Geostrategic effects of Revisionism: the Iranian lesson
Robert Faurisson, June 5, 2008
The energy crisis is causing worry. However, Iran, which possesses huge reserves of oil and gas, wishes to exploit them better, with our help, and sell us the products, a procedure that would lead to a marked softening of worldwide petrol, diesel, fuel oil and gas prices. A good many nations have an eye on this great potential wealth and would be apt to respond favourably to Tehran's business proposals. But the United States has decreed the boycott of Iran and, up to now, the world's policeman has generally been obeyed. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can make all the proposals he likes: he still finds himself considered a criminal. His request for a collaboration that would let him fully re-equip the country's drilling, production and processing operations is refused. He goes so far as to suggest that countries using the single European currency pay in euros and no longer in dollars, but to no avail. People turn their back to him. Some threaten him. Even the Pope refuses to receive him. In many countries, his embassies and diplomatic staff are deprived of contact with the local authorities and foreign delegations; they have ended up with pariah status. One may well ask oneself where such radical behaviour towards the Iranians ever originated and why the international community acts so obviously against its own economic interests.
Three grounds are usually brought up to explain this policy of boycott and open hostility: 1) the Iranian president is perhaps trying to arm his country with nuclear weapons; 2) it seems he wants to exterminate the Jews in Israel; 3) he holds the extermination of the European Jews during the Second World War to be a myth. The first two grounds do not make much sense; only the third is serious and, for that reason, instructive.
In reply to the first ground, it's fitting to observe that if Ahmadinejad's accusers possessed the slightest evidence that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, such evidence would long since have been brandished before the world; however, up to now, they have supplied no real evidence and, in any case, if Iran had a nuclear bomb at her disposal, she could not launch it towards a geographic zone populated by as many Palestinians as Jews; her bomb would kill or maim both populations without distinction.
The second ground rests on the absurd manipulation of a text. Ahmadinejad has had and continues to have ascribed to him an incendiary statement according to which the Jewish State is to be "wiped off the map", words taken to mean the extermination of the Jews in Israel. Actually, he'd merely repeated in 2005 Ayatollah Khomeyni's 1979 declaration that "the regime [in Persian, "rezhime"] occupying Al Qods [Jerusalem]" would one day "vanish from the page of time". Ahmadinejad took care to spell out his phrase by specifying that, if all the inhabitants of the land of Palestine - Moslems, Jews and Christians - had the right one day to vote freely and opt for a regime of their choice, the Zionist regime would disappear from Palestine just as, for example, the Communist regime disappeared from Russia. The Western media, as a whole, have reported neither the exact wording nor the explanation.
The third ground is the true one: if the Iranian president causes so much fear, it's owing to his revisionism. He has wielded the sole weapon that can deeply worry the Jewish State and its ally, the United States. He possesses what I've called the poor man's atomic weapon. In the findings of historical revisionism he effectively holds a "device of mass destruction" that would kill no-one but could neutralise Israel's number one political weapon: the Great Lie of the alleged Nazi gas chambers and the alleged genocide of Europe's Jews. Raised in the religion of "the Holocaust", the peoples of North America and Europe generally believe in this Great Lie and see Ahmadinejad as a heretic; thus they dare not defend any policy of rapprochement with Iran, or call for a lifting of the boycott, although therein lies the only chance of seeing their energy costs decrease. Doubtless some of these peoples' leaders desire an understanding with Iran, but they back away at the prospect of being criticised as accomplices of the new Satan, of the "denier", the "negationist" who "kills the Jews once again by denying their death".
The news of the international "Holocaust" conference in Tehran (December 11th - 12th 2006) rang out like a warning shot. By no means reserved to revisionists, that conference was open to all. Confrontation of opposing views was allowed, and it took place. The rout of the antirevisionists was dramatic. And President Ahmadinejad, already fully apprised of revisionist argumentation, was thus able to restate that "the Holocaust" was a myth. Bush, Blair, Chirac, who know nothing of revisionism, responded by making a terrible fuss. As for the Israelis, they are aware of the Jewish authors' utter inability to answer revisionist arguments on the scientific level; they now uphold their Great Lie only with Elie Wiesel-style fake testimony or cinematic guff in the manner of Claude Lanzmann, when they don't resort to novels, drama or even sham museum exhibitions like those at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem or the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington; they have therefore seized the occasion to draw up a bill in the Knesset that would let the State of Israel demand that any revisionist, wherever in the world he might be, be delivered to its own courts! When there's no proof to show, the cudgel is used. The Zionists and their friends are getting more and more alarmed at the diffusion of revisionism over the Internet. They make many attempts, cynical or veiled, to strengthen Internet censorship but, up to today at any rate, they have not yet achieved their aims. Throughout the Western world repression of revisionism is worsening, but it's all a waste of effort so far. The holocaustic propaganda and Shoah Business grow ever more deafening, but henceforth they tend to annoy or tire people.
Revisionism has long been an intellectual adventure, experienced by a certain number of academics, researchers and various other persons ready to sacrifice their lives or their tranquillity for the defence of historical truth, and of justice. Today, revisionism is becoming, on the international plane, a noticeable bone of contention; it is asserted by some and violently denounced by others, and is present even in certain political or economic altercations. It is destined to play no small role in the endless crisis in the Middle East as well as in the current energy crisis. For the powerful, it will constitute a threat and, for others, a way out. In any case, the times when revisionism could be treated with contempt or quite simply ignored are decidedly past.
An excerpt from President Ahmadinejad's recent press conference in Rome
During his visit to Rome on June 3, President Ahmadinejad held a gathering with four journalists, amongst whom Tiziana Ferrario of Italian state radio and television (RAI). I learned of this only some days after having written my article of June 5. The recording of the exchanges was not broadcast and cannot be heard or viewed on the RAI website; nonetheless a transcript (presented as complete but, in fact, rather approximate), dated June 4 2008, is to be found at http://www.tg1articolo.rai.it/R2_popup_articolofoglia/0,,1067150%5E1078765,00.html.
As for the audio recording itself (questions in Italian, answers in Persian with simultaneous Italian translation), it may be downloaded at http://www.mediafire.com/?4lzfmynghgv.
Here I give only an excerpt, translated from the recording, and have put into bold type the fragments that seem most deserving of a revisionist's attention. Readers will note the image, quite to the point, of "the black box of the Holocaust", a box that it is forbidden to open. For my part, I should add that this box contains a black historical lie with its ravings, gruesome fabrications, filth and, especially, hatred in the style of Ilya Ehrenbourg, Elie Wiesel or Simon Wiesenthal, inspired by some all too real horrors, those of a world war full of sound and fury.
The question is: what is the philosophy that led to the [Zionist] regime's founding? Could the events of the second world war represent the philosophy and reason for creating such a cruel and harsh regime? 60 million people lost their lives during the second world war in Europe [sic]. Why is it that only a part of those dead are always brought to mind? Why is it that Europeans have for 60 years had to continue paying reparations to a small, tiny group? Political reparations and economic reparations?
What part did the generations living today in Italy or in Germany have in the events of the second world war?
Today in Europe it seems the Holocaust can no longer be talked about [freely]. I hope that some governments in Europe manage to free themselves from the Zionists in order to let the black box of the Holocaust be opened *.
There are many unanswered questions. Now, let's admit, let's suppose something happened: where did it happen? Did it happen in Palestine, or somewhere else? Who committed the crimes? The Palestinians, or someone else? Why must it be the Palestinians who pay the price?
It's been said that the Jews were without a homeland and that a homeland had to be given to them. Why did it have to be the land of Palestine? If we accept the reasoning based on historical roots of this [inaudible], then we'll have to undo all the present borders in the world.
What is it that renders the Zionist regime immune to questions like human rights, freedom and civil rights? The things this regime does are a disgrace to all mankind. Why is it that some governments in Europe must give the Zionist regime their absolute support? On the grounds of what mission assigned to it? These are important questions.
Now perhaps the time has come in Europe for thinkers, men of culture and thought, to try to give an answer. Maybe you know that in Germany, in a park, they've installed a symbol of the Holocaust; they bring innocent boys and girls, innocent Germans to visit this monument, telling them: "Here's what's the crime committed by your fathers and you have to feel mortified and pay the price for the crime your fathers committed". But what country behaves this way with its own children? Shouldn't governments tell the new generations about the honourable and beautiful things [their fathers] have achieved?
And if we assume the hypothesis that there was a Holocaust, we'll be speaking about a part of the 60 million people who died during the second world war. And where are the other dead? Does anyone talk about them? And does anyone talk about paying a price? Is there any humiliation of other European peoples for all the others killed? And does any government think of paying something for the [other] harm done? Why is it that all truths must be sacrificed on the altar of the Zionist regime?
Millions of people with no homeland, hundreds of thousands killed, a threat for all the Middle Eastern countries, and [this regime] feels bound by no law. Can the world be made to move forward with this double standard? I don't think so.
Now, we believe the post-second world war literature has come to an end. And the mission assigned to the Zionist regime has come to an end. And there will thus be an implosion. And I say this with full knowledge of the facts. Because it's something they too know quite well, there will be an implosion. We're talking about, we're proposing a humane solution: hold a referendum amongst all the Palestinians [i.e., all inhabitants of Palestine] to decide their own destiny. Why [are the Zionists] against it? This is a democratic solution and we don't understand why it's not [accepted]. It's a solution for human beings.