Copyright (c) 1997 - Ingrid
A. Rimland
November 23, 1997
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
The other day, a ZGram reader chided me mildly for using
the word "comrade," complaining that it sounded RED and was a
real turn-off. I guess it does - and heaven forbid that it should!
But I am rather fond of it because in German, "Kameraden" sounds
certainly respectable and is a term at once appropriate, reverend and sacred.
I have decided now to keep on using it - and, thus, contributing to its
linguistic rehabilitation.
After all, why should we yield to Commies a perfectly good word? The term
predates the Reds - they stole it for their Bolshevik Revolution, along
with so much else. Therefore, I take it back.
After all, isn't that what Revisionists do - take back their cultural birthright,
including their own language?
I use it in the German cultural and traditional context when I say I have
a lot of comrades all over cyberspace. My good French comrades, for example,
sent me a shortie notice on their own progress on the Internet - no small
feat in that country, what with their "hate laws" stalking them
just like the pack of wily, vicious hyenas these odious laws are.
It gives me great pleasure to share my comrades' cyberspace efforts with
you, while begging their indulgence for slight paragraph liberties I took
so as to conform to my bite-size ZGram paragraph format - easy on the eye,
I hope, and gentle on the mind:
"In this communiqué, the Webteam of AAARGH, a
well known revisionist Website based in virtual Paris, announces a new dimension
of its site. A new section is devoted to the opponents of revisionism.
Of course, it may be argued that these people have every possibility to
express themselves on the Net - whereas revisionists, altogether, run less
than a dozen sites among a million. But the point is the value of comparison.
Linking is one thing. But hosting your enemy is much more mind-opening.
We want readers to compare freely. Our principle is that a free mind has
the resource to choose or to abstain.
We have no fear (of) a discussion or {an intellectual} confrontation, and
we stand assured that the general public will benefit from this possibility
of comparing arguments on the same site. We develop a sophisticated system
of inner cross-linking that provides documentary help for the visitors.
We feel that most of our opponents would fall into one of three main categories.
First, (there are) those who speak about revisionism without ever reaching
for its basic arguments. They have a political or ideological agenda for
which the rejection of revisionism appears as a corner-stone.
As expected these people fight each other bitterly. Right now, in Paris,
there are sort of "popular tribunals" sentencing people for their
supposed (passing) acquaintances with alleged revisionists. A creeping
Stalinist political correctness is achieving the destruction of what little
of the left was left by this epoch.
We call them "Talk Too Much".
Others, much less numerous, have one way or the other gone into the historical
arguments. Some of them have done some homework. We take their views very
seriously.
But they have not, so far, succeeded in persuading us. We have seen in their
works quite a number of flaws, of mistakes and errors, which we have described
in a detailed manner. We intend to display all the texts we are criticising
in order for the reader to have both views open for examination.
But we still have to call them "Could Do Better".
And then we have those who would love to replay the thirties and be the
heroes who will, at last, repulse fascism. They call to vigilance, ask for
denunciations, prepare blacklists, and behave in general like a Thought
Police Unit.
Because they entertain the paranoid belief that fascism is everywhere around
us, they spread a kind of intellectual terror that has its full impact on
intellectuals, most of whom are quite prepared to submit to the powers that
be. A surprising proportion of the so-called intellectuals nurture the inner
dream of being a policeman (or woman) and we have some near-pathological
border cases.
We call them "Vigilantes".
This applies now to the French section of the site, but it will be expanded
to other languages as well, beginning with English.
Of course, it would not be possible to reproduce all the available literature
which, one way or the other, is devoted to attack revisionism. Our intention
is nevertheless to provide a fairly large range of representative works.
Go to http://www.abbc.com/aaargh/fran/arvs/arvs.html
Thought for the Day:
"Freedom's just another word . . . for saying 6-million
didn't die"
(Title of a 10-page article by Vancouver Sun columnist Paula Brook in the
Canadian literary magazine *Saturday Night*, November 1997 )
Comments? E-Mail: irimland@cts.com
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