Well I'll say this about the whole 'holocaust denial' thing. It's not uncommon for some aspects of the holocaust to be questioned in conspiracy theory circles.
It's not unusual for some aspects of the holocaust to be questioned in
academe by historians, the difference being that historians are (generally, with dishonourable exceptions) punctilious about sourcing credible primary and secondary supporting evidence for the answers they arrive at to these questions.
As with many other aspects of history. Just about all of them, in fact. But what is palpable is the desire to 'out' someone as a nazi. Oh gosh, we don't get the chance to point the finger like that these days do we. Yes, this person said that! Well maybe not quite but close enough! That means they are nazi, they are evil, and we can put them in the stocks and pelt the fruit.
It doesn't mean that at all, it means that we should ask them to put up or shut up, and possibly request that they not used their academic credentials as a bolster to the credibility of claims they make in fields that diverge from their area of expertise.
Maybe even they should be hanged? After all, freedom of speech doesn't apply to them - we just decided. No matter that 'freedom of speech' is an inalienable principle that means absolutely nothing if one picks and chooses where it applies.
I wasn't aware that "freedom of speech" was an "inalienable principle", but that it was a "right" contingent on how it's exercise affects others.
And hitler got his power from this mentality, the witch-hunt - not those who would defend freedom of speech as an absolute against all-comers.
No he didn't.
Hitler "got his power" from cultivating Capital, moulding his pronouncements to appeal to the rural peasantry of the
lande to counterbalance the leftward voting habits of the urban-dwellers, and making grand but unkept promises about "job creation" for the urban poor, all underlain with a Judaeophobic and anti-Slavic current that also emphasised Germany's status as a "victim" of the Versailles treaty.
It was only
after he (more or less) legitimately got elected as
Reichskanzler that he instituted his dictatorship and cultivated the
overt scapegoating of "social others" as a way of both exercising and deriving power over the general populace.
I'm posting this while a bit drunk, probably against my better judgment. But I can promise this - Nick Kollerstrom, bumbling, slightly crazy, likeable, mild-mannered chap that he is, is no nazi. He's just a conspiracy theorist.
At the considerable risk of invoking Godwin's Law, that sounds like a fairly apt description of Heinrich Himmler too.
But hey, why not string him up? After all, we need to stamp on those conspiracy theorists too - they phoned up badger kitten, don'tchaknow, after she launched an public assault on them on her blog. Let's round them up and send them to the gas chambers! Sieg Heil!
Who wants to string him up? No-one.
Who wants to see whether his employers is happy to support his views? Plenty of people on this thread.
Seems perfectly fair to me.
