Holocaust denial
oracknows | March 9, 2006An update to the story of arson at the Holocaust History Project that I first discussed on Wednesday.
A local news report showing the extent of the damage to the offices of the Holocaust History Project and including an interview with Harry Mazal can be found here.
Not unexpectedly, the cockroaches are crawling out of the woodwork on some discussion boards. A Holocaust denier under the 'nym of "Lurkerthe" (you'll need to scroll down a bit). I knew it wouldn't be long before deniers tried this gambit, or some variation thereof:
Hats off to Mazal. He is smarter than I thought.
A nice little…
oracknows | March 8, 2006Yesterday, after writing about the arson at the offices of the Holocaust History Project (THHP) earlier this week, I made an appeal to the blogosphere to link to THHP. My concept was thus: Since the arsonists appear to have wanted to silence THHP, I thought that it would be a fine "screw you!" to them to get as many bloggers as I could to link to THHP and increase its readership and exposure as far above what it was before as my humble efforts could produce.
And boy, did you come through! From fellow ScienceBloggers to fellow RINOs to a variety of others, lots of you have linked to THHP and…
oracknows | March 8, 2006Today's regularly scheduled post has been delayed due to an important and tragic development.
Something bad happened a couple of days ago, something that cuts rather close to home.
Arsonists targeted the offices used as a mailing address for the Holocaust History Project (THHP). (Video here, but only if you have IE and Active X installed, unfortunately.) The fire caused considerable damage to a warehouse complex and caused smoke damage to nearby businesses. Although the perpetrators have not been identified, there is good reason to suspect that it was not the business that was targeted, but…
oracknows | March 7, 2006I'm a bit late on this one, but Deborah Lipstadt won the National Jewish Book Award for best book about the Holocaust for her book History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving.
I started reading the book a couple of months ago, but got sidetracked. Last weekend, I picked it up again and plowed through nearly half of it in one sitting. It's that compelling, and it reveals much about David Irving that I didn't already know, particularly his anti-Semitism. For anyone interested in the Holocaust and Holocaust denial, it's well worth reading.
Note: Due to a comment and TrackBack spam attack…
oracknows | February 28, 2006Well, that didn't take long.
Only a few days after his conviction for Holocaust denial, David Irving has reverted to form:
Far-right author David Irving's repudiation of his views on the Holocaust and Hitler's role in it has not lasted very long. In a prison interview just days after he told an Austrian court he had been wrong to deny the Holocaust, he reverted to insisting that the slaughter in Nazi death camps was exaggerated, and that Jews "bear blame for what happened".
He went on:
The author was jailed on Monday for three years for denying the Holocaust during two lectures and in a…
oracknows | February 25, 2006Today, while I'm making fun of anti-Semitic idiocy coming out of Iran, perhaps I should stop being so upset over the free speech infringement that I've railed about regarding David Irving's three year sentence for Holocaust denial in Austria.
It turns out that he isn't really in prison, and his name isn't even David Irving.
(Hat tip to Andrew Mathis!)
oracknows | February 25, 2006You can't make stuff like this up. You really can't.
Did you know that Tom and Jerry are in reality a clever secret nefarious plot by the Jews?
That's what Professor Hassan Bolkhari, who teaches philosophy of art at Tabatabaei and Al-Zahra Universities in Iran and is a member of the Film Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a cultural advisor to the Iranian Education Ministry, asserts (if you understand the language, feel free to check out the original video here):
There is a cartoon that children like. They like it very much, and so do adults - Tom and Jerry.
[...]
Some say that this…
oracknows | February 23, 2006Here's a comment that popped up in my moderation queue for an article I wrote on the old blog several months ago:
The Holocaust is a huge money maker for Jews; one they do not wish to lose. Irving's and Zundel's struggle in our time is analogous to Galileo's struggle with discovery that threatened the TPTB's power structure.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Now the Holocaust deniers are pulling the Galileo gambit. This guy needs to get a clue. As much as I find the law that sent him to prison for three years to be an offense against free speech, Irving is no Galileo.
oracknows | February 22, 2006Austrian prosecutors think Irving's jail term is too short:
Austrian prosecutors have filed an appeal against the three-year prison sentence handed to the British historian David Irving, arguing that he escaped too lightly for the crime of Holocaust denial.
Irving was left stunned and open-mouthed when the sentence was handed down after a one-day trial in a Vienna court yesterday.
After entering a guilty plea and publicly accepting that he had made a mistake when denying existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, Irving had clearly expected a more lenient punishment over two speeches made to…
oracknows | February 21, 2006For a humorous take on the David Irving verdict, go here. The Photoshopped picture and caption are priceless.
oracknows | February 20, 2006Well, that was fast.
The trial took less than a day. David Irving, as expected, pleaded guilty. As expected, he was found guilty of Holocaust denial. What was not expected was the severity of the sentence:
VIENNA, Feb. 20 (AP) — The British historian David Irving on Monday pleaded guilty to denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in prison. He conceded that he was wrong when he said there were no Nazi gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp.
Mr. Irving, handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, arrived in court carrying a copy of one of his books, "Hitler's War," which…
oracknows | February 19, 2006Well, today's the day. After all the waiting, it's finally here.
David Irving is going to stand trial for Holocaust denial in Austria today.
Those of you who have read my old blog a while know what a despicable human being I consider David Irving to be. He's clearly an anti-Semite, most famously having said that "more women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz" and being known for repeating anti-Semitic doggerel. He's spent decades in essence falsifying history, denying that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, that the…
oracknows | February 15, 2006As anyone who read my old blog knows, I have some very strong views on free speech, viewing it as the single most important basis of a free society. It is therefore not surprising that I recently commented on the Danish cartoon imbroglio, in which fundamentalist Muslims, outrage stoked by their Imams and by Muslim governments such as Saudi Arabia and Syria, have tried to impose their religious views on secular societies. One thing I noted is how the Iranian government, in their effort to try to claim that Europeans have a double standard, launched a contest asking for cartoons about the…