Ernst Nolte (some P relevance eventually)

[glthompson]

I don't think there's any European/American split on this, except perhaps
statistically. Lots of politically-coded speech blurs an essential distinction
between free speech and valued speech (perhaps there's a better word for this
latter, but nothing comes to mind right now). Ernst Nolte was free to speak and
publish his statements on the Holocaust, even though they conflicted with reality
as understood by the consensus of those who have observed the concentration camps
and other evidence (common sense, if you like). David Irving is free to say and
right what he wishes in the mode of Holocaust denial. No Thoughtcrime here.

Only they are not rewarded, personally or professionally, for speaking in ways
which are not valued by the power structure, who in this case represent the public,
the profession of history, and a large majority of the public who have been taught
by Occam's razor that the most probable explanation for all those corpses, the
empty gas canisters, the rooms full of hair, the beaten-up suitcases with carefully
painted address labels, etc., was in fact the Final Solution rather than some
elaborate hoax. They can write what they want, but they'd better not expect
promotion, positive public notice, or even continued employment for what the rest
of us see as telling lies.

I'm puzzled by the common assumption that the cry of "free speech" means that we
should give respectful audience to any sort of blather, no matter whose interests
it serves. We're all free to do the hate speech thing, only we'd better not expect
any awards for courage in the process. At my university, the faculty contract
defines academic freedom as saying and teaching what you like so long as it agrees
with truth as understood by one's discipline--left profitably undefined, but I
suppose it would exclude flat-earthers in astronomy class, and probably
creationists in biology. And maybe librarians who would prefer to classify books by
date of acquisition, or perhaps by the color of their bindings. So long as there's
a system, we can learn to work within it . . .

This thread runs into a problematic area with _GR,_ IMO. Through a lot of the
novel, we're encouraged to see systems, structures, social compulsions as tools of
Them, and we identify freedom with evasion from control, as with Slothrop early on.
But equating paranoia with visionary status leads to antiparanoia, chaos, and the
potential not only for Slothrop's dissolution (not a good thing) but Seaman
Bodine's and Roger Mexico's raid, which probably felt good but didn't do a whole
lot, the Counterforce, which ends up at least partly betraying itself, von Goll's
megalomania, etc. So how do we reconcile the novel's either-or approach to control
with what I think is probably our experience of wanting some control and some
personal agency? Does veering towards the anarchy side tend more or less to Jim
Joneses and David Koreshes and quasi-religious groups who drink cyanide in order to
hitch a ride on the nearest comet? (Did they make the trip?) Does veering toward
the control side squelch inventiveness and humor and other qualities valued as
creative?

Gary Thompson


Dave Monroe wrote:

> .. so, whadday'all think of that there David Irving?  What if he would have won
> that lawsuit, the implication thus being that he was NOT antisemitic, had NOT
> denied the Holocaust?  Might well have derailed him on the neo-Nazi lecture
> circuit,

> Robert wrote:
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Spencer Thiel <spen at fictiondepartment.com>
> > To: Pynchon List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Date: 23 czerwca 2000 22:02
> > Subject: Re: Ernst Nolte
>
> >
> > I wouldn't say it's wholly subjective and whimsical, either. How about
> > historical
> > facts? They get interpreted, sure, but nevertheless they are established
> > facts. . . . The Polish case is very clear to me. This guy denied the facts:
> > we have Auschwitz records, witnesses and extant extermination
> > infrastracture. Hard evidence not to be refuted in any courtroom. He's a
> > damned liar! Do you
> > really think he should still be called "historian" and accepted as such
> > by his former professional colleagues? . . .
> > Politicians want to
> > make the whole world political, as that would allow them to call the shots
> > in every issue, but let's face it, it's some scholars who are venal here.
> >
> > ---
> > Sprzedasz to czego nie potrzebujesz, kupisz to co szukasz
> > na aukcji internetowej - bez oplat !!! http://www.interaukcja.pl