Anti-Semitism
oracknows | August 30, 2007Vacation 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…
oracknows | August 23, 2007You 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…
oracknows | August 21, 2007My 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…
oracknows | July 18, 2007In a story that needs no embellishment, the Iranian state news agency, IRNA, is reporting that fourteen "spy squirrels" were captured infiltrating Iran. According to IRNA: "In recent weeks, intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran's borders. The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services."
Allegedly, the critters were equipped with modern technology including GPS units, cameras, and listening devices. The report also said that the squirrels were trained for espionage…
oracknows | May 19, 2007Let's face it. By their very belief in Holocaust denial, Holocaust deniers demonstrate day in and day out that they aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer (or the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, pick your simile). However, occasionally, I come across Holocaust denial that brings stupid to a whole new level, and I was made aware of a couple of such examples last week. Naturally, I could not resist sharing them with you, my readers.
First, Larry Fafarman makes his case for the prize of Stupidest Holocaust Denier Statement, with such gems (excerpted from his "article") as:
"Who in the…
oracknows | May 14, 2007While trolling the deepest, darkest, most vile racist parts of the Internet, as I am wont to do looking around for new Holocaust denial idiocy to take down, I came across something unexpected, so unexpected that it made me curious. Basically, Bill White, Commander of the American National Socialist Workers' Party, apparently annoyed that he can't edit Wikipedia pages to conform to his racist views, proposed a strategy for "destroying" Wikipedia. Apparently, according to white racists, Wikipedia is full of "Jewish bias," whatever that means.
I'm sure there must be Wikipedians out there. (Heck…
oracknows | April 30, 2007Andrew reminds me that today is a very special day. Yes, indeed, it's the day that everyone who detests fascism should celebrate:
Fuehrerstodestag! (Otherwise known as "Dead Hitler Day.")
Yes, 62 years ago this hour, Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer of the Reich, finally cornered, his nation in ruins, offed himself in his bunker in Berlin as the Red Army was relentlessly advancing on him. After over 12 years in power, he had plunged the world into the largest war ever fought, resulting in the deaths of millions upon millions of people, and his exterminationist anti-Semitism had resulted in the deaths of…
oracknows | April 28, 2007After the Virginia Tech shootings, as you may recall, a lot of people started using the shootings as a convenient excuse to start pontificating about their favorite cause or to attack their most hated enemy, be it secularism or even vaccines. In fact, politicians, pundits, and just plain annoying whackjobs are blaming the rampage on so many different hobbyhorses, that there's even a blogger keeping a running tally, which is up to 72 so far.
A few days ago, I thought I had uncovered the lowest of the low, where a white nationalist besmirched the name of one of the heroes of that horrible day,…
oracknows | April 23, 2007A while back, I posted about news reports that teachers in the U.K. were reluctant to teach about the Holocaust because of fears of offending the sensibilities of certain parts of the population. The subtext, of course, was that Muslims were the ones who would be offended. I lamented that such sensitivity might be causing teachers in the UK not to teach the Holocaust properly, much as sensitivity to the religious beliefs in the US lead to teachers not teaching evolution. I wasn't alone in making this connection. Both PZ and the Bad Astronomer made similar comments.
It turns out that perhaps I…
oracknows | April 22, 2007Ever since the Virginia Tech shootings a week ago, there's been a lot of playing of the blame game in the blogosphere over who or what was to blame for Cho Seung-Hui's deadly rampage. A few days ago, I mentioned one bright spot of heroism among the carnage, where a faculty member, Professor Liviu Librescu, barred the door to his classroom to the gunman, buying his students precious time to escape. He was apparently shot multiple times through the door.
Librescu ended up giving his life so that a few more students could jump out of the windows of the classroom. As it turned out, he was also a…
oracknows | April 15, 2007Heh.
Although it's apparently been making the rounds over the Internet, I had never seen this list before until Andrew over at Flavor Country posted A Dictionary for the 9/11 "Truth" Movement, which, if you've ever read the comment thread (223 comments!) after my one major foray into discussing the true idiocy that is the 9/11 "Truth" Movement, you will immediately realize to be pretty darned close to the truth.
A few key examples:
Alternative theory: Something so wacky that even Twoofers don't give it much credence (e. g. holographic planes, pods).
Brainwashing: non-conspiratorial thinking,…
oracknows | March 26, 2007Ever since arch Holocaust denier David Irving was released from prison in Austria after being convicted of denying the Holocaust, I've been wondering how long it would take for him to reveal his true stripes and be up to his old tricks again.
The answer, not surprisingly, was: Not long. Witness this story:
ROME -- British historian David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for questioning the Holocaust, visited the Auschwitz death camp and renewed his claim that there was no proof it had gas chambers during an Italian TV program aired Friday.
In the Sky TG24 documentary program "Controcorrente…
oracknows | January 8, 2007White supremacist Kevin Strom is busted:
Jan. 4, 2007 -- A leader of the white supremacist movement was arraigned today on charges of possession of child pornography and witness tampering after being arrested by FBI agents Thursday night at his home in Charlottesville, Va.
Kevin Alfred Strom, founder of the National Vanguard white supremacist group, was considered the leading intellectual of the movement since the death of William Pierce, the author of the notorious "Turner Diaires."
Strom was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, charged with the two counts, and is currently…
oracknows | December 17, 2006First, check out The Daily Show's take on the Holocaust denial conference, with goodies like Revision Quest and Just Say No. It's the show that characterizes the "question" being discussed at the conference as: Was the entire Holocaust an elaborate episode of Punk'd? Best line: David Duke, he's like the Flock of Seagulls of hate. Or maybe the one about the neo-Nazis who are publishing a book about the Holocaust entitled If We Did It...
But, believe it or not, I've found a take on the Holocaust denial convention, parts of which may be even funnier than The Daily Show, and it comes from a…
oracknows | December 12, 2006
Regular readers of this blog know that I couldn't leave this one alone.
Yesterday, the Holocaust-denying President of Iran Mahmoud realized his promised dream of holding an "academic" conference to "debate" the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, it's a lovefest for Holocaust deniers. Indeed, many of the most "prominent" Holocaust deniers in the world are now gathered in Iran to spew their lies:
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran opened a conference on Monday to examine the Holocaust and question whether Nazi Germany used gas chambers to kill Jews, drawing condemnation in the West and criticism from Iran's…
oracknows | November 29, 2006Andrew Mathis over at Flavor Country does it well. Indeed, his demolition of Holocaust deniers on Usenet on the newsgroup alt,revisionism undoubtedly had an influence on what later became my special brand of Respectful Insolenceâ¢.
So, sit back and enjoy as he thoroughly fisks an article by Mark Glenn, the webmaster of the Crescent and Cross (WARNING: Glenn likes to post extremely gory pictures), a website that is, as Andrew puts it, dedicated to "uniting Christians and Muslims against Jews."
Here's a little taste of Andrew's response to one of Glenn's claims that Jews are "exploiting in a…
oracknows | November 27, 2006I've mentioned one particularly odious (well, more odious) subset of Holocaust deniers, a type that I call the "Holocaust never happened but the Jews deserve it" type of Holocaust denier. These Holocaust deniers claim that either the Holocaust never happened or that it was greatly exaggerated, while at the same time spewing anti-Semitism along the lines of, "The Jews deserved everything they got" from the Nazis. (Never mind that the denier just said in the previous breathe that the Jews never got much of anything as far as persecution from the Nazis). If you don't believe that this type of…
oracknows | November 19, 2006Via Holocaust Controversies, I've become aware of a new anti-denier blog, Holocaust Denial Absurdities. Its first couple of posts look promising, such as this description of the censorship of opposing viewpoints that goes on at a denier forum.
oracknows | November 4, 2006A while back, I commented on the infamous Iranian "Holocaust Cartoon Contest," which Iran sponsored in response to the Danish cartoon imbroglio in which cartoons featuring the Prophet Mohammed triggered violent protests among Muslims last winter. Their stated goal, was to try to draw some sort of equivalency between their offense at having Mohammed mocked and what they expected would be the West's offense at having the Holocaust or attitudes towards the Holocaust mocked. The result, as I mentioned, was underwhelming; with a few exceptions, the contest didn't cause much reaction. Even Rabbis…
oracknows | October 4, 2006The other day, in the midst of a discussion about one of my posts about Holocaust denial, an anti-Semite posting as "bernarda" demanded:
Then I read books like Norman Finkelstein's Holocaust Industry and understood that it [the Holocaust] has just become a propaganda tool to create a permanent guilt complex, even on Americans who had nothing to do with it. Why are there several holocaust museums in the U.S. but no slavery museum?
The answer is pretty simple: Because the U.S. did not perpetrate the Holocaust. It helped to end the Holocaust. In contrast, the U.S. did perpetrate slavery. That's…