answering otto Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #1590

[Doug Millison]

Otto: "If you are of the opinion that Mr. McVay has accused rj of 
usin h-d-rhetoric you should quote the piece and not just say it here 
"as if  (one of the favorite words of postmodernists) it were the 
truth. I've done a lot of reading today and found no such thing."

Otto,

Thanks (if that's the right word) for the invitation to demonstrate, 
again, the validity of  my claim that rj/jbor used Holocaust denier 
rhetoric.  I also appreciate the opportunity to correct the record on 
two other points after rj and kai have lied repeatedly about what I 
have said. You will see, below, that Ken McVay, a specialist in 
Holocaust history, observed that rj was using a Holocaust denier's 
(Greg Raven's) definition of the Holocaust. I also quote a post in 
which another P-lister objected to an anti-Semitic slur from rj/jbor. 
And I deny the false assertion that I have called anybody on the 
P-list a child molester, , contrary to Kai's assertion the other day. 
I have called Blicero a child molester (or words to that effect -- I 
believe what I actually said was that Blicero took advantage of his 
colonial status to abuse the boy sexually) -- you know, Blicero the 
fictional character in GR.  I'll  dig up the old posts to demonstrate 
this, too, if you'd like.

You may recall -- you were active in this discussion at the time -- 
that after I contacted McVay to pose questions about whether Dora 
inmates could be considered Holocaust victims (rj argued that they 
weren't), I reported his responses  to the P-list and included full 
text (I would be happy to send them to you again, if you doubt my 
word,just let me know).

rj then contacted McVay himself, in the following post:

Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 17:57:40 +1100
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
Subject: FW: Concerning Holocaust-denial

- ----------
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: kmcvay at nizkor.org
Subject: Concerning Holocaust-denial
Date: Wed, Oct 4, 2000, 5:56 PM

Dear Ken McVay

This is just a follow-up to an inquiry made yesterday regarding the
characterisation of the Dora-Mittelbau labour camp as one of "the Holocaust
camps." I have, up until now, been using the definition of the Holocaust
provided at the Nizkor website:

"when one uses the term "Holocaust," the understood meaning is that of the
systematic murder of six million Jews by the Nazi state"

http://www.nizkor.org/features/revision-or-denial/rebuttals-02.html

[snip the rest of the post, I can send the whole thing to you if you wish]

rj then posted McVay's response:

Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2000 18:53:09 +1100
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
Subject: FW: Concerning Holocaust-denial

- ----------
From: kmcvay at veritas.nizkor.org (Ken McVay)
To: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>
Subject: Re: Concerning Holocaust-denial
Date: Wed, Oct 4, 2000, 5:56 PM

You wrote:

>"when one uses the term "Holocaust," the understood meaning is that of the
>systematic murder of six million Jews by the Nazi state"
>
>http://www.nizkor.org/features/revision-or-denial/rebuttals-02.html

That definition is not Nizkor's definition, but Greg Raven's - a
Holocaust denier.

>However, this is not the crux of the dispute.

Good :-)

[snip the rest of the post, I can send the whole thing to you if you wish]

So, McVay noted that rj was using a Holocaust denier's definition of 
the Holocaust.  Prior to this, I had said that rj was *echoing* 
Holocaust denier rhetoric, but here we see McVay observing that 
rj/jbor was in fact repeating Holocaust denier rhetoric.

Here's the text where I clarified what I was saying about rj and 
Holocaust denier rhetoric:
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2000 08:59:43 -0700
From: Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
Subject: appealing to McVay

rj's post to Ken McVay is far from a straightforward statement of the
dispute.  I have not called rj a Holocaust denier -- that remains
rj's fiction -- but I have compared the evasions, equivocation, and
prevarication of rj's quibbling about whether or not Dora is a
Holocaust locale or if the Dora victims in GR might be considered
Holocaust victims to the *kind of rhetoric* that Holocaust deniers
use.  [snip -- full text available]

That's about the time that Derek and jbf asked us to drop it, which I 
promptly did, and stayed quiet (out of rj's discussion threads, at 
least) until New Year's Day when I objected to being called a Nazi, 
after keeping quiet while rj, kai, Morris, Mackin and the rest of 
that posse repeatedly dragged my name through the mud.

Otto said he had not seen any anti-Semitism in rj's posts; I quote 
from a relevant post:
"First of all, asshole, my name is Derek, not "maus" (which is, as you no
doubt know, not only my last name but an insulting hurled toward Jews in
Germany, you little sweetie you...)."

That appeared in an October 5 post. I can send you the full text if 
you wish, but this should be enough to demonstrate my point of rj's 
spewing anti-Semitic slurs.

I don't want to go over this Holocaust stuff all over again, but it's 
worth correcting the record.  I said rj echoed Holocaust-denier 
rhetoric, and a Holocaust expert confirmed that observation. I said 
rj spewed anti-Semitic slurs, and that's in fact what happened.

Millisonically,
Doug


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