During my first Internet year, when Revisionist content was not as readily available as it is now, I relied heavily on a handful of loyal Revisionist columnists to supply me with ZGrams and essays. One of my favorite columnist was a fellow with the screen name Eric Blair whose writings I could almost always post as it came floating in with great regularity.
In later years, Eric didn't send me as much any more - partly, I think, because I became so overwhelmed with structuring the Zundelsite that I didn't always have time to give his essays first priority. But I knew he spent his fine mind and keen observation powers in select newsgroups and private internet groups, and he was, and is, always to be relied upon to send me timely information.
Here is an update on how Eric writes:
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First and Second Impressions of Mr. Death | Eric Blair
On the evening of January 21, 2001, on the CBC Newsworld documentary program The Passionate Eye, I was able like other Canadians to watch Mr. Death, an Errol Morris film on execution hardware designer and Holocaust skeptic Fred Leuchter. By then, I had read several, mostly laudatory, reviews of the film. But this was the first time I was able to watch it. I also taped the show in order to compare how first impressions stacked up against second impressions.
Film reviews I read all overstated the fact that Fred Leuchter looked like a "geek." And while I might agree that there are moments where Leuchter is filmed from an unflattering angle and does, now and then, evoke a chuckle or two with momentary lapses into nerdiness, such instances are few and far-between. Often the opposite is true. For much of the 96-minute movie, while Leuchter is on the screen, we see him sitting neatly dressed, composed and relaxed, peering right into the camera's lens and, far more importantly, confidently declaiming his views.
Leuchter comes across as a dedicated science teacher you knew in high school, passionate about science and eager to enlighten a class of young scholars on the complexities of physics, chemistry and biology; the sort who managed the school's annual science fair and showed himself attentive to the small detail in a student's class project. Anything but a personification of "evil," as a few commentators would have it.
It is as a voice, as he narrates parts of his own life story, that viewers first come to know Leuchter. DJs describe some popular music as being very listenable; it does not soon wear out its welcome. The same might be said of Leuchter's New England speech. He articulates his thoughts in complete sentences, with faultess grammar; when he narrates an episode from his troubled life, he tells it with the casual ease of a precocious child playing connect-the-dots. Finally, whatever gauche persona viewers may find in him (big black horn-rimmed specs on a narrow face contribute) is eclipsed by his resonant voice.
The documentary takes a sharp turn with the sudden appearance of Ernst Zundel; with that, Mr. Death starts us out on what is to be a sojourn into the netherworld of "Holocaust denial," with Leuchter our down-to-earth, disarmingly even-tempered Dantesque guide. Had Mr. Death signed on as a work (of) allegorical literature, sort of like The Pilgrim's Progress, and Leuchter been identified within it as the lost soul known as Fool in Error, it's highly unlikely Church authorities would have tolerated so winsome a sinner; who, moreover, appeared to debunk Holocaust orthodoxy so plausibly. The Canadian academic and Leuchter detractor, Professor Robert-Jan Van Pelt, meanwhile, could have been cast in the role of Leuchter's rather cranky theological nemesis, Moral Outrage. It is, in fact, Professor Van Pelt who is heard loudly decrying Leuchter's Auschwitz gas- chamber blasphemy:
"Holocaust denial for me is so revolting, and the way for me not to immediately become sick with having to deal with Leuchter, was by saying, 'OK, I am going to map his journey.'"
And so we set off on the "journey," dogged by an impressive and darkly ominous sound-track intended to heighten the sense of drama. Where Leuchter remains a coolly detached and matter-of-fact observer, Professor Van Pelt waxes at once reverential and morally outraged:
"Auschwitz is like the holy of holies. I prepared years to go there and to have a fool [Leuchter] come in, come in completely unprepared, it's sacrilege!"
We are shown a stand-in for Leuchter in stylized slow-motion scenes chiselling away at the concrete walls in the alleged Auschwitz gas chamber, always in tandem with strident sound- effects; again, to heighten the sense of drama. And we are shown, at other times, actual videotape of Leuchter mindfully examining the ruins and collecting samples from the Auschwitz site, minus any sound-track or bombastic sound-effects. A kind of symmetry unfolds between the real (and understated) and the artificial (and overhyped) scenes. It's as if Errol Morris was looking for ways to counter the too-compelling resonance in Leuchter's voice.
The documentary is subtitled The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. The last part of the film is devoted to Leuchter's fall. He becomes a pariah for having authored The Leuchter Report and delivered lectures defending its conclusion. Goaded to the last ditch by Jewish groups, until he finds it nearly impossible to earn a living, much less go on garnering contracts from prison facilities for more custom-made execution hardware, he must scramble to survive. But through it all, however, he maintains his dignity, is never self-pitying, and describes his ordeal with the typical understatement that seems a personality trademark.
Revisionist scholar Robert Faurisson tells of being invited to appear as a guest on a TV program. The host, who intended to expose the French academic to ridicule, has an impossible task of trying to counter Faurisson's arguments. "He realized too late," recalled Faurisson afterward, "the serious and dangerous character of Revisionism." He added: "...Dangerous because it [Revisionism] IS serious." I suspect that by now, two years after Mr. Death premiered at Harvard University and the Sundance Film Festival, Errol Morris will have also made that discovery.
When I watched the film again a day later, it merely reinforced my first, all in all, generally positive impressions.
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By the way, the Leuchter Film also played in Australia a few days ago, coast to coast, but seems to have been censored or cut off in mid-stream, at least in parts of the country, because we had several calls from irate Australians complaining that they didn't get to see the film to its conclusion.
Thought for the Day:
ites is an update on how Eric wr"It follows that before a theory can be considered true, it is virtually indispensable that there be perfect freedom to impugn it. Any limitation, even indirect and however remote, imposed on anyone choosing to contradict it is enough to cast suspicion upon it. Hence freedom to express one's thought, even counter to the opinion of the majority or of all, even when it offends the sentiments of the few or of the many, even when it is generally reputed absurd or criminal, always proves favorable to the discovery of objective truth."
Vilfredo Pareto, Mind and Society , p. 568.