Atrocity Gods
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zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
Mon Mar 19 09:53:15 EST 2007
--
Atrocity Gods by Ashley Howes
<http://one-state.net/howes.html>http://one-state.net/howes.html
About the proposed EU Holocaust Denial Law
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present
controls the past." George Orwell, "1984"
If the EU is going to craft new 'Holocaust Denial' legislation,
surely it must first be defined. Mainly it is used to label those
who, in the opinion of the one using the term, minimize the suffering
of Jewish Holocaust victims and thereby foster the potential for
future state-organised mass murder. The imagery of the
über-industrial Holocaust is so gut-wrenchingly horrific that anyone
challenging the story is deemed criminally guilty of intent to incite
racial hatred or civic disorder.
The subjectivity involved in evaluating intent explains the many
glaring examples of double standards surrounding the 'holocaust
denial' controversy. For example: the 'establishment' historian Raul
Hilberg states that the number of those murdered in Auschwitz was not
four but one million, whilst the total number of Jews who died in WW
II was not six but five million. When he makes such revisions, this
is not considered 'denial'. Yet when an 'unapproved' historian such
as David Irving cites the same figures or, for example, that the gas
chamber at Auschwitz is a post-war Soviet construction, during his
trial in Austria he was not allowed to bring in the Auschwitz
director to testify because no question regarding the truth or
falsehood of any aspect of the Holocaust was allowed. In most courts
where such cases are tried, there is virtually no defence against
'denial' accusations even if the revision in question is generally
agreed-upon by 'non-denier' Holocaust historians.
Not only do these surreal double standards make Kafka appear a
realist, but also the changing story makes defining the Holocaust,
let alone 'denial', almost impossible. Although all mainstream
'approved' historians accept that the systematic mass murder of
millions took place more or less as narrated, the specifics have
changed considerably in the light of new evidence, usually uncovered
by those they label 'deniers'. At first, the method was not gassing
but steaming, mass burnings and so forth, with people sentenced to
death based on numerous eyewitness testimonies (without
cross-examination). Later, gassing was established as the main method
with hundreds of further eyewitnesses recalling in graphic - and
conflicting - detail as to how this was perpetrated in camps in
Germany proper. But years - and more testimonies, convictions and
executions - later, all mainstream holocaust historians agreed that
there were no gassings within Germany, rather outside, most of them
in the Auschwitz complex. But when later forensic analysis, witness
cross-examinations and other documentary analysis (train schedules,
official German inmate records released from Russian archives, trials
etc.) revealed that this too was inaccurate, the numbers in Auschwitz
shrank from four to around one million, though the global total of
six million remains.
Whether or not the total is accurate or even important, always
overlooked is this glaring fact: the latest approved version means
that previous versions, largely based on eyewitness testimonies in
this 'most documented event in world history', were false. In other
words, even though we know for certain that many events - such as
making soap from Jewish fat - did not occur as related in sworn
testimony used to execute 'war criminals', pointing this out or
challenging any aspect of a decades-old narrative riddled with
inconsistencies and thousands of outright lies can be construed as
hate speech, whereas the original falsehoods, which themselves are
clearly hate speech - indeed blood libels - are neither characterized
as such nor are the perpetrators prosecuted.
What matters, it seems, is not the facts but simply who is telling
the story. 'Kosher' storytellers can revise the narrative freely
whilst their non-kosher opponents are sent into solitary confinement
for years, such as Zündel and Rudolf in Germany. Right now, the
kosher historians all 'deny' the following: that gassing happened in
German-based camps, that soap was made from Jewish fat, that six
millions were killed systematically, that four millions were killed
in Auschwitz, and most - but not all - that Hitler gave written
orders for mass extermination. They are not guilty of 'denial'.
However, if any non-kosher authors state any of the above they can be
prosecuted for the crime of hate-speech.
From Denial to Confession
Even assuming such a thought-crime statute were to be passed, it
should not exclusively refer to those denying only the Jewish
Holocaust during WW II. The point is often made that the Jewish
Holocaust receives disproportionate attention because other
genocides, such as in Ukraine, Armenia, China or Russia, are
generally ignored. Although true, this still misses the key issue,
namely the Holocaust's main function as propaganda whose purpose is
to preserve our sense of self-worth and honour by demonising the
enemy in order to deflect attention away from the atrocities
perpetrated by the victors.
For example, it is time the Allies cease 'denying' a literal
holocaust (death or sacrifice by fire) that we perpetrated against
about 900,000 Germans, mainly civilian women and children in
phosphorous-aided firebombing raids. [photo] We deliberately burned
them to death, thousands of them roasted alive in airtight bomb
shelters which remained so hot from the raging flames in the
fire-induced tornadoes outside that, when the doors were opened long
after the raids were over, the sudden inrush of oxygen caused
families of desiccated corpses to spontaneously burst into flames. We
literally roasted living people to death. There are many photographs;
but few have seen them.
gaskammer
Similarly, it is time the US admitted how many hundreds of thousands
(some say well over a million) of German prisoners we starved to
death in open fields, with US guards, as ordered by Eisenhower, on
pain of execution, not to provide any food or shelter whatsoever. The
detainees ate all the grass available, drank rainwater and died in
their hundreds of thousands. We did this. Also, the post-war forced
winter march of several million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe
during which over two million starved or froze to death - not to
mention, no doubt, other atrocities along the way.
One of the first to raise this explicitly was Justice Wennenstrum in
the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 23rd 1948, shortly after quitting
the Nuremberg Trial proceedings in disgust:
"If I had known seven months ago what I know today, I would never
have come here. . . The initial war crimes trial here was judged and
prosecuted by Americans, Russians, British and French with much of
the time, effort and expenses devoted to whitewashing the Allies and
placing the sole blame for World War II upon Germany.... The
prosecution has failed to maintain objectivity aloof from
vindictiveness, aloof from personal ambitions for convictions. It has
failed to strive to lay down precedents which might help the world to
avoid future wars." (Chicago Daily Tribune, February 23rd, 1948).
Many say that the main value of remembering the holocaust vividly is
so that 'never again' as civilised peoples will we allow such horror
to arise in our midst; this is a convincing point, and usually
sincerely made. However, by overlooking much of the overall story in
favour of allowing one particular slant to dominate the
meta-narrative and thus core identity of 'modern' society, we are
already doing it again. How else to explain how we believe that since
1990 we have starved and slaughtered well over one million Iraqis,
mostly women and children, through sanctions, bombing and invasion
all in the name of 'justice', 'decency' and 'freedom'? The only way
we can buy into such self-serving deception is because of this
powerful belief in our own righteousness. This belief allows us to
'deny' that we have perpetrated such war crimes because, thanks to
our meta-narrative, we do not perceive ourselves as capable of such
crimes even whilst actually committing them, as we are collectively
doing even today. Belief trumps facts every time.
More importantly, this collective collusion on our parts drives the
process. Even assuming 'ruling elite societies' exist, it is not they
who pull strings in a vacuum, rather we who need puppet-masters to
assume responsibility for determining our collective imperatives in
the right sort of 'feel-good' way. So the murder of a million Iraqis
in the past decade, and the displacement of over three million since
2003, is the result of our own mutually engendered 'conspiracy' for
which we are all responsible.
The Atrocity God
'Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!'
- Sir Walter Scott
How can 'good' people like us be the ones perpetrating such crimes
even now? Answering this question reveals the ongoing function of the
Holocaust narrative in our lives today.
The Holocaust is part of a much larger history involving most of the
world during the past century. However, the emotional core of WW II,
itself the essential crucible in which today's world order was
forged, is experienced viscerally within the Holocaust imagery. This
is of far greater emotive import than the outer official 'history'.
For us today, the pith of the entire catastrophe known as World War
II is captured in the imagined mental image of a few score naked
civilians huddled together in a shower room dying an unspeakably
horrible death. This vivid imagery provokes immediate, viscerally
felt horror. Just as we would deplore anyone who tortures an infant,
we feel natural revulsion towards the perpetrators.
To understand this dynamic as it plays out today, we need to examine
the nature of the belief system. Since the WW II Holocaust narrative
helps shape our belief in who we are as people by defining our role
in this seminal period of modern world history, its function is
similar to that of a deity - in this case one whose imagery focuses
on atrocity, cruelty, injustice, anguish, hatred and so forth.
Strangely enough, the past and current examples of our crimes
mentioned above are not because of 'holocaust deniers' who in essence
question the veracity of this 'Atrocity God', but its adherents who
believe that by 'worshipping' images of hatred, injustice and
brutality they can in turn dish out atrocity themselves without doing
wrong, because 'they' who make us fear atrocity, deserve to suffer it
themselves, whilst 'we' who fear and fight against atrocity, are
always reasonable people acting in reluctant but heroic self-defence.
This sort of view allows Israel, for example, to keep taking more
territory in the name of self-defence without seeing the glaring
hypocrisies involved. Zbigniew Brzezinski remarked on this during a
recent congressional hearing about Iran, namely that after some sort
of attack on 'us' - false-flag or otherwise - we could then go after
them 'defensively'.
This deceptive view is far more than simple self-serving opportunism:
it is sincerely believed, something most critics and victims do not
understand. Shortly after he left office, President Clinton said that
his biggest mistake early on was to assume that his opponents were
aware of their hypocrisies; however, later on he realised that they
truly believed they were doing the right thing, which is why they
were so powerful.
The 'prayer' invoking such demons into our world is any dynamic which
solidifies antagonism between self and other - collectively 'us' and
'them'. This 'satanic' prayer has great 'evil' power, and we see it
invoked day after day in so many ways. By praying to such Manichean
deities, we engender their type of emotion-based aggression to
incarnate in reality. Our world takes on the atmosphere of our
perception, as any mystic, lover or good housekeeper well knows, so
we should be far more careful about the nature of the gods we
worship. Our contemplation essentially summons them into our mind and
body streams, invoking a living presence which then looks out through
our eyes, walking amongst us, permeating personal and public life.
This power, far greater than any individual's, is all pervasive but
invisible and as such is a form of deity, or god.
Our 'belief' in this 'god' allows us to ignore the degree to which
its living emotional impact shapes our collective identity by
confirming us as those who combat demonic forces and from there being
able to deny - sincerely - that we are anything but the good people
we 'believe' ourselves to be. We enjoy cheap chocolate and coffee -
the products of exploiting child (aka slave) labour, third world
farmers, local governments and crooked international funding
mechanisms - starve children, bomb civilian populations and so on,
secure in the knowledge that we are the good guys who stood up to the
totalitarian psychopath Hitler and the mesmerized fanatical German
masses who gassed millions of living, innocents, huddled naked and
helpless in chambers disguised as public showers.
The story IS the Deity
The meta-narrative is the peg on which we hang the rest of our
self-righteous identity. Anyone who criticises 'us' is 'them', whom
we are now cognitively 'programmed' to perceive as emotionally
identical to those holocaust-perpetrating monsters of yore. Emotion
always trumps reason by having a higher volume on the scale of
experience, since emotions are felt viscerally in the body-mind, that
agent which anchors our experience to specific place and time, aka
'reality'. This is why arguing the facts never challenges a core
belief system.
Furthermore, it is not the story that creates the Manichean dynamic,
rather that dynamic which creates the story, our desire to have our
cake and eat it, to perpetrate injustice and selfishness in the name
of justice and altruism. Attacking the story is attacking ourselves
and is therefore verboten. The debate about whether or not the story
is true or its detractors thought criminals is a diversion; rather,
we must become more aware of how we use it to avoid responsibility
for our own crimes, past and present.
If we in the modern age feel that because of our reliance on science
we are less ruled by belief or myth, we are fooling ourselves; there
is no power greater in the human realm. Stories mirror how we weave
physical, cognitive and emotional faculties into one overall tapestry
of experience - aka 'real life'. Without narrative context, we could
not progress moment by moment through getting up, bathing, dressing,
eating breakfast, going to work and returning back home; we could not
grow up, marry, raise children, age and then die in any coherent
fashion.
Because all experience is filtered through this narrative cognitive
process, 'real life' combines objective and subjective. Each
individual at the family dinner table views the same 'facts'
differently depending on how they fit into their own particular
subjective 'story' or viewpoint. Similarly, we combine fact and
fiction to fashion our collective identities from which manifest
national institutions, language, dress, highways, schools, technology
and so forth. This is called 'culture', something so quintessentially
human and real, but which is clearly a blend of reality and artifice.
Without such storytelling faculties, we could make no sense of space
and time, there would be no society or culture. This faculty binds
together our physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual faculties
into that which 'makes sense'.
So the ongoing story of life is a primordial art form; and the art of
life is how we fashion the tale to engender mutually enlightening
culture, not one that wags us into hell. Hell is where every
interaction involves aggression and fear, i.e. intense angst and
pain. Intensifying aggression between 'us' and 'them' is that which
fuels the furnaces of hell.
Because ultimately we can never separate fact from fiction, in the
context of this issue what is most important is to see how we use
narrative, including visceral imagery, to empower the Atrocity God to
'bless' our belief that no matter who 'they' are and what we do to
'them', we will always remain on the side of decency, 'freedom',
'democracy' and so forth because 'they' are evil. Through such
belief, we are possessed by the demon of self-serving deception - and
it is deception, because of course 'they' are of the same nature as
ourselves, breathing the same air and sleeping each night under the
same celestial canopy of stars.
Propaganda in some form or another is a natural function of all
States, for when all is said and done it involves how a collective
tells its meta-narratives to itself. In other words, even a totally
enlightened society will have its narratives, or 'propaganda'; the
issue is whether or not they reflect sanity and wisdom rather than
deception and neurosis.
Beyond the Manichean:
Whilst I was slowly writing this article, William Pfaff published one
in the NY Review of Books about America's current myth of, or belief
in, cultural exceptionalism. He too seems to be echoing the theme
here that a society's 'meta-narrative' determines how we view
ourselves, also that the life of a nation resembles the plot-line of
any work of fiction, in this case tragedy.
"Schumpeter remarked in 1919 that imperialism necessarily carries the
implication of
an aggressiveness, the true reasons for which do not lie in the
aims which are temporarily being pursued...an aggressiveness for its
own sake, as reflected in such terms as "hegemony," "world dominion,"
and so forth...expansion for the sake of expanding.... This
determination cannot be explained by any of the pretexts that bring
it into action, by any of the aims for which it seems to be
struggling at the time.... Such expansion is in a sense its own
"object."[12]
Perhaps this has come to apply in the American case, and we have gone
beyond the belief in national exception to make an ideology of
progress and universal leadership into our moral justification for a
policy of simple power expansion. In that case we have entered into a
logic of history that in the past has invariably ended in tragedy."
Being alive at all is a great blessing, and any 'enlightened' society
nurtures and celebrates this, whereas unenlightened ones pervert
living into some sort of endless nightmare. All over the world
billions of parents love their children and vice versa; all over the
world, there is sun, wind, rain, trees, flowers, foods to eat. Each
blade of grass and dewdrop thereon is saturated with a limitless
abundance of basic goodness. However, any or all of us can become
'possessed' by an Atrocity God or any other demonic principle which
perverts our basically good nature into an overly selfish,
I-versus-other dynamic.
Any aspect of human life that is essentially good, uplifted, decent
etc. can be so perverted, be it speech, food, dress, thought, love,
marriage, community, solitude, scholarship, monasticism, religion,
politics, parenting - and so on ad infinitum. Such deception covers
up our naturally good, kind nature, polluting us with the poison of
hatred-spawning aggression from which comes all the horror of
immorality, societal neurosis and war. Perfectly good people are
capable of this, as we proved not only by the literally millions of
atrocities we perpetrated during WW II, but also by the ways in which
we continue to perpetrate more of the same whilst denying them - and
again: sincerely so.
Interestingly, although natural and perverted can be differentiated,
'good' and 'evil' are not simply two sides of the same neutral coin;
rather there is fundamental goodness, and then its perversion. The
Manichean fallacy is to perceive them as being essentially equal,
like two different colours. Although philosophically seminal to the
issue under discussion, it is beyond the scope of this short essay,
not to mention the wisdom of its author, to expound on further as it
deserves.
Even if we are 'good' and happen to be facing those possessed by such
demons, the way to 'overcome' them is not by becoming worse demons
ourselves, because such aggression only intensifies the demonic
'us-versus-them' dynamic, making the Atrocity God stronger as 'He'
seduces more of 'us' into being willing inhabitants in His hell
realm. First we should not buy into deceit-derived 'us-them'
dynamics; then, starting with our own view, we must find a way to
perceive 'them' as 'us' and in turn invite them to feel similarly. In
this way, we become of the same kin, which has the same root meaning
as 'kind'. True kindness is a virtue, not a vice or weakness -
contrary to what so many pseudo 'conservatives' nowadays preach!
If one is not under its spell, this sort of deception is quite easy
to spot because it always involves using other to define self, often
blaming someone else, or 'them', for one's own condition, a function
of solidifying the (illusory) difference between self and other.
Those who keep building their narrative edifices using the bricks and
mortar of accusing others of being 'liars' or 'mass-murderers', for
example, are reflecting their own state of hostility as projected
onto others, whilst denying responsibility for their own aggression.
So the us-versus-them dynamic is quintessentially aggressive.
This goes back to the deity principle: the deity image (like anything
in life) is a symbol of its own nature. The Atrocity God, whilst
pretending to champion the opposite, in fact worships atrocity,
injustice, cruelty and so forth because that is the aggressive nature
of its imagery - its viscerally, and thus literally embodied, state
of being. The lie always reveals the nature of the liar just as the
object of worship reveals the nature of the worshipper. For example,
consider this famous quotation:
"Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of
hate - healthy, virile hate - for what the German personifies and for
what persists in the German."
Eli Wiesel, winner of 1986 Nobel Peace Prize
Since he is a leading member of 'the Church of Atrocity', such
outrageous statements do not merit hate-crime prosecution. He is a
part of 'we', and therefore 'good' (even worthy of a Nobel Peace
Prize) so we all basically agree that his hatred is 'healthy',
whereas 'theirs', of course, is beyond the pale. And yet the
expression is clearly one of other-demonisation in order to justify
hatred.
Criminalizing those who question core aspects of our collective
meta-narrative only further empowers this Atrocity God, one of whose
favourite deceptions is to prevent us from understanding that
pointing out the falsehoods in our other-demonising, self-sanctifying
narratives is not necessarily the same as saying that 'they' are all
good and we are all 'bad'. In other words, if we strip away the
victors' propaganda, we might find that the Germans of WW II were no
worse or better than the British, American and Russians, or in other
words that we are no better than they who are no worse than ourselves.
But saying this about past or current adversaries is regarded by many
as so offensive that any statements intimating that our enemies are
anything other than demons or that we are anything other than noble
is ipso facto perceived - first emotionally and now legally - as such
clear evidence of a 'hate crime' that no defence is even permitted
and the perpetrators banished from society.
Threat to our individual or collective identity and thus sense of
reality, engenders a viscerally-felt fear response, such inner
emotional turmoil instantly projecting out distorted versions of
other. Having thus projected onto other our own fear-spawned hatred,
using the typical response of aggression which essentially places
self above other, we strive to eliminate the threat. Our own fear,
born of clinging to the false identities that give existential
meaning to our lives, engenders such monsters. Rather than listen to
what they have to teach about our own distortions, we destroy them.
Because challenging the meta-narrative is threatening, arousing
hatred in ourselves, those who claim that denial is a hate crime are
sincere, but the question remains: whose hatred is in play: those of
the deniers, or those who disagree with them?
Even considering such thought-crime legislation evidences the degree
to which the us-versus-them Demon of Aggression, the Atrocity God,
holds sway in our culture. And the obvious fact that such laws are
now being introduced in Europe sixty years on indicates the
narrative's seminal importance in our culture today.
I end this article with the following items for consideration:
If the above hypothesis is true that the 'story-telling' cognitive
faculty essentially shapes individual and collective experience and
also that the aggressive self-versus-other Manichean view drives the
dominant meta-narratives in the West, then, 'scientifically'
speaking, we should see certain future outcomes confirming it, such
as:
a) Should it be somehow perceived that most of our
meta-narratives, including those from WW II, have been largely based
on partisan propaganda, both Israel's legitimacy as a progressive,
western democratic state and the West's general ability to keep
portraying ourselves as the 'good guys' - even whilst actually
perpetrating ethnic-cleansing or genocide - will be undermined, to
the point that Israel will find some way of living at peace with her
neighbours, albeit no longer as a racially exceptionalist entity, and
America will abandon all of her military bases abroad.
b) The US will not attack Iran in early 2007 as many are
predicting because the story doesn't yet fit; or put another way:
only when the story fits will they be able to mount and sustain an
attack.
c) People go along with more of the deceptive meta-narratives
with the result that aggression and conflict intensify, while
millions of ordinary people suffer and die needlessly, as happened
not so long ago in WW II and has been happening more or less
continuously in various regions, often with US and Western
participation, ever since. The proof that such WW II based
meta-narrative is still in play will be the degree to which current
enemies are compared to those of yore.
=====
Ashley Howes is a Canadian citizen who grew up in the UK. He works in
Sydney, Cape Breton, NS, paying modest bills and watching the larger
world go by through the lens of the internet. Occasionally, he likes
to voice his opinion as an individual citizen of this our world.
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