From brlhagen@aol.com Wed Jul 10 06:52:54 PDT 1996
Article: 49353 of alt.revisionism
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.inc.net!newspump.sol.net!spool.mu.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news-res.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!portc01.blue.aol.com!newstf01.news.aol.com!newsbf02.news.aol.com!not-for-mail
From: brlhagen@aol.com (Brlhagen)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Hagen Responds
Date: 10 Jul 1996 00:48:32 -0400
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Lines: 132
Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com
Message-ID: <4rvcn0$bsp@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Reply-To: brlhagen@aol.com (Brlhagen)
NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com

Mittelman, Kelley, and Ehrlich in the last few days responded to my
article, "REVISIONISM DEFINED" and I hereby put forth a further response
to them.  I will not engage (beyond this sentence) in a saliva-lobbing
contest with McVay (who appears to be a charlatan) nor with Borowsky (who
apparently is locked into a junior high school mind-set).  

Regretfully, I find that you ignored many of my points or distorted them. 
So I will feel free to ignore your specific points and respond generally. 
(Though I will work diligently not to distort what you have said.)  Your
scriptures are not mine and so when you quote or reference them it has
less impact on me than you apparently imagine or hope will be the case.  
I have stated, all along, that brutality and atrocity ocurred (on both
sides if in very different ways).  Much of your critique implies I am
denying this.  Someone reading only your responses to me, and not my own
words, would conclude I had written something very different from the
actual document I posted.

Also there is a good deal of, "that statement is anti-semitic and
therefore it is invalid or untrue," on your part.  I don't accept the term
"anti-semitic" to be anything other than, in our day,  a smear term
meaning bad thought, impermissible idea, or, most appropriately, heresy. 
I don't think whether one is anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, anti-Arab,
anti-German, anti-Christian, anti-Polynesian, etc. necessarily has any
bearing on the rightness or rectitude of any particular assertion that one
might make.  It should stand or fall on its own.  Therefore, if I make (in
your opinion) an anti-Semitic assertion that does not invalidate it.  It
can be invalidated, certainly, by being erroneous.  And you're obviously
free to say so if you believe it.  But for me you invalidate nothing by
charging that a particular sentiment is anti-this or that.

The essence of my position regarding the Jewish Holocaust flows out of my
disbelief in the gas chambers.  If there were no gas chambers there was no
extermination, no genocide.  There can be an abundance of cruelty,
brutality, slavery, inhumane confinement, murderous behavior, etc. (and
there was, as I have indeed stated) without gas chambers but there cannot
be genocide.  If there was no genocide what was there?  As I said in my
precis clearly there was the intent to expel Jews from Europe.  There was
also a barbaric war between Germans and Jews in eastern Europe and Russia
in which tens of thousands of the latter were killed .  There was no
shortage of atrocities.  But - and if you're honest you will concede this
- without the gas chambers there was no genocide.  Without genocide you
have only expulsion and brutality.  Bad enough, sure, but very much in the
same universe of atrocity committed by the anti-German side: Dresden, the
carpet-bombing of German working-class areas which resulted in a million
or more deaths among non-combatants, the post-war rapine of Germans and
persons of German descent.  All of the latter atrocities,  on those rare
ocassions when they are even mentioned, invariably are dismissed because,
after all, the Germans were "bad" people and anything that was necessary
to defeat them and win the war was perfectly justified.  And of course
after the war it was only proper they be severely chastised.  

Sorry I don't buy it.  There were atrocities on a massive scale on both
sides in WWII and its aftermath.  Holocaustery is the very essence of
denying this truth.  I will not be a party to it and I will applaud
revisionism and wish it well because it pushes in the direction of truth
and objectivity and fairness.  And I really don't care who makes up the
revisionist party or who benefits if, and when, revisionism becomes an
acceptable view, even the accepted view.  History is not a football match
in which we root for our team and wish the opponents poorly.  We should be
pushing for truth or as close to it as we can get.  And damn the
consequences.  But of course I know history as it is practiced today by
historians and others, and perhaps as it has always been practiced, really
is not that different from the football contest.

So, as regards the existence of gas chambers, I think your side (the side
of the Holocaust as the overarching evil of our epoch or of any epoch) is
in serious trouble.  I think very many people are beginning to doubt the
gas chambers because it is a pretty incredible story if you examine it
with any objectivity.  There is very little believable evidence for gas
chambers if you filter out the hysterical and the religious.  Of course
you can't publicly express your doubt because, as regards Holocaustery, we
remain in the age of the Inquisition.  The subject matter is different but
the head still readily rolls off one's shoulders.  You critics will of
course deny this and demand evidence.  I say look about you, the evidence
is everywhere, and nowhere is it more stark than on the average college
campus.

I note that a number of my critics mention repeatedly something along the
lines of "no credible historian accepts your view of the Holocaust," and
therefore, by the numbers, you lose.  I don't think that follows at all. 
I have pointed out (and surely you cannot deny this) in the world we
inhabit it is very foolish and even very dangerous for someone, in
academia or outside, publicly to express a revisionist position or even
sympathy for a revisionist position.  David Irving is persona non grata
(denied entry) in many countries of the western world.  He has lost
millions due to cancelled book contracts and I know for a fact his life
has been threatened.  He has no defenders that I know of in academia and I
seriously doubt any of my critics regard Irving as anything other than the
embodiment of evil.  And he is only on the margins of revisionism.  And
yet apparently he is enough of an historian to have dozens of books in
most libraries in the US.  (Or did the last time I looked.)  Have any of
you defended Irving's right to speak, to be heard, to do research, to
publish?  How does he differ from Salmon Rushdie?  Oh, I forgot:  Irving's
a bad guy, an anti-semite.  Of course.  Untrue but no doubt you believe
it.  If you don't, say so.

Interestingly enough, Ehrlich, in commenting on something said by SF924,
shed important light when he pointed out that in his experience very few
of his colleagues would touch anything to do with revisionism because they
would not wish to assist it any way or be thought "anti-semitic."  And he
said any academic who jumped into the fray would risk "professional
ostracism."  Very true words.  So why is there any surprise that no
credible historian is on the revisionist side?  It's really a Catch 22. 
The moment a credible historian became sympathetic to revisionism he would
be denounced, he would be shunned, he would lose his book contracts,
probably his job.  And of course he no longer would be a credible
historian. Thereby maintaining the purity of the fraternity of "credible"
historians.

Generally I don't think your collective critique of my position - what
I've seen so far - has been very effective.  You nitpick and continually
demand evidence proving my case though the evidence your side has thus far
shown to prove the existence of the gas chambers is quite pathetic -
again, once you filter out the hysterical and the religious.  And I think
you really have to concede that Holocaustery rises or falls on the
existence of those gas chambers.   If there were none the Nazi atrocities,
their treatment of the Jews (and others), have to be seen as only a part
of the most atrocity-ridden bloodbath in the history of mankind, a
bloodbath in which both sides contributed very significantly.  If someday
the existence of gas chambers is proved definitively I will alter my view
and renounce Holocaust revisionism.  And I will congratulate you for being
correct all along.  But my very honest view is that I'm quite safe from
such humiliation.  Are you?

Bruce L. Hagen









From brlhagen@aol.com Wed Jul 10 06:52:56 PDT 1996
Article: 49358 of alt.revisionism
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!noc.van.hookup.net!news.jumppoint.com!n2van.istar!van.istar!west.istar!news-w.ans.net!newsfeeds.ans.net!newsjunkie.ans.net!newsfeeds.ans.net!gatech!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!news-res.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!portc01.blue.aol.com!newstf01.news.aol.com!newsbf02.news.aol.com!not-for-mail
From: brlhagen@aol.com (Brlhagen)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Revisionism Defined
Date: 10 Jul 1996 00:47:02 -0400
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Lines: 6
Sender: root@newsbf02.news.aol.com
Message-ID: <4rvck6$brg@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
References: <4rsokv$9e5@newsbf02.news.aol.com>
Reply-To: brlhagen@aol.com (Brlhagen)
NNTP-Posting-Host: newsbf02.mail.aol.com

Because my internet service provider is clunky beyond repair it is
difficult for me to respond with any ease within this thread.  Therefore
my response will be found in a new thread, subject matter, "Hagen
Responds," which I am posting simultaneously with this note.

                 Bruce L. Hagen

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor