Cowboy wrote: ↑Sun Jul 13, 2025 6:47 pm
Nessie wrote: ↑Sun Jul 13, 2025 4:54 pm
I am
sceptical of claims of geysers of blood and self burning corpses. I am not so arrogant to think that my scepticism has any evidential value. Instead, based on research into witness behaviour and recall,
I regard such claims as hyperbole, emotive descriptive,
likely atrocity story or rumour, which is quite common with witnesses, especially to traumatic events.
So, by this logic, we should be able to be skeptical of the gas chamber story/rumor?
Skeptical that witnesses are repeating rumor and hyperbolizing death count claims?
Yes, and there were many, including British Intelligence during the war, who were sceptical of the claims about gas chambers.
It is not really a matter of logic. The ABC of investigation, to ensure fairness and thoroughness, is to Assume nothing, Believe nothing, and Challenge everything. That is done by evidence gathering and corroboration.
We know that intelligence agencies were planting rumors of all sorts throughout the war via black & gray propaganda in psychological operations. OSS documents provide instructions on how to create effective rumors, and they align very well with the many atrocity stories that came out of the war.
What is a rumor?
- The successful rumor is a simple, brief, concrete, and vivid story, purporting to come from inside sources and concerning persons and events familiar to all members of the group.
I don't want to de-rail the topic of the thread, but I felt this should be pointed out.
It is not a derail, because it is clear that this experiment can easily be designed to fail and get a desired result. So-called revisionists know that traditional methods of enquiry by historians and criminal investigators, gathering evidence to establish a chronology of events leading to a corroborated, proven conclusion, does not work for them. So, they look for other ways to supposedly investigate the Holocaust.