(I. plausibility of big picture and motive)

1. The logistics needed to support the official story are stupendous

The number of total victims claimed used to vary wildly. In the 1980’s, a cousin of mine returned from an official tour and proclaimed to us with wild eyes that the number exterminated was actually over 20 million! Usually, however, the number of non-jewish victims is always kept just a little below that of the jewish victims, i.e. 5 million compared to their six. So stick with that for a moment.

As a budding Physicist, I was encouraged from a young age to visualize quantities, not just memorize them. If a dinosaur is said to be 30 feet tall, I look at a building and imagine a head poking in through a third-story window. That makes it vivid. We were also trained to do “order of magnitude” sanity checks of our calculations. One of my students carried out this agenda in a clever way. He supposed that every time a tire rotated, a one- atom- thick radius of rubber was removed by contact with the pavement. He then looked up the inter-atomic spacing of rubber, and calculated how long a tire should last. To order-of-magnitude, the tire life came out to be approximately right. That is the right way to test a model in a preliminary way.

Now, the serious accounts of the holocaust suggest that it took place mainly over a period of about two years — say, mid 1942 to mid-1944. Say there were six “death camps.” Then the average camp had to dispatch about 2 million victims, or 1 million per year. That is 20,000 per week, or 4,000 per day, if weekends or other rest days are allowed for.

4,000 per day, day in, day out, gassed, incinerated, and disposed of, for two years without letup, during the time that a desperate war was being waged, in which the Wehrmacht often had to resort to horses and wagons for its own logistics. Look up how long it takes a crematorium to incinerate one body with a Google search, and continue the calculation.

Perhaps, as Rocco in Godfather 2 said, “difficult; not impossible.” But almost impossible. Maybe impossible. It staggers the imagination in any case.

It was this kind of thought that first made me, with my background, open to the possibility of holocaust research. But it took years before I could work up the courage to actually start doing it.

2. There is more than one big-picture narrative, and these are contradictory

For example:

“No one knew” about the holocaust. That’s why it was rarely or never referred to explicitly by the officials.

On the other hand, “everyone knew” (e.g. the movie Amen.) That’s why the mass destruction of the German cities is justified, and never-ending reparations.

Likewise, at Treblinka, the bodies were dug up and burned, and everything bulldozed over without a trace, to remove all evidence prior to the allied victory.

On the other hand, “exterminations continued to the last day of the war” (e.g. the film We Were So Beloved).

Listen to enough discussions of the story with ears perked up, and such  contradictory covering propositions will quickly be discovered. We know from logic that once contradictions are allowed, anything can be proved.

3. If the Germans had set the goal of systematic extermination, bullets to the back of the head would have been much more efficient and cost-effective

The Judeo-Bolsheviks knew better, when they massacred the Ukrainians. Wouldn’t the Germans have learned from their superiors at the art of mass-murder?

4. The claim of having the goal of genocide — that is, completely eliminating the jew from the world — is not plausible, in that it was known that millions of jews had taken up residence in the US (for example)

Indeed, the Germans regarded the US as effectively a jewish client state.

For years the goal of the National Socialists was to induce the jews to leave, as can be seen in the film We Were So Beloved, for example. They knew many thousands of jews had emigrated to lands of safety, at the behest of the Nazis themselves. It is quite impossible to imagine rational people thinking that they could pull off a global extermination.

There is no evidence, contrary to the bar-room chatter, that Hitler had the goal of “taking over America,” let alone the world. On the contrary, Hitler envisioned a four-power division of hegemony between the Germans, the Japanese, the British, and the Americans. (See, for example, the Teaching Company’s series, World War II: A Military and Social History, conducted by Penn professor Thomas Childers.) The British indignation was not at the thought of someone “taking over the world,” but at having their own position of primacy challenged.

Thus, the idea that Hitler’s goal was to successively mop up all the remaining pockets of jewry, and thus succeed in “genocide,” is simply impossible.

(II. Rules of Evidence)

5. Much of the “evidence” comes from a group which not only had just been in a desperate war with the Germans, but was their ideological enemy.

The pictures of mountains of hair, and mountains of eyeglasses, and so forth, come almost exclusively from the Soviets. The Soviets just ten years earlier had conducted the infamous “show trials” in their own land. The Soviets had perfected the art of cinematographic propaganda in the earlier decades, led by Eisenstein. The Soviets had a visceral hatred of the Nazis exceeding even the Nazis’ hatred of them. The Soviets are now known to have blamed massacres on the Germans that were carried out by themselves — the Katyn Forest massacre, for example. They are known, documented liars.

6. Most of the “evidence” supplied by the Western allies has had to be modified or abandoned in the course of time

In the 1970s, mention of the word “Dachau” elicited the same horrified shudders that “Auschwitz” does today. But when I visited that camp in 1979, imagine my surprise to see that German historians had been permitted by their rulers to place a sign near the “gas chamber” that declared that no one was gassed to death at Dachau.

Likewise, any number of American WW2 veterans involved with the “liberation” of Buchenwald swear up and down that they “saw the evidence of the holocaust” with their own two eyes.  Yes, the conditions were harsh. Yes, many perished there in the cold or due to unjustly harsh treatment — the Reformed pastor Paul Schneider for example. But no one suggests anymore that anyone was gassed to death at Buchenwald. Buchenwald was a punitive labor camp: nothing more, nothing less.

Today, the idea that jews were turned into lampshades has been exploded.

Likewise, the stories about human soap — now abandoned.

Human hair for mattresses — absurd. No mattress stuffed with human hair has been produced. Think about it. If human hair had been seen as a desirable commodity, would not the Germans have first started a program of human-hair recapture from the civilian barbers — where the hair would be clean, not lice-infested, and plentiful, coming from repeat customers? Yet no such program has ever been made public.

By an amazing coincidence, it appears that all of the camps liberated by the Western allies have now been cleared of the charge of being death camps. All the camps still listed as “death camps” were liberated by the Soviets.

7. Even the Soviet accounts have been slowly revised and otherwise rendered suspect

It is now admitted that the main gas chamber at Auschwitz was reconstructed after the fact — “to reflect how it really was,” of course. (See other details about Auschwitz in the three videos that begin here.) The number of victims at Auschwitz has been revised downward by millions, yet the total number is never affected.

8. There is precious little actual eye-witness testimony

Examining the accounts carefully, one often finds the testimony qualified by “I heard that…” or “someone said that…” This is known technically as hearsay.

9. The detailed “eye-witness” testimony is often mutually contradictory

Some of the original “eye-witnesses” claimed the death chambers worked by electrified floors. Some said the floors were designed to open up and dump the bodies into railroad cars underneath that could haul the corpses quickly to their graves.  Others said they worked by evacuating the air. Others said the holocaust occurred by people being thrown alive into burning pits. None of these tales are accepted in the official account any more.

10. The detailed “eye-witness” testimony is often absurd

Adolf Eichmann spoke of blood spurting up out of the burial grounds.

The prison confession of Rudolf Gerstein, whose story is amplified in the movie Amen, is a serious case in point. His details are simply impossible. The pile of clothes would be ten stories high. The body counts would pack more than one victim per cubic foot of space. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), Gerstein died in Allied prison under suspicious circumstances before he could be cross-examined.

11. Eye-witness testimony that runs against the official story is always discounted, making the account look like a non-falsifiable dogma

Red-cross reports on camp inspections, for example.

12. Video pictures, absent verbal testimony giving the interpretation, are nearly worthless

We have all seen the footage of bulldozers pushing emaciated bodies into mass graves after the war. But who were the victims? Germans starved to death by the infrastructure destroyed by Allied napalm? Prisoners that died of typhus because the means for dealing with it was similarly destroyed? Without a narrative, including dates, times, and places, raw images are worthless.

At Buchenwald, there is a picture showing a mass of bodies. As time ran out toward the end of the unconditional-surrender destruction of Germany, these corpses could not be buried or cremated in time. It is now known that Buchenwald was not a death camp.

The maker of the Night and Fog documentary admits they were operating with little documentation. See my review for some of the absurdities in that film. Staring at the images in that “documentary” confirmed me as a skeptic. (It can be dangerous taking evidence too seriously.)

13. Doing the “numbers” by census report is unsound

First, jews are reluctant to be counted, even by themselves (see Wex’s explanation for this). Second, a reduction in number obviously does not prove foul play, let alone identify the killer. Third, some census figures I have seen show the jewish population increasing during WW2. This matter needs to be gotten to the bottom of.

14. The general German concession of guilt does not pass the smell test

Nuremburg led to a remorseful owning-up by the Germans. It was neither, “Ja, we did that, but you need to hear our side,” nor, “we didn’t know about it therefore we are not guilty.” There is just stunned, remorseful silence: a peculiar combination of assuming guilt even while incognizant.

For example, the interview of Traudl Junge that frames the movie Downfall shows that she was unaware of the holocaust, though she served as the personal secretary of Hitler. Yet she feels guilty because Sophie Scholl was her age, and Sophie “knew.” But the movie expanding on Sophie Scholl’s life does not put words in her mouth different what any pacifist might say in general terms. What is the chance that Sophie, living in Munich, “knew” while Hitler’s personal secretary did not know?  How does Traudl now “know”? Because the Nuremburg Trial proved it. All the years at Hitler’s side, right up to the end, divulged not a hint of it.

(III. General nature of historical evidence)

15. The evidence for the holocaust is quite different from the evidence for other historical “facts”

Think of the difference between denying the holocaust and denying, say, the existence of George Washington, or denying that the battle of Gettysburg took place.

To do either of the latter examples, one would have to deny the entire continuity of the historical narrative, including finally one’s own existence in a coherent world. But to deny the holocaust, the rest of the narrative of history remains intact.

Suppose someone denied that the Battle of Gettysburg ever happened. But there is the field that can still be visited, with bullets still findable in the soil, and mass grave ditches. There are the official field reports. There are the thousands of soldiers’ memories, that were integrated into the shared experience of the nation and, above all, their families: widows and comrades, that lived next door to others, and whose descendants still live among us. There were the books written later by the generals that were actually there. These all match the newspaper accounts written as the event was happening. At the end of the day, there is no integrated history of the world if there was no Gettysburg: then the whole world might as well be a figment of my imagination.

This comprehensiveness and coherence that would be lost is hardly the case if it turned out there was no holocaust.  The stories of the players and the newspapers are perfectly coherent and comprehensive without a holocaust: indeed, neither the newspapers nor official statements of the time even mention a holocaust in any kind of compelling way.

(IV. Evidence of fraud)

16. Many of the salient elements of the narrative were broached before the corresponding fact could have occurred

The “six million” figure was broached several times, long before it could have been a fact.

My favorite is the reference to “gassings” in the Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator, produced in 1940, and long before the alleged “final solution” proposal at Wannsee. (A correspondent suggests it was a reference to WW1 gas. However, since the Allies also used gas in WW1, it would have been awkward for Chaplin to bring this up in his parody of Hitler.)

17. The Nuremburg trials have many marks of a show-trial

The Soviets were major players as prosecutors and judges, coming off their own show-trials of the previous decade. The American staff was loaded with resentful and vengeful jews. There was very little cross-examination. There is evidence that torture was used and threatened.

18. The number of “holocaust survivors” is huge, and continues to grow

Just a couple months ago, our local rag trotted out another victim of suffering during the Holocaust, who had remained completely silent for sixty-five years!

Before they think about it, people think the vast number of survivors is proof of the holocaust. It is the opposite. It is evidence against.

19. The story has grown, and grown, and grown

Evidently, the memoirs of Churchill, Eisenhower, and de Gaulle make scant mention of the Holocaust by any name. The director of the movie Judgment at Nuremburg states that he found that college audiences found his material incredible at the time — the early sixties. The Holocaust only became big business in the seventies. And it continues to grow.

Normally, don’t we expect details of history to be most vivid near the event, and fade with the passage of time?

(V. politicized nature of subject)

20. Revisionists are attacked in a way that is entirely unfair, ad hominem, and even criminal

Robert Faurisson has been beaten up physically, and endlessly reviled in print. Revisionists are routinely accused, without any evidence other than the content of their conclusions, of being neo-Nazis or fascists. Above all, see also #24.

The charge of “anti-semitism” as the only motive that could lead to questioning the story is question-begging. Perhaps the attackers should entertain the converse: could it be that seeing how questioners have been ridden roughshod over is the very thing that pushes some toward “anti-semitism”?

21. Questioning the official story is usually not answered by unassailable facts, but by appeal to the authority of the establishment guild

And this is particularly weak when we realize that the guild is self-perpetuating: dissenters are not allowed in, or are forcibly removed. When discussing the identity of King Tut, we might expect some objectivity from the academic guild, but when discussing a subject for which publishing the wrong answer will lead to losing the royally-rewarded tenure track, academics themselves should be honest enough to recognize their bias. Read the story of Germar Rudolf, and ask how many other academics you have ever met would be willing to sacrifice the cushy academic life for Rudolf’s destiny. Consider this list of people fired, exiled, and persecuted in Switzerland for doubting the story. Shame, and double shame!

Now add to this the threat described in #24. It is hardly surprising that the guild is united around one story.

The appeals to authority are often coupled with a condescending sneer that suggests that only perversity could even raise the question. Compare this to how someone that believed the earth were flat and the sun revolves around it would be answered. Can you imagine how absurd it would be if the only answer ever given to such a person were, “all the university Physicists disagree with you”?

Anyone – including non-Physicists — that can’t rattle off two or three infallible proofs that the earth is round and is rotating on its axis has no right to claim those beliefs.

Anyone that can’t rattle off half a dozen infallible proofs for the holocaust has no right to scoff at the questioner.

22. The manner in which jewish suffering is highlighted, and the suffering of others minimized, smacks of propaganda

The very term “holocaust” is virtually copyrighted. The Armenians are not allowed to refer to the Armenian holocaust. Nor are the Tutsi in Rwanda. Nor, the Cambodians under the Pol Pot. All these people are only allowed to mention their story as a footnote to the One Really Important Story.

23. Likewise, the way in which the noses of the “liberators” are rubbed in the muck smacks of propaganda

Virtually every American city of any size has a holocaust memorial. I thought we were the liberators, that we should be praised. No; we are to feel guilty also.

Finally, the clincher:

24. Almost everywhere in Europe, people that question the holocaust story are thrown in prison

Pacifist artist Ernst Zundel was dragged from his home in Tennessee, shipped to Canada, and then sent to Germany, where he sits in the slammer. Note that the charge of “inciting racial hatred” is identical to the “charge” of denying that the Nazis killed millions of Jews. Note also this chilling statement: “German prosecutors were able to seek his extradition on the ground that a Web site he ran was accessible in Germany.” What site is not accessible in Germany?  By this criterion, no one is safe that publishes such material on the web.

David Irving — thrown into the slammer in Austria for denying the holocaust – in a speech he had made seventeen years before!

Gerd Honsik  — extradited from Spain and thrown into the slammer in Austria – for holocaust denial

Gaston-Armand Amaudruz — Swiss citizen, thrown in prison – for holocaust denial

Fredrick Toben –  sentenced for publishing “anti-Semitic material” – which are detailed as (1) suggesting the Holocaust did not happen, (2) questioning whether there were gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp, and (3) hurting some jews’ feelings by challenging their intelligence.

Some of these have already been freed. On the other hand, the list is not complete.

Not since the Gulag Archipelago was in full swing has the expression of heretical opinion been treated this way. Does anyone suggest throwing flat-earthers in prison, or Gettysburg-deniers? This shows that the holocaust is functioning as a state religion — in an age that pretends horror at religious persecution.

What academic wants to be thrown in prison, or (if he is American) put in a position of not daring to step foot into Canada or Europe?

What young academic wants to jeopardize his chance for the life-long gravy-train known as tenure?

What academic, tenured or not, wants to face a national campaign by ADL terrorists to have him removed from office and rendered unemployable?

Academics today is all about “getting funding.” What is amusing is that in the very era, our own, when every historian is keenly tuned in to the “material factors” that might have “influenced” the Nicean Council, or even a Luther, seem totally oblivious to the material factors that are patently and undeniably steering their own work!

The “academic consensus” in any matter that is so politically and (above all) financially charged as this subject is, has no value whatsoever. It is unfortunate, but true.

When people are thrown in prison for expressing a belief, it is virtual proof that something is going on with the power-holders other than commitment to truth.

Conclusion

These considerations do not prove that the holocaust story is false, but the consideration I have outlined do prove that investigating it is not a sign of insanity or bad faith. On the contrary, the mockers and persecutors of revisionists must answer the charge of bad faith, if not outright dishonesty.

The landscape has changed for me, and I think the landscape will be changed for anyone that takes a couple years, part time, to look into these matters.  For me, the burden of proof has decisively swung to the side of the received story.

Robert E. Sherwood

Enter Robert E. Sherwood, playwright and playboy, to save the day. He pulled off a most amazing feat, producing a play in which every evil action or attitude of anyone anywhere is portrayed as simply a lapse into Nazism. Yes, the invasion of Finland that filled people with disgust appeared to be carried out by the communist Red Army; but this was only because they had temporarily forgotten their ideals and succumbed to the temptation to act like Nazis. Indeed, perhaps they were as innocents actually being manipulated by Nazis to carry out a Nazi agenda without even knowing it. Therefore, America needed to awaken and prepare to wage war against the Nazis.

The title of the play was “There Shall Be No Night,” from Revelation 21:25 or 22:5. However, it does not purport to be a Christian answer to the global situation. The main character explains that the deeper meaning of Revelation is theosophical rapture in one’s own mind:

Kaarlo: We can all use the Book of Revelation to substantiate our own theories. It’s an eternally effective device. I have heard evangelist charlatans quote it to prove that if you do not accept their nonsense and pay for it, you will most surely burn in hell.  But there is something profound in those words I quoted. That unknown Jewish mystic who wrote that — somehow, unconsciously, he knew that man will find the true name of God in his own forehead, in the mysteries of his own mind. “And there shall be no night there.” That is the basis of all the work I have done. (Scene 6)

The play premiered on Mar 29, 1940 — just two weeks after the “First War” against the Finns and 24 days after the Soviet massacre of 25,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in cold blood at the Katyn Forest.

The play can be summarized adequately by describing each character, for there is not much in the way of plot: the propaganda proceeds by chit-chat among the players, and the small amount of action is merely implied by the dialogue.

Dr. Kaarlo Valkonen, Finnish psychiatrist, takes every chance to pontificate about insanity, of which waging war is one manifestation. The Russian Revolution was an idealistic breakthrough of sanity, even as the work of Freud and Pavlov and himself is a marshaling of science toward curing humanity of its mental problem. Despite his pacifistic tendencies, however, he comes to see that Nazism is the one thing that will prevent man from rising to greatness, so he finally takes up arms himself.

His wife, Miranda, is New England-born, and represents the “can’t we all just get along” attitude of the typical American. She had two ancestors, representing two sides of America: “rugged heroism” — that one “died happy” –, and capitalism — that one “made a nice fortune selling shoddy uniforms to the army.” She is inclined to favor the latter as a role model for their son, like the proverb “better a live dog than a dead lion,” but the play is meant to rekindle the former motif, and trigger a properly anti-Nazi warlike spirit in other Americans.

Their son Erik, being of mixed American/Finnish blood, represents the conflict between patriotism and love of fun and romance. In the end, he realizes that he must fight for “freedom” and against Nazism in every form. He dies, but not before impregnating his girlfriend Kaatri. She is persuaded to flee to America to raise the child away from all the insanity, thus becoming a symbol for women and children that can rebuild and “carry on the blood” after the men have died fighting Nazism.

Affable German Consul Dr. Ziemssen frankly announces everything about Germans that Sherwood believes about them. In this way, Sherwood does not have to defend his prejudice, since his straw-man “opponent” admits the same view.

A few examples from the text of the play itself will show just how blatant New Deal rhetoric can be; indeed to the point that it is rather amusing in retrospect.

All evil comes from Nazism

Erik and his girl are discussing the Soviet buildup (Scene 2).

Erik: The American government — all governments — are being pulverized with fear by this Soviet propaganda. They want to pulverize us, too, so that well give them what they want without a struggle.

Maybe Erik is waking up to the Soviet threat? Alas, no:

… It’s all bluff — it’s all an imitation of the Nazis.

Kaatri: But when the bluff doesn’t work, suppose they go on imitating the Nazis — suppose they do attack?

Note the Soviets appear to be the aggressor, but if so, they are only “imitating Nazis.” Later (scene 5), Joe, the fighter pilot, describes his feelings after strafing a column of Germans.

Joe: They were Nazis. It gave me a thrill. All this time, in fighting the Russians, I’ve felt just a little bit uncomfortable — you can imagine it, Dave, after my experience with the Loyalists. You know, I couldn’t help saying, “God forgive them — for they know not what they do.”… But when I saw those Nazis — those arrogant bastards — and I could even see the looks on their faces, — all I could think of was, “God forgive me if I miss this glorious opportunity.” I let ‘em have it! It was a beautiful sight…

Dave: I thought it was about time for the Nazis to be taking a hand in this war. No wonder the tide of battle has turned. I guess they’ve decided there has been enough of this nonsense of Finland’s resistance. Probably they want the Russians to get busy somewhere else.

The idea is that the Russians when they are aggressive are simply the tools of the Nazis, not acting according to their own ideology and interests. In scene 7, incredibly, the Germans continue to be referred to as the actual aggressor:

Joe: This city might hold out for a long time, like Madrid.

Dave: I hope not. Because if it comes to a siege, you’ll see German battleships out there, doing their bit in the bombardment. I wouldn’t like to be here when that happens.

A bit later, Dave grants that the Soviets have a role, but:

Dave: Three months ago, the Soviet troops marched in…. The cause of revolution all over the world has been set back incalculably…. The Soviet Union has been reduced from the status of a great power to that of a great fraud. And the Nazis have won another bloodless victory.

Incredibly, the result of the Soviet invasion of Finland is… a Nazi victory over Finland.

Again and again, the play drills in that if the Soviets do something bad, it is falling away from the ideals of the Revolutionists, and instead, imitating Nazis.

Communism is good

In scene 1, son Erik says he is studying economics and sociology. His father chimes in.

Kaarlo: And skiing. He can’t make up his mind whether he wants to be another Karl Marx, or another Olympic champion.

Thus, Karl Marx is set up as the great exemplar of economics: the analogue of an “Olympic champion” of skiing.

Dave: Have you been much in the Soviet Union?

Erik: Oh, yes. We lived there when father was working with Pavlov.

The “oh, yes” shows enthusiasm at the memory of the Soviet Union. The only thing worth mentioning about that country is the science, the good work.

Dave: And you really believe they might invade this country?

The “really” indicates that it is inherently incredible to think of the USSR invading another country.

Erik: If there were counter-revolution in Russia, anything might happen. Or the Nazis might come that way. We have to be prepared.

Thus it is explained how such a thing could happen. It could happen if there were counter-revolution, i.e. if the Marxist revolution were overthrown by reactionaries! Or, what amounts to the same thing, the Nazis might get there first. There is some banter about punch, then:

Dave: Of course, the Nazis have been highly successful in terrifying people of the Bolshevik menace. But all the times I’ve been in Moscow, I’ve never seen anything but a passionate desire to be let alone, in peace.

Notice all the assertions here. Any fear of the Bolsheviks is caused by Nazi propaganda. Dave has been in Moscow a lot and all he has seen is the desire for peace. Just like Walter Duranty, only here it is being said with a straight face.

The German confesses that world conquest is the goal

Later, in scene 3, when the German Dr. Ziemssen urges his friend to leave Finland, he reveals this bombshell:

Ziemssen: You think our enemies are these — these Communists who now invade your country?

Kaarlo: Yes. That is what I think.

Ziemssen: The Russians think so, too, but they are wrong. We are your enemies, Herr Doktor. This Finnish incident is one little item in our vast scheme. We make good use of our esteemed allies of the Soviet Union….

After a bit he continues

Ziemssen: The same is true of every nation that we conquer; we shall see to it that none of them will ever rise again … This is a process of annihilation. It is a studied technique, and it was not invented in Moscow. You will find the blueprints of it, not in Das Kapital, but in Mein Kampf. …

Kaarlo: Do you approve of this technique?

In answering, Ziemssen indicates that the Germans even plan to enslave their fellow Aryans, the Scandinavians:

Ziemssen: Naturally, I regret the necessity for it. But I admit the necessity. And so must you, Dr. Valkonen. Remember that every great state of the past in its stages of construction has required slavery. Today, the greatest world state is in process of formation. There is a great need for slave labor. And — these Finns and Scandinavians would be useful. They are strong; they have great capacity for endurance.

The memes continue to be planted that the German goal was world conquest, including the outright lie that they desired the conquest of the new world:

Kaarlo: Where can one go to escape this world state?

Ziemssen: An intelligent question, Herr Doktor. I assure you that the United States is secure for the present. It may continue so for a long time, if the Americans refrain from interfering with us in Mexico and South America and Canada. And I believe they will refrain. They are now showing far greater intelligence in that respect than ever before. They are learning to mind their own shrinking business.

America must give up its isolationism

In Scene 3, while the doctor encourages his wife to leave the country, the meme is planted for Americans pondering their role. Miranda’s attitude is to mirror the American isolationist view — understandable but untenable.

Miranda: I don’t think [Erik] would be particularly happy or proud to hear that his mother has scurried to safety at the first sound of a shot fired.

Kaarlo: Erik has American blood in his veins. He will understand.

Miranda: Oh! So that’s it! His American blood will tell him that it’s perfectly reasonable for me to run away. You evidently share Kaatri’s opinion of me.

And later, American non-involvement is likened to Pontius Pilate.

Dave: [Pilate] knew that this was a good, just man, who didn’t deserve death. .. But when they cried, “Crucify Him!” all Pilate could say was, “Bring me a basin of water, so that I can wash my hands of the whole matter.”

Summary

In summary, the play drives home that Soviet aggression, to the extent that it was not just a manipulation by the Nazis and under their control, was a lapse from the glorious ideals of Marxism. American must therefore wake up and crush the Nazis.

It is no wonder that Sherwood was fingered to become an employed shill for the New Deal. The question for a grad student in history to pursue is to discover how he became such a doctrinaire apostle for the “cause.” A good place to start would be his Hollywood connections, who rewarded him richly for minor editorial work. He hung out with a number of them during his California jaunts. Therein is probably to be found the story behind the story.

Because people groups have allegedly evolved separately, they are at different stages of evolution, and some people groups are less evolved. Thus, the other person may not be as fully human as you. This sort of thinking inspired Hitler in his quest to eliminate Jews and Gypsies and to establish the “master race.” Sadly, some Christians have been infected with racist thinking through the efforts on our culture of evolutionary indoctrination, that people of a different “color” are inferior because they are supposedly closer to the animals. (p. 78f.)

And, in case you missed it the first time,

Evolutionists like Hitler treated the Jews, Gypsies, and other groups as inferior, and therefore argued that they needed to be eliminated. (p. 166)

It is unfortunately necessary again to question Ham’s honesty. In the current sputtering shibboleths about Nazis, you are supposed to mention the persecution of homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses as well. Why does Ham “forget” to mention those groups? Why only Gypsies and Jews? Obviously, because Sodomites are not a racial group, and Jehovah’s Witnesses are not a racial group. (Perhaps it is also because his rhetoric would then find less sympathetic reception amongst his white conservative audience?) But this should have cued him in that his premises might be wrong. He needs a theory to account for the persecution of all the groups that were persecuted.

The “closer to the animals” argument is dubious as stated. Presumably, Ham believes that cattle are “inferior” to humans; yet this has not led him to desire that all the cattle of the earth should be wiped out. Of course we slaughter cattle, but this is different than “eliminating.” The history of man is full of mutual slaughter, and not necessarily based on a theory of inferiority. Indeed, probably it hardly ever is tied to a theory of inferiority.

Moreover, one can believe that some races are inferior to others based on any number of criteria having nothing to do with evolution, nor does such a belief need to entail hatred or a desire for genocide. One could believe that one’s mortal enemies were superior, and therefore had to be eliminated — kill or be killed as they say.

Note further that the desire for racial separation does not necessarily imply a sense of racial superiority, any more than separating the squabbling children is. Think: let it be that the Aryan is inferior to the other races. Fine: now can we have our own country? Indeed, if there is any legitimacy to desiring to see one’s tribe continue qua tribe into the future, then the desire for separation would only become stronger when said tribe is mingled with a superior and dominating rival tribe.

We can summarize the fallacious forms of Ham’s logic thusly:

• Belief in racial inferiority does not imply justification for genocide
• Belief in racial inferiority does not imply belief in evolution
• Desire for racial separation does not imply belief in racial inferiority
• Desire for racial separation does not imply belief in evolution

The Hamites have not thought this matter through carefully because, I suspect, their minds have been addled by the Nazi meme, which our rulers have deeply implanted in the minds of our people. Corrupted by our rulers’ meme, the Hamites in turn plant their own. The meme-planting intent of this passage is clear: if you want to live where you can raise your children far away from Negroes, then you are equivalent to a Nazi, acting like Hitler.

Whenever the H-card is played, one should unpack carefully. Why is the deliberate Judeo-bolshevik slaughter of millions of Ukrainians prior to the ascendancy of H never mentioned? That was surely racial hatred, but not necessarily based on evolution. On the other hand, there are several ways that Ham on Hitler re race is wrong, reflecting the analysis above:

1. H’s alleged belief in the primacy of the German and the relative inferiority of the Slav, Hun, and Mediterranean did not stop him from making friendly alliances with Croatia, Hungary, and Italy (not to mention Romania) against their common enemy, the Bolsheviks; and those allied nations fought valiantly at the side of the Germans.  (Slovakia too was on friendly terms, and had something equivalent to an SA of their own.)  Many Russian soldiers after capture volunteered to fight with the Germans against their communist rulers. (Roosevelt/Truman obeyed Stalin’s order to hand them over to the USSR after the war for execution — but I digress.)

2. If he had heard that the Slavs regarded their race as superior, I suspect H would have taken that with bemused humor. He would not have cared if you did not agree that the Aryan was superior. Indeed, he would probably respect you more if you held a similar view of your own race. Think of C. S. Lewis’ friends observing that the men of every nation believe their own women the most beautiful, when one of the old ones murmured “yes… but in our case, it is true.”

(Interesting trivia: H thought of the Japanese as the “Aryans of the Orient.”)

3. Nor was his desire to expel jews from Germany necessarily based on a belief that jews were inferior or sub-human in the sense that Ham implies. It was based on his conviction that jews were deleterious in their effect on the German people; and whether that pernicious effect was due to their being superior or inferior would be irrelevant to that conclusion, unless it should be that jewish superiority made separation even more urgent.

4. Why were other groups put in concentration camps, such as Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Sodomites? I cannot produce quotes, but it does not require much imagination to find a common denominator to make sense of such a policy: all of these groups are resistant to bonding tribally: they thus needed to be quarantined during the national emergency. All of this would make for an interesting discussion in its own right, but too much of a digression just here. The point is, that Ham’s pulling of the H-card is confused and probably exploitative of current political shibboleths; it cannot be marshaled to his thesis about evolution, or even race.

If quarantining a group believed to be potentially dangerous during a national emergency is so bad, why don’t the Hamites harp on the American segregating of Japanese-Americans during WW2 — which was unambiguously race-based. Why does poor old H always have to take the heat on this one? The answer is, that the American action was very clearly not related to a belief in evolution. It was based on the question of ethnic loyalty. The action may have been just or unjust — that would be the subject for a different essay. But it would reveal a nest of debatable issues that belie the Hamites’ charge of evolution, and place the discussion in a completely different framework.

5. We have made the point before, but it bears repeating in this new application: Hitler’s view that the Aryan needed to be preserved and separated from the Jew is a position that one could hold with or without evolution. The logic is simply absent when people make this assertion.

6. Doubtless, Hitler had a dynamic view of history, such that energetic peoples would tend to expand and sluggish ones contract.  Any pointy-headed academic might entertain such a hypothesis about history. No doubt, H desired his own people to be one of the energetic ones, not one of the sluggish ones. Given the hypothesis, that is certainly a rational view to have. It is compatible with either evolution or anti-evolution.

If it turns out that H believed in evolution in point of fact, would that prove Ham’s thesis? No it would not. It is the logical entailment that is wrong with Ham’s analysis.

People need to work up the courage to study that period in our people’s history; or perhaps just a study of critical thinking will suffice. After they do, cheap rhetorical tricks such as are sprinkled through this book will be enough by themselves to strip credibility from such authors. The Hitler treated by the Hamites is actually just a cartoon character created by Hollywood. That is why I say “the Hitler” in the title of this post. It is a stock character, to be dragged out on demand from the back-stage closet, like “the Mummy,” or “the Vampire.”

Now perhaps the Hamites will answer this analysis along these lines: even granting that the desire for racial separation is not logically dependent on a view of inferiors and superiors, and even if such a desire is possible with or without evolution — yet the escalation from separation to extermination (i.e. the “holocaust”) would only be possible on a view of superiority derived from evolution. Now leaving aside the fact that the “holocaust” story itself, as we have begun to document, seems to be patched together with even more baseless assertions and distortions than the Hamites can make in one short book, consider the logic of this move even granting the premise. First, such a view would be a misunderstanding of Darwinism. Darwinism speaks of the fittest surviving, not the “superior” as conceived of along logical, ethical, or teleological grounds. In other words, a Hitler that wished to exterminate a rival gang would not need to deduce a “right” to do so from some axiology of worth: the desire itself would be its own vindication or (upon loss) rebuttal. It is a misunderstanding to think that Darwinism permits a calculation of ethical right, or even a pragmatic right. The fittest survive, because those that survive are the fittest by definition. It has nothing to do with an apriori. Second, such a desire could be produced by other non-Christian worldviews with or without Darwinism being part of the package. One could believe, for example, that one’s own tribal god has created one’s tribe, or set it apart, and so ordained. In that case, Hitler’s view would be formally analogous to the ancient Hebrews’s genocide of the Canaanites, if it were the case that Jehovah were simply a tribal invention and not the true God. Again, such an attitude need not involve either a view of superiority or evolution. Finally, the last resort of the Hamite will probably be to say, that the execution of a genocide requires the cooperation of many persons, whose scruples would have to be overcome by some means or other. But if their scruples are based on Christian convictions, how would this be overcome by Hitler asserting Darwinism? The overcoming of scruples would need to take place by defeating Christian convictions by hook or by crook, and (a) this need not take place via Darwinism, and (b) the cynical Hitler-figure would not need himself to believe whatever subterfuge would be used to overcome the others’ scruples. And again (not to sound like a broken record), the agenda could just as well be pushed on the view of the right and exigencies of tribal survival as on the view of tribal inferiority or superiority.

One gets the feeling that Ham never tests his premises by the free variation of imagination. After a while, one starts to wonder if he is just cliché-monger, not a thinker at all. But if Ham merely passes along the usual “white lies” about Nazis, we cannot let the “Editor-in-chief” Jim Fletcher in his forward to the book off the hook so easily. Of that little piece of work, we must borrow the words of Mary McCarthy spoken originally about Lillian Hellman: Every word in it is a lie, including “and” and “the.” Consider just this one whopper:

Even the Japanese in World War II, to justify that nation’s expansionist aggression, had been told that they were the most “highly evolved” race on earth. After all, Europeans, with their longer arms and hairier chests, were clearly still closer to the ape, weren’t they? (p.13)

I seriously doubt that he can back up his quote with a published citation: I am calling your bluff, “Mr. Fletcher.” But perhaps he will find some Japanese somewhere that said that. Perhaps some over-heated rhetoric on either side may be excused on the mitigating circumstance of the heat of battle — on the level of the playground pugilist’s “your mother wears army boots.”

However, even the slightest acquaintance with the facts belies this assertion as a fair statement of the case: the expansion of Japan was into the territory of fellow Orientals, and they were allied with that nation, Germany, which is arch-European! Even the attack on “European” America was reluctantly undertaken due to the deliberate provocation of the Roosevelt administration, as “Mr. Fletcher” would have known if he had read even ten pages of history before getting up on his soap box.

Again, if he feels the need to take a cheap shot, why not pick on “us” rather than “them”? After the US government had goaded and tricked the Japanese into a war they did not desire, consider how “the Allies” treated them racially. Military commentator Fletcher Pratt “declared that the Japanese ‘can neither make good airplanes nor fly them well.’” (T. Fleming, The New Dealers’ War, p. 44) After Pearl Harbor, “an agitated General Douglas Macarthur swore they must have acquired Germans or some other white mercenaries to fly their planes.” (pp. 44-45)  “After the bombs fell, the paper’s cartoonist, Theodore Giesel, future beloved children’s book writer Dr. Seuss, drew a picture of a long column of slanty-eyed Japanese lining up to collect TNT at a house labeled ‘Honorable Fifth Column.’” (p. 110) “Pearl Buck risked her status as a best-selling author … in her 1943 novel, The Promise, about the British and Chinese fighting the Japanese in Burma. She depicted the British as infected with all but incurable racist attitudes, which led them to see Asians as subhuman, even when they were allies.” (p. 379) “In an official government film, Action at Anguar, issued in the spring of 1945 to support the seventh war-bond drive, footage showed Japanese soldiers being burned alive by flamethrowers while the narrator said: “By this time we had shot, blasted or cooked six hundred of the little apes.’” (p. 540)

A Christian should be doubly careful to be fair and just in his treatment of his enemies, knowing the proneness of human nature to self-deception. One feels cheap having to correct Ham and his colleagues on these matters: like having to prove that there were 10 cookies in the jar in the presence of the little liar that obviously stole one. The situation has gone beyond the passing on of falsehoods that are part of the received tradition taught in government schools. One can forgive someone that has not been corrected, for passing on the false idea that Lincoln waged the “Civil War” to end slavery. But here, we are dealing with a situation that has gone beyond that: people think they can actually make up any slander out of thin air and pass it on with impunity when dealing with Nazis.

Schlissel thinks one can lie when dealing with a Nazi: it is but a short step, and one which most published Americans evidently have taken, to think one can tell any lie about the Nazis. Ham et al. undoubtedly think that if these baseless assertions about Nazis turn out to be false, they are just little “white lies,” well justified by the circumstance. But John Murray showed convincingly that even inadvertent passing along of falsehoods involves one in sin: for God is Truth. This is a very serious matter. If people claiming to be Christians continue to do it after being corrected, the credibility of their profession will eventually need to be questioned.

See also the earlier posts on the Stalingrad documentary and movie referenced.

Here is a site with many useful maps that can be studied in connection with the discussion, such as this one.

The introduction covers some of the background politics, a quick overview of other theaters, and definition of some of the terminology (57″).

This one covers the eastern front as it developed during 1941 (89″).

The core group interviewed consists of childhood buddies Walter Hess, now a fellow film-maker, Louis Kampf, now an activist and MIT professor, and Max Frankel, now in charge of the editorial page at the NY Times; relatives – notably his father Bert and Aunt Annie; and others in concentric rings of closeness – the rabbi’s widow Sary Lieber, Mrs. Krakow from down the hall, Walter’s mother Mrs. Moletta Hess, and the imperious Ilse Marcus. Editor Hans Steinitz and Yonkers housewife Edith Eisenmann fill out the cast.

(* Throughout, I use the present-tense “now” from the perspective of the film – I have not tracked these people down to the real present. In parentheses are the approximate time into the film, in hours:minutes.)

Most of these jews regarded themselves as Germans, and draw a sharp us-them distinction between themselves and jews from Poland or Russia. They claim to be descended from jews that followed the Roman legions up the Rhine, and stayed. There are signs of Aryan admixture: the rabbi’s widow has blue eyes, and several of them lack the characteristic “jewish whine” in their tone of voice. The claim that they thought of themselves as “Germans of a different religion” has surface (though deceptive) plausibility. Indeed Kampf’s father would have joined Hitler’s army (1:57) and Frankel confesses he would have marched with the Hitler Youth if only they would have had him (35, 2:03).

Not only did they think of themselves as Germans, they believed they were so regarded. The title comes from Bert Kirchheimer’s remark that the Germans felt bad about the new regime “because we were so beloved.” Mrs. Hess continues to correspond with her German friends from back home right up to the present (1:46) (as does Mrs. Krakow also [1:57]) and blames the problems that did occur not on something Germanic but on “the human.”

The German jews looked down their noses at the Polish jews, who, they claim, were tricky in business, dishonest, and they cheated — “not like us.” In 1938 the Polish jews in Germany began to be sent back, getting dumped in fields in Poland. Mrs. Lieber says that the attitude of the German jews was to “let them go back” (31). Frankel’s family was “first generation German” and was sent back. They walked back to Germany — so desperate were jews to get to and stay in Germany then — but were threatened with concentration camp if they came back again. (Later his mother with classic chutzpah stormed into the Gestapo office and demanded, and got, exit visas to America.) Kampf adds that the German jews blamed Polish jews for Nazi hostility toward jews, and on the ship to America there was a virtual ongoing war between the German jews and “Ostjuden” (34).

Thus, when Hitler started to make noises, many assumed it was a transient difficulty that would soon fix itself. Yet they did start to move out, and “by 1950″ – an odd year to anchor the statistic on, as if the emigration continued blithely along during and after the war – “more than 20,000 jews had settled in Washington Heights, setting up thirteen synagogues.”

The theme of ethnic and even infra-ethnic resentments is explored. Frankel admits that in New York, he was reviled even by other jews who had been there twenty years longer. “Why don’t you go back where you came from?” they asked (1:09). Frankel wonders if the “hysterical, grieving, deep pessimism” of earlier waves of East European jewry is due to their peasant stock, or perhaps something more deeply cultural in the Russian soul (1:11). Some of the jews in the film tut-tut the arrogance of new immigrants, including Russian jews, while others defend them.

A basic leftist orientation is presumed with these jews. A simplistic “Nazis=capitalists,” “good people=socialists” is taken for granted. Hitler “used the concentration camps to destroy the socialist, communist and trade union opposition, which had the support of the majority.” (49) Uh… right.

Interesting facts come to light to prove that Hitler’s intent was not the genocide of jews, but their removal from Germany.
•    Jewish men could “buy” their freedom from concentration camps for the pledge to leave Germany (40)
•    In 1936 jews could leave with all their money, while Germans could only take 10 Reichsmark with them if they left (29). (Later, the restriction to 10 was evidently extended to jews as well.)
•    Mr. Hess (already deceased at the time of the documentary) spent time in Dachau, after which he took the family on a cruise ship vacation, riding first class (51).
•    As mentioned above, the Polish jews that had emigrated to Germany were “dumped” into Poland, and were often desperate to get back into Germany.

The strident Mrs. Marcuse (1:40) shares the view of the narrator (1:44) that Germany deserved to be bombed into rubble. The indignities that justify that conclusion are sprinkled throughout the film and I list them here:

1. 1936 Nuremberg law said they could not call themselves German any more
2. kosher slaughter was banned (21)
3. stores were boycotted
4. German nurses could not work on jewish men
5. some of Walter’s classmates threw dirt clods at him
6. Frau Schumacher at one point stopped inviting Walter to the annual Easter-egg hunt (59)
7. in general, the Germans made Walter hate himself (58)
8. the Germans threw the jews out of a pool in Mannheim, and as a result, one of the girls was afraid to swim for the rest of her life (24)
9. Mrs. Eisenmann says, for punishment for misbehavior in one of the camps, women’s heads were shaved funny
10. Mr. Hess at one point was made to enter his place of work through the rear door (28)
11. in one camp, Mrs. Marcuse had to use a pail as latrine (1:19)
12. in another camp, underground editor Steinitz had to use a typewriter with a broken A-key (1:18)

I will limit my commentary on this list to just the first four items. (1) Not being able to call oneself “German” is a reasonable thing applied to a tribe that refuses to assimilate, that is, a tribe that is in fact not German as to tribal identity. (2) Kosher slaughter should in fact be banned from any civilized country, and those that continue to perform it should be exiled or executed. This is deliberate cruelty to animals that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up: more will need to be said about this in the future. (3) As I showed elsewhere, boycotting minority-owned stores is actually entirely reasonable if in effect that minority is boycotting the stores of the majority — whether they are doing so as intentional program or by natural ethnic loyalty. (4) is just common sense.

Finally, I mark those items in the film that can serve as evidence that can be gleaned on the question of the “holocaust.”

1. A couple of the interviewees mention how many of their “family” were lost to the holocaust. Mrs. Krakow “lost more than twenty.” (Exactly how many; can we get some names and places?) Bert Kirchheimer says, “they always told me 46 people from my family were murdered… Of course, I counted them, a long time ago” (11). There is something a bit flippant about this statement. “They” always told him. He counted, but a long time ago – don’t ask for specific details now. Above all, if 46 people can be identified as “my family,” then “family” is a very extended family indeed. (Extend the concept sufficiently, and most Germans can probably say they “lost 46 people” in the war, too.) Names and dates and places, please.

2. Steinitz admits that the German camps were not extermination camps (1:17). This is a relief to hear: many Americans are still unaware of this fact due to the post-war propaganda. It is an amazing coincidence that all the “death camps” turn out to have been in regions “liberated” by the Red Army.

3. The narrator makes the preposterous statement, “Exterminations were carried on up to the last day [of the war]” (1:37). Meanwhile, the real Germans in Auschwitz were nursing Elie Wiesel back to health, and asking him if he wanted to be left behind to be rescued by the arriving liberators, the Red Army. Wiesel opted to return to Germany with his captors.

4. The grating Mrs. Marcuse reviles a young soldier that did not know of the existence of the nearby concentration camp – by which she must have meant “death camp.” She says “he should have been killed.” (1:43) Of course the liberating soldier would have known about the camps as such. Apparently, he had not yet discovered that they were actually death camps. Any eye-witness that does not support the story should be killed, Mrs. Marcuse evidently thinks.

5. In general, we still don’t get the names of individuals executed at named dates and places. The closest we get is Edith Eisenmann who claims to have found a letter indicating that her father was told that mother had been sent to a gas chamber. (1:39). But this is still hearsay three-times removed.

Twice, something rather odd is said in reference to gas chambers:

6. Mrs. Marcuse says that the SS women threatened that saboteurs would be “sent to the gas chambers” if it happened again (1:34). It did happen again, but instead of being sent there, the girls responsible were executed in the sight of their shifts to make an example. So, was “send to the gas chambers” a vacuous threat, like Scarlet threatening Prissy to “sell her south”? or is Mrs. Marcuse filling out the drama based on what she heard later?

7. Similarly, consider the statements by Mrs. Eisenmann that when her family arrived at Auschwitz, she was directed to the one side, the others to the other side. (But her father was a baker, presumably a healthy man in the prime of life. Why would he be rejected for work and a young girl kept?) Later, people in the camp said “see that? that’s the gas chamber” and most odd of all, consider this: “they told us when the gas was turned on” (1:29).

Apparently Mrs. Eisenmann heard the stories later about “gas chambers,” and she assumed that they would work like the gas oven in her kitchen. No one ever told her, or it did not sink in, that the “gas chamber” was supposed to work by Zyklon-B tablets being dropped through a slot in the roof; not by “the gas being turned on”!

The film could have had a half-hour edited out without loss, but nevertheless I recommend a couple viewings (HIx 2). It opens up new vistas on the German situation in the 1930s and the intra-tribal hostilities within jewry. Especially, it drives home unmistakably what the real German goal vis-à-vis jews was in the 30’s and it clearly was not extermination. Finally, several odd statements give further matter to ponder regarding the “holocaust” question.

An outline follows with a few minute-markers to help navigate.

1. The term holocaust itself (refers to this article) 0 – 15

2. The phrase, “the most documented event in human history”

Does it follow it is the most certain event?     19

The nature of documentation as human 28

Question of reliability    41

remembrances
Soviet army
Nuremburg testimony
camp rumors
financial incentives    49
some is fraudulent    52

What does claim “most documented” even mean?    1:09

What is an “historical event”?

The subject is an analysis of the sociological constituting of our world, with a focus on the medium of communication. The world and our consciousness of it have changed by virtue of the technological changes making mass-communication possible. As an entry into thinking about this, consider the difference between watching a movie and “reading the book.” Even if the story conveyed is identical, reflection shows there are significant differences in what has taken place in having the story “communicated.” The movie presents images created by someone else; reading involves creation of images by the reader himself. In the movie, real time marches forward inexorably as the viewer sits passively; in reading, it is under the control of the reader — one pauses to reflect;  one sets the book down to be continued later. Likewise, the fictional time-pacing within the movie is determined by the editor; in the book, it is at least partly determined by the imagination of the reader, not the invisible editor.

This aspect of the analysis — the “media ecology” proper — fits in nicely with the agrarian critique of modernity. There are analogies, for example, with transportation. Acquiring a horse meant that a round trip to the county seat might could be done in a single day rather than requiring an overnight. But the car allows sons to leave for a job in a distant city, never to come back. Once-bustling towns are now ghost towns, the only jobs left being the strip of fast-food joints along the interstate exit. Technology has brought a qualitative, not merely quantitative change to our way of living. We need to rethink whether the Amish have a true and valid insight, and not always write them off as having “stopped technology” at a merely arbitrary point.

A second major aspect of the subject Reynolds discusses is the study of mass communication by academics on the one hand, and by manipulators on the other. In turn, the latter category includes mass-marketing on the one hand, and political manipulation on the other. More on this below.

With the stage set, Reynolds is able to use the insights obtained to launch a strong attack on the methods of the church-growth movement, showing the inadvertent evils attendant upon the very fact that modern multi-media is used, in contrast to the methods of worship described in Scripture.

The Regulative Principle of Worship as defined by the Westminster Confession specifies that certain elements of worship are required by Scripture, elements not specified are forbidden, and a third category, “circumstances,” is subject to wisdom.  Reynolds argues (303-305) that the result of his analysis is that modern multi-media cannot be put into that third, “neutral” category, and thus we should regard them as forbidden.

In evaluating the work, I proceed chiastically. The commitment to the Regulative Principle is encouraging coming from a bright star like Rev. Reynolds, who is a scintillating conversationalist and a preacher that is at once engaging and searching, combining the best of Francis Schaeffer’s broad cultural concerns with a stronger attachment to the vantillian critical method. I had the pleasure of “hanging out” with him a number of times during my sojourn in New Hampshire in 1996. Those of our readers that reside anywhere near Manchester, New Hampshire should visit Amoskeag church and become a member there if not already a member of a true church somewhere else.

Reynolds’ work on the Regulative Principle in connection with media ecology sheds new light on elements of our form of worship that at first glance may appear to be dusty relics of a bygone century. For example, though the focus of his study is the preaching of the word, a new insight is also gained into the “genius” if you will of the reading of the Word (381-3) as a distinct element of worship, the performance of which moreover is restricted by our standards to the pastor in his executive function as an agent of the holy catholic church manifested in presbytery. A naturalistic approach might suggest that an age of universal literacy and Bible dissemination might render that element superfluous, requiring instead that members read the word privately and dispense with the public reading. Not so, Reynolds’ research shows. There is a mode of receiving the word of God which is instantiated in that element indispensably. This book makes an important contribution in the area of worship theory.

Unfortunately, the evaluation of the secular role of mass-media falls a bit short due to the dots that are not connected. The threads are already confusing because the distinction between study of media as such must be combined with study of the deliberate use thereof to manipulate the masses toward an end hidden from those being manipulated. And this involves both the practitioner — the actual creator of propaganda — and the theoretician — who performs studies with human guinea pigs to determine the most effective methods. We need to take note of the fact that the names of the movers and shakers of the theory and practice of the manipulation of the masses using technologies both new and old look like an attendance list at the Convention of Hebrew Congregations.

We can begin the story with the massive, national full-court press that was put in place by the Chosen Tribe in 1913-15 to exonerate rapist-sodomite-murderer Leo Frank, just because he was a jew. Though newspapers – a medium invented in the 17th century — were at the heart of this campaign, their coordinated use for manipulating public opinion probably never reached such focused intensity before the Frank case.   The mass-media campaign was led by Adolph Jew Ochs, publisher of the New York Times (though the murder took place in Atlanta). In addition to carefully-orchestrated press releases let out simultaneously by all the jew-controlled newspapers across the country, the services of Albert Jew Lasker (son-in-law of Sears and Roebuck chairman Julius Jew Rosenwald) were put into service. Lasker was an expert at national media “campaigns” to establish brand name recognition such as Quaker Oats and Budweiser Beer. Lasker came up with the slogan “the truth is on the march” which became, as if by magic, the rallying cry by the national media to get Frank off the hook. Likewise, allegations of Atlanta mobs chanting phrases like “Kill the jew or we’ll kill you” were simply made up out of whole cloth, without any factual basis. Newspapers that stood with the legal system against Frank were boycotted. William Randolph Hearst succumbed to the pressure and became a shabbes goy for the campaign, along with others hired for the purpose. Financing came from a variety of sources, especially from Jacob Jew Schiff, notable later as a major financier of the Russian Revolution. The goy detective William Burns was paid a pretty penny to “get to the bottom of the case,” arriving in town with lots of media fanfare to that effect, while in reality, his job was to spread walking-around money to bribe witnesses to recant their testimony. In the end, the men of Atlanta prevailed, and such was the jewish rage at one of their own being executed, that the so-called Anti-Defamation League was founded.

Reynolds missed this story, but the strands involving armchair academics and wartime “social researchers” he does pick up on are also part of the story, albeit less dramatic. It is a story that starts before the Frank incident with Karl Jew Marx and Sigmund Jew Freud. In the decade leading up to WW2, the story continues with studies of the effectiveness of radio in influencing public opinion and elections. Paul Jew Lazarsfeld invented the “focus group” and questionnaires to evaluate audience responses. “The Kate Smith War Bond drive, promoted by CBS in 1943, demonstrated the power of feigned personal concern in identifying with and manipulating a mass audience” (91).  Kurt Jew Lewin was one of the founders of social psychology. “The one who controls the flow of information through a medium (‘channel’) dictates the shape and content of messages” (93). His disciple Leon Jew Festinger continued the social research. The story is peppered also with wry neo-con pop critics like Neil Jew Postman, Allan Jew Bloom and Joshua Jew Meyrowitz as well as explicitly destructive critics like Jacques Jew Derrida and Stanley Jew Fish. In between was the “Frankfurter School” consisting of men like Herbert Jew Marcuse who wrote arcane books making leftism appealing to young shickse and Theodore Jew Adorno who worked on rhetorically preempting Aryan push-back by creating and propagating the theory of the “authoritarian personality.”  I am passing over various rabbit-trails like Shannon’s channel measure of information, which is properly an electrical engineering concept.

The jewish exploitation — and to large extent creation — of mass-manipulation by psychological study and marketing practice evidently has two main goals: personal or tribal enrichment, and neutralization of Christian civilization as a way to reduce the chance of harmful reaction by the goyish masses. It involved, in addition to the takeover of university sociology departments and creation of new ones, tireless agitation in favor of massive third-world immigration and the elimination of every trace of Christianity from public schools and the public square, as one can read about by surfing around on the ADL’s own website (click the story decade by decade and marvel).

Of course, goyim also have their place in the story — some, that were in the wrong place at the wrong time (esp. WW2); some, of the “usual culprits” of the City of Man, that provided financing, most notably the Rockefeller empire (136); others, like Reynolds’ personal hero Marshall McLuhan, were properly critical.

But how did Reynolds miss the main thread of the story? Partly, it is because of his acceptance of the odious judeo-christian myth (77, 137) popularized by Francis Schaeffer. As a result, jews are repeatedly not distinguished from “Germans” (73, 79) or “Europeans” (69). Partly, it perhaps must be attributed to the very success of the mass-media manipulation that is the subject of the book!

In fairness, the “media ecology” and its relation to worship is the strength and the main purpose of the book: the rest could have been excised without loss to the thesis, and perhaps should be in a subsequent edition.

Nonetheless, the story of the manipulators is important in its own right, and I hope many of our people will get this book as an introductory survey, and then do further research to connect more of the dots. To know that one is being manipulated, and understand even a little about how, is already an antidote to its poisonous effect. Eliminating the parasites can follow when enough people wake up and get wise.

Greg Reynolds, The Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Preaching in the Electronic Age (Eugene: Wipf and Stock) 2001.

Mrs. Dagmar Davis

where the human action takes place: the terror, the moments of hope; the heartbreak, the acts of kindness; loyalty, betrayal; courage, cowardice; hard, endless work, stiff upper lips, pain that is still felt, and pain that can no longer be felt. The little stories are the important ones, ultimately. Here is one of those stories, from World War II, told by Mrs. Dagmar Davis of Wilmington.

I supplement with two brief, somewhat miscellaneous ruminations:

1. As I strolled around the cities of Germany, a few parts of which are still being rebuilt after more than a half-century, something struck me: the hard part of building a great civilization is the design, the plan, the concept; not the lugging bricks around and laying them. You can always do that; but only a few can design.

And the design has already been done! It is in our heads.

Imagine an analogy: a musical Bomber Harris tries to destroy every manuscript containing the works of Beethoven, and say he succeeds. But Beethoven is in our hearts and inner ears. There are undoubtedly musicians that have memorized long stretches, and even more that could finger it out from the audio memory. At length, there is little doubt that nearly the entire opus of Beethoven would be reconstructed and recommitted to paper.

2. There is a tendentious group that is trying to shave a digit off the number of victims of the Dresden bombing raid, i.e. to convert 130,000 into 30,000 dead. I have a theory for what is motivating such people, but the first point to make is that it is neither here nor there from an ethical standpoint.

Churchill and Harris knew that Dresden was swollen with refugees from the East, with more than a million jam-packed into its timber-framed downtown. From an ethical standpoint, from the standpoint of intent, they are, therefore, guilty of the murder of well over a million. That the actual number killed was only a tithe of that is to be accounted to several things, but one thing it cannot be accounted to is the good intentions of Churchill and Harris.