Thomas Dalton's identity revealed (by Kevin Barrett) as David Skrbina

[bombsaway]

Not everyone is a Bruno. In fact, it's pretty clear that Church threats of violence to enforce its orthodoxy worked on most of the population for a long time. People like Bruno were an exception.

Skrbina now should be able to able to make some supplementary income by doing more things in 'dissident right' spaces. He won't be jailed and he won't be burned at the stake. The "threats" are minor in comparison. Bruno would have laughed.

[Stubble]

I'm Dalton now.



For the record, the SPLC is FBI mostly, although there are some mossad ties.

If you look at their activities around the Oklahoma City Bombing and read the reports published under foia it looks really weird.

If the SPLC 'hacked' this fella, I'd put my chips on it being domestic if we were betting.

[HansHill]

Interesting. So when public figures condemn controversial ideas, what they are really saying is "there is a non-zero chance that I am actually an expert in this field, I understand the arguments very thoroughly and you are all so full of shit but here we are condemning it anyway"

Got it. Additionally - doesn't this just underscore Rudolf's claims that there are a great many credible academics who agree with him but have decided to remain quiet for whatever private reason. LOL.

[Archie]

From the SPLC's hit piece,

Revealing that Dalton and Skrbina are the same person underscores the importance of exposing those who cloak extremist ideology in academic authority. Unmasking Dalton exposes efforts to lend a facade of legitimacy to white supremacist and Holocaust denial views, a technique that these movements rely upon to spread their propaganda.

Note how for them, if anyone "uses" their credentials to say anything that they disagree with, they think this is automatically an abuse of those credentials. This is a revealing mindset. Most people place value on credentials only insofar as the credential signals that someone is more informed and competent than is typical. The SPLC views credentials, prestige, and so forth merely as a means of policing opinion. They want to monopolize the prestige and credentials and distribute these only to those with approved views.

Curiously, even though the SPLC has seen a major fall from grace the last few years, Google still prominently places their slanders as though they had some credibility. The SPLC page is among the first results now for David Skrbina. The mainstream media however seems to cite the SPLC less than they used to. The SPLC used to be their go-to source whenever they wanted to poison the well against somebody.

[Callafangers]

I think it's cowardly to sell out a movement like he did, to "buy time". It's obvious it's not going to work anyway. He might be more low IQ than low character. I still would never label a movement that I whole heartedly believed in as vile. He didn't need to do this.

What you "think" is irrelevant. You're not even on the field, you have no clue what one deals with in trying to feed himself and his family while simultaneously standing against a monolithic establishment that is working against you, hates you, and wants you to suffer and starve.

It's lovely that you have an opinion, bombsaway, but per your usual dishonest scheming, you're attempting to cash in on the drama by peddling what you think will curry the most favor your way (yet anyone with 1/4 of a brain can see right through it).

You're incapable of feeling embarrassed, it seems.

[SanityCheck]

From the SPLC's hit piece,

Revealing that Dalton and Skrbina are the same person underscores the importance of exposing those who cloak extremist ideology in academic authority. Unmasking Dalton exposes efforts to lend a facade of legitimacy to white supremacist and Holocaust denial views, a technique that these movements rely upon to spread their propaganda.

Note how for them, if anyone "uses" their credentials to say anything that they disagree with, they think this is automatically an abuse of those credentials. This is a revealing mindset. Most people place value on credentials only insofar as the credential signals that someone is more informed and competent than is typical. The SPLC views credentials, prestige, and so forth merely as a means of policing opinion. They want to monopolize the prestige and credentials and distribute these only to those with approved views.

Curiously, even though the SPLC has seen a major fall from grace the last few years, Google still prominently places their slanders as though they had some credibility. The SPLC page is among the first results now for David Skrbina. The mainstream media however seems to cite the SPLC less than they used to. The SPLC used to be their go-to source whenever they wanted to poison the well against somebody.

The SPLC piece remark you quote is actually just very poor analysis. "Thomas Dalton, PhD" emerged in 2009 with a book where he put that on the cover, resorting to a classic and far more universal dick move. Maybe it impressed people over the years, maybe not. But any author who is so keen to add "PhD" after their author name is basically screaming insecurity. In some cases the credentials aren't earned, in many more the "PhD" is writing ex cathedra out of their area of genuine expertise. I think that all qualifies as a facade.

But the rhetoric of 'expose' and 'unmasking' is just stupid 'antifascist' sensationalism (and also unfortunately mirrors far right and antisemitic sensationalism, since 'unmasking' is also a thing with them).

With Holocaust revisionism, anyone who encounters the more serious end will rapidly realise there have been some professors who were key movers, like Butz and Faurisson, who were writing outside their areas of genuine expertise and were not historians. Then the IHR and JHR had a similar editorial board mixing up such professors with other revisionist authors and researchers. But that is in the past.

The current era has been more characterised by researchers who don't have the 'credentials', or didn't have the higher credentials, who've done the donkey work - Mattogno, Graf the former school teacher, Kues - generally with masters' degrees and not PhDs. They've been much more productive than the actual PhDs, Dalton and Kollerstrom, with the nearly-finished-a-PhD, Rudolf, in between. The two actual PhDs who've written introductions to revisionism in the past 15 years are largely presenting the findings of others who don't have credentials but do have a track record of published books and visiting archives.

Identifying Dalton as Skrbina doesn't change an awful lot. Dalton was always a populariser and not a coalface researcher like Mattogno. His claim to be a PhD and professor of humanities didn't mean very much since he was obviously not a historian. If we now add in Skrbina's output then the effort put in to writing Debating the Holocaust and subsequent updates must have been significantly limited. The same goes for Skrbina with his book The Jesus Hoax. Skrbina-Dalton are both quite good at summarising and simplifying, and clearly can write fast. But Skrbina's take on Christianity and apparent knowledge/reading into the topic is pretty shallow. Skrbina's proper work might be very good, but Skrbina and Dalton have seemingly too many interests in controversial topics (even if it's just two), and spread themselves quite thin.

That explains why Dalton the revisionist didn't produce something that seemed very impressive to anti-deniers. I had bracketed him with the many other popularisers and summarisers of the same era (Victor Thorn, Peter Winter, Gerard Menuhin, Nicholas Kollerstrom) since they all seem to have dashed off a textbook level summary relatively rapidly. But that's also what Butz did in the early 1970s, with a limited amount of actual research on top. And what all the summaries in between have done, including Germar Rudolf's Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte aka Lectures on the Holocaust.


The other problem with the SPLC fussing over academic credentials is this ignores the contrarianism and appeal of outright outsiders attacking establishment or consensus or indeed academic/scientific thinking. The whole point is to be dissenting from all that. If the author is a renegade academic, great, but they don't need to be. Which is better, a PhD in philosophy turning their hand to writing history, or David Irving with no qualifications but many successful history books to his name? In terms of impact Irving wins hands down. But that was 25 years ago.

[Callafangers]

That explains why Dalton the revisionist didn't produce something that seemed very impressive to anti-deniers. I had bracketed him with the many other popularisers and summarisers of the same era (Victor Thorn, Peter Winter, Gerard Menuhin, Nicholas Kollerstrom) since they all seem to have dashed off a textbook level summary relatively rapidly. But that's also what Butz did in the early 1970s, with a limited amount of actual research on top. And what all the summaries in between have done, including Germar Rudolf's Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte aka Lectures on the Holocaust.

Revisionism is in a different battle than orthodox scholarship on the 'Holocaust'; the former needing to overcome biases in public opinion based on decades of one-sided, distorted presentations on this history. Hence, summaries are exactly what has been needed, building recognition of the quite-serious nature of this work and eventual, more widespread interest in participation. Dalton's work in translating key historical works (Mein Kampf, Goebbels' diaries, Martin Luther's writings, etc.) are further examples of his overall intent to make this field of research more accessible, not limited by language barriers and false assumptions spread by mass propaganda.

Dalton perhaps could have found the means to spend more time digging in archives to specialize on one or a few specific areas of the 'Holocaust', which it seems you give more credit for (academically speaking), but this is not where the greatest need has been at, for revisionism. Once millions of people have asked the fundamental questions they've been conditioned into not asking, some hundreds will inevitably make a hobby or a career out of digging much deeper into nuances. There is a necessary "order of operations" here you do not seem to recognize.

[SanityCheck]

That explains why Dalton the revisionist didn't produce something that seemed very impressive to anti-deniers. I had bracketed him with the many other popularisers and summarisers of the same era (Victor Thorn, Peter Winter, Gerard Menuhin, Nicholas Kollerstrom) since they all seem to have dashed off a textbook level summary relatively rapidly. But that's also what Butz did in the early 1970s, with a limited amount of actual research on top. And what all the summaries in between have done, including Germar Rudolf's Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte aka Lectures on the Holocaust.

Revisionism is in a different battle than orthodox scholarship on the 'Holocaust'; the former needing to overcome biases in public opinion based on decades of one-sided, distorted presentations on this history. Hence, summaries are exactly what has been needed, building recognition of the quite-serious nature of this work and eventual, more widespread interest in participation. Dalton's work in translating key historical works (Mein Kampf, Goebbels' diaries, Martin Luther's writings, etc.) are further examples of his overall intent to make this field of research more accessible, not limited by language barriers and false assumptions spread by mass propaganda.

Dalton perhaps could have found the means to spend more time digging in archives to specialize on one or a few specific areas of the 'Holocaust', which it seems you give more credit for (academically speaking), but this is not where the greatest need has been at, for revisionism. Once millions of people have asked the fundamental questions they've been conditioned into not asking, some hundreds will inevitably make a hobby or a career out of digging much deeper into nuances. There is a necessary "order of operations" here you do not seem to recognize.

On the contrary, I'm recognising a necessary interplay for revisionism and indeed *any* set of ideas couched in the form of studies, between popularisations and summaries on the one hand, and specialisation on the other.

It also matters what other books someone writes. Many of the popularisers and summarisers in recent decades come from an explicit conspiracist background, which certainly applies to Victor Thorn and Nicholas Kollerstrom. So their other books are on other topics. Dalton wrote articles about Jesus and Christianity as far back as 2010, and these confirm the overwhelming likelihood that he is indeed Skrbina. Skrbina wrote more in that vein, while also doing more serious philosophy on technology and philosophy of mind. It's a simple inference to observe that having so many interests means spreading oneself a bit thinner than some might like.

That's fine. Nobody is expected to dedicate their entire life to one idea, especially not if it makes it impossible to earn a living. Taking a serious hobby interest is perfectly acceptable. But amateurs and hobbyists can go quite deep with their part-time work, supporting themselves with some other career while contributing a lot, especially if there are many of them. There are oodles of website owners, bloggers, and published authors - especially in areas like military history - who have probably spent small fortunes and masses of time researching something for little reward or return. Most are very obsessive and focus largely on one thing. They're hedgehogs rather than foxes. Dalton-Skrbina is a fox, interested in several ideas. Both types are needed.

The problems start when an idea finds it difficult to assemble a cast to share out work on an encyclopedia more evenly, as happened when Germar Rudolf first suggested a revisionist encyclopedia and had virtually no takers. So he had to write almost all of the first edition himself. Or if an idea wishes to convene a conference, have an edited collection, or collective work. It would be almost impossible to find enough authors to redo Dissecting the Holocaust thirty plus years on. In the 1990s, there were enough revisionists, with enough specialisms, that Rudolf could put together such a collective work. Today, he probably couldn't.

This isn't to blame Dalton for the state of affairs; it's not on any one individual to do xy or z. It's on the entire community. If a popularisation stimulates others as you suggest and hope, it does its job. That's fine.

The main collective issue is if there is a series such as the Holocaust Handbooks, then one can stand back and criticise the standards across different volumes, or if it recycles older and outdated books too much (Sanning, Butz, Ball, Leuchter), or if most of the volumes are basically authored by one person (as is screamingly obvious). The imbalances and unevenness are entirely legitimate things to discuss.

The other collective issue stems from the contrast with conventional studies. Any one individual author might be excused not being entirely up to date with conventional literature, but if a group as a whole is ignorant or behind in its reading and the points addressed, then that, too, is a legitimate thing to discuss. Dalton chiming in with only lightly updated editions of Debating is not the only weakness; Rudolf is also very busy as an editor and cannot keep up properly. Mattogno can between 8 and 20 years behind by the time he might address a key conventional study. If there were more revisionist authors, then they could crowdsource this and be collectively more knowledgeable. Kues was a lot better at keeping up with conventional historiography, but he's no longer around.

The final collective issue is how one idea or take compares with others. Revisionism still exists which is a remarkable achievement, even though it is much reduced for authors compared to previous decades. By contrast, 9/11 Truth had a big surge in the mid-2000s by way of oodles of books then videos, and has largely trailed off and declined; it was of its time and place. There have been many other crazes or controversies since then. Any existing idea is competing for attention with other ideas as well as newer ones. Some eventually fade, while there are peaks for others. Another example which is relevant because of Skrbina: Jesus mythicism seems to have been a much bigger deal, generating more books and more responses, a decade plus ago. It's still around, but the zeitgeist has shifted, online atheism isn't as front and centre as it was in the 2000s to early 2010s. On the other hand, generic WWII revisionism is likely about to surge up again, having come and gone over the years.

[fireofice]

An update on the situation here:

https://yle.fi/a/74-20151230

The situation is apparently being investigated by a university that he is a visiting scholar of.

[Archie]

One interesting thing about Dalton's trajectory is that he made an effort in Debating the Holocaust (first published in 2009) to be moderate and even-handed. Subsequently his interests broadened to the Third Reich and historical anti-Semitism. By now, he seems to be full on national socialist, a trajectory that surprised me a little given Debating. It could be that he was hiding his power level and the tone in Debating was tactical, but my guess is that the trajectory of his worldview probably does correspond roughly to the chronology of his publications. I think he started out doubting the Holocaust and branched out to related topics from there. And when you think about, national socialist ideas could be quite appealing to someone with an anti-modernist, anti-technology philosophy. (I believe some scholars have argued that Hitler was not as anti-modern as often supposed, but nonetheless such sentiments can undoubtedly be found on the far-right, e.g., Savitri Devi, Madison Grant).

[Archie]

That explains why Dalton the revisionist didn't produce something that seemed very impressive to anti-deniers. I had bracketed him with the many other popularisers and summarisers of the same era (Victor Thorn, Peter Winter, Gerard Menuhin, Nicholas Kollerstrom) since they all seem to have dashed off a textbook level summary relatively rapidly. But that's also what Butz did in the early 1970s, with a limited amount of actual research on top. And what all the summaries in between have done, including Germar Rudolf's Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte aka Lectures on the Holocaust.

Revisionism is in a different battle than orthodox scholarship on the 'Holocaust'; the former needing to overcome biases in public opinion based on decades of one-sided, distorted presentations on this history. Hence, summaries are exactly what has been needed, building recognition of the quite-serious nature of this work and eventual, more widespread interest in participation. Dalton's work in translating key historical works (Mein Kampf, Goebbels' diaries, Martin Luther's writings, etc.) are further examples of his overall intent to make this field of research more accessible, not limited by language barriers and false assumptions spread by mass propaganda.

Dalton perhaps could have found the means to spend more time digging in archives to specialize on one or a few specific areas of the 'Holocaust', which it seems you give more credit for (academically speaking), but this is not where the greatest need has been at, for revisionism. Once millions of people have asked the fundamental questions they've been conditioned into not asking, some hundreds will inevitably make a hobby or a career out of digging much deeper into nuances. There is a necessary "order of operations" here you do not seem to recognize.

Many revisionists have felt that piling up increasingly voluminous and arcane research is a way not really needed and is a way getting side-tracked. Here is Butz (from supplement 1 of his book). (I agree to a point, but still feel there is value in additional research).

The dilemma I am delineating is that, by generating much verbiage on this subject, I may give some the impression that it is a complex one. Therefore let me state emphatically that the great verbiage is required not because the subject is complicated but because public opinion has become distorted by the media’s generation of many times that verbiage, generated over several decades, with the consequence that unusual and elaborate therapy is required. However, it is very important that this select group not lose sight of the fact that the subject is quite simple and that only a cultural illness has made the great efforts of revisionists necessary.

Our problem has long been that our material is censored and not given a fair hearing. That's why when I wrote the promotional article for the forum a few months ago, I decided to argue in favor of the very modest proposition that the topic should be debatable. That is the first battle and that is the one that we have yet to win.

[SanityCheck]

One interesting thing about Dalton's trajectory is that he made an effort in Debating the Holocaust (first published in 2009) to be moderate and even-handed. Subsequently his interests broadened to the Third Reich and historical anti-Semitism. By now, he seems to be full on national socialist, a trajectory that surprised me a little given Debating. It could be that he was hiding his power level and the tone in Debating was tactical, but my guess is that the trajectory of his worldview probably does correspond roughly to the chronology of his publications. I think he started out doubting the Holocaust and branched out to related topics from there. And when you think about, national socialist ideas could be quite appealing to someone with an anti-modernist, anti-technology philosophy. (I believe some scholars have argued that Hitler was not as anti-modern as often supposed, but nonetheless such sentiments can undoubtedly be found on the far-right, e.g., Savitri Devi, Madison Grant).

Despite starting off seeming to be even-handed, Dalton's original edition in 2009 soon enough injected conspiracist takes on Jewish power (while denying rather lamely he was arguing for a 'hoax'), and he was anything but even handed in his overall treatment. The book was meant to appear to be even-handed, but nobody on the other side believed it. The pretense at even-handedness may have fooled some or made the medicine easier to go down, but Dalton was always misrepresenting the conventional position in multiple ways, not least by not actually knowing enough about it.

Most of Dalton's other publications and editions seem to date from 2019 onwards, quite a gap, but one that could now be more easily explained by his alter ego's output and academic career. In between Dalton was writing occasional revisionist articles alongside articles on other themes. Skrbina was apparently unaffiliated between 2018-2020 after leaving Michigan and before joining Helsinki (and the update article suggests he might not have been truly full-time there), so he had time to produce more after leaving Michigan.

Dalton-as-Dalton was exploring Nietzsche and Christianity in 2010, and seems to have other pieces which could be considered primarily antisemitic rather than National Socialist. The first sign of an interest in Hitler is an article from 2016 'Rethinking Mein Kampf'. Even after injecting this into the mix Dalton-as-Dalton seems most exercised by 'the Jews' in various ways.

Skrbina has edited some writings of Savitri Devi, although it should be noted that Kaczynski is explicitly anti-fascist and anti-Nazi. Savitri Devi shows up earlier in the history of revisionism, being the first person to have told Ernst Zundel the Holocaust was untrue, while also corresponding and knowing many other 1950s-1970s palaeo-Nazi and neo-Nazi, antisemitic and far right figures, some of whom like Colin Jordan and Einar Aberg were also Holocaust deniers.

[SanityCheck]

Many revisionists have felt that piling up increasingly voluminous and arcane research is a way not really needed and is a way getting side-tracked. Here is Butz (from supplement 1 of his book). (I agree to a point, but still feel there is value in additional research).

The dilemma I am delineating is that, by generating much verbiage on this subject, I may give some the impression that it is a complex one. Therefore let me state emphatically that the great verbiage is required not because the subject is complicated but because public opinion has become distorted by the media’s generation of many times that verbiage, generated over several decades, with the consequence that unusual and elaborate therapy is required. However, it is very important that this select group not lose sight of the fact that the subject is quite simple and that only a cultural illness has made the great efforts of revisionists necessary.

Our problem has long been that our material is censored and not given a fair hearing. That's why when I wrote the promotional article for the forum a few months ago, I decided to argue in favor of the very modest proposition that the topic should be debatable. That is the first battle and that is the one that we have yet to win.

The problem is, history is an open-ended medium - whether as an academic discipline or in popular forms. So it will always be difficult to try to narrow a debate when with every historical field, things are anything but narrow, instead they expand and deepen.

Butz's dilemma is replicated throughout revisionism, since most of what is dealt with in e.g. Hilberg is never touched on at all. The greater part of the 1933-1945 story of persecution and murder is not even vaguely addressed, as it hasn't been seen as 'essential' or 'critical'. So this means whole runs of publications on say Theresienstadt or the course of events in France are untouched and in essence, not disputed. Therefore they stand.

The focus on gas chambers was a heuristic and a means of making a bigger topic manageable. Which would be fine if the 'verbiage' from revisionists was kept under control.

So this is why the genre of revisionist writings ends up slaloming between shorter summaries (like Dalton) and massive runs of excessively longwinded books from Mattogno. Or multiple authors all trying to explain away the same thing (such as Pressac's criminal traces, which obviously generated a lot of responses in the 1990s before Mattogno became the last man standing). One extreme is too short, the other needs to be synthesisable into shorter forms, which might require a middle ground.

The other problem is that even with these tendencies, one cannot entirely wish away or skip over the genealogies and literature development within revisionism. The multiple authors trying to make sense of the ZBL Auschwitz crematoria construction documents very much included Butz, with efforts from him well into the 1990s, alongside Faurisson, Staeglich, Crowell, and many others. Since these essays and books are still preserved online, there needs to be some acknowledgement that past interpretations might not have been correct, but the opposite seems to be true; people still argue for the air raid shelter thesis.

There seems to be a reluctance on the part of the summarisers such as Dalton and Rudolf to concede any error except in passing - Rudolf was only gently critical of Staeglich's Auschwitz Myth when he republished it, presumably because he wanted to sell some more copies. Meanwhile, other earlier revisionists are practically memory-holed even if their pamphlets and works might be still online and still make converts.

[Archie]

Germar has a new post about pen names on the CODOH homepage. He generally recommends that people use pen names.

I have been active in the field of creating and publishing controversial historical research and opinions since 1990. My 35 years of experience have taught me one thing: to recommend to any newcomer to the field to use a pen name, unless he or she is prepared to accept the blowback that this activity can and will bring in their life.

He talks about Dalton a little at the end.

https://codoh.com/library/document/on-t ... pen-names/