Is it the opinion of the Court that
merely asking for proof of Mr. Obama's claims is grounds for being
indicted as a "denier"?

I'm not "The Court" but, yes: these are entirely unobjectionable historical facts, the denial of which would constitute historical falsehood.

I'm also not the Court, but I agree with Ahistoricality and Obama. Denial of the fact of the Holocaust is "baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful."


And I should say that as the editor of this site, Holocaust denial comments will be deleted as soon as I see them, and repeated postings of such will lead to banning.

I'm not the court either, yet if I read, "is it the opinion of the Court that merely asking for proof of Mr. Obama's claims is grounds for being indicted as a "denier"? Then, I read this:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/denial.html

" One of the most notable anti-Semitic propaganda movements to develop over the past two decades has been the organized effort to deny or minimize the established history of Nazi genocide against the Jews. In the United States, the movement has been known in recent years primarily through the publication of editorial-style advertisements in college campus newspapers. The first of these ads claimed to call for "open debate on the Holocaust"; it purported to question not the fact of Nazi anti-Semitism, but merely whether this hatred resulted in an organized killing program. A more recent ad has questioned the authenticity of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
These ads have been published in several dozen student newspapers on campuses across the country.

Similar propaganda has established a beachhead on the computer Internet. In addition to creating their own home pages, Holocaust deniers have sometimes "crashed" the sites of legitimate Holocaust and Jewish discussion groups in a blatant effort at anti, Jewish provocation and self-promotion. Additionally, Holocaust deniers have advertised their Web sites by purchasing innocuous-sounding, inconspicuous classified ads in college and community newspapers.

These paid advertisements and Internet activities have been a national phenomenon since 1991. Though there is no evidence that they have persuaded large numbers of students to doubt the settled record of events which comprise the Holocaust, their appearance has generated acrimony and has frequently caused friction between Jewish and non-Jewish students."

It appears to me to be an obvious conclusion. That's the most civil way I can say it.

AndrewMc, I appreciate how you handled that.

Just to hazard a guess, I don't think our anonymous friend is actually a Holocaust denier. Based on the writing style, I think this is our old 9/11 truther friend, who is somehow going to turn the Holocaust into a metaphor for how we're all wilfully ignoring evidence that 9/11 was an inside job.

That makes sense Jeremy, it's easy to overreact sometimes for me about that.

How are you doing? Hope you have a break and are enjoying it. I move in 3 weeks; been a long, long, long year.

Doing great, though my "break" is definitely a working break. I'm editing and sending off some article drafts to journals, and I'm starting to study for my exams next year.

I didn't realize you were moving too -- are you following the wife? If so, that's welcome news.

That's good to hear Jeremy, and good luck with getting published - you've got a lot to offer.

Yes, in 3 weeks I'll be headed her way, just did a job interview a couple weeks ago, but won't find out till August. We've got a reserve you could say I've been saving up in case we need more time, but I can do odd jobs also in the meantime.

turn the Holocaust into a metaphor...

Even if it is as you speculate, Jeremy, the metaphor is inappropriate and, more importantly, the same bad historical methods and reasoning that are used by holocaust denialists are quite common among 9/11 Truthers. It's entirely likely, as we've seen elsewhere, that the two beliefs will overlap populations: Orac, and others, have talked about the phenomenon of "wingnut magnetism" (or "woo magnetism" in Orac's case), in which someone who believes one absurd thing is much more likely to actually adhere to several parallel errors.

Dear god,

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/holocaust_denial_and_911_truth_two_crapp.php


" suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but I am somewhat. As loony as the President of Iran Ahmoud Ahmadinejad is, as much of an Energizer Bunny of Holocaust denial and host of a conference for Holocaust denial as he is, even I didn't think he would go this far. But, thanks to Mark Hoofnagle and Screw Loose Change, I learn that he has. I should have seen it coming:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said Wednesday it was "speechless" after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced doubts about the accepted version of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. "I am not sure what you say about a statement like that. It leaves one speechless," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

- snip -

The bottom line is that Holocaust denial fits perfectly into the very same sort of paranoid, conspiratorial world view necessary to believe in something as utterly ridiculous as 9/11 Truth. The same sort of person who can think that there was a massive conspiracy orchestrated by the Jews to falsify evidence for the Holocaust (and, yes, that is what some of them say) is the very same sort of person who can believe that our own government would kill 3,000 of its own people in order to--what? Provide a pretext to invade Iraq? Consolidate its own power? Let's put it this way: No matter how incompetent or even downright malignant I think the Bush Administration may be, it defies belief that it would be competent enough and evil enough to pull off such a plan."

I think I'm going to be sick.

Why "Denial of the fact of the Holocaust is 'baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.'"


http://www.hairenik.com/armenianweekly/NYS_122207_05.htm

ADL’S GENOCIDE DENIAL MUST BE CHALLENGED

Genocide scholars classify denial as the highest form of hate speech and the last stage of genocide. Nobel laureate Elie Weisel calls it a "double killing."

Israel Charny, executive director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, explains, "Denials of known events of genocide must be treated as acts of bitter and malevolent psychological aggression, certainly against the victims, but really against all of human society, for such denials literally celebrate genocidal violence and in the process suggestively calls for renewed massacres—of the same people or of others. Such denials also madden, insult and humiliate the survivors, the relatives of the dead, and the entire people of the victims."

Genocide denial also increases the probability of future genocides. "The black hole of forgetting is the negative force that results in future genocides," writes Professor Gregory Stanton in The Eight Stages of Genocide.