A new David Cole interview and scrutiny of the middle ground

[bombsaway]

https://rumble.com/v3j5vxo-mirror-david ... ew-mp.html

I watched this interview which I thought was fairly interesting, not in terms of historical insight, but rather discussions of a middle ground position, between orthodoxy and denialism.

I've referred to the posters on this forum as revisionists, and they are in a sense, though it's also true they definitely deny the most important Holocaust claim, the killing of 5-6 million Jews. They go further than this (one could call Reitlinger a denier by this metric), basically saying that there was no organized killing program to speak of, rather justified and rather equanimous targeting of some Jews for purposes of partisan suppression. Germar Rudolf didn't deny any of the orthodoxy's claims re SS police killings in occupied USSR, but if I had to ping the "revisionist" members here how many Jews they thought were shot I'm sure none would go over a few hundred thousand, and none would claim this was part of a genocidal program meant to reduce Jewish population as an end unto itself.

The "middle" position, as practiced by Cole, and apparently Martinez is an adherent now as well (this is different from what I heard from him a few years ago), is actually mere degrees away from orthodoxy. It might be fair to call it a 5 or 10% revisionist position. They make no claims about any "unknown" mass resettlements. Cole denies mass gassings at Majdanek, but most historians take this view now as well. He doesn't deny gassings at the bunkers of Auschwitz or at the demolished Cremas. He speaks of the Hungarian Jews as a population that was transferred for work purposes, but apparently hasn't even read revisionist scholarship on this https://codoh.com/library/document/the- ... july-1944/ which has documents from Auschwitz reporting only 1/3 of the deported Hungarian Jews were employable, and that most of them disappeared (to which his own arguments about Unicornville https://hooverhog.typepad.com/hognotes/ ... -cole.html now apply).

Even the 5% revisionist position seems barely tenable, I don't think Cole or Irving or Weber or any proponents of that position have even responded to such criticisms.

So what can we say to the absolute revisionists here (who I will just call deniers for shorthand)? I think something to think about it is why so many people who are antisemitic by the conventional definition, already ostracized and denigrated by mainstream society are either 5% revisionists or have abandoned it completely. From what I've heard from people on the forum, the debate is totally lopsided, no reasonable person could ever view the orthodox position as having any legitimacy. I want to push back on this with the example of people like Cole (who produced more or less denier material as you can hear about in the interview) and especially Martinez who has actually received criticism from his audience for taking such a stance. There may be incentives for moving on from denial, but there are also incentives to keep practicing it, clearly there's a large audience clamoring for it, and these days expression is more permissible making it a profitable enterprise to be honest. So there's something amiss here that deniers should square with. The point I would make, is based on these facts, a neutral observer couldn't label the debate as being one sided, at the very least.

The one final insight from this interview are the areas where denial is tenable. It's clear that on the basis of witness, documentary, and physical evidence, orthodoxy is well favored (physical evidence you might be able to make an argument about but deniers haven't been able to answer elementary questions about grave inspections https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=107&start=225) So as Cole says what remains are questions of implausibility - the Germans couldn't have destroyed so many bodies so quickly, it would have required too much fuel. But as I've pointed out before, implausibility can also be leveled at the denier position - the ABSOLUTE absence of direct evidence for their claim of what happened "mass resettlement". And unlike, orthodoxy, no mechanism as been offered to explain this absolute (not partial) absence.

[fireofice]

On motives, David Cole clearly has a Jewish motive to affirm large parts of the holocaust. Martinez is more of a nationalist, but if you follow him on social media and other places, he clearly gets a kick out of being contrarian against and arguing against other nationalists and also doesn't like Hitler and National Socialism very much. I don't think you can get very far appealing to motives with these two.

That said, the motives of someone like David Irving or Mark Weber would perhaps need more explaining, as they have no obvious motive to affirm large parts of the holocaust. I think here it is just clear that they want mainstream respectability, and they value this more than whatever anyone like us says.

[bombsaway]

On motives, David Cole clearly has a Jewish motive to affirm large parts of the holocaust. Martinez is more of a nationalist, but if you follow him on social media and other places, he clearly gets a kick out of being contrarian against and arguing against other nationalists and also doesn't like Hitler and National Socialism very much. I don't think you can get very far appealing to motives with these two.

That said, the motives of someone like David Irving or Mark Weber would perhaps need more explaining, as they have no obvious motive to affirm large parts of the holocaust. I think here it is just clear that they want mainstream respectability, and they value this more than whatever anyone like us says.

Martinez wasn't always like this, here he claims that gas chambers were not used in a significant way https://youtu.be/fFxDjvID41Y?t=7590 , I remember him having even stronger denialist positions in the past.

There are incentives perhaps to "recant" but also to deny, since it's a majoritarian position among those identifying as Jew critical or however you want to term it. Martinez, has taken heat for his positions, and on twitter has deferred taking a public stance on the truth of the Holocaust. For those who believe that the Jews are conspiring in some way to ethnically destroy or degrade whites (Martinez's position ihthe above vid) , Holocaust hoax is a relatively minor offense. And there are many other people who hold this view and *still* aren't Holocaust deniers. Richard Spencer, the 'counter currents' publication, which analyzed Cole vs Unz debate.

Deniers are in la la land if they think the debate is more or less settled, even on their side.

[Stubble]

Affirming the holocaust and promoting it as a positive thing is something I have seen. Personally, I don't buy it. I have more faith in my fellow man that to believe it.

So far as jewnarnia or jewlantis is concerned, I don't think that's an accurate framing of my position.

My position is that jews on each side of the iron curtain were told their family members were dead and they believed it, in their marrow.

So far as proving a reduction or non reduction in population, it depends on who is doing the counting I suppose and also on how many times 1 individual gets counted in the death toll for example.

You can get to 6,000,000 quickly if you count everyone many times.

[bombsaway]

My position is that jews on each side of the iron curtain were told their family members were dead and they believed it, in their marrow.

And the likely millions of Jews who were held in unknown internment camps/ghettos didn't tell their stories to anyone, why?

Whereas Jews who were held in known internment camps like Theresienstadt and in Transnistria (these fell under Soviet control) spoke of their experiences in great detail, again why?

[Stubble]

My position is that jews on each side of the iron curtain were told their family members were dead and they believed it, in their marrow.

And the likely millions of Jews who were held in unknown internment camps/ghettos didn't tell their stories to anyone, why?

Whereas Jews who were held in known internment camps like Theresienstadt and in Transnistria (these fell under Soviet control) spoke of their experiences in great detail, again why?

This is like asking why nobody testified that gas chambers didn't exist. People did testify to that effect, nobody paid attention. It is a count hits and ignore misses kind of deal.

I can find you a handful, but, not the million and a half you require.

Such is the nature of my predicament.

You demand I produce the displaced persons, eighty years after the fact, and say that because they were unable to give interviews to western media and the Soviet media didn't go interview them, they don't exist.

/shrug

Look, I ain't buying it. The orthodox narrative at the least is inaccurate and in need of revision and personally, I think the whole thing is a propaganda lie.

Look at what has happened with the historical record concerning majdanek and tell me the orthodox narrative is inerrant truth.

[bombsaway]

This is like asking why nobody testified that gas chambers didn't exist. People did testify to that effect, nobody paid attention. It is a count hits and ignore misses kind of deal.

I can find you a handful, but, not the million and a half you require.

I don't require a million and a half, where did you get that idea?

Sure. Find a me a single testimony from a Jew about being resettled that is in disagreement with what mainstream historians believe.

Imagine the suffering these people endured (eg being a Dutch Jew repatriated into a repressive state, having to learn Russian or pick up new skills, perhaps being sent to the gulags for having come from capitalism). With Jews' tendency to self mythologize you would expect there to be thousands, maybe tens of thousands of such testimonies.

But there isn't even one.

Hence my plausibility concerns.

[Stubble]

This is like asking why nobody testified that gas chambers didn't exist. People did testify to that effect, nobody paid attention. It is a count hits and ignore misses kind of deal.

I can find you a handful, but, not the million and a half you require.

I don't require a million and a half, where did you get that idea?

Sure. Find a me a single testimony from a Jew about being resettled that is in disagreement with what mainstream historians believe.

Imagine the suffering these people endured (eg being a Dutch Jew repatriated into a repressive state, having to learn Russian or pick up new skills, perhaps being sent to the gulags for having come from capitalism). With Jews' tendency to self mythologize you would expect there to be thousands, maybe tens of thousands of such testimonies.

But there isn't even one.

Hence my plausibility concerns.

Let me get my spade and shovel. I'll come back in a bit. Unless I'm mistaken (possible) there is an interview with at least 1 displaced jew in the archives of another voice of freedom with Ernst Zundel.

I mean, you are telling me I'm wrong in this? There are literally 0? None. Not one.

https://codoh.com/library/document/jews ... c-sobibor/

None of these people went east, for example.

[bombsaway]

This is like asking why nobody testified that gas chambers didn't exist. People did testify to that effect, nobody paid attention. It is a count hits and ignore misses kind of deal.

I can find you a handful, but, not the million and a half you require.

I don't require a million and a half, where did you get that idea?

Sure. Find a me a single testimony from a Jew about being resettled that is in disagreement with what mainstream historians believe.

Imagine the suffering these people endured (eg being a Dutch Jew repatriated into a repressive state, having to learn Russian or pick up new skills, perhaps being sent to the gulags for having come from capitalism). With Jews' tendency to self mythologize you would expect there to be thousands, maybe tens of thousands of such testimonies.

But there isn't even one.

Hence my plausibility concerns.

Let me get my spade and shovel. I'll come back in a bit. Unless I'm mistaken (possible) there is an interview with at least 1 displaced jew in the archives of another voice of freedom with Ernst Zundel.

I mean, you are telling me I'm wrong in this? There are literally 0? None. Not one.

No, there are literally 0 of these.

Find a me a single testimony from a Jew about being resettled that is in disagreement with what mainstream historians believe.

It must be hard to imagine from your perspective, I can empathize.

Resettlement is different than being used for labor. Recall Goebbel's diary entry, "On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.”

[Stubble]

I really hope I don't end up having to move into the here's why that's a good thing camp.

I'd really prefer they just be an integrated mass of ignored holocaust survivors, that's a much more pleasant view to entertain. Unfortunately unless evidenced, that view is false.

[Numar Patru]

On motives, David Cole clearly has a Jewish motive to affirm large parts of the holocaust.

He's always been Jewish, but thirty years ago, he denied the whole thing. If his motive is "Jewish," as you claim, then what changed?

[Archie]

The one final insight from this interview are the areas where denial is tenable. It's clear that on the basis of witness, documentary, and physical evidence, orthodoxy is well favored (physical evidence you might be able to make an argument about but deniers haven't been able to answer elementary questions about grave inspections https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=107&start=225)

I would encourage people to read that Kola thread to see for themselves the utterly ludicrous arguments that bombsaway and Nessie made in that thread. Do the math and see for yourselves. My favorite part was probably when bombs claimed, on page 14(!), several MONTHS after the topic was started, that 33 bodies per cubic meter was possible. I can forgive an arithmetic error but what I find amusing is that he waited that long to do such a basic and crucial calculation. Not only did bombsaway do very poorly in that thread, he bizarrely continues to indulge in rather shameless and undeserved touchdown celebrations. He has now done this multiple times in multiple unrelated threads which I think it quite distasteful (and embarrassing given the vast chasm between his true performance and his glowing self-assessment).

[Numar Patru]

Considering the point having been made (and not disputed) that Kola identified enough grave space to hold > 200,000 fully clothed men, I’m not sure pointing to that thread as a revisionist victory is advisable.

[bombsaway]

I can forgive an arithmetic error but what I find amusing is that he waited that long to do such a basic and crucial calculation. Not only did bombsaway do very poorly in that thread, he bizarrely continues to indulge in rather shameless and undeserved touchdown celebrations.

How long did I wait to make my correction from 33 to 25? Was it days, weeks, or maybe it was less than 2 hours?

And you can see I was making volume calculations (which can simply be extrapolated to 25) on the first page.

You're grasping at straws buddy.

There's no celebration really, you stopped participating, failed to answer my point about body compression over time, also failed to answer the central question of why bodies destroyed and dumped back in the graves mixed with sand. That's a forfeit.

[Archie]

I've referred to the posters on this forum as revisionists, and they are in a sense, though it's also true they definitely deny the most important Holocaust claim, the killing of 5-6 million Jews.

The labels don't matter except for propaganda/well poisoning reasons. For a debate, more neutral labels are preferred so as not to distract from the substance of arguments.

Cole has started trying to draw a novel distinction between "revisionists" and "deniers" but this was only after he came back. "Hey, I'm a DENIER like Faurisson!" It seems he was trying to have it both ways by still claiming some of his revisionist cred but also maybe hoping the mainstream would go easy on him if he held back and/or served a deradicalizing function. If the intention here was to get revisionists to moderate their views I don't think it has worked. The Halfocaust stuff just hasn't caught on and it isn't going to because it doesn't make sense.

See here for recent discussion:
https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=176

Cole seems to indulge in quite a bit of "revisionist history" with respect to his own beliefs. Back in the early 90s, he obviously did not believe the Holocaust, but he tries to minimize the extent to which his views have changed. He was a "denier" by his current standards. When he came back around 2013, he starting claiming he believed in the AR camps but not Auschwitz. Now I guess he's started accepting some of the Auschwitz stuff.

but if I had to ping the "revisionist" members here how many Jews they thought were shot I'm sure none would go over a few hundred thousand, and none would claim this was part of a genocidal program meant to reduce Jewish population as an end unto itself.

If the "death camp" numbers are 10x exaggerated, it's naive to take 2M+ shooting deaths as given.

The "middle" position, as practiced by Cole, and apparently Martinez is an adherent now as well (this is different from what I heard from him a few years ago), is actually mere degrees away from orthodoxy.

It really isn't because these incoherent compromise positions require you to make concessions that undermine the broader Holocaust. That's why the orthodoxy refuses to play this sort of game. For instance, Cole seems to still disbelieve Krema I (coincidentally the gas chamber he's most known for critiquing and probably where he has the most personal interest in staying revisionist). But Krema I, although trivial in terms of number of deaths, is actually a quite major concession. Rudolf Hoess confessed to conducting gassings in Krema I. If that is not true, that would prove that he falsely confessed to those gassings in his memoir. But if that's the case, how would this not raise major doubts about his statements on the other gas chambers? It would! If Majdanek is a hoax, same thing. Note that the orthodoxy continues to maintain "limited" gassings there precisely because it would be such a damaging concession.

Even the 5% revisionist position seems barely tenable, I don't think Cole or Irving or Weber or any proponents of that position have even responded to such criticisms.

What do you mean by 5%? revisionist position? I consider most anti-revisionists to be at good 10-20% revisionist. They tend to go with lower numbers (5M instead of 6M) and they will concede at least certain things.

Nowadays I don't think you can claim anything under 5M without getting in some degree of trouble. And anything under 4M, forget it. That will probably get you branded a Holocaust denier or at the very least a Holocaust minimizer or something like that.

So what can we say to the absolute revisionists here (who I will just call deniers for shorthand)? I think something to think about it is why so many people who are antisemitic by the conventional definition, already ostracized and denigrated by mainstream society are either 5% revisionists or have abandoned it completely. From what I've heard from people on the forum, the debate is totally lopsided, no reasonable person could ever view the orthodox position as having any legitimacy. I want to push back on this with the example of people like Cole (who produced more or less denier material as you can hear about in the interview) and especially Martinez who has actually received criticism from his audience for taking such a stance. There may be incentives for moving on from denial, but there are also incentives to keep practicing it, clearly there's a large audience clamoring for it, and these days expression is more permissible making it a profitable enterprise to be honest. So there's something amiss here that deniers should square with. The point I would make, is based on these facts, a neutral observer couldn't label the debate as being one sided, at the very least.

We think for ourselves and are not going to defer to Cole who may or may not be sincere in his views. I find vintage Cole more persuasive than current Cole. If current Cole wants to convince us, he should write up some serious, well-cited articles where he lays out his best arguments and evidence. To my knowledge he has not done this.

And the idea that I should change my mind because of Martinez (who?) is just laughable. I have never heard of that guy. Why should I defer to someone who knows less than me about the topic and who is mostly interested in politics?

More generally, this comment is based on the false premise that denying the Holocaust should be automatic and expected for people who are "anti-Semitic," far-right, etc. That's not true at all. If you are a white nationalist and are mostly interested in current issues, your incentive will be to avoid the Holocaust. This is especially true in Europe where there are legal considerations. If you want to be able to travel in Europe at all (many nationalists do), you would be wise not to do any public Holocaust denial.

In quite a few cases, there are right-wing intellectuals like Andrew Joyce who don't discuss Holocaust revisionism explicitly in public but who privately do not seem to believe in it. They don't get into it for practical reasons. Some haven't looked into it very much. Kevin MacDonald fits that category. He doesn't know the topic very well and he's not the type to endorse something without having done all the research. And at his age he doesn't want to embark on a major research project on the Holocaust.

I don't assign much weight to this sort of thing unless the person has explained and justified their position in considerable detail. If you condition on people who are well informed and who are willing to go in depth, the revisionist side is quite well-represented. Judging from X, there revisionists outnumber anti-revisionists by a significant margin.