HISTORY NEWS NETWORK: ADDRESSING MORAL ISSUES CARELESSLY

As HNN reports:

"Last week at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) announced that Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has won the Robert Ferrell Book Prize for Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. The award attracted the notice of Professor Hasegawa's critics, including Robert P. Newman. We asked Mr. Newman to explain his objections. After we had his piece in hand we sent it over to Professor Hasegawa for a response.

I took Professor Newman's objections to Hasegawa to be intemperate, and with regard to the moral issues raised, careless. I posted a comment to that effect. If we can't discuss the moral issues regarding the intentional killing of innocent, unarmed Japanese civilians, we will not be able to talk openly about what is true and what is not true about the intentional killing of innocent, unarmed civilians by Germans during that war. You can find my brief observations in "Comments" at http://hnn.us/articles/24482.html

THE PASSION OF CHRIST

Last night I watched Mel Gibson's film for the first time. On television, here in Baja, with Spanish sub-titles. What struck me most forcibly was:

The actor playing Jesus had a good face. The violence began too early on, went too far, and I did not believe that the Jesus character could have kept going the way he did. And then there was the Roman counsul (?) who was uncertain of the morality of executing Jesus, and the priests who were certain that he should be executed. I didn't believe in the Roman character, he was too "sensitive." I did believe the Priests, who were adamant that Jesus was dangerous to their own beliefs, their own position and should be killed by the State. The priests were true believers, the Roman was not.

That is the way it is now with regard to intellectual freedom and the Holocaust story. Those who want to destroy revisionists and revisionist arguments are absolutely certain of what they want. They are true believers. The great majority of us who believe in intellecual freedom are uncertain of the morality of "offending" the victims of the Holocaust and those who identify with the victims, for whatever reasons. We are paragons of sensitivity. The search for truth and the ideal of intellectual freedom take a back seat to our felt need to respect the sensitivity of those who demand it, even when it is for themselves alone.

MY NEW EMAIL ADDRESS

Telnor, the telephone company here in Baja, changed my email address sometime during the middle of December. The telnor address that I have used for years no longer works. I have inadvertantly lost contact with a number of individuals. If you believe you are one of them, please note:

My new email address is bsmith@prodigy.net.mx

If you have been using bradley1930@yahoo.com -- that one still works fine.

LUNCH AND ARIEL SHARON

The car is still in the shop so when my wife got back from church and woke me up from my first nap of the day we walked up to the Boulevard and around the corner to a café where they serve chicken. They don’t serve anything else. Rice and beans. It was dark and cold on the street, while inside the café it was dark and cold.

We sat near the side wall that is entirely glass. Outside there is a passageway about three feet wide, then a seven-foot concrete block wall painted with hills and fields and flowering plants. Over head the passageway is covered with chicken wire, and down in the dirt there are white pigeons, a dove or two, and a couple rabbits, one brown and the other black and white.

We ordered chicken, of course, and while we ate and I listened to my wife talk about our daughter I watched the black and white rabbit, which is the smaller one, lick and clean the brown one like a mother cat cleans its kitten. I’d never seen that before.

After awhile a fat Mexican came in with his wife, I suppose, and sat at a table near us. I was struck by how closely the Mexican resembled Ariel Sharon, the Butcher of Beirut. The nose, the mouth, the stomach, the haircut. Everything. If I had been in some other venue, I would have felt a moment of anxiety.

Thought recalled that this morning on a CNN “Breaking News” segment it was reported that Sharon had suffered a stroke and was in hospital. When I first heard the news I thought, well, let’s hope for the worst. The guy’s been nothing but trouble for as long as I can remember. Then it occurred to me that waiting in line to govern Israel is Bibi Netanyahu. My enthusiasm felt compromised. What kind of choice is that? Bibi and George W?

Look out Iran!

AN OVER-NIGHT TRIP TO AMERICA

PART ONE

Yesterday evening I was to attend a memorial service for David McCalden, the conceptual founder of the Institute for Historical Review. McCalden was a beloved, cranky, intelligent, womanizing, engaging, odd individual. We had our bad times, but I remember him with real affection and admiration.

The get-together, not really a “service,” would be held in Manhattan Beach at a Chinese bar, where all our four-times-a-year get-togethers happen. In order to be certain that I would be there on time, 6pm, I would have to drive north to the border and cross into California by 12 noon. Here in La Gloria my car was in the shop with a busted steering wheel and an electrical short that my mechanic could not locate.

So I would have to get a bus to Tijuana, a taxi to the frontier, walk across the bridge, wait in line with the other terrorists to cross over, catch a streetcar to Chula Vista, then another taxi to Budget Rent a Car where I had reserved the least expensive automobile they rent. It all went pretty well. I arrived at Budget at 12.30pm.

While I’m waiting at the front desk two Chinese men enter. They are each well over six feet tall, in their mid-thirties, slim and well-built, good-looking, and in good humor. My first reaction on seeing them there is to note how tall they are—and then suddenly thought has me back in Korea in 1951, more than half a century before. I had nothing to do with it. Thought was on its own, living out its own existence.

It was probably a February morning, and the day was just breaking. We were one platoon of infantry lying in a couple snow-covered rice paddies in a small, narrow valley. A road ran north/south through the length of the valley and the Chinese were coming south at us. We were to hold where we were. We had no support. Even the company machinegun squad was with another platoon. We had our M-1 rifles, a few grenades, and that was it.

I was glad to see day breaking. Sometimes when the Chinese came there were a lot of them and when they came at night it could be a real bother. Now that a winter light was seeping through the clouds we could relax a bit. We could heat coffee. We could talk, horse around a bit. And then one of the guys gave a yell and we dove on our faces. There was some shouting back and forth. I didn’t get it.

And then I saw that straight ahead, maybe sixty yards, there was the head and shoulders of a Chinese soldier, his arms raised as if he were surrendering. He was close enough that he could have shot a few of us before we would have known what was happening. None of us stood up. A couple of the guys yelled at him. Get up or get shot. The Chinese stood up, his arms above his head. He started walking toward us. A couple of our guys went out to meet him and shake him down.

In another couple minutes he was standing there in full quilted uniform, with the fur cap, in the center of a dozen American soldiers and everyone was laughing. It was remarkable. We could have been killing each other, but we were laughing.

There was a Chinese kid in our platoon from Fresno and he began translating. The Chinese was just tired of the fighting. The worst part of it was American air. He had deserted his unit the night before and crawled toward our line in the dark. He knew he was taking a chance, but he somehow felt that if waited for daylight and showed himself the way he had that we would not shoot him. He was right.

He was a tall, well-built man in his early thirties. He was one of the tallest guys there in the paddy, well over six feet. He had an intelligent, good looking face and a winning smile. Everyone took a shine to him. He was very much like the two Chinese who came into the Budget Rent a Car office while I was waiting to pick up my reservation.

Only now it occurs to me to imagine how it might have been if I had had a way to introduce myself to the two Chinese there in the office, tell them the story that thought had just flashed back to, and invite them to have a beer. I would have other stories to tell them about the Chinese in Korea, which might encourage them to recall a couple stories about Americans that they had been told by their fathers and uncles, or that they had witnessed for themselves.

REVISIONISM: A CRIME OF THE MIND

Stephen Smith of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust writes that Holocaust “denial” (that is, free inquiry, skepticism, historical investigation, public debate, intellectual freedom) is a “crime of the mind.” Who benefits? Among others, The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. I suppose the Trust has access to a good amount of money. Follow the money. It is a crime of the mind to do anything that will undermine the influence of those who are getting the money. This is why some revisionists play with the word “holocau$t.”

David Golding of the Israeli Embassy in Dublin wants an apology because Keating’s article questions “our God and our religion.” It is very much like a “crime of the mind” to question what has been written about Golding’s God and his religion. Those who forward the concept of “crimes of the mind” to restrict public discourse are themselves the primary beneficiaries of such charges, and of the “crimes” themselves, which are in turn forwarded as fundraisers to forward the need for laws against crimes of the mind.


Justin Keating on Israel
The Dubliner, November 2005

I have reached the conclusion that the Zionists have absolutely no right in what they call Israel, that they have built their state not beside but on top of the Palestinian people, and that there can be no peace as long as contemporary Israel retains its present form. I hasten to make clear that none of this gives me any pleasure, but in the great scheme of things my personal wishes do not weigh heavily in the scale pans of history. I wish I did not think what I do, I hope I am wrong. My conclusions are based on the answers to five questions.

Read more
http://www.honestreporting.com/a/dublinerarticle.htm


In London, Stephen Smith, chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, said: “Holocaust denial is a crime of the mind. It is designed to insult the dead, humiliate the survivors and to make us disbelieve the scarcely believable.”

Spokesman David Golding of the Israeli Embassy in Dublin requested an apology from the Dubliner, “I found [the article] offensive and hurtful … it questions our God and our religion. I am very angry and disappointed that an eminent Irish historian could produce such revisionist rubbish.”

Read more
http://www.thejewishpress.com/news_article.asp?article=5820

HARRY MAZAL ON DAVID IRVING

A week without posting here. I’ve been distracted, lost really, worrying and thinking and worrying about money, about funding, expenses, bills, debts. For revisionists, the usual.

I did do the Christmas letter for 2005. The primary family story this year is that there is a new baby in the house, so it’s the primary story in the Christmas letter. It’s at the printers now. If you’re not on my USPS list, drop me a note with your address and I’ll send it on to you the middle of next week.

I’ve done some more work with The History News Network, the Web site “by historians for historians.” I am allowed full access to the site, am allowed to post wherever I want. It is all very proper. There is no other such place on the Web. By and large, the professors do not want to get involved. What’s in it for them?

One exchange is interesting for who participated in it, and who quit. It reminds me of the time I was a guest on the Bob Grant show and Simon Wiesenthal was on with me. Simon was willing to talk until he found that there was someone on the air with him who was willing to talk back. He hemmed and hawed, stammered this and that, and then hung up the phone. If you disagree with them, they are in agreement: they will not talk to you. That's how the taboo is maintained.

HNN posted a story from the Independent by a Charles Glass titled “David Irving Should be Protected by Free Speech Laws" http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/18799.html. There were a few comments. The one that interests me here is #71990, by Harry Mazal.

Free speech is a two way street (#71990)
by Harry William Mazal on December 4, 2005 at 3:48 PM

[ Harry W. Mazal OBE directs The Holocaust History Project http://www.holocaust-history.org/ ] , a primary resouce for those who want to believe and are outraged by doubt.

[start]

Mr. Glass states:

"But my belief in freedom of expression requires me to defend the right of both to speak. Otherwise, what is this free speech I believe in? The freedom to agree?"

One cannot fault that argument.

Curiously enough though, where were many of the defenders of freedom of expression when David Irving sued Professor Deborah Lipstadt for libel in London? She had written a scholarly book that analyzed Holocaust deniers including, but not principally, David Irving. His failed libel lawsuit was nothing more than an attempt to strip Professor Lipstadt of her fundamental right to express herself.

It is almost poetic justice that he should now be facing a long prison term for expressing himself freely. Several years ago he was responsible for Prof. Lipstadt's virtual incarceration - five plus years of preparation for and attendance in the courts - was probably more stressful and debilitating than the same time spent in a prison cell.

By his failed legal action he also forced Prof. Lipstadt and her admirers to invest millions of Pounds Sterling in her defense. Although he was assigned court costs, he has never paid them and indeed boasts at how he was responsible for this huge loss to whom he refers as the "Traditional Enemy".

To argue that justice prevailed and that Irving lost his lawsuit does not give back the years that Professor Lipstadt lost, the pain and suffering that she endured, nor the massive expenses that were incurred in her defense.

It would be apprpropriate if Mr. Irving were freed, but only after he has had to raise millions of Pounds Sterling in his defense and spent years of preparation and attendance in a foreign courtroom.

Freedom of expression is a two way street.

[end]

Re: Free speech is a two way street. (#72001)
by Bradley Smith on December 4, 2005 at 9:17 PM

You have it dead wrong. Intellectual freedom is either there for everyone, or it's not there. It's either there everywhere, all the time, or it's not there. The issue today is not that Irving brought a flawed libel action against Lipstadt in the past. And it is not a matter of how much money the Holocaust Industry fronted Lipstadt, or how much she has "suffered."

Intellectual freedom is not a two-way street. It's a one-way street. It promises the same thing to those going in your direction that it promises those going in my direction. All this talk about Irving's character, how much money was spent, and Lipstadt's "suffering," is the commonplace routine of those who believe in intellectual freedom for themselves always, and for others sometimes.

David Irving deserves the protection of free speech laws for exactly the reasons that Deborah Lipstadt deserves them, and you deserve them. That's what is implicit in the ideal, and has been for the last 25-plus centuries.

Re: Free speech is a two way street. (#72098)by Bradley Smith on December 6, 2005 at 2:32 PM

[After a couple days passed with no word from Harry. I made the following observation.]

Sartre wrote somewhere that "every word has an echo -- and every silence." When those who believe the gas-chamber stories are confronted over the right to intellectual freedom for those who do not believe, the echo of their silence is everywhere.

[And that was the end of it. That is usually the end of it. Those who front for the Holocaust Industry do not have it in their hearts to freely exchange ideas with those who are not themselves part of the Industry.]

A NOTE ON DANIEL PIPES

Following is a letter regarding the back and forth I engaged in on History News Network, a Web page “For Historians, by Historians.” The specific back and forth can be found here in the "comments" section at http://hnn.us/articles/18197.html . At the end of this letter the author suggests something that I do not want to believe.


Bradley,

The excerpts from your HNN sallies in SR 123 were of interest and tells us a lot about the status of play in the culture wars. You did a great job in keeping the heat on the academic frauds that support suppression of ideas they don’t like.

It’s also a little depressing to read that “some truths are absolute” [the Holocaust being the big one - I’m sure the guy who wrote that would be appalled to think that a religious truth like the divinity of Jesus might fit his test], thus justifying suppression of dissent; or a Ph.D. from Harvard no
less who doesn’t like the criminalization of falsehood but would make an exception here because of the dangers of revisionism.

Not one of these guys had a single word of criticism of exactly what was wrong in what revisionists say and as usual the assumption is those who “deny the Holocaust” are akin to folks who deny that the sun rises in the east or claim that nothing bad happened to any Jews during World War II - but they are careful not to actually say THAT because then they might be drawn into an actual debate with the hated revisionists and secretly they know that they would not fare well in that venue.

A simple smear is a much better tactic. I doubt a single one of these people has read Butz, Mattogno or any of the other revisionist scholars. And of course we have one whiz who KNOWS that revisionists are not only unscientific but are motivated by a desire to restart Nazi ideology. He just knows. Bradley, I’ll bet you didn’t even know that those were your own real motives. And oh yes, the dreary charge of “anti-Semitism” when all else fails. It is all quite depressing in such a high-blown site.

The simple question you raised long ago is still the best one to start with these quasi-religious fanatics: what do we mean when we use the term “the Holocaust”? And exactly what do revisionists claim? Let’s discuss it.

I expect that you will be cut off shortly by HNN. Daniel Pipes is one of the bosses.

Albert Doyle

HISTORY NEWS NETWORK

Following is a letter from Paul Grubach. I asked him to go ahead.
History News Network is a Web site sponsored by George Mason University, created "By professors, for professors."

Dear Brad,

I was just looking over your Dec. 2005 newsletter and saw your very interesting debate with the History News Network.
[See: http://hnn.us/articles/18197.html , then go to "comments"]
Those guys you are debating are putting forth a bunch of fallacies. Some examples.

1. Cravatts says: "Some truths are absolute and do not require a fair and balanced measurement against some contradictory body of thought. An entire intellectual 'industry' of Holocaust denial research has many fervent followers...but few sentient school boards would find it palatable or reasonable to have students exposed to the 'theory' that the Holocaust never occurred along with history lessons expressing the verifiable and incontrovertible fact that it did."

Cravatts contradicts himself. On the one hand, he criticizes Intelligent Design as "non- science," and unscientific, and then he goes on to make a very fallacious, unscientific defense of the Holocaust ideology.

First of all, there are no absolute truths in science. All scientific claims must be open to rebuttal, reinvestigation, and reevaluation. What separates a scientific theory from a nonscientific theory is that a scientific theory must be open to empirical falsification at all times.

By claiming that the Holocaust ideology is an "absolute truth" and "does not require a fair and balanced measurement against some contradictory body of thought," he is claiming the Holocaust ideology must be accepted a priori--period!!! Therefore, it can never be open to empirical falsification and it is not a scientific theory. By forcing people to accept it a priori, they make the Holocaust ideology unfalsifiable and self-perpetuting. Exactly what the Holocaust ideologists want.

2. John Beatty wrote: "Why is it a criminal offense? Simple: 'Never Again!' By denying the truth of industrialized genocide it becomes possible again. Personally I don't care if you deny the Earth beneath your feet. But doing that will not enable systematic murder again."

He is saying that if you deny the Holocaust ideology, you make is possible that the Holocaust will happen again. So therefore, "holocaust denial" should be banned.

To show the fallacy in this argument. Suppose group of left-wing historians came forward and said that "Stalin's genocidal crimes are vastly exaggerated and we can prove it."

The historical community would not say: "Oh, you cannot deny or minimize Stalin's crimes, because then they will happen again. So we will not listen to your evidence. You must accept Stalin's crimes as fact and that is it. And all questioning or reevaluation of Stalin's crimes will be banned."

No, the historical community would quietly listen to the arguments and evidence of those who claim that Stalin's crimes of genocide are vastly exaggerated. It is only in the case of the Holocaust ideology do intellectuals come forth with pseudo-intellectual defenses like Beatty's to protect the ideology.

Would you like me to write a short article showing the fallacies in your opponent's arguments, and then you could put this in your next newsletter?

WILL DAVID IRVING BETRAY HIMSELF, AND US?

When I first heard that David Irving had been arrested in Austria on his way to talk to some college students and was being held in jail, I was flabbergasted. I didn’t know what to make of it. The arrest and deportation of Germar Rudolf did not surprise me. But Irving in jail? It was out of character for him. I had a hard time getting my brain around it.

Irving is, in fact, guilty of breaking Austrian law. He did “deny” the Holocaust, to use the usual jargon. His lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, tells the Guardian on 26 November: “There are the transcripts of his speeches, there is a newspaper interview that he gave [in 1989]. It’s pretty black and white.”

“But Irving told me that he has changed his views after researching in the Russian archives in the 1990s. He said, ‘I’ve repented. I’ve no intention of repeating these views. That would be historically stupid and I’m not a stupid man.’

“He said, ‘I fully accept this, it’s a fact. The discussion on Auschwitz, the gas chambers and the Holocaust is finished ... it’s useless to dispute it’.”

So the news—and this is only news—is that David Irving is going to recant his “revisionist” views on the Holocaust story. Who would have thought?

Irving is an absolutely unique individual. His capacity for work, his genius for organization, the quality of his intellect, his learning, his endless energy, his physical strength, his unwillingness to suffer fools and his easy willingness to offend friends, his daring—I have never met anyone to match him. No one.

At the same time, among we lesser folk, we have watched David Irving make one mistake after another. It began with his unwillingness to take on the Holocaust Industry straight on by setting aside his life-long interest in Hitler’s inside circle and do a real book on Auschwitz, the book he better than anyone else anywhere was capable of producing and promoting, I wish I could get inside his brain on that one, but it isn’t going to happen.

Then there was the stupidly conceived libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt, where during the trial he was brilliant and wrong-headed and utterly full of himself. Irving’s defeat at that trial was the most serious single blow that revisionism has ever received. Only last week a correspondent reminded me that it was the Lipstadt trial that convinced serious people that, okay, revisionists had taken an interesting run at the Holocaust story, they had failed in full view of the Western world, and there was no reason to worry about Holocaust revisionism any longer.

And of course his uniquely self-punishing interviews with the press that were comic and self-demeaning at the same time. What an interesting ride this man has had.

And now? If we are to believe his lawyer, who sounds like a practical man, David Irving is going to recant his views with regard to Auschwitz, the gas chambers, and who knows what else? He may. He may not. It would not be beyond him. This is a man for whom there is nothing “beyond.” But I feel a betrayal in the works. I hesitate to say it, but betrayal is in the air. My hope? That he recants to the Austrian court, is freed, and when he is out in the world again that he stands up in public to declare:

“I lied before a corrupt court. There is no honor in telling a corrupt court the truth if you do not enjoy being punished at the hands of corrupt law. The Auschwitz story is crap. I know it, and millions of people all over the Western and Muslim worlds know it. When I said ‘Auschwitz is a sinking ship,’ I was right. I meant it then, and I mean it now.”

Will David Irving betray himself then? And us? Or has David discovered evidence that supports the gas chamber stories and kept it secret from us and everyone else all these years? We are not going to know until he is a free man.

Stories I meant to write but didn't. There are others

Nazi, Democratic, and Republican soldiers

On 12 November the AP reported that some 2,000 neo-Nazis clashed with police outside Germany’s largest World War II soldier’s cemetery, where the extremists had hoped to stage a demonstration in honor of the Nazi soldiers. Thousands of police were on hand in Halbe to keep the peace between the roughly 2,000 skinheads who had gathered in the town, 30 miles south of Berlin, and the estimated 1,600 counter-demonstrators.

We will write in honor of “Nazi” soldiers,” but not in honor of “German” soldiers. At the same time we will never write about the honor of “Republican or Democratic” soldiers,” but always about “American” soldiers. Underlying this hypocrisy is the obsession with the alleged (and real) “crimes” of the Nazi soldiers, and the obsessive evasion of the (real) crimes of “Democrat and Republican” soldiers in that war.

Jewish pain here, intellectual freedom there

D.D. Guttenplan is the London Correspondent for the Nation, and author of “The Holocaust on Trial” (W.W. Norton, 2001). He is currently writing a biography of I.F. Stone (one of my heroes—BRS). On 19 November the L.A. Times published an article where he argues that David Irving “deserves free speech…”

Further along he writes: “Countries that outlaw Holocaust denial do so not because they love liberty less than we do but because their history is different from ours. Holocaust denial causes real pain to survivors and their families. To fail to acknowledge that pain, or to treat it as a particularly Jewish problem that need not trouble anyone else, is to deny our common humanity - precisely the denier’s aim.”

Like so many of us, Guttenplan commiserates with the “pain” of Jews, but does not consider the “pain” felt by Germans for demonstrably false, yet unending charges of “unique German monstrosity.” Jewish pain is linked with “our common humanity,” while “German pain” is a German problem that need not trouble anyone else.

“As important, in Germany and Austria Holocaust denial is not just hate speech but also a channel for Nazi resurgence, like the Hitler salute and the swastika, which are also banned.”

If Holocaust denial is a “channel for Nazi resurgence,” what do the Guttenplans (for there are an army of them) believe intellectual freedom and the right to free inquiry are channels for? Trips to the moon?

Guttenplan writes: Whatever their motives, the Austrians have every right to deny Irving a platform, even to deport him.

Why do they have every right to deny an independent historian the right to express his views about history? And then there is the primary issue, which Guttenplan does not want to comment on: do the Austrians have “every right” to imprison dissident scholars? Like in Saudi Arabia, or Zimbabwe perhaps? Guttenplan is evasive here, unwilling to choose between “Jewish pain,” and the great ideal of Western culture—intellectual freedom.

There is nothing unusual in this. In America the intellectuals, and particularly a sissy professorial class, are in wide agreement that the problem of Jewish pain is more important that the right to free inquiry and a free press.

Thanksgiving

There are other stories I should comment on here, but its Thanksgiving and our daughter and son-in-law are here and, well, pleasure before business.

Taboos inside taboos

Last night a friend called from Washington wanting to know if it were true that Germar Rudolf is going to be deported to stand trial in Germany for revisionist thought crimes. I said that is my understanding. In about a week. We talked for half an hour. We wondered when the time will come when even the factotums working for the German State will understand that they are destroying their credibility by not allowing their credibility to be challenged with regard to the Holocaust story.

The prosecution and imprisonment of revisionists for thought crimes has very little, if anything, to do with the accuracy of what revisionists write or how they interpret the historical facts. It is all the expression of taboo. We cannot talk openly about what happened between Germans and Jews during WWII. The discussion is circumscribed, censored, suppressed, taboo.

During World War II the overwhelming majority of those in German occupied Europe collaborated with the Germans. Anne Frank’s father, Otto, was among them. He made his living collaborating with the Germans. That was then. What’s changed?

Today almost every government in Europe collaborates with the Germans in maintaining the taboo against an open debate on the Holocaust story. Americans are particularly corrupt in our collaboration with the Germans on this issue. America was formed on one ideal—that of intellectual freedom. We betray that ideal, and reveal our own moral corruption, in our collaboration with the Germans today. Nothing’s changed.

Revisionists have our own taboos. It is taboo to criticize the published writings or statements of revisionists who admire Hitler and the Hitlerian regime. It is taboo to publicly question the racialist arguments of specific revisionists. Taboo to argue publicly against the anti-semitism that exists among revisionists. It is not that we cannot do it, or occasionally do not do it, but we understand that when we do we will break the taboo against doing it, and we’ll suffer the consequences.

Creating taboo to protect something you hold dear from being questioned is what people do. It plays a significant role in human culture. All of it. And taboos do not stand alone. There are taboos inside of taboos, and other taboos inside those. Alan Watts argued that the greatest taboo of all is the taboo against knowing yourself. If you want to know yourself, you have to wake up. You can’t get to know yourself when you’re half asleep. Who among us, especially among the Germans, wants to take a chance on truly waking up?

I think Watts was right. Waking up to who you really are is taboo. Ask the Germans. Ask their primary collaborators, the Americans. The fear of waking up, of breaking the Holocaust taboo, is everywhere among them.

The new baby, the new grandfather, and the orange kitten

Our youngest daughter, Paloma, gave birth to a boy at 6am on 30 October. Both Paloma and the baby did fine. This means that I’m a grandfather. The event took place in a hospital on the other side, in Chula Vista. That means the kid is an American by birth.

I wasn’t there when it happened. Paloma’s mother was there, along with a cousin who lives in Chula Vista with her own two children. I was at the house here in Baja, taking care of business. Taking care of business includes taking care of four dogs, six cats, and several dozen parakeets and canaries. When my wife is gone, there’s animal crap everywhere. And then there’s the work, trying to earn a living. The animals and the work. I don’t know which is more onerous.

They got down here three days later, Tuesday evening. My level of interest in the baby was remarkably low. I have been unable to get into the project. My wife was into the project about a half hour after Paloma told us she was pregnant. That was six months ago. I saw one sonogram of the fetus. I could see an arm sticking up with a hand and fingers. I told Paloma it looked like a frog.

“What the hell have you been doing,” I said?

She laughed.

I was told that the baby was beautiful. I have never heard anyone describe a newborn baby as being ugly, or looking like a toad. I was a little apprehensive. When I saw it (him) Tuesday night he looked normal. I have not seen very many newborns. The only one I can remember is Paloma. I write about that night in Bones. It was a profound experience for me. I could see that she was beautiful. No mistaking it. She looked like my mother’s side of the family.

So now I’m looking at her newborn. He looks okay. I can’t say that he’s beautiful, the way his mother was at that age (three days). He has her forehead. He looks more or less like Paloma, except that he has dark hair, like his Mexican father. Everybody expects that I will be happy, enthusiastic. There is a house full of cousins and aunts. I don’t feel very much at all. Everybody wants me to hold the baby. I don’t want to, but I take a run at it. People clap.

Later on in the hubbub the cousins are asking what the baby’s name is and I am surprised to hear that Paloma has named him Bradley Eden Smith. Bradley? She had told me she was naming him “Eden.” Okay. The Bradley is a surprise. I feel peculiar. It’s a first for me.

The next morning Paloma and the baby are downstairs. My wife insists that I hold him. There’s nothing there. I am aware that he has the general appearance of his mother, not his father. I’m okay with that. His father is problematic. And then the father is there. He picks up his son and holds him. I feel—I’m not certain what. But what the hell is he doing holding “our” baby. The baby belongs to “our” family. Paloma, her mother, and me.

The next day it is becoming clearer how much the kid looks like his mother. There are moments, looking at him, when for an instant I forget that he is who he is, and he becomes Paloma. I’m feeling some sort of connection with him, from some kind of odd angle. People who visit ask me how it feels to be a grandfather. It’s nothing to brag about. I feel uncomfortable hearing about it. I’m supposed to be happy about it. I’m not. I don’t know how to feel like a grandfather. What the hell’s that?

A couple more days pass. The baby, “little” Brad I suppose, has a powerful voice. When he cries it’s a big cry. There’s no whimpering. When he farts you can hear it in the next room. Paloma is happy. My wife is happy. Everyone who visits, and the visitors do not stop, is happy, congratulating me on being an “abuelo.” Even the men. It’s just not for me. Not yet.

One morning I’m holding Little Brad and decide to chuck him under his chin. It must tickle his fancy. A big grin lights up his face. It’s the same full-face smile that Paloma had when she was his age. I still recall the first time I saw her beautiful smile. It was morning, and she was three days old. She was in her crib in the dinning room and she smiled just for the hell of it. It was stunning. I called out to my mother, who was sitting in her wheelchair in the front room:

“Ma! I just saw her smile. You should have seen it. You’ve never seen anything like it.” That was when we were in Hollywood. I was okay about being a father. I was fifty-six years old. Now we’re in Baja, I’m older, and it’s different.

Another day passes. Then it’s morning and I’m in the kitchen making coffee. I hear a tiny little “meow” and see that the orange kitten, he’s four weeks old, sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor where I could step on him. I imagine that he looks kind of bewildered. I pause and call his name: “Ricardo?” He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t understand Spanish yet. He just sits there, rather lost. I reach down to him.

Without thinking about it, I say softly, “Do you want granddad to scratch your ear? Huh? Come on kid. How’s that?”

Dennis Rodman, the intellectuals, and personality cults

Watching the Jay Leno show. Dr. Phil McGraw and Dennis Rodman are guests. Rodman is a style junkie. His style is unique and rather off the wall, but it’s his style, and with it he expresses his personality as best he can. For myself, I don’t wear costumes, but that’s me. I turn off the TV and lie in the dark thinking about Rodman. Beside me, my wife is snoring lightly.

And then thought, without even the hint of a preamble, turns to Adolf Hitler and the cult of personality. Remarkable. Back in the 50s and 60s the “cult of personality” was a big issue among my commie friends and intellectuals generally. It typically had to do with fighting this cult on the left. I don’t recall it ever being used with regard to the right. I don’t recall it ever being used with regard to Hitler.

Any significant idolization of a single public figure is an expression of a personality cult. There are those in the revisionist community, a minority, who idolize Hitler. A majority of revisionists understand that Hitler was not a demon, but they do not idolize him. Of course, the intellectuals have spent a great deal of their credibility capital to convince us that Hitler was in fact a demon—that is, “larger than life.”

There are no demons in real life. It is the intellectuals themselves who have created the cult of a demonized personality in which Adolf Hitler is "idolized" for his demonic achievements. It's all rubbish, but the Big Brains have argued it for so long that it would shame them to give up on it now. That is why, as a class, they approve of the crimminalization of revisionist arguments, and the imprisonment of those of us who express them.