ZGram - 2/21/2004 - "The Angler, the Carp and the Revisionist"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGRAM - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

February 21, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Once upon a time, so Revisionist legend has it, the feisty Dr. Robert 
Faurisson of France, Revisionist par excellence, paid a resolute 
visit to Dr. Berenbaum, Head Honcho of the Holocaust Museum in 
Washington, D.C., where he shook a scolding finger in his face, 
demanding:  "Don't show me shoes.  Don't show me hair.  Don't show me 
glasses.  Show me or draw me a gas chamber!"

A few years later, Dr. Faurisson dug in his heels and simplified his 
challenge even more:  "No holes, no Holocaust!" insisted he.  Imagine 
claiming something that simple - and still finding only faint echoes!

Below, Dr. Faurisson resorts to yet another means of Reason versus 
Faith.  Enjoy!

[START]

The Angler, the Carp and the Revisionist

Once upon a time there was an angler who, on meeting a stranger, said 
in a frantic voice: "It's a miracle! I've just made a unique, an 
unprecedented catch: in yonder stream, it so happens, I hooked a two 
hundred-pound carp."

The stranger, who, as luck would have it, was a sceptic, a disciple 
of Pyrrhon, one of the school of Saint Thomas, in short, a 
revisionist, asked, in a guarded manner, whether he might see the 
monstrous catch.

"Would you, by chance, be casting doubt upon my word?" inquired the 
angler, adding: "It's quite simple: if you don't care to believe me, 
I'll show you the place where I caught it."

The revisionist objected that what interested him was not so much the 
place as the fish. Nonetheless, he ended up conceding: "All right! 
Let's go see the place!"

Once at the spot he noted that, in the way of a stream, all that lay 
before him was a rather modest trickle of water. He took it upon 
himself to make this remark to the angler and pointed out that never 
could a carp of such size have cavorted in so sparse a current.

He called a few passers-by to witness and, before them, went so far 
as to poke fun at the angler. He thought himself entitled to 
maintain, in a mocking tone, that there existed in France no carp of 
such weight. For him, in his own words, the amazing carp had about it 
too much of the scent of a farcical Jewish recipe for stuffing, or of 
some Hebraic fiction. With a snigger, he brought up Tobit's magical 
fish and the Leviathan monster, along with the "great fish" (which 
was not a whale) that swallowed Jonah, him of the miraculous rescue 
at sea.

What followed was to prove that he had spoken too much.

The angler considered that the sceptic, in scoffing at him, had 
ridiculed all anglers and hunters who, in France, were legion. As he 
saw it, there was danger afoot and so he must act. In effect, such 
insolence threatened to bring discredit upon the thrilling tales of 
which anglers and hunters were at times so prolific. Thus the angler 
proceeded to lodge a grievance with a well-established body bearing 
the name "Fishing, Hunting and (Biblical) Tradition."

For some time, this organisation had made a speciality of targeting 
the revisionists in their entirety. The latter, at their end, found 
fault with the venerable body for being too quick to take offence, 
for behaving irascibly and often carrying on with an ungodly carping 
over nothing. Of substantial electoral weight and anxiously courted 
from left, right and centre, the said organisation was accused by the 
revisionists of deploying some especially violent militia groups. The 
revisionists went so far as to assert that "Fishing, Hunting and 
(Biblical) Tradition" was part of a vast pressure group: "the 
Biblical Lobby." To which claim their opponents retorted, perfectly 
coolheaded, that no such lobby existed.

The impudent carp-doubting revisionist was sued by the organisation 
for personal injury caused, the group claimed, by allegations that 
were both untruthful and malicious.

The court handed down its ruling.

At first, it allowed itself to hold that, far from being untruthful, 
the revisionist's remarks on the magical carp might very well be 
accurate. But, in a latter instance, the court got a better grip on 
things. It ruled that, despite everything, the revisionist, in his 
statements taken as a whole, his failure to show charity towards the 
angler and his want of penitence might well have been inspired by 
malice. As a result, the revisionist found himself ordered to pay 
heavy fines and damages.

Still, in the years that followed, the criminal persisted. He renewed 
his observations and questions about the phenomenal carp. He was 
challenged in other lawsuits, assailed with more fines, administered 
some firm physical punishments (one of which left him at death's 
door), dismissed from his post, cursed. All to no avail. Doubtless 
the devil drove him.

To silence the revisionist and his ilk for good, a heavy blow was called for.

It was dealt on the 14th of July 1990. It is on the symbolic date of 
July the 14th that in France the people, in the name of democracy and 
republican virtue, commemorate the taking and destruction of the 
Bastille in 1789. On the same occasion, they commemorate the 
abolition of the privileges of birth and the advent of a new era of 
liberty, equality and fraternity. A salutary recourse to Dr 
Guillotin's machine had at times been needed in order to make those 
who remained insensitive to the beauty of such ideals see reason. On 
14 July 1990, then, there appeared in the Journal officiel de la 
République française a special law, made to measure and designed to 
have an effect just as automatic as that of the guillotine's blade. 
Straightaway, it prohibited, without examining the substance of the 
question beforehand, any challenge to or casting of doubt upon the 
stories told by a certain category of anglers and hunters. Deputies 
and Senators had passed this law in an atmosphere of democratic 
terror, brought to boiling point thanks to the providential, albeit 
sickening, affair known as "the Carpentras cemetery outrage."

To ground their prohibition in law, the legislators turned to a 
judgement pronounced, nearly a half-century earlier, by certain 
victors who had proceeded to try certain vanquished. The victors had 
got the brilliant idea of setting up an international military 
tribunal in order to punish those vanquished. Devising their own laws 
and rules, the judges and prosecutors had, in their wisdom and of 
common accord, decreed: "The Tribunal [i.e., themselves] shall not be 
bound by technical rules of evidence" (Article 19 of their Charter). 
They had also specified: "The Tribunal shall not require proof of 
facts of common knowledge but shall take judicial notice thereof" 
(Article 21). By a last provision, they had taken care to warn the 
accused that any accusatory reports made by the victors' various 
commissions would be admitted with no discussion allowed since 
thereof the Tribunal "shall also take notice" (Article 21, 
continued). At this time, that is, in the period of 1945-1946, some 
strong-minded fellows jeered at a justice by which, in their words, 
Samson, with the blessings of the Eternal (God of armies and vengeful 
God), cynically assigned himself the right to judge one whom he had 
just overwhelmed and held at his mercy. Some wags made sarcastic 
remarks about military justice which, according to them, was to 
justice what military music was to music. Happily, by the 14th of 
July 1990, or almost half a century later, the minds of the 
population had been so adjusted by years of proper guidance that it 
had become unseemly to talk such madness, to let fly such witticisms. 
All now marched in step and in the same direction. Under a seeming 
diversity of opinion, all had at last understood that Good and 
Justice were always on the side of the victors, and Evil and Crime on 
the side of the vanquished. Necessarily.

Armed with this law, French judges no longer had to judge. They 
needed only to submit. They duly executed, with the most exquisite 
grace, and rulings rained down upon the revisionists.

It may also be said that today the heads both of "Fishing, Hunting 
and (Biblical) Tradition" and of the Lobby-That-Does-Not-Exist ought 
to declare themselves fully satisfied. The magical carp has become an 
object of worship. Museums are dedicated to it, richly endowed by the 
French taxpayer. The radio, television and newspapers chime with a 
thousand tales confirming the Carp's existence for us. In the course 
of it all, this Carp has acquired a capital C. It has become the 
Unique, the Ineffable and the Indescribable (here again with capital 
letters). It is nowhere to be seen but it is everywhere. Its story is 
taught in all the schools of the land. Adolescents listen 
open-mouthed to the old anglers and hunters, male and female, who 
come to dispense (in return for hard, cold cash) their astonishing 
testimonies about the Golden Carp. As if seized by a joyful frenzy, a 
thousand institutions pour forth streams of gold and silver to the 
national and international associations assembling the millions of 
witnesses who, having one day seen the magical Carp, afterwards 
dispersed to all points of the globe. Abroad, these witnesses have, 
for the most part, amassed fine fortunes, attesting to their know-how 
and indubitable honesty. To these rich folk, the banks today 
spontaneously bestow hefty offerings. The insurance companies do 
likewise, along with the museums, factories, laboratories, telephone 
companies and railways. "A worldwide stampede into servitude," claim 
the vile revisionists, taking a phrase from Tacitus; but, as everyone 
knows, the Roman historian was nothing but a Nazi; in a famous work 
dedicated to them, had he not sung the praises of Germania?

If one believes the newspapers, the truth of the story of the Golden 
Carp is hardly contested any longer and, each day, the rich grow 
richer.

And yet!

Yet, the rumour maintained by the sceptics remains current. To such a 
degree that - sad to say - even the anglers and hunters seem taken 
with doubt. Of course, without interrupting their usual moaning and 
chanting, they cry out against and attack more than ever the odious 
breed of revisionists but these acts of theirs are, precisely, but 
swipes, shouts and complaints. Where are the arguments? What must be 
offered in reply to the few doubters who still demand to see the Carp 
or, barring that, its depiction? What is one to say to those who 
piously visit the spot where the angler made his miraculous catch and 
who still see there only a babbling brook? But, to begin, what is to 
be done in the face of the simple, stupid and nagging observation 
made by the Sunday angler or the laboratory scientist according to 
whom the species of carp that dwell in the rivers of France can never 
have produced a specimen of two hundred pounds?

The truth of the matter is that doubt gnaws at our noble anglers and 
hunters. And they no longer make a secret of this. "The day when we 
are no longer here, no-one will believe in the fabulous Carp any 
more", they cry.

The revisionists smile. In their turpitude, they retort that history, 
at least such as it is conceived by historians worthy of the name, is 
precisely made of events to which the witnesses have vanished, or 
will one day vanish. Then, in their perversity, they dare to add 
that, on the other hand (again from a historian's viewpoint), what 
does risk being erased with time are rather the poppycock, the tall 
tales, the lies of one's day and age. And, with insolence, they dare 
to conclude: "Such is the lot that, inexorably, awaits the story of 
the Golden Carp, which is nothing but an outrageous lie, a pure 
legend, a wild nonsense, an abracadabric April Fool's prank."

How can the story of the divine Carp be saved from the accursed 
revisionists' constant efforts to undermine it?

At this dawn of the new century, in these excruciating times, that is 
the question haunting the high priests and worshippers of the 
lucrative Golden Carp. By their side, a good number of others are 
also seeking an answer to this harrowing riddle, which carries a 
thousand political and monetary implications. More and more, one may 
notice all sorts of people wondering: the historians to heel, the 
journalists at the trough, the politicians with their scandals to 
hide, the idolaters of the Golden Calf or the servants of the 
Almighty Dollar: "How, yes how," they ask themselves, "can we save 
the worldwide religion of the divine Golden Carp from ruin?"

They are losing all hope of finding a solution.

And everything goes on as if the revisionists, sure of their work and 
sniggering behind the scenes, held the key to the mystery.