NP Ernst Nolte

[davemarc]

> From: Spencer Thiel <spen at fictiondepartment.com>
> 
> Regardless of the opinions held by Ernst Nolte, he was dismissed for
views 
> that he held (at least according to the email, a source I have yet to 
> verify).  A similar event happened to the French Holocaust revisionist 
> Robert Faurisson who was dismissed from the University of Lyon in 
> France.  Regardless of their views, their dismissals are clear violations

> of their rights to free speech, and thus easily applicable to the term 
> 'thoughtcrime'.  There can be no two ways about it: you are either for or

> against free speech.  And if you are for free speech, you are in favor of

> exactly the kind of speech that said 'scholars' are making; that is,
speech 
> that isn't in accordance with your own thoughts (and even in this case, 
> history truths).

Nolte should be able to say whatever he wishes to say.  No argument there. 
But no one should be obligated to pay for or endorse or avoid challenging
what they say regardless of what they say. 

As far as "thoughtcrime" is concerned, being accused or suspected of
"thoughtcrime" in 1984 is significantly different from Nolte's predicament
of being taken to task on his factually unsupportable assertions.  

Here's Deborah Lipstadt on Nolte:

"One of the dangers of Holocaust denial is that it so stretches the
parameters of the argument regarding Germany's wartime behavior that it
renders Nolte's kind of relativism increasingly respectable....

"....Nolte contended that Weizmann's official stand [in 1939, on the
outbreak of the war, that the Jews would stand by Great Britain and fight
on the side of the democracies] gave Hitler good reason 'to be convinced of
his enemies' determination to annihilate him much earlier than when the
first information about Auschwitz came to the knowledge of the world.' 
What power the Jews had to effect Hitler's annihilation Nolte did not
specify.  When Nolte was criticized on this point in light of prewar Nazi
persecution of Jews, he said that he was only quoting David Irving....How
quoting Irving justified using such a historically invalid point remains
unexplained, unless one wishes to see it as a reflection of Nolte's
personal predilections...."

And Lipstadt on Nolte and his book The European Civil War 1917-1945:

"Without offering any proof, he claims that more 'Aryans' than Jews were
murdered at Auschwitz.  According to Nolte this fact has been ignored
because the research on the Final Solution comes to an 'overwhelming degree
from Jewish authors.'  He described the deniers' arguments as not 'without
foundation' and their motives as 'often honorable.'  The fact that among
the core deniers were non-Germans and some former inmates of concentration
camps was evidence, according to Nolte, of their honorable intentions. 
Nolte even advanced the untenable notion that the 1942 Wannsee Conference,
at which Heydrich and a group of prominent Nazis worked out the
implementation of the Final Solution, may never have happened.  He
disregards the fact that participants in that meeting have subsequently
attested to it and that a full set of minutes survived.  This suggestion
implies that if Wannsee was a hoax, many other Holocaust-related events
that we have been led to believe actually happened may also be hoaxes.  He
suggests...that the Einsatzgruppen killed numerous Jews on the Eastern
Front because 'preventive security' demanded it since a significant number
of the partisans were Jews.  While he acknowledges that the action may have
been carried to an extreme, it remains essentially justified.  Another of
his unsubstantiated charges was that the documentary film Shoah
demonstrates that the SS units in the death camps were 'victims in their
own way too.'

"Coming from a denier these arguments would have been utterly predictable. 
Coming from Nolte they are especially disturbing and revealing.  Nolte
cannot be ignorant of the vast body of research on this topic that has been
conducted by scholars of every religious persuasion and nationality,
including his fellow German non-Jews.  Nor, since he tries to defend them,
can he be ignorant of the deniers' explicit anti-semitism.  In his writings
he has too often referred to the reality of the Final Solution to be
accused of espousing Holocaust denial.  Yet his recent writings make him so
palatable to the deniers that the IHR is seriously attempting to convince
Nolte to participate in its meetings and addresss its conventions...." 

If you've ever wondered how Nazi crackpot science and history managed to
gain a foothold in German and other universities prior to WWII, it's
informative to take note of how it gains a foothold today, during these
supposedly more enlightened times, as evidenced in part by the accolades
recently showered upon Nolte.

d.