Me and the H-Bomb Part Two: The Gas Chamber of Samuel Crowell

By Chip Smith

PREFACE

In 2010, Nine-Banded Books will publish a newly and finally revised edition of Samuel Crowell's long-developed monograph, The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes. In addition to the text of "Sherlock," the book will include a revised and updated restatement of Crowell's empirical research on German civil defense architecture (largely an expansion of his other major work, Bomb Shelters in Birkenau) as well as a new closing essay appraising a number of revisionist and counter-revisionist texts that have appeared over the last decade.

I mention this first by way of disclosure, but I will say up front that I feel a special obligation about this one. To state it plainly, I think Crowell's book is important. I think it will be read. And I am perhaps naively hopeful that it will be taken seriously by people -- even some few public intellectuals -- who are understandably skeptical of revisionist challenges to the consensus historiography regarding the Holocaust. I don't expect that an encounter with Samuel Crowell will change many minds, but I do think there is a real possibility that some readers will come away with an understanding that, as Crowell puts it, "the revisionist interpretation on the subject of mass gassing [is] possible, and since possible, a particularly unworthy candidate for censorship."

What follows, the second in a three-part series devoted to the Holocaust controversy, is my digressive introduction to Crowell's major theoretical work, The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes. Though I believe that Crowell's other contributions to the literature of revisionism are just as relevant, I have chosen to focus on Sherlock because its central argument is so shockingly novel, and so seldom engaged. I also think the argument will be vindicated, at least in broad form.I've been wrong before. Time will tell.

The third and final installment in this series (part one is here) will be broadly devoted to "Skepticism, Epistemology, and 'Belief in Belief'." In that post, I will respond to a number of points raised in reader commentary and correspondence. I will also revisit the curious case of Irène Némirovsky and Michel Epstein, with a few surprises.

My apologies for the delay.

Demjanjuk tried on Nazi death camp charges

AP’s David Rising reports that John Demjanjuk was put on trial today charged with being an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews at the German camp at Sobibor more than six decades ago. The wheels of justice never stop turning for Germans and those who served Germans during WWII—always with the exception of Jews who served Germans during WWII.

Rising mentions Nazi “death camp” charges, Nazi “machinery of destruction,” and “the mass killing of Jews.” He doesn’t mention “gas chambers.” I take this to suggest that Mr. David Rising does not much believe the Sobibor gas-chamber-story. A reasonable man, perhaps.

Holocaust Denial, Meet Climate-Change Denial

These two denials will meet, December 3, in London, at an event held under the auspices of the Index on Censorship magazine. I celebrated what now is becoming known as ClimateGate on this blog a couple of days ago ("A Hack-in for the Rest of Us,") and now, the sort of institutionalized censorship arrayed against climate-change skepticism is being appreciated as similar to the grand-daddy of them all, the censorship of Holocaust skepticism. The perpetrators are different, the cause seems different, but the methods are the same, and money is coming from the same places - taxpayers like you and me.

Way back in 2006, a fascinating piece appeared in the Daily Articles of the Ludwig von Mises Institute that extensively adumbrated ClimateGate. It is a spoof e-mail from a "generic" colleague to Richard Lindzen, possibly the doyen of professionally qualified skeptics of the climate science of Global Warming, and it complains to him how his refusal to participate in the Climate-Change Industry is damaging not only his career, but the careers of his colleagues and the climate-change profession in general. In light of recent events, it seems especially percipient.

There's still time to get over to London in time for Censorship's event. But bring lots of warm clothing - it's cold in London this time of year, Global Warming or no.

"Holocaust Denial is Pervasive, Growing, and Doomed"

Sunday, November 22, 2009
Interview with Deborah Lipstatic - "Holocaust Denial is Pervasive, Growing, and Doomed"

November 22, 2009, CNN

by Michael K. Smith

New York City -- Speaking from the Bellevue psychiatric ward, where she is undergoing evaluation for advanced schizophrenia, Holocaust Confirmer Deborah Lipstatic today declared, "The situation is critical and victory is at hand," in the war on Holocaust heresy.

Lipstatic, Professor of Victimology at Coca Cola University in Atlanta, insisted that Holocaust denial is not a legitimate field of study and entirely worthless intellectually, which, she said, explains why she devotes herself night and day to refuting its claims.

This year marks nine years since historian David Irving lost his libel suit against Lipstatic, who chronicled her battle against him in her book, “Money Can't Buy Love But It Can Buy The Courts - How I Single-Handedly Defeated David Irving With Swarms of Lawyers and Researchers and an Avalanche of Holocaust Industry Cash" (Orthodox Books, 2000).

Legalienate's editors were generously granted a lengthy interview with her on the recently proclaimed Holocaust Obsession Day, which lasts for 24 weeks instead of what Lipstatic called the "stingy" 24 hours of the standard day. Speaking from the isolated back ward where she currently resides, she explained how to make failure look like victory, why freedom requires adherence to a single view, and how Holocaust denial plays a crucial role in forging Jewish identity, especially among gentiles.

LEGALIENATE: Nine years later, how would you characterize the Irving trial?

LIPSTATIC: It was a resounding victory for the world inside my head. I went head-to-head with the world's leading Holocaust denier and I single-handedly won a judgment stating that historical facts are not to be determined by the courts.

LEGALIENATE: But wasn't that obvious from the beginning?

LIPSTATIC: Not to me it wasn't.

LEGALIENATE: Have you solved the problem of Holocaust denial?

LIPSTATIC: Of course not. But we did provide precise explanations proving that what Deniers say are complete deviations from what we say. We didn't prove what happened, and nobody else better either, but [....]

A Hack-in for the Rest of Us

With the effluent from the discouraging hack-in of David Irving's Web site being downloaded by holoterrorists all over the world, it is refreshing to see that hack-ins occur in our favor, too.

At first blush, the massive (60MB) leak of e-mails and other data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia would seem to have little to do with the perpetuation and enforcement of Holocaust mythology. But regardless of your own position with regard to the "science" of human-originated global warming, the leak from the CRU is a blockbuster exposé of the role of profession-advancing enforcement of "consensus" among scientists and policymakers in subverting the entire academic establishment, "peer review" and all.

As with Holocaust perpetuation, the unholy alliance of government and the academy, fueled by money and the incessant quest for power, is what drives the Global Warming Industry, and sixty Megabytes of data prove this over and over again (you can download it all through the article linked above, just like you can download data said to come from David Irving's Web site).

Holohoaxers invariably cite "reputation," "academic standing," "peer review" and other talismans of orthodoxy when advancing their views of the Holocaust. The mendacity and manipulativeness of orthodox establishments of all kinds is indelibly illustrated in the data exposed by this magnificent event.

The emperor has no clothes.

Wikipedia and the Holocaust

“Born” decades after the end of the Holocaust, Wikipedia knows all about the Holocaust, including quite a bit of stuff that is either impossible or highly speculative, just like a lot of other people that young and older, too. The English-language Wikipedia has over one million articles, and in them, there are over ten thousand pointers to the over 700 categories and sub-categories concerned with “The Holocaust” (yes, I counted them, and yes, this is much less than six million).

In the aggregate, Wikipedia is “crowd wisdom,” in this case of a crowd most of whose members received extensive indoctrination in the mythology of the Holocaust in both their educations and from the popular culture. Vis á vis the world’s English-speaking population, the subgroup of contributors to Wikipedia’s content, of which I am one, contains overrepresentations of two groups: (a) younger, better-educated, computer-literate folks; and (b) members of groups considered to be victims of the Holocaust. Groups from which most Holocaust revisionists come are correspondingly underrepresented.

Wikipedia is justly famous as “the encyclopedia anyone can edit,” and I can attest to this attribute, as I have contributed two or three articles and edited several dozen other ones, including articles concerning the Holocaust. But the notion that “anyone can edit it” is seriously misleading, on two scores. The lesser factor is the ability “wall” that composition and entry of material places before less-experienced and –dedicated computists. Wikipedia has, in effect, an editing “language” which must be to at least some extent mastered to do anything more than cross a tee or dot an eye. I have devoted many hours to its mastery, and remain able only to enter the most-rudimentary embellishments on straight text such as a table or a footnote. It is far more-challenging than making this blog entry.

The other, far more-serious threat to the survival of anything you might enter into Wikipedia is Wikipedia “standards,” which I heartily approve in principle, that are enforced by an army of “Administrators” who constantly patrol new entries and “correct” (usually expunge) those that don’t meet their ideas of the standards. Among the standards are ones concerning “original research” and “verifiability.” Original research means you can’t enter stuff that isn’t published somewhere else, by someone else, including, fortunately, the Web. Verifiability comes to mean something pernicious on controversial points as to which competing points of view are published. It means, all too often, that whichever of the two points of view that is more supported by establishment authorities is favored, and the one(s) opposing it, either suppressed or given short shrift.

A sterling example of this is to be found in the (main) article on “The Holocaust,” as well as in “Holocaust Denial.” One of dozens of related articles, “Criticism of Holocaust Denial” contains, under the heading “Jewish Population,” (the first) three paragraphs whose import runs diametrically counter to the bias of most of the Administrators as I have experienced it. I am the proud author of these paragraphs, assuming they’re still there, which supplant an earlier version that my version both replaces and refers to. A(n un)suitably disposed Administrator may indeed have noted its thrust but left it intact because it is totally (and easily) verifiable—there are responsible Administrators, including some quite devoted to the mythology of the Holocaust. More likely, it hasn’t been discovered yet, at least by an irresponsible Administrator.

I’ve lost Wikipedia battles, too, including right there in the “Criticism” article. There is a heading, “Denial as Anti-Semitism” that I had the effrontery to change to “Anti-Semitism as a Motive for Denial.” I didn’t change anything in the section—just the heading. An Administrator whipped that baby right back where it came from (and as you see it now), noting that “informed opinion” establishes incontrovertibly that denialism is anti-Semitism.

Of course, having ready recourse to the counsel of my own sentiments, I know that statement can be totally untrue.

But Wikipedia doesn’t allow “original research.” Check it out, and contribute your own—that is, somebody else’s—wisdom.

Clemson University -- response to a confused and slanderous letter from History News Network

Editor of the Clemson University Tiger:

Gord McFee of the Holocaust History Project finds it necessary to begin his comments on my “Eisenhower” ad by slandering me personally. I have “duped” the Tiger staff into running the ad. My goal is one of “deception, dishonest [sic] and duplicity.” My wish is that readers will “ask themselves the wrong question [who decides what the right question is—Gord McFee?].” My question is “dishonest” and I am “dishonest” and a “hypocrite” to boot.

Once Mr. McFee has purged himself, for the moment, of his personal animosity, he asks a perfectly reasonable question:

“Why would one expect Eisenhower to have discussed the gas chambers or the Holocaust? [the ad does not mention “Holocaust”]." Here I will suggest why I think he would have.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of Allied forces on the Western front. By 1943 it was getting about that the Germans had weapons of mass destruction (gas chambers) in which they were murdering perhaps millions of civilians with a particularly lethal gas.

Would the Commander in Chief of one army, faced with an enemy army in possession of weapons of mass destruction, have no professional interest in the matter? Does that make sense to you? If it does, I believe you have every right to say so and to say it in print and I will not slander you but will respond in a reasonable manner.

I do not believe it likely that the commander of one army, hearing that the commander of his opposing army has weapons of mass destruction and is using them at that moment to murder millions(?) of civilians, would not express some interest in the matter. Could the “gas” be delivered against his own troops in the field? How would he know if he did not look into the matter? Could the gas be delivered over the great populations centers in Central Europe? Would he have no interest in the possibility of such a scenario?

I believe the question is a reasonable one to ask in a university setting. And I find it interesting, though not surprising, that not one academic has chosen to reply to the question in the pages of the Tiger.

Bradley R. Smith