I am part of a Revisionist discussion group - though more of a lurker than a participant. I read the posts because I can glean such useful nuggets and snippets from these discussions, partly for my ZGrams and partly for other work that I do - and sometimes for sheer relaxation.
One recent thread that is still causing sparks deals with IQ and race. One of the charges against some Holocaust Revisionists, repeatedly made, is that if they would only be a little bit more reasonable and treat Revisionism as a serious discipline ***by itself*** and wouldn't ogle Hitlerian tenets all the time - as some of us do, to the distress of others - Revisionism would be ever so much more acceptable and "democratic".
This, in a round-about way, led to the following exchange:
Bill:
"But how can you [give credit to individual aptitude] in America where everyone _has_ to be a bigshot to have any sense of social prestige? I guess what I am saying is that the race explanation for the dumbing down [in schools] is too pat. It's society-wide.
Ken:
As to the social prestige thing, I go back to my statement that all functions which contribute to the common good are equally worthy of respect, exactly as much as the glamorous and exotic ones. The orderly who cleans the bedpans and changes the filthy linen in a hospital will be missed more than the surgeon if his task is not performed, because the work of the latter will be rendered useless by infection and epidemic. The cleaner earns respect, but is given none. That pervasive sort of attitude is a social cancer that eventually creates a system in which potential linen orderlies vegetate in a classroom for six years and come out with a license to cut people open and manipulate their innards. I think I'm hitting on a central tenet of National Socialism here, by the way.
Bill:
This goes back to what I said last Saturday about National Socialism recognizing the need to create a society that gave dignity to the common man. And, as I have said for three years now, I will repeat: National Socialism was popular because it was the first truly _democratic_ and _national_ political philosophy in Germany, although it was not affected by the "egalitarian" philosophy that we have, where everyone _must_ come out the same, and although it did not stress freedom of speech the way we do (I don't think Germans ever have), BUT its popularity was keyed to its orientation to the common man, and its class-busting focus.
People like Rommel were Nazis, but Rommel had no bone to pick with Jews. He liked the democratic aspect that made it possible for school teacher's son to become a general.
The degree to which modern Germany's success with its own form of democracy is indebted to the Third Reich is one of those things that will require an age of greater openness than we now have.
However I have a major caveat here: the government _did_ argue its terms in racial terms, and _did_ seek to justify its expansion and its persecution of Jews and others on _racial_ grounds. That alone will always make it distasteful to me. It is also true that this _racial_ thinking was used to kill a lot of people; however, I don't consider that any worse than the Soviet Union, which managed to kill many more by one or two magnitudes and did it all without a hint of "racism."
Interesting then, if a German killed someone because they were Jewish or Polish -- and during at war, at that -- he is guilty of a hate crime, whereas if he's an NKVD agent and kills ten times as many, it's not quite so bad.
(To anticipate a possible objection, I put the deaths caused the Allies against German civilians on about a par with the deaths caused by the Germans in the East: that is, it was a war, and things like this happen in war. However unlike others on this list I still think that there were excesses caused by the Germans that were in excess of what was reasonable.) <end>
To that I say: Ernst Zundel to the fore - to give us his unique perspective since he has studied NS more than any of us have.
Here's what he had to say this morning:
This whole race issue raised against the Germans is a red herring!
It always shocks me that the most sophisticated, well-read people in America still glean their knowledge about so-called "German racial policies" from the popular pulp press or perhaps William Shirer, or lately the History Channel. It would help if they knew the original statutes in German - and the speeches, as well as the context in which the speeches were made.
For the record, and this is important: ***No one in Nazi Germany was exterminated just for their race, or their class, or their religion.***
People were incarcerated in concentration camps most frequently for what they had done - or, especially in wartime, for what they said, wrote, planned etc - like agitation against the war ("Wehrzersetzung") or sabotage, treason etc. All these offenses were equally harshly treated and dealt with in democratic countries like England, Canada and America. I know of one case where a German-American restaurant owner in Detroit got a 35 year (!) prison term for sheltering and feeding one escaped German prisoner of war in 1943! Talk about excessive!
The idea that Germans were dealing too harshly with the Soviets in the East or other guerrillas: It was war, and these people were harming the front as well as fleeing civilians. Sometimes whole villages were nests for Partisans, as these guerrillas were called. The Americans in Viet Nam, the French in Algeria, the British in Malaysia killed hundreds of thousands of civilians whom they suspected of being guerrillas in post WWII campaigns. Not for racial reasons - so they claimed! - but for "security" reasons! One wonders, then, why the Americans referred to their enemies in Viet Nam as "gooks", the British to Arabs as "wogs" etc. There were certainly racial overtones in all these quasi-colonial campaigns, however much the hypocrites in the Western world would want to deny it.
The facts of the matter are:
Blacks were riding in the backs of the buses in the U.S. until the 1960s. They had to get their rights by Federal Law, enforced at gun- and bayonet point. I corresponded with Jesse Owens before his death. He told me things the press has never published.
In Hitler's Germany, black athletes like Jesse Owens were lionized, contrary to what postwar propaganda claimed. A big deal is made about Hitler not shaking his hand - Jesse told me that neither did Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy or Johnson! It was President Ford who finally honored him and invited him to the White House! He got no commercial endorsements after he returned from the Olympics - in fact it was, in his own words, ". . . back to the bus" in his own hometown!
Give the Western world's current disastrous outlook on race and immigration a few more decades to bear its equally disastrous fruits - and I would wager a bet that some of Germany's ideas, which were then being evolved, will look pretty attractive to the victims of these contemporary race-denying policies. Just look around: Already Americans, Canadians and Brits are voting for a "Nazi" policy - with their pocket books, and with their feet! It's called "white flight" - a retreat from the cities to the segregation-by-housing-costs of the expensive gated suburbs, and from there to the old farms and homesteads!
Nobody is saying that the German policy on race and eugenics was perfect - it was in its infancy, and much played out in a country at war with 51 other countries. But can American, Canadian and British people in power claim with a straight face that their policies in place, then and now, were and are any better?
The German policy was honest, open and forthright - as befitted the German character. It was, quite simply, Germany for Germans. German cities, German subways, German schools were safe for German citizens. That's more than America can claim - where even kindergartners are in danger, and where the offspring of people who greatly helped America become what it was in its glory, are now mowed down by bullets like chaff! <end>
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Thought for the Day:
"The fight against Germany has now been waged for months by every Jewish community, on every conference, in all labor unions and by every single Jew in the world.
There are reasons for the assumption that our share in this fight is of general importance. We shall start a spiritual and material war of the whole world against Germany.
Germany is striving to become once again a great nation, and to recover her lost territories as well as her colonies. But our Jewish interests call for the complete destruction of Germany..."
(Vladimir Jabotinsky, in Mascha Rjetsch, January, 1934)
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