Holocaust

As the resident World War II maven on ScienceBlogs, I noted with interested PZ's mention of a story from Germany about a German Cardinal's jaw-droppingly bad choice of words: A German cardinal has triggered a storm of criticism in Germany by describing atheist art as "degenerate" -- a term usually avoided in public discourse because of its association with the Nazis. Cardinal Joachim Meisner was speaking at the blessing of his archdiocese's new art museum, the Kolumba, in the heart of Cologne, on Friday. "Wherever culture is separated from the worship of God, the cult atrophies in ritualism…
I'm not normally a big fan of these reality TV courtroom shows, and I've never watched Judge Hatchett before. That being said, I was surprised how well done this segment was in which a 14-year-old who's fascinated by Adolf Hitler (even going so far as to write "I love Hitler" in large letters on a sheet of paper) and had come to admire hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan was educated about just who and what it was that he was idolizing. Although I'm skeptical that a single visit to the Museum of Tolerance and meeting with Elizabeth Mann, a Holocaust survivor, can turn this kid around, I'm…
Vacation time! While Orac is off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on February 2, 2006. Enjoy! It had to happen sooner or later. I'm only surprised that it's taken so long. What is it? Well, finally, Orac has attracted a Holoaust denier in the comments of his last post on David Irving, Holocaust denier extraordinaire (spelling errors not corrected): There is much that can be said about Irving, I…
Vacation time! While Orac is gone recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on July 25, 2005 . Although the Undead Führer himself has made only one appearance, but the concept is there, and this forms the basis for what the monster became. Enjoy! As for all the Hitler Zombie reruns, don't worry. I decided to do that over the weekend, and now I'll change to reposts of different topics for a while. In the most recent issue…
Vacation time! While Orac is gone recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on July 6, 2005 and is the very first time ever that the Hitler Zombie appeared in a horror story form. As such, it was a landmark day in the annals of Respectful Insolence. Appropriately enough, it's over what had become a frequent blogging topic even back in those early days. Enjoy! Deep within a dark crypt, far beneath the ground, it slept. The…
Vacation time! While Orac is gone recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on June 26, 2005 and is the fifth ever Hitler Zombie post. Although the Undead Führer himself has not yet made an appearance, the concept is there, and this forms the basis for what the monster ultimately became. Enjoy! The Hitler zombie's been a busy undead Führer the last three weeks (1, 2, 3, 4), and it's time (I hope) for him to go back into…
Vacation time! While Orac is gone recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on June 23, 2005 and is the fourth ever Hitler Zombie post. Although the Undead Fuhrer himself has not yet made an appearance, the concept is there, and this forms the basis for what the monster became. Enjoy! It would be no fun at all to write this blog if everyone always agreed with me. (Of course, it would be even less fun if everyone violently…
Vacation time! While Orac off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on June 22, 2005 and is the third ever Hitler Zombie post. Although the Undead Führer himself has not yet made an appearance, the concept is there, and this forms the basis for what the monster evolved into. Enjoy! (Note: I did not check all of the links; if some of them are now dead, I'm sorry.) I've been wanting to write about Senator Dick…
Vacation time! While Orac is off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on June 10, 2005 and is the second ever Hitler Zombie post. Although the Undead Fuhrer himself has not yet made an appearance, the concept is there, and this forms the basis for what the monster became. Enjoy! Last week, inspired by this post, I discussed how quick politicians and pundits are these days to make fallacious comparisons to…
You know, even though I know he's been a Republican talker for a long time, that he worked for the Nixon administration as a speechwriter and lawyer, I've always kind of liked Ben Stein. My wife and I used to like to watch Win Ben Stein's Money, and he was quite amusing as the principal in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He's always come across as a pleasant doofus, even though I know that image appears to be carefully calculated one. Now I learn that he's the narrator and a driving force behind a pro-"intelligent design" movie called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which is due to be released…
My regular readers here know to what lengths I go to combat Holocaust denial on the Internet. It's a fairly regular topic on this blog, as is rebutting the lies Holocaust deniers routinely spout. Not surprisingly, Holocaust deniers like to try to portray me as either Jewish or somehow in the thrall of the ADL, much as alternative medicine aficionados like to try to paint me as being a shill for big pharma. (Hey, big pharma and all you Jews out there controlling the New World Order, where are my checks? You guys owe me several years of back payments for my online efforts to undermine the…
I learned the other day that one of the most renowned historians of the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, passed away at the age of 81: WILLISTON, Vt. --Dr. Raul Hilberg, a world renowned Holocaust scholar has died. He was 81. Hilberg, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont, died Saturday from a recurrence of lung cancer although he never smoked, his wife Gwen said. He died with her at his side at the Vermont Respite House in Williston. Hilberg was the author of The Destruction of the European Jews, (1961), a landmark study of the Nazi killings of more than 5 million…
&uotI've been on call and grant writing, both of which have put a major crimp in my blogging time, preventing my usual daily magnum opus and leaving me reposts and pithy link-and-comment posts, at least for today. Since having become a little irritated by comparisons to Nazis by a certain opponent of bans on indoor smoking, I thought now would be a great time to show you something that I've been meaning to show since the time that I moved the old Blogspot blog over to ScienceBlogs. Yes, I'm talking about the origin of the Hitler Zombie. This post, which appeared on June 2, 2005, is in…
Until the other day, it had been a long time since I had indulged my interest in World War II history. Not surprisingly, a certain anti-Semitic troll appeared out of the woodwork, thus amazing me with persistence, given that it's been at least two months since I've even mentioned the topic. That's a long time to have to wait for an opportunity to leap into the comments here and rail against "Jews" and Zionists while I've been dishing out the usual commentary on alternative medicine, science, clinical trials, Since he/she/it's here again, I thought I'd mention a story that's cropped up over…
While I'm back on the subject of Nazi Germany, here's a rather interesting tidbit of news about a book that I'll undoubtedly want to read when it comes out: During the latter half of World War II, the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) undertook a massive clandestine operation of which the full, extraordinary details are only now coming to light. Between 1942 and 1945, a section of SIS - known as MI19 - secretly recorded no fewer than 64,427 conversations between captured German generals and other senior officers, all without their knowledge or even suspicion. The 167 most significant…
Here's a bummer of a bit of information that some elderly Germans are discovering: Hundreds of elderly Germans are being confronted with the revelation that they were recruited into the Nazi party during the second world war. Historians researching Nazi party archives in Frankfurt have discovered that a string of prominent Germans were among those automatically granted membership to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday. Writers, a cabaret artist, scientists, journalists and politicians, including former cabinet ministers, are among those whose names are on the list. According to records, they…
Via Ed Brayton, I've learned of an interesting commentary by Sasha Abramsky on a topic that's near and dear to my heart. Well, its' more like a major pet peeve, one that irritates me so much that two years ago I even created a character who's made regular, albeit increasingly infrequent, appearances on this blog. I'm talking, of course, about the Hitler Zombie, everybody's favorite undead Führer whose chomp on a pundit's brain results in stupid and ridiculously overblown Nazi analogies. Indeed, such analogies irritate me sufficiently that at times my attacks on them have been described by…
Well, well, well. Remember about a year ago, when Libertarian wingnut Vox Day shot himself in the foot big time by using a warped logic to argue that because it was "possible" for Hitler to round up six million Jews in four years then it's not "impossible" for us to round up 12 million illegal immigrants, a contention that I had a great deal of fun royally fisking (as did Sergey over at Holocaust Controversies) and that was so bad that it was apparently deemed too offensive even for WorldNet Daily, which edited it to water down Vox's horrible historical analogy? (If not, please check out my…
Here are a few typical eugenicist quotes from early last century: "It is an excellent plan to keep defective people in institutions for here they are not permitted to marry and bear children." "[Scientists who are working at the task of improving the human race] would like to increase the birth rate of families having good heredity, while those people having poor heredity should not marry at all." "At the present time there are in the United States more than a million people with serious hereditary defects, and to reduce their numbers by even a few thousand would reduce the amount of…
I'll admit it. There have been at least two times since I started blogging that I fell for a dubious story because I exercised insufficient skepticism. The first time occurred very early on in my blogging history when swallowed a story about how legalization of prostitution was claimed to lead to the requirement that unemployed women take jobs as prostitutes or lose their unemployment benefits. More recently, I backpedaled a bit over a story about how supposedly history teachers in the U.K. were not teaching about the Holocaust out of concern for offending the sensitivities of certain of…