(thanks to L. for brining this article to my attention – VS)
An exclusive interview with one of Europe’s most well-known political prisoners
by Kourosh Ziabari for Foreign Policy Journal
Ernst Zundel is a German author and historian who has spent seven years of his life behind bars as a result of expressing his controversial viewpoints and opinions. He is a revisionist who has denied the Holocaust as described by most historians. He has been one of the most prominent political prisoners in Europe and has been jailed in three countries on two continents.
After his arrest in the U.S. in 2003, he was deported to Canada, where he was kept in prison as “a threat to the national security” for two years. After deportation to Germany in March 2005, he was convicted and sentenced in 2007 to five additional years of imprisonment on charges of holocaust denial. He was finally released on March 1, 2010.
This is the first interview Ernst Zundel has given since his release.
Firstly, I would like to extend my congratulations on your recent release. Were you ever mistreated or subject to any type of mental or physical punishment in breach of international conventions?
My entire treatment these past seven years by those arresting me, trying and convicting me, and keeping me in prison has been in brutal breach of international conventions. I was arrested in broad daylight on American soil by officials of the U.S. government who acted as hit squads for a nefarious lobby. There was no arrest warrant. I was not read my rights. I was whisked away in handcuffs without being allowed to get my wallet, to call my attorney, to be allowed to make my case before an American Immigration Judge or even hug my wife goodbye.
I was incarcerated in six different prisons on two continents in three countries — the USA, Canada, and Germany — without relief of any kind. In effect, I have had 10 percent of my life stolen from me – and for what “crime”? For having “overstayed my U.S. visa”?
Throughout my imprisonment, basic human rights principles were trampled underfoot repeatedly and with impunity. The worst prisons were the Canadian detention centers at Thorold, Ontario and at Toronto West, where I was held for two long years in isolation cells, ice-cold in the winter, no shoes or socks allowed. The electric light in these cells, bright enough to be able to read, was kept on 24 hours a day. Through a glass slot in the door I was checked every 20 minutes, and my activities were meticulously noted by the guards: one sheet for every day. No dignity, no privacy. My toothbrush was kept in a plastic bin in a hall. I was not allowed to speak to other prisoners. Bed sheets were changed only after three months. No pillows. No chairs. When I wrote to my wife or to my attorneys, I had to sit on a makeshift pile of my court transcripts. No radio, no television, not even an electrical outlet to sharpen my pencils. No ball point pens, only pencil stubs, cut in half with a saw. No spoons, forks, or knives were permitted; only a white plastic spoon with a fork called a “spork” that had to be returned every time at the end of the meal. With very few exceptions when furtive guards showed me some kindness away from the surveillance cameras, I was treated as though I was the worst of criminals. That’s Canada for you, where I have lived and worked without a criminal record for more than 40 years.
It was somewhat better, but not much, in the United States. In Germany, it was quite a bit better in terms of the basic necessities, but personal mail was routinely withheld – 1,700 letters for up to five years – even after I forced a court to order that it be given to me. My so-called trial in Mannheim was a political show trial in the Stalinist mode in that my guilt was a foregone conclusion. I requested that exculpatory exhibits be allowed as validation for what I believed and had written and said. No meaningful defense was allowed. I could not put on record any forensic evidence, any historical documents, or even expert witnesses, That very request to be allowed to offer evidence was held to be a new offense of criminal behavior and could have resulted in new criminal charges – as were, in fact, lodged against my lawyers during that very trial who tried to overcome these restrictions.
Along with the rest of EU members, Germany regularly criticizes other countries for violations of free speech and human rights. However, your case demonstrated the emptiness of such claims within Europe. What’s your take on that? Is Europe really a utopia of liberty and freedom of speech?
Most European countries have only selected free speech for officially approved and sanctioned views on history. Almost all EU countries have laws in place that restrict freedom of speech under the guise of one fig leaf or other, such as the prevention of racist or neo-Nazi activities. The state decides selectively who is and what is racist. These laws are hypocritical, in Germany’s case superseding even their own Basic Law.
Dissidents are allowed very little opportunity to be read or heard in the mainstream corporate media channels of the West. The control mechanisms of the press are many, often subtle but widely understood and obeyed – fear of loss of jobs, diminished circulation, the withholding of government advertisements etc. There is no longer unrestricted freedom in any Western country, not even in the U.S. with its wonderful Constitution and Amendments such as the Bill of Rights.
Allow me here to point out to your readers the outline of a censorship practice known by its neutral term “rendition”, but more honestly defined as political kidnappings to force the silencing of dissident speech or alternate thoughts. Renditions in the West are ever more frequently practiced not only against alleged “terrorist suspects” but against ordinary political activists and writers whose viewpoints are frowned upon by such outfits as AIPAC and similar Zionist lobby and interest groups, B’nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress etc.
In order to spell out what I can only describe to you in broad strokes, I’d like to briefly shed light on the period preceding my arrest in the U.S. and Canada, the conniving and the similarity in other cases like mine, where an innocuous or alleged infraction is used as a fig leaf to silence a political opponent.
Viet Dinh, a Georgetown University law professor and director of their Asian Law and Policy Studies Program who helped craft the Patriot Act, put it succinctly, as reported in an American publication called Wired that deals with freedom of speech on the net. That interview reads:
Wired News: An estimated 5,000 people have been subjected to detention since 9/11. Of those, only five — three noncitizens and two citizens — were charged with terrorism-related crimes and one was convicted. How do we justify such broad-sweeping legislation that has resulted in very few terrorist-related convictions?
Dinh: I’ve heard the 5,000 number. The official numbers released from the Department of Justice indicate approximately 500 persons have been charged with immigration violations and have been deported who have been of interest to the 9/11 investigation.
It may well be that a number of citizens were not charged with terrorism-related crimes, but they need not be. Where the department has suspected people of terrorism, it will prosecute those persons for other violations of law, rather than wait for a terrorist conspiracy to fully develop and risk the potential that that conspiracy will be missed and thereby sacrificing innocent American lives in the process.
This is exactly what happened to me. The initial reason given was an alleged immigration infraction – namely a “visa overstay”. I was no terrorist; I was a dissident writer. My political detractors knew perfectly well that I was in America legally, awaiting adjustment of status due to my marriage to an American citizen. I was in Immigration Adjustment of Status proceedings, meticulously following all the prerequisite steps. I was living openly in a rural area in Tennessee and was listed by address in the local telephone book. The U.S. government had given me a Social Security number, a work permit, a document that allowed me to leave the country and return unmolested. I had undergone and passed an FBI check and a health clearance. The only last step missing was a personal interview by an immigration official to ascertain a valid marriage to my American citizen wife.
We had been notified in writing that this interview could take as long as three years, and that no status report would be given. We were patiently waiting for that last step, a routine interview with an immigration official. Our immigration attorney had requested such an interview in writing – twice! Under oath, he testified that he had written those letters. These letters have mysteriously disappeared from our immigration file. When I was arrested, it was claimed that I had negligently “missed a hearing” which gave them grounds for an arrest due to a visa overstay. In other words, a simple bureaucratic loophole was found or fabricated that has cost me seven years of my life.
What happened to me in the context of a deliberate state policy of deception has also happened to others. Similar ruses via false accusations were used in cases like Germar Rudolf, likefwise married to an American citizen, El Masri of Germany, Maher Arar of Canada, Gerd Honsik of Spain, Siegfried Verbeke of Belgium, David Irving, and now Bishop Williamson of England, to name only a few individuals who were caught between the grind stones of a criminal policy possible only under the Patriot Act in the U.S. and similar legal instruments in other countries. Embedded in that background of a widespread covert policy and practice to force political conformity, my case makes eminent sense. We are no longer dealing with an aberration. These extrajudicial renditions give 9/11 and the Patriot Act a new light as a global policy instrument of brutal censorship of unpopular thinkers and writers.
The thrust of a prestigious publication such as yours would normally deal with the policies of foreign governments, renditions, kidnappings, and incarcerations not only of foreign enemies but, as in the case of Vanunu, an Israeli-born- and-raised atomic scientist. He was no neo-Nazi, no racist, no Holocaust Denier, yet he was relentlessly pursued by the Mossad and ultimately kidnapped and jailed for 18 years.
The patterns of the breaking of international law and conventions, the use of false identities, and the brazen practice of breaking and entering by spy and intelligence agencies, etc. – these criminal activities are daily in the news. This sets the stage and makes my case a logical progression of an old, established policy, with this one difference: we are no longer talking about hunting and kidnapping alleged “Nazi war criminals” like Eichmann or stone-throwing Palestinians or even “Arab terrorists”, but instead the targeting of writers and other political dissidents in Western countries calling themselves “democracies”.
My story does not even end there. In my case, my “Holocaust Denier” profile was convenient, but passé. It was not even, as is so commonly and falsely claimed, “Denial of the Holocaust” or even more bizarre, my “visa overstay”! I was told what actually happened by a friend of ours with high-level UN connections. In his own words: “It was the Blue Booklet that did it! That’s when it was decided at the very highest level to take you out for good!”
Here is what happened, briefly: In the early months post-9/11 my wife, an avid Internetter, discovered a compelling research document entitled Stranger than Fiction: An Independent Investigation of 9/11 and the War on Terrorism by Anonymous, 11-11-2. She gave it to me over breakfast. I read it, found it interesting, and ran a few copies off on my printer for people on my mailing list. I did not write that lavishly footnoted paper. I did not research it. I merely copied it. Somebody must have concluded that I, with my background of thorough forensic investigations in other areas, showed more than ordinary interest in 9/11 as a potential political false flag common in intelligence agency operations!
During my trial in Mannheim, ostensibly for “Holocaust Denial”, portions of my monthly newsletter, where I mentioned this booklet and the 9/11 topic, were referenced by the prosecution as criminal offenses. Only after it became clear that I welcomed the opportunity to have my attorneys present forensic evidence of a potential 9/11 cover-up were those portions of the accusation against me hastily dropped, and my trial became a “Holocaust Denial” show trial in the traditional Stalinist mode, “… accuse wildly but don’t allow a defense!”
As we later found out through various freedom of information requests in various countries, there was in place for years a deliberate, convoluted plan to arrest and detain me under false pretenses so as to take me out and put me behind bars.
I mention this only as an overarching, logical example as to how diabolically clever my political opponents are in using the accusation of “Holocaust Denial” and persecution of Holocaust Revisionists as arrows in their arsenal of weaponry to shore up, consolidate, and protect their deceptively acquired power and influence.
What’s the reality behind Holocaust? Didn’t it happen at all? What about people such as Elie Wiesel, Thomas Blatt, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Leopold Engleitner who are Holocaust survivors and describe their own accounts of those painful days, when they personally witnessed the heart-rending demise of their parents in concentration camps and bone-crushing machines. How should we resolve these contradictions?
I will not answer this question. I would risk five more years in jail if I answered these questions honestly and truthfully. However, in the age of the Internet, others less known than I am find ways to simplify a painful, multifaceted problem, as this cartoon makes plain.
Many people of other countries have come to the categorical conclusion that the Western world is a beacon of liberty and unrestricted freedom of speech. But it sometimes seems that the reality is something else, and that people can be easily prosecuted merely for publishing views that are disliked. The booklet you published, Did Six Million Really Die?, is an example. What do you think?
Here is just one more example of what I already outlined above: We have faxes and other documents that prove on official embassy letterhead that the much vaunted and propagandized U.S. Judiciary has run interference for these kidnappers and renditioners via behind-the-scenes ex parte communication, thus engaging in a cover-up and whitewash worse than the ones practiced by those the U.S. government always blames for human rights violations in their hypocritical press campaigns, like against China in Tibet, Lukashenko in Belarus, Putin in Moscow and, of course, Iran during the recent so-called Green Revolution.
Many Zionist websites have introduced you as a white supremacist. Is that a fair characterization?
This claim is a convenient character assassination technique. I have never been a white supremacist and have stated so for decades, publicly, in countless interviews, newsletters, speeches, broadcasts, etc. It is my opponents’ modus operandi to broad-brush complex issues by politically expedient demonization.
You’re opposed to the regime of Israel because of its discriminatory and atrocious approach against the nation of Palestine. You consider yourself a pacifist who advocates stability and peace; aren’t these beliefs incompatible with your viewpoint regarding Hitler, who is internationally considered to be a notorious dictator and relentless killer? How can your peace-seeking stance come together with your approval of Hitler?
I cannot answer this question due to legal restraints. An honest and complete answer would land me in jail as a re-offender very quickly. Implicit in your question is the toxic image of me that my detractors would like you to have. To be called a Nazi is worse than being called a leper. For decades I have been on the receiving end of just such a targeted character assassination campaign. I have been jailed many times not for advocating an ideology but for expressing a dissident, alternative viewpoint on many topics, including Adolf Hitler’s role in history. Revisionism is not an ideology. It is merely a scientific method of re-examining historical events and of trying to understand the movers and shakers who made history a footnote to their personalities.
Let me answer your question this way: I have always abhorred any kind of violence in the pursuit of political goals. By anyone! Politically, I was and am a pacifist, much in the Gandhi style. I advocate a sober, neutral look at history, including the period known as the Third Reich. The peoples of the world, regardless of what system of government they live under, owe it to themselves to emancipate themselves of the simplistic images of propaganda and deceit posing as history.
On May 1995, your Toronto residence was the target of an arson attack which resulted in $400,000 worth of damage. A few days later, some of your extremist opponents were caught trying to break into your property. Again a few days later, you received a parcel bomb which the Toronto police detonated. Have you ever tried to lodge a complaint against them? Have they ever been lawfully sentenced?
This is the flip side of some of the questions above. While I have never advocated or engaged in violence, egregious acts of violence have been repeatedly practiced on me, of which the political kidnapping in 2003 was merely the latest. As to the fire and the bomb, no, nothing was ever resolved. The police apprehended the bomb builders and senders, but the charges laid were stayed. There seems to have been no political will at the highest levels of the Canadian government. There was no political coin to be garnered by prosecuting Jewish arsonists, who even confessed to the deed.
Do you differentiate between the Zionists and Jews as the followers of a divine, monotheistic religion?
Yes, the two are totally different. Some Orthodox Jews who are united against Zionism, such as the Neturei Karta, believe that also. They know the godfathers of Communism and Zionism followed identical policies. The guiding spirit behind the two systems is the same. Neturei Karta rabbis attended the 2006 Teheran Conference sponsored by your President in an attempt to distance themselves from what they consider to be a dangerous atheist clique in the pursuit of illegal politics of conquest of which they want no part.
The mainstream corporate media, while having already vilified you, remained silent about your release. What do you think about this? Are you going to continue your ideological path or would you prefer to keep a low profile and forget about the intellectual activities?
Ironically, that was exactly what I intended to do when I moved to Tennessee and married Ingrid; keeping a low profile and turning to private endeavors such as my love for art and music. I felt that my revisionist outreach was finished, concluded to my inner satisfaction. Let others read both sides and then judge for themselves. All the arguments, all the information needed on the Holocaust is out there, on the Internet, in tens of thousands of websites, all for the taking. How often do you have to dig up an archeological site to find yet one more bone, yet one more implicating shard? My wife likes to say that you don’t have to eat a camel to know what a cutlet tastes like. I was quite ready to retire and satisfy my creative needs and desires. I could leave the political mopping-up activities for others to complete. But could my political opponents bring themselves, as rational people might have, to likewise call it quits? No; that is simply not in their nature.
As you point out so cogently, a powerful vilification campaign is still going full blast. It keeps my name in the media for people to decide for themselves who I am. Upon my release, my wife has collected thousands and thousands of letters from readers, only three of which were negative! Not a bad record, of the millions of dollars spent and millions of words dispersed in an attempt to paint me as as a devil with horns.
Let me ask you – would your prestigious publication have cared to interview me if you thought that I deserved the label of Evil Incarnate?
[Editor’s note: The views and beliefs of Ernst Zundel are his own, and not those of Foreign Policy Journal. It is the policy of FPJ to uphold the principle of freedom of speech, which means freedom to say things that others may find despicable. It is otherwise a meaningless principle. It is also the position of FPJ that both sides to a story deserve to be heard. It’s up to readers to draw their own conclusions and make their own judgments.]
Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian media correspondent, freelance journalist and the author of Book 7+1. He is a contributing writer for websites and magazines in the Netherlands, Canada, Italy, Hong Kong, Bulgaria, South Korea, Belgium, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. He is a member of Stony Brook University Publications’ editorial team and Media Left magazine’s board of editors, as well as a contributing editor for Finland’s Award-winning Ovi Magazine. As a young Iranian journalist, he has been interviewed and quoted by several mainstream mediums, including BBC World Service, PBS Media Shift, the Media Line network, Deutsch Financial Times, L.A. Times and Sky News. He is a contributing writer of Tehran Times newspaper. His articles and interviews have been translated into numerous languages, including Spanish, Italian, German and Arabic. Contact him at kourosh@foreignpolicyjournal.com. Read more articles by Kourosh Ziabari.
Holocaust Denial is something few people understand. What is being denied is not that many Jews died in the Holocaust but rather whether or not there was an industrialized extermination of Jews – especially via gas chambers.
This argument stems from the near complete absence of forensic evidence that would be expected to corroborate the “eyewitness” testimony that was given at the Nuremburg trials.
Speaking for myself, I have no conclusive opinion on the Holocaust, but I think incarcerating people for voicing doubts about the Holocaust narrative is abominable political crime, and perhaps is the best example of a political crime that can be found in much of the “free world”.
Michael Colhaze summarizes some of the key facts that are not in dispute here:
This [the Holocaust] happened when I read somewhere that it had been pulled off without a single written order.
To tell you the truth, it really made me frown for a moment. Because if I know something with absolute certainty, it is that we Germans love our Red Tape…
As to my doubts, they were soon forgotten when I read the only logical explanation for this mystery, brilliantly put forward by Raul Hilberg, the Holocaust’s most eminent historian.
What began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by an agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus – mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.
Far-flung indeed! I could not help thinking in a somewhat macabre aside. We amazing consensus – mind reading Germans! No wonder we are good car makers!
And to disperse any doubts that might still linger anywhere at the back of your mind, allow me to quote the following.
Ninety-nine per cent of what we know about the Holocaust we do not actually have the physical evidence to prove . . . it has become part of our inherited knowledge.
A statement unleashed by Professor Jan van Pelt, him of the Waterloo University and leading authority on Auschwitz, in a recent interview with the Toronto Star.
Here are examples of what Holocaust deniers claim:
One Third of the Holocaust
This film explores 2/3 of the Holocaust, in other words everything except Auschwitz. The key forensic arguments are summarized in episodes 2, 11,12,13.
Buchenwald: A dumb Portrayal of Evil
This film depicts allied propaganda efforts. You might want to start near the 40 or 45 minute mark to understand the typhus epidemic that flourished in the final weeks of the war.
The David Cole video about Auschwitz and his appearance on Donahue document that that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were constructed after the war.
Fritz Berg, a mechanical engineer addresses the subject of gassing via carbon monoxide and gassing in general in this interview with Michael Collins Piper and here.
Here are some papers by Fritz Berg:
Zyklon-B and the German Delousing Chambers
NAZI Railroad Delousing Tunnels for Public Health, or Mass Murder!
Diesel Gas Chambers: Absurd for Murder
Copies of the book Hoax of the 20th Century by an engineering professor at Northwestern are also feely available.
Another German chemical engineer Germar Rudolph, is presently in jail for writing a doctoral dissertation which demonstrates that high concentrations of zyklon B residue can only be found in the gas chambers used for delousing, but not in the rooms said to be used for exterminations.
@Nationalist: Speaking for myself, I have no conclusive opinion on the Holocaust, but I think incarcerating people for voicing doubts about the Holocaust narrative is abominable political crime, and perhaps is the best example of a political crime that can be found in much of the “free world”.
Agreed. History, as a field of reserach, is ‘revisionist’ BY DEFINITION. Disputing any one historical account should not be a matter for courts and judges, but for other historians in the court of public opinion.
As for the genocide of Jews during WWII, I am absolutely convinved that it did happen, though I think that the “official” “6 million” figure is open to debate. I am very dubious about the mass use of either the gas chambers or the crematoria. They make for great Hollywood movies, but for bad extermination methods. Bullets, dysentery, malnourishment and abuse kill just as well, though they are not unique enough for a ‘Holocaust’ narrative which claims to be totally unprecedented and unique (which, of course, it was not).
I knew at least two “Holocaust deniers” in my life, one very well. The two I knew were honest researchers, even though I always suspected that their personal pro-Nazi leanings were the key behind their research (rather than just a detached interest for facts and history).
Zundel, by the way, strikes me a a Hitlerite type too. So if he (and the rest of them) have my sympathies in their attempts to establish the facts of WWII and if I support their right to free research and free speech, I totally reject their ideological foundation as I abhor not only National-Socialism or racism, but even nationalism and Fascism in all their aspects. I do that not because I was socialized to do so by my environment, but because I studied Nazi literature ad nauseam, because I knew quite a few Nazis personally, and because I came to the inescable conclusion that all that ideology is absolute and utter bullshit.
I do like Wagner, and I absolutely love Richard Strauss, but that is about as much Germanic nationalist stuff I can put up with. I flush the toilet on the rest of this arrogant and pagan worldview.
The Saker
@Everybody: I want to add one more thing to my previous post: I find it absolytely disgusting that NODOBY besides neo-Nazis stand up for the right of ‘revisionists’ and ‘Holocaust deniers’ to freely conduct their reserach and publish their findings. This is an ABSOLUTE DISGRACE. Having “some more equal than others” in regards to basic civil rights is always totally hypocritical.
Louis Antoine de Saint Just, a French revolutionary, famously said “”Pas de liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté” (No freedom for the enemies of freedom). This is the perfect expression of the totalitarian mindset (no wonder Saint Just was a big pal of that genocidal maniac Robespierre!) and it is, of course, no small irony that Saint Just himself ended up executed…
Why are Nazis singled out anyway as “beyond the pale”?! Did they kill more than Communists of Western “democrats”?! Of course not!
A old Soviet joke went like this:”what will is say under ‘Hitler’ in a 22nd century dictionary? It will say “small dictator of the time of Stalin””. There is a lot of wisdom to this.
How is it that all these putatively liberal doubleplusgoodthinkers always forget about Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) famous words:
“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
We don’t have to agree – or even like – those whose freedom of research and speech we support. That is, I think, the ONLY way to uphold these basic human and civil rights.
The Saker
“I knew at least two “Holocaust deniers” in my life, one very well. The two I knew were honest researchers, even though I always suspected that their personal pro-Nazi leanings were the key behind their research (rather than just a detached interest for facts and history).”
I knew only one, a guy who went completely mad and now believes he is the reincarnation of Hitler. Anyway, I think their nazi sympathies is the most important reason why most Holocaust deniers ended up jailed. I am open to revisions of the Holocaust (like methods of killing, the existence or not of gas chamber, number of victims, etc), but still one thing is for sure: National-Socialism is one of the most evil social doctrines, due to its radical racism, nationalism and militarism.
“Why are Nazis singled out anyway as “beyond the pale”?! Did they kill more than Communists of Western “democrats”?! Of course not!”
Like you once said as we were arguing on the numbre of victims of the Soviet regime, this is something that doesn’t matter that much. Nazis killed millions, caused the biggest and bloodiest war, and their racist and militaristic doctrine is essentially evil. Liberal Democracy and Communism are humanistic, cosmopolitan and freedom doctrines, and even though they had their share of crimes, it is because their ideas were perverted, but can and should be redeemed. Unfortunately, this is something that happens often, good ideas perverted into violent and cruel ones. The same happens with most religions, too.
Funny, Zundel mentions Bishop Williamson, a Lefebvrist (ultra-right Catholics who were excomuniated by John Paul II and pardoned by Benedictus XVI) who was living in Argentina, but was moved from here by the Holy See because he taught in private schools and was caused a scandal by showing too much sympathy towards the nazis in his classes.
Once again, this is the reason why I don’t listen much to deniers. I am strongly against criminalizing Holocaust Denial, but it is hard to take deniers seriously.
@Carlo: National-Socialism is one of the most evil social doctrines, due to its radical racism, nationalism and militarism.
I absolutely agree with you. And, unlike Communism, it has exactly ZERO intellectual value or contribution to political, social or economic studies. I have yet to read ANY Nazi text which would say anything worth of interest. As for the racist crap in Mein Kampf, it is just a load of bull.
Liberal Democracy and Communism are humanistic, cosmopolitan and freedom doctrines
Here I am not so sure at all. Communism is fundamentally violent (just think of the idea of “dictatorship of the proletariat) and its main proponents were open apologists for terrorism (read Trotsky’s essay Terrorism and Communism; you can find it here: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/index.htm). It is also a fact that almost all countries which attempted to built a communists society ended up with a bloodbath.
As for liberal democracy, its theoretical foundations appear to be better on the face of it. But if you look deeper, you realize that liberal democracy implies capitalism, and that capitalism always implies exploitation and imperialism, and hence, more wars and more genocides.
I do agree that both Communism and Liberal Democracy are far more sophisticated and interesting theories, but they are, I would say, no less inherently evil and violent that National-Socialism. The latter is cruder, dumber, more “in your face” – for sure. But is it *worse*? That I am not so sure at all.
@Carlo: Zundel mentions Bishop Williamson, a Lefebvrist (ultra-right Catholics who were excomuniated by John Paul II and pardoned by Benedictus XVI)
Yeah, it always make me giggle how the utterly pagan Nazis and the Papists always end up allied to each other even though they also deeply hate each other at the same time. Of course, Hitler openly admitted that he admired the Jesuits and that he partially modelled the SS on them. Yet, at a deeper level, there are two fundamentally different phenomena: Hitler and Mussolini are somewhere much closer ideologically to other militant atheists such as Lenin, Trotsky or Stalin, whereas the “traditional” European neo-Facists like Petain, Pavelic and Franco which are pure products of the Papacy.
Either way – what a disgrace all this is for a continent which, at least 1000 years ago, used to be Christian and which then turned into a real Petri-dish of totalitarian and genocidal ideologies…
@Carlo: just to clarify. My comments about Communism being inherently violent are not directed a Socialist ideas per se. If Socialism is understood in a Communist way, i.e., as a transition phase towards true Communism, then, of course, it is violent. But when Socialism is understood as an end in itself, as a society in which the masses are in contol of the state, in which private enterprise is carefully regulated, in which social rights are extended to everybody, in which national ressources and assets are controlled by the state, then I do not thinkt that it has to be violent at all. Looking at the Bolivarian socialists of people like Morales, Chavez or Correa, I think that there is a truly humanist version of socialism which does not have to inevitably degenerate into Gulags, economic collapse and mass violence.
I just wanted to clarify that.
Cheers!
“I do agree that both Communism and Liberal Democracy are far more sophisticated and interesting theories, but they are, I would say, no less inherently evil and violent that National-Socialism. The latter is cruder, dumber, more “in your face” – for sure. But is it *worse*? That I am not so sure at all.”
Yes, worse, because it is racist, because it dreams of exterminating many “races” (not only Jews, but Slavs and Roma alike), because it idealizes War as necessary for a “pure”, “strong” society. None of these exist in Democracy and Marxist Communism, as both aim at establishing peaceful and igualitarian societies. They surely fail, in one way or another and at different degrees, and are subject to perversions, but they are essentially better than Nazism.
“Yeah, it always make me giggle how the utterly pagan Nazis and the Papists always end up allied to each other even though they also deeply hate each other at the same time.”
I know there are ultra-right activists inside Catholicism, but don’t they exist in Orthodoxy also? As far as I know, in Russia still exists the Black Hundreds (though not as strong as they were 100 years ago). On the other hand, there are strong movements inside Catholicism, specially in Latin America, who work in favour of the poorer and weaker members of society. Many priests and even some bishops were killed in the waves of Latin American military dictatorships in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. And remember that Latin American socialism, even Castro’s regime, has never had any serious problem with the Holy See, even the anti-Communist, Polish, Pope met with Fidel Castro.
“My comments about Communism being inherently violent are not directed a Socialist ideas per se. If Socialism is understood in a Communist way, i.e., as a transition phase towards true Communism, then, of course, it is violent. But when Socialism is understood as an end in itself, as a society in which the masses are in contol of the state, in which private enterprise is carefully regulated, in which social rights are extended to everybody, in which national ressources and assets are controlled by the state, then I do not thinkt that it has to be violent at all. Looking at the Bolivarian socialists of people like Morales, Chavez or Correa, I think that there is a truly humanist version of socialism which does not have to inevitably degenerate into Gulags, economic collapse and mass violence.”
Here I fully agree with you. As Popper noted, the biggest flaw in Marx’s ideas is the Theory of History (which, by the way, is Hegelian). Take away the Theory of History, with its mechanism of economic modes producing necessarily a tendency towards Socialism and (ultimately) Communism, as well as its creed in the eschatological destiny of the proletarians, and there remains a lot of interesting things in socialism, even in its Marxist variant.
@Carlo: Yes, worse, because it is racist, because it dreams of exterminating many “races” (not only Jews, but Slavs and Roma alike), because it idealizes War as necessary for a “pure”, “strong” society. None of these exist in Democracy and Marxist Communism, as both aim at establishing peaceful and igualitarian societies
The first orders to commit genocide with the Slavs were not Nazi, but Papist and Western Europe has long considered that Slavs should be slaves and that they should be converted to Papism. And if Nazis wanted a pure Aryan race, Communists wanted a pure “worker’s society”. They saw class enemies exactly like the Nazis saw racial enemies. Heck – even their propaganda styles look alike. No Carlo, there is no less hate of the “other” in Communism as their is in National-Socialism.
The Nazis promised us a peaceful and egalitarian society called the “Thousand Year Reich”. The Communists promised us a peaceful and egalitarian society called “Communism” and the Capitalist promised us a peaceful and egalitarian society called called the “End of History”.
They are all alike, in nature and in essence. All filled with arrogance, violence and impossible dreams.
As far as I know, in Russia still exists the Black Hundreds (though not as strong as they were 100 years ago)
The real “Black Hundereds” were the monks who in during the Troubled Times called for the expulsion of the Poles and Jesuits invadors from Russia. Later, all sorts of wanna-be “patriots” referred to themselves as “Black Hundereds”, but there was no real “movement” as such. I am not aware of any movement called “Black Hundered” in Russia today, but I am quite sure that all sorts of xenophobes fancy themselves as “Black Hunderds” while they randomly assault Vietnamese or Malian, or Tadjik bypassers in the Moscow subway. Putin, by the way, passed a law forbidding any expression of racism or xenophobia and quite a few skinheads and xenophobic thugs have already been jailed under these laws.
Carlo: the biggest flaw in Marx’s ideas is the Theory of History (which, by the way, is Hegelian). Take away the Theory of History, with its mechanism of economic modes producing necessarily a tendency towards Socialism and (ultimately) Communism, as well as its creed in the eschatological destiny of the proletarians, and there remains a lot of interesting things in socialism, even in its Marxist variant.
Very well put. I could not agree more on this. The “ticking bomb” of Marxism is dialectical materialism and its application to the analysis of history. It is a VERY interesting idea, and a lot of it actually makes sense, but, as you point out, that is where the core impulse towards insane excesses is hidden. If Marxists dump that part as both deeply flawed and dangerous, we end up with a most interesting body of socio-economic analysis which can be put to very good use in resisting imperialism and capitalism.
I think that we agree on most things, you and I.
Well, I think we could argue endlessly on this, but you are right, we agree in many important subjects. Nazism and Communism, at least in their worst forms, are gone, fortunately. We may disagree about the past, but most importantly we agree about what the future should be.
@Carlo:We may disagree about the past, but most importantly we agree about what the future should be.
Yep. :-)