reinvented himself as a Republican event organizer in Hollywood and there was a moderately large scandal when his cover got blown up.
He tells about this event and many others in his "tell all" book. He moderated his historical views considerably, coming to the conclusion that extermination camps did exist. His shtick had always been being a Jewish denier. Now it's a drunken ex-denier who kinda saw the light, but is still an asshole towards both sides. He condemns total hardcore denial, but also claims that Auschwitz wasn't an extermination camp at least from 1943 on and the well-documented gas vans didn't exist.
In fact, Cole didn't find anything new or big about the Holocaust, he simply takes the extremely well-known documents like the Korherr report and interprets them with varying degrees of plausibility, while ignoring the documents that contradict his other positions. All banal, nothing notable. But for some reason some see his position as the "golden middle", or something. Nonsense. This deeply confused and superficial individual has nothing new or interesting to add to the Holocaust historiography.
In the appendix to his book Cole tries to lay out his views. Let's take a look at a couple of points.
Short intro: Cole used to be a hardcore Holocaust denier in the early 1990s, shot a comical video about Auschwitz which became a hit among the deniers (the deceptions of this video are fully exposed here). He reinvented himself as a Republican event organizer in Hollywood and there was a moderately large scandal when his cover got blown up.
He tells about this event and many others in his "tell all" book. He moderated his historical views considerably, coming to the conclusion that extermination camps did exist. His shtick had always been being a Jewish denier. Now it's a drunken ex-denier who kinda saw the light, but is still an asshole towards both sides. He condemns total hardcore denial, but also claims that Auschwitz wasn't an extermination camp at least from 1943 on and the well-documented gas vans didn't exist.
In fact, Cole didn't find anything new or big about the Holocaust, he simply takes the extremely well-known documents like the Korherr report and interprets them with varying degrees of plausibility, while ignoring the documents that contradict his other positions. All banal, nothing notable. But for some reason some see his position as the "golden middle", or something. Nonsense. This deeply confused and superficial individual has nothing new or interesting to add to the Holocaust historiography.
In the appendix to his book Cole tries to lay out his views. Let's take a look at a couple of points.
