ZGram - 2/9/2002 - "Goldhagen gets blasted by Sobran"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

Copyright (c) 2002 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

February 9, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

More yet on the newest Goldhagen book via a recent Sobran column - but
first let me set up the clip:

Quite often, when I feature a writer of note in my ZGram - and that writer
lets it shine through that he subscribes to the Hollywood version of the
so-called "Holocaust" - that is, "...six million Jews were gassed by the
Nazis" - I get a lot of flak from my readers.  Having long shed that
harmful atrocity propaganda Lie, my readers feel that I am doing Truth a
disservice if I let a writer's conventional opinion stand "as is" - without
challenging it vigorously and taking that writer to task.

One such case developed in regard to Dr. Philip E. Glidden's book, "Trading
on Guilt", wherein he chastizes the US public school system for
psychologically traumatizing young children with gory stories of the
"Holocaust"  - but does not challenge the "Holocaust" per se.  I find that
book timely and worthwhile, even though Dr. Glidden makes no attempt to
confront the dreaded taboo.  I have no idea if he still believes in the
Holocaust Myth, but if he does, I say that is his business.  His activism
is still useful to us.

I feel he has done society a very great favor by battling a bureaucracy
that needs to start thinking for itself.  After all, schools do not concern
themselves endlessly with the genocidal extermination campaigns of Stalin,
or the murder of tens of millions of Chinese by Mao's Communists, or the
misdeeds of other mass murderers like Pol Pot.  Schools do not traumatize
little children with stories of America's serial killers like Jeffrey
Dahmer, Richard Speck, John Gacy - whose sadistic murders were proven in a
properly constituted court of law, where standard rules of evidence were
applied - whereas in the case of the so-called "Holocaust", the court
proceedings were a sham.

I believe that if someone fights half of the Revisionist battle, that is
far better than playing intellectual couch potato while little children's
psyches get permanently harmed.  What Glidden has done so far by calling
the public schools on the carpet will get no criticism from me.  I wish he
would go all the way, but my energies should not be spent undoing a partial
attempt at debunking.

I want to illustrate my revisionist tactic by a second example - Joe
Sobran's latest column, "The Cross and the Swastica."  Read it first and
then let me finish my comment:

[START]

          When the Communist Party seized control of Russia more than 80
years ago, it tried to eliminate two things: Christianity and
"anti-Semitism." Tens of thousands of priests and bishops were murdered,
ancient churches were razed to the ground, believers were forced to worship
secretly, and atheism was taught to children in the state schools. Though
"anti-Semitism" was never precisely defined -- like many key terms in the
Soviet vocabulary -- whatever it was, it became a capital crime.

        In the democratic West we are seeing a renewed conflation of
Christianity and "anti-Semitism." A flood of books and articles have tried
to blame anti-Semitism (still vaguely defined) on Christian doctrine,
especially Catholic doctrine. Many of the attacks focus on Pope Pius XII,
who has been called "Hitler's Pope." Some actually blame Christianity for
the murder of six million Jews.

        The latest and most audacious entry in the campaign to equate
Catholicism and anti-Semitism is that of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of
the forthcoming book A MORAL RECKONING: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH DURING THE
HOLOCAUST AND TODAY, to be published by Knopf. A long excerpt has just
appeared in THE NEW REPUBLIC.

        Goldhagen goes far beyond the now-routine charge that Pius XII was
culpably "silent" during the Holocaust. This charge, by the way, falls
under the heading of Virtual Truth -- a falsehood repeated so often that it
becomes futile to refute it. During World War II, the NEW YORK TIMES
praised Pius for being the only major figure in Europe who was *not* silent
about racial persecution: "a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a
continent." Today you get the impression that he was the only one keeping
silent -- though "heroes" like Winston Churchill, who was silent on the
subject even in his postwar memoirs, are given a pass.

        But Pius XII isn't Goldhagen's ultimate target; Christianity is. He
contends that the central Christian doctrine -- the doctrine of the
Crucifixion -- is anti- Semitic! After all, the Gospels mention a Jewish
role in that event. Goldhagen seems to imply, without explanation, that
this is factually false.

        In Goldhagen's mind, the Cross begot the Swastika. Nazism was the
updated spawn of the earliest Christian teachings and the Holocaust was
their fulfillment.

        If this is true, it would seem that the Communists were right to
try to eliminate Christianity. Goldhagen never quite says this, but it
follows from what he does say. He notes that the oppression of Jews in
Russia ended when the Communists came to power; but he also resents any
suggestion that Jews played any role in Soviet Communism (that's
anti-Semitic too). You get the  impression that Communism was led by
well-meaning gentiles. (One gets that impression about many things these
days.)

        Goldhagen uses the word "anti-Semitic" so loosely that his charges
can't be falsified. How can you disprove a charge when you don't even know
what it means? This too is a principle of Soviet jurisprudence: an
impossible burden of proof falls not on the prosecution, but on the
defendant.

        If Christianity has always been anti-Semitic "at its core," as
Goldhagen says, why didn't the Holocaust occur when Europe was still
Christian? And if anti- Semitism is a Christian doctrine, why was it so
fervently embraced by people who rejected or were indifferent to all other
Christian doctrines? The Church taught that fornication was immoral, but
that didn't seem to stop people from fornicating, especially after they
lost their faith.

        True, the Church also condemned murder, which would seem to rule
out the mass murder of Jews, but Goldhagen actually says that this teaching
was "barely known"! The Ten Commandments -- "barely known"? Some Protestant
bigots have charged that Catholics are forbidden to read the Bible, but
Goldhagen takes the cake for malicious ignorance.

        You would think that an anti-Semitic Church would at least censure
the Jews in its creeds, its formal doctrines, its papal encyclicals. You
would expect its leaders to warn the faithful against Jewish influence. You
would certainly expect its official condemnations of Communism to mention
the Jewish role in Bolshevism, as such Catholics as Hilaire Belloc and
Father Charles Coughlin did.

        But none of this happened. In fact, the Second Vatican Council
specifically repudiated the notion that all Jews bear the guilt of the
Crucifixion. Goldhagen, a virtuoso of aspersion, finds even this
anti-Semitic!

        Self-absorption can go no further. Goldhagen has produced a
monument of intellectual ethnocentrism and paranoid slander.

[END]

Zundelsite comment:

Is the historical information contained in this column one iota less useful
to Sobran readers because this noteworthy columnist *seems* to believe that
the conventional story of the 'Holocaust" is true?  Surely, by now, he
knows better, we think - but can he afford to antagonize his markets, which
depend on Jewish sponsors, by making a stand on an issue that might not be
important to him?  Look at all the other shocking things he reveals!

I say an ally is an ally - although he might even object to be seen as an
ally in the Revisionist struggle.  He will have his good reasons that we
can easily surmise.  That is entirely up to him - and not for us to sneer
at.

=====

Thought for the Day:

"Little strokes fell great oaks."

(Benjamin Franklin)