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ISSN 1440-9828
January 2006
No 272Fredrick Töben: Who are the real haters?
During the Christmas holiday period I had time to reflect, and to self-reflect, on my 61 years of existence. To date it’s been a good journey, painful at times but also pleasurable, certainly always challenging and rewarding, and above all illuminating. It is self-evident that this assessment is made without a reference to any kind of scapegoats, though impediments to living according to an ideal are aplenty. But that is to be expected because one of the overarching principles of being alive is the battle-of-the-wills, which for some has become a field where the basest of human motives is nurtured, then sold to the public as a particular kind of virtue. Holocaust believers form one such particular group that exudes hatred towards Germans without according Germans a right-of-reply to those vicious allegations that speak of genocide and war crimes.
Hence, there is a current crop of debased individuals who have honed the victim mentality to such a fine degree that a word, a look, a person’s mere presence is regarded as an insult. I am not rejecting the notion that there are real victims – of crime, of vendettas, of judicial persecution. REVISIONISTS know all too well that they are the victims of the whims of HOLOCAUST believers. The latter maintain their power base without paying any respect to an enquiring mind discovering factual information that clearly refutes the foundations on which HOLOCAUST believers rely upon for plying their trade in victimology. The ultimate sanction within dialogue is: “You Germans lost the war!”
Rene Berclaz, Ernst Zündel, Germar Rudolf, Siegfried Verbeke, et al, can confirm how vicious the HOLOCAUST judiciary has become in enforcing their HOLOCAUST dogma/religion. Imagine, you are accused of offending against the so-called HOLOCAUST laws, then when you mount a defence, then the content of your defence is considered proof that you are indeed what the original charge claims you are – guilty and a HOLOCAUST denier, and therefore open to public vilification sanctioned by the courts and enacted through the media!
As in the witch trials, where dissidents were burned at the stake or drowned in a river, HOLOCAUST believers ruthlessly enforce their new religion without any reference to any factual argument – again following the pattern set down by witch trials where, for example, witnesses gave evidence to the court that an accused -1. had been seen riding a broomstick;
2. had been seen consorting with the Devil,
3. had had sex with the Devil, and
4. the Devil’s semen is ice-cold.
As in all fabricated stories, usually the final point is the telling one that the whole story is made it. Naturally the judge hearing the case would never demand a forensic investigation of the Devil’s semen.
So it is with the HOLOCAUST believers when they initiate a HOLOCAUST trial – the accused cannot present evidence that would refute any of the allegations made against him. Why not? Because HOLOCAUST believers cannot refute any of the claims made by REVISIONISTS, and HOLOCAUST believers have to date failed in this venture – see John Bryant’s review, following.
That we have in the 21st century reached the darkest period of intellectual enquiry is surprising for some, but for others not unexpected. The various taboos that kept the lid on the enquiring mind questing to find out where the various social, financial, economic and political power structures are hidden, have become exposed. Secrets that once were rock-solid have been blown away by the freedom of information rushing through the Internet.
The control freaks who subtly and not so subtly kept tight control on information dissemination have lost the plot, and are now fretting to the point where, for example, in the USA political scene the President’s office has officially engaged Hollywood to assist in scripting its daily Presidential events. What is real and what is an illusion is made to seem inseparable to those who believe, those who non-critically accept the official versions of events. For example, the 9/11 scam that has been sold as a Muslim terrorist attempt on the USA because these ‘terrorists’ hate America for its freedom and democracy, is slowly unraveling – and this in spite of a number of factors having been solidified through various court cases. For example, Larry Silverstein received a favourable jury verdict on his claim that the two “terrorist attacks” on the WTC were indeed two events – and so two insurance payouts were made to him. How can such a legal verdict be overturned and the factuality of the event be described as an insider job? Larry Silverstein himself stated as much when he decided to “pull Building 7” and have that brought down in a controlled explosion, as were the two WTC towers.
That the Allies at the beginnings of World War Two, over 60 years ago, also trumpeted platitudes about freedom and democracy is telling. After 60 years of this nonsense, individuals are again wrestling their way through such deception and, naturally, those in power again feel the heat. There is an open discussion about the “Jewish problem” – the power behind various governments, so to speak. And when offers are made to individuals, such as Dr Hamer, offers that cannot be refused because it involved world Freemasonry, but he refuses, then the nasty side of things come into view – assassination attempts and corrupt legal processes. Dr Hamer’s trials and tribulations are instructive here. It appears to me that the Revisionists’ Holocaust challenges are still relatively tame, though October-November 2004 saw such a flurry of activity against Revisionists that the persecutors must be gleaning things from those who are so desperate in silencing Dr Hamer, and desperate in stealing Dr Hamer’s intellectual property.
The current war on terrorism is designed to keep a generation enthralled and mystified as it gets sucked into predatory capitalism and hedonistic consumerism. We shall have to wait and see if this time the dark forces again win over the light forces – definitive patterns should soon emerge, and one factor to watch is the price of gold and the world economy. The political sideshows in various theatres of war usually become just that, useful distractions. We saw this clearly illustrated when the USA and its willing helpers invaded Iraq with full guns blazing on anything that moved, on anything except the Iraqi oil ministry and the central bank where business continued as usual. Such is life!
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John Bryant: ‘Holocaust Mythology: A Review of Vidal Naquet’s Assassins of Memory’
in: Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Jews but were Afraid to Ask because you thought you’d be called “Antisemitic”. Second Edition, 2005, The Socratic Press , PO Box 66683, St Petersburg Beach FL 33736-6683, USA.
It is not often that one comes upon a book written about a subject which the author refuses to discuss, but Assassins of Memory, by French classical scholar Pierre Vidal-Naquet, has actually accomplished this difficult absurd feat (Columbia University Press, 1992). The reason for this strange oeuvre is that the Jewish Establishment, of which Vidal-Naquetis part, is coming under increasing pressure to answer the arguments of the Holocaust revisionists, who in the view of many (including this writer) have demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the Orthodox Jewish Version of the Holocaust (OJV) is as full of holes as a Swiss cheese with worms. The establishment Jewish position is, of course, that the revisionists, in addition to being antisemitic scumbags and reincarnations of the Devil himself, are of such order that in their arguments do not deserve to be answered, although the revisionists have acquired such a following that Establishment Jewry is actually becoming rather embarrassed, and thus feel compelled to say something, even if only to say they aren’t going to say something. Indeed, no matter how loud the revisionists chorus becomes, this is the most likely Establishment Jewry’s best strategy, since all their attempts to answer the revisionists have so far ended in defeat, despair and just that much more embarrassment. From this we may surmise that the argument between revisionists and Establishment Jewry will probably end not with a bang but with a whimper, where the defenders of the OJV will simply die out, leaving all the dozens and dozens of Holocaust museums as monuments to the lies and falsehoods which Establishment Jewry told. We can only wonder how long it will take the younger generation of Jews to turn these embarrassments into art museums, restaurants and perhaps even a whorehouse or two.
It is altogether appropriate that Vidal-Naquet has taken up the cause, such as it is, of anti-revisionism; for as a classical scholar he is well versed in dealing with the myths of other cultures, and the Holocaust is surely the central myth of contemporary Judaism. Perhaps, of course, he subconsciously recognizes the force of the revisionist argument and the fact that the OJV is a myth, but nonetheless feels compelled, as a Jew, to fight the good fight and tell the good lie, in hopes that the barbarians of Truth will somehow be driven from the gates of Jerusalem. And what precisely is the “good lie” that Vidal-Naquet tells? To use his metaphor, the assertions of revisionism are of the same sort as the claim that the moon is made of green cheese, and are thus not the kind of thing that any serious scholar would respond to. Unfortunately for Vidal-Naquet, however, this is obvious rubbish; for the reason why a serious scholar will not answer a green cheese argument is because the base of astronomical knowledge which is not questioned by anyone makes such an assertion wildly improbable, while the base of WWII historical knowledge which is not questioned by anyone – including both Establishment historians and revisionists – has no such effect on the revisionist theories.
Now perhaps some would come to Vidal-Naquet’s defense on this point by saying that the green-cheese metaphor was merely an unfortunate comparison; but I am willing to give Vidal-Naquet credit for being an intelligent man who would not let a point so fundamental as this slip by him without making as good an argument as he can. But because the argument – which I assume is the best that Vodal-Naq2uet can muster – is inadequate, this suggests the illogic of his entire program, and thus the complete corruption of his thought. Of course we do not have to rely on the choice of the green-cheese metaphor to reach this conclusion: The conclusion is also apparent from his failure to answer an argument which has a wide following and the support of respected scholars, and it is also apparent from the absurdity of the fact – pointed out at the beginning of this essay – that someone would write a book to answer an argument by not answering it.
Actually, it is not wholly true that Vidal-Naquet fails to address the revisionists’ arguments, but when he does so, the results are both bizarre and embarrassing. Perhaps the most important example is in his list of “The principles of revisionist method” (p21), in which he claims in point #2 that [Revisionist scholar Arthur] Butz and [Paul] Rassinier, for example, are totally unaware of the documents written by members of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando [inmate “trusties”], which were hidden by them and then rediscovered after the war, documents giving a precise description and agreeing in all respects with what is known from other sources about the functioning of the gas chambers. [Revisionist scholar Robert Faurisson is satisfied with an allusion (Le Monde of January 16, 1979) to ‘manuscripts – miraculously – rediscovered’, and whose inauthenticity he does not even attempt to demonstrate.”
All of which sounds like there might, after all, be some evidence for the gas chambers, except that when we check Vidal-Nquet’s footnote 43 to all this, we find that “In his Memorie en defense … , Faurisson, for his part, has attempted to disqualify these texts (pp 232-236)”.
Or in other words, here is the great scholar Vidal-Naquet, saying in the main text that Faurisson “is satisfiedwith an allusion” to refute these texts, but then admits in a footnote that Faurisson spends at least four pages in his book refuting them. If this is scholarship, I pray never to be guilty of it. But there is far more than this to hoist Vidal-Naquet by his own petard, at least in the Foreword of the English edition to his book by Jeffrey Mehlman, who notes that Vidal-Naquet concedes a major point to his nemesis, Robert Faurisson, to wit, that the diary of Anne Frank is a hoax.
In Addition, Mehlman notes yet another and even more important concession by Vidal-Naquet to revisionism, by acknowledging Establishment Jewish Scholar Arno Mayer’s remark that sources for the gas chamber story are “at once rare and unreliable” (Does this say something about the above-mentioned Sonderkommando documents?). With all this, then, it is hardly a surprise that Vidal-Naquet does not try to answer the revisionists – he can’t! But there is a final point against Vidal Naquet and the rest of the woolly-brained defenders of the OJV, and which derives from the often-quoted premise of skeptics that “extraordinary hypotheses require extraordinary proof”. The way this applies to the revisionist controversy is that the mass gassing of people – the likes of which have never before been seen in the history of the world – is an extraordinary event, and thus the onus probundum is on those who assert that it happened.
Or to put it another way, in the view of skeptics and others of scientific mein, it is the responsibility of those who postulate the mass gassing of Jews to prove their case, and thus it is not the responsibility of the revisionists to prove theirs. We can only wonder whether Nidal-Naquet will have the intelligence to discern what this means for his position.
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From the Töben Archives
The two following items were written years ago and about a decade apart. They are of interest in reflecting the development, or otherwise, of a world view. It is evident that I still had many personal blind spots to overcome but in essence the foundation of my world view has remained the same – with added comments of December 2005.
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1. To a 1968 Teaching Colleague in New Zealand
Vancouver, BC, Canada
7 July 1970
Dear Mrs Goodall
After a whole year’s silence I sit down in front of my typewriter, fingers itching, ready to let off a little steam towards that land of the long white cloud.
I have just recently arrived in Canada and I will most probably remain here for a few more weeks. It is so difficult to sum up a country in a matter of days.
It may interest you to know that after my Zambia quest got rolling I began to question the whole business again – in a mercenary way I said to myself, “What’s in it for me?’ I could already see myself dancing matrimoniously around a camp fire, etc. So, instead I worked for three months at the Deep Cove Manapouri Power Project. I started there as an ordinary labourer and emerged, soberly, as a second-class miner – not minor! What an experience that was!
Ironically, after my sojourn in the fiord country I boldly applied for a teaching position at Te Awamutu College, which required a good German and English teacher. I won’t mention the Social Studies unit ‘America and Russia’ which I had to deliver to Form IV. Bless the school for having put up with such a restless teacher as I who is also worried about a life-style?
So, from school it was back to industry. And this time the lucky recipient was the Westfield Freezing Works in Auckland. For two months I played the part of an inoffensive chamber-hand. It was only towards the very end, after I had acquired the language habit of my ‘mates’ that a general resentment set in against me. I developed a beautiful technique, far superior to theirs, which permitted me to spout forth an endless string of obscenities. Unfortunately I could not sustain this behaviour for too long, and my lapse into ‘normalcy’ bugged the workers. Suddenly I wasn’t one of them anymore – and when this happens it’s time to go.
I packed my bags at the end of January, disgusted that the Normal Kirk motto – Make things happen this year – fell by the side with the return to Wellington of Kiwi Keith as PM. Also, matters of the heart still had an overpowering effect upon me. From Deep Cove to Te Awamutu, from Massey Uni/Palmerston North to Auckland – always it was there. Perhaps if I had not been in possession of that beautiful DS 21 I could have pleaded: Sorry, can’t see you – no transport, can’t make it to Wellington. And then as it passed, I was bound to depart from New Zealand at my original 1967 entry-point at Wellington.
Back in Australia I raced to the West where Poseidon was rocking the world’s Stock Exchanges with its nickel finds. I worked for a Canadian exploration firm as a field assistant, diagnosing, rather merely recording magnetic anomalies of the surrounding regions of Kalgoorlie and district. Unfortunately I saw that too many brakes were applied on fellows working in the field – the speed was missing. Mind you, enough fellows sniffed the other speed. I was quite surprised how many of them were addicted to grass, despite the barrenness of the countryside. Of course, all this happened in great secrecy. It certainly wasn’t as obvious as it is in San Francisco or Vancouver.
In any case, the futility of walking in 120° temperature disenchanted me again. I packed my belongings and sett off for Darwin and beyond, still nurturing that funny feeling which urges me to press on, away from monotony towards something ‘better’. The inner voice won’t let me rest as yet. I hope that by the time it does I won’t be sitting on a rubbish heap together with the rest of the hippie community. One consolation – it should then either back up my Philosophy of life or call me a miserable failure.
So much for this rather personal prattle.
Vancouver reminds me so much of Wellington – there is the same expanse of beautiful restless water lapping against its shores – possibly more polluted than Oriental Bay; the mountainous terrain in the immediate distance; Mount grouse (Grouse Mountain) with its tourist attraction recalls for me Mount Victoria. Speaking of Victoria – the chunk of landmass a few miles off-shore Vancouver, Vancouver Island, harbours BC’s capital city, Victoria, on its southern tip. And with a population of 100,000 it proudly houses another Victoria – the University of Victoria.
Cities, islands, universities, people – money! By God, there’s money to be made here in the teaching game. The average wage is $5-6 thousand. University lecturers and professors are ‘wealthy’ men.
Unfortunately the picture of prosperity is distorted. One must not forget that the cost of living almost swallows all the apparent gains from such a high income. A pound of butter costs 78c; margarine 30-50c; cigarettes are 50c – I don’t smoke anymore! A haircut costs up to $2.50; one pear is 16c; a good apartment rises above the $200 mark, p.m. And so the list grows – and without stating the obvious, the wage-earner cannot break out of his environment if he wishes to lead a good life. There is just enough there to sustain the veil of prosperity; when the pay period comes along, it is welcomed by all.
However, for the enterprising, the risk-taker, Canada, and like most other countries – including New Zealand – still offers unlimited opportunities. And if the will is there to nut out something that will sell, then the fortune is guaranteed – there are enough people here who are willing to spend their pennies on ‘nonsense’.
Despite all this I am already entertaining the idea of eventually returning to New Zealand after visiting Europe. The life-style evolved by the New Zealander smacks of quality rather than quantity, and to hell with the latter when my head begins to shake. Let me mature with, and within, a South Pacific country where every facet of humanity is developed to such a high pitch that one cannot quite feel a part of the country anymore. It is so easy then to just become an observer, a muckraker, a social prophet.
I am already rather sick of the king dicks of the masses – the police-cops-fuzz … armed with an ostentatious pistol, dangling handcuffs, solid riot stick and a sense of power that I find pathetic – he will not hesitate to carry out his duty to the last letter of the law when his ‘needs’ require attention.
But what other alternative is there for those whose job it is to keep the peace – society must somehow protect itself from the bum, the drug trafficker, the addict, the unemployable, the desperate, the ‘honest’ student.
That reminds me of a little story I heard the other day. The scene was the 500 block East Fifth Avenue in Vancouver. The military, Air Sea Rescue, Police, and reporters and photographers rushed to the vacant lot where a bearded young man pointed out an object in the bushes and said he was getting ‘vibrations’ from it. Apparently the fellow had been checking it for days, and it must have come from outer space because it was non-metallic. When a reporter asked him what this was all about he said, “It’s classified information, isn’t it Officer?” An officer nearby agreed, and he told the young fellow that an ambulance was on its way to take him to hospital so that he could be checked for ‘radioactivity’. The fellow agreed that was a smart idea but he didn’t like to leave the thing in the bushes. He was reassured the police would take care of that.
After the ambulance had taken the young fellow away a couple of reporters and the police headed for the bushes where the ‘thing’ was hidden. It was a piece of blue plastic piping which could well have come off a space craft – and in the fellow’s mind it did. The moral ... that’s the way things are these days when the kids go on LSA and other such trips.
It seems a shame that the post-WWII generation has to resort to such drastic measures for an escape from reality. What went wrong? I can only conclude that the blame must lie not only with the hippie but also with the generation that is now rejecting him.
I recall my first caning experience at Lumsden. Goodness me, I was to blame for such incidents as much as the ‘punished’ – no wonder I gave it away after feeling sick about it. Still, if only the hippie could develop a code of conduct that includes reasonable honesty and imbues his aliens with trust, then perhaps he would re-emerge a better person. Unfortunately, individualism is so strong among the commune that trust has no meaning in it. So much for this topic.
Mrs Goodall, recently I received a copy of the LDHS Magazine together with a few greetings. Would you kindly convey my kindest regards to those students concerned. Yvonen also sent me a list of successful candidates in the 1969 Chamber of Commerce Examination. I still feel something for these students who managed to battle through my lessons. I can assure them that my year at Lumsden will always remain with me – I did learn a lot!
I must also comment on Mr Blackie’s article in the Magazine. He is quite right in pointing out that today’s youths are not fulfilling their obligations. But because of historic inevitability, and world social and economic and military manipulation - a handful of people rule the Earth [early conspiracy murmurings? - FT] – it does not really matter under which system children are raised. The strong survive in both, ready to lead the weak.
And on such a somber note I must conclude my rather lengthy letter. Please send my regards to Mr Blackie and Miss Bowie.
Fredrick
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2. What ails the West – a personal view. By Dr Baba Naira.
Dr G F Toben February 1982
The so-called progressive western world, better known as the self-styled first of the four worlds, is in a crisis. Economically it has to contend with the problem of unemployment – about 25 million people are without a permanent job – and a general downturn of its industrial output. Politically it has suffered many setbacks which reflect a somewhat non-directional political policy.
The haphazard political approach of trial-and-error (K R Popper) is not sufficient in crisis situations. It is not enough to follow the road – we must know where the road leads to. If it leads nowhere, we have to find a new one – and this requires reflection and recourse to principles and not just an appeal to some standard as unstable as the momentary exigencies of a nation’s commerce or industry or social life (R H Tawney, 1937).
The American response to the Polish crisis, launching a massive global television onslaught called ‘Let Poland be Poland’, became ineffective and rather farcical when the list of participants included a non-democratic martial-law-ruled Turkey.
The second Western mission of recent times was the Pope’s visit to Africa. The week-long mission to this continent highlighted how out of touch this Pontiff is. His moral lesson on religious tolerance, birth control and abortion appeared to have been preached to a European audience, where these matters are indeed a problem. Religious tolerance need not be mentioned in Africa, especially in Nigeria, where a Moslem head-of-state welcomed the Holy Father. Similarly with abortions – it is not a problem in Africa. Did the Pope wish to export these Western problems to this continent?
It appears that the West, the first world, has more problems concerning life-denying forces, than the other worlds put together.
In a similar vein, America’s Secretary of State, Alexander Haig, conjured up the old enemy, the old ghost of Communism – and failed miserably. The Vietnam war produced a moral lesson that prevented the re-vitalization of this useful scapegoat. The effects of Vietnam have still not been fully digested by the American people. But surely, that mighty American dream, that naïve illusion of possessing a moral superiority over other peoples, has finally been dashed to pieces – as Toynbee predicted would happen to both America and Israel. Both, he felt, needed to lose a war in order to become human again (A Toynbee 1969).
But let us return to the initial issue – what is causing this massive breakdown of performance within the Western World? Is it a final coming to terms with the legacies of the colonial era? The exploiter is certainly now faced with a mature exploited who rightfully demands his fair share of any plunder of his natural resources.
[It was Ian Smith of Rhodesia who refused to give a way for a song his country’s strategic minerals on the world market, thereby attracting the wrath of the multinationals who forced regime change. Initially Robert Mugabe directed the multinational program worked out for Zimbabwe, until he, too, refused to give away his country’s riches. The IMF and World Bank, among others, then called in their loans and swiftly began to kill off Zimbabwe’s economic development, with the inevitable consequences of the race-card being played by those in whose interest it is to deflect from the actual cause of Zimbabwe’s current hyper-inflation and social disintegration – the global predatory capitalist system. – FT 2005]
This historical perspective, however, offers us too many colonial periods in the history of mankind – slavery and exploitation are as old as human history. The most enlightened Greek civilization with its highly developed democratic institutions accommodated a slave system without flinching an eyelid. We thus gain few new impulses, few insights from a study of the past except possibly that trite observation: man learns not from history.
Still, the past is important in understanding our present – but not only. We must look towards the future if we wish to understand our present actions, our present course. For example, the African continent would have moved into the computer age independently of whether it was colonized or not. The impulses of progress cannot be isolated to one single event. Life is a little more complex than that.
It is at this point, however, that the problem begins. The Continental Europeans bemoan a lack of vision in the American political program. Hence the Continentals are forging ahead, without the Americans, in interpreting their own future because there is only confusion coming from America. The battle for Europe has begun in earnest, but the two rival superpowers, America and Russia, are both floundering in their own confusion.
If this non-directional attitude is causing confusion, then it is because the problem is one of a lack of values and principles. And what principles and values does the West retain? Is the West not marked by a lack of clearly defined goals and objectives? Is there not a tendency to rationalize and justify in an absurd way? The loss of a clear perspective cannot be tarned by calling up the devils of the past: the Communists, the Fascists have either disappeared or they have become respectable. The terrorists, the guerillas, the freedom-fighters have become establishment in many countries. For example, the founders of Israel, Zimbabwe, Vietnam – possibly soon some revolutionaries in South America – were all leaders of resistance.
No amount of scapegoating will explain away the West’s wrong response to world events. The West has to subject itself to the painful process pf self-analysis if it wishes to understand its own illness. It is not an external factor that is producing this imbalance in the life of Western culture and politics. Is it that the global thrust is becoming too demanding for the West? Why are countries from other continents refusing to be drawn into the two super-power system? America and Russia propagate Capitalism and Communism respectively, yet for many nations this simple ideological division of the world is not satisfying anymore.
[The current ‘war on terrorism, for freedom and democracy’ is an even more simplistic divide – FT]
One possible factor causing this imbalance in the West is the creeping nihilistic attitude that has befallen it (W Kraus – 1982). Religious and moral principles have been thrown overboard by the disillusioned younger, post World War II generation. The drug problem is symptomatic of this loss of direction. Drg users wish to gain their peace of mind, their ‘high’ immediately. They wish to experience the transcendence of human existence while still a part of this world. What some religions offer in the form of paradise in the world to come is attainable now through drug consumption – so they believe.
The nihilistic void is often filled by an unnatural pursuit of pleasure. The hedonistic attitude is marked by this very characteristic of nothingness, except of course, immediate pleasure. There is no concern for the pursuit of truth – for the hedonist truth is pleasure. But because values and attitudes are inseparable from actions and reasons, this pursuit of pleasure dissatisfies. Is life not more than a mere pursuit of pleasure?
Then there is the tendency to reduce everything. This tendency, according to many reputable psychologists, is a dangerous mental illness; the environment, next-of-kin and colleagues at work, the problems with other people are all discredited, reduced and ridiculed. Why? Basically so that the individual who engages in such action can accentuate and feel his own superiority ( R Conway – 1971).
The basic motivational factor producing such nihilistic phenomenon is of course fear – the fear of being too weak, too inferior to do anything of value for other people. The root-cause of this kind of nihilism – and there are various forms far more subtle and not so easily detectable - is often a feeling of hopelessness and inner confusion.
Even in Nigeria one can see this attitude in flashes, especially among the students. [ Once, after receiving from the American Cultural Centre in Cano a load of books that I then distributed free to my students, one student remarked that he would at least have something to pass on to his son! After experiencing such enthusiasm for learning from my students in NigeriaIt was a culture shock for me to return home to Australia, there to find many students, and teachers, scorned the reading of good books, let alone begin to build up your own personal library. FT]
There is, however, no reason to develop such negative attitude. Despite the obvious social, political and economic problems facing Nigeria, it is possible to look back over the past two or three decades and see that conditions in all spheres of life have improved in this country. Minna, within the last five to six years, has developed at a breath-taking pace. That such development brings with it additional problems is not denied. Rather, they are accepted as a challenge to man’s ingenuity. Such problems cry out for solutions – and solutions will inevitably be found.
Often visitors to this country suggests that Nigeria is in a mess. Such statements must be put into perspective: for example, the recent doomsday message from The Economist reporter, Nicholas Harman, who after a few days in Lagos spoke of Nigeria’s ills in poetic form: “- bribery and tribary, tangle at the top and muddle in the middle”, and, according to him, the only way this country is going is “downwards” (New Nigerian editorial, 21 February 19820.
This is, of course, a comment by a person who still seeks to point the finger at others without engaging in a little self-analysis. The economic and social ills confronting Britain today cannot be discussed away by pointing to a won war, or a loss of former colonies. There is something more fundamentally wrong with a people’s attitude and values when industrial strikes have been made a way of life!
[Sir Walter Crocker, who once was a diplomat in Nigeria, informed me that he felt Nigerian independence had been granted too early because the infrastructure necessary to sustain what Britain had developed there, was not as yet firmly rooted within the Nigerians themselves, and hence oil exploitation by the ruthless multinationals could not be effectively resisted without the divide-and-rule policy picking off one ruler at a time and corrupting him for the oil company’s scheme of things. FT]
Again, it is a nihilistic attitude of mind that operates in Britain today – an attitude that denies basic life-giving forces to operate effectively. It is accepted with total resignation and in true defeatist style people say that nothing can be done about it.
The British Prime Minister wishes to do something about it by legislating against the unions. But, ironically, isn’t that exactly what the Polish military rulers are doing against their own union movement “Solidarity”? They are curbing union power because it threatens their system of government – which failed to respond to the people’s basic needs.
The above leads us to draw a pertinent parallel between Britain and Poland. Both countries embody social institutions that believe in the reality of the class concept. The British believe that there is such a thing as an upper, middle and lower class, while the Poles believe that in their country the working class has won the battle against all other classes that once exploited it – just as Marx had once predicted.
That such thinking is symptomatic of false consciousness is, of course, not accepted by these people. We may even express this matter in stronger terms: class thinking is an example of intellectual dishonesty.
That class-thinking is analogous to racism is not obvious to many people either. Racial thinking is more obvious and clear-cut because it relies upon a visual factor, namely skin colour. Yet class thinking is just as illogical as racial thinking because no-one has as yet explained what constitutes those cases that are non-definable, cases in which people contain characteristics of more than one race or class. The Black African with Chinese features in, for example, Tansania, combines two racial features; similarly, the manual worker in Britain who drives an expensive car and lives in his own home overlaps rigid class criteria.
It is thus a simplistic and naïve way of looking at human nature. All too often such as view regards people superior or inferior because of some ill-defined traits or characteristics. It is usually the person who believes in such concepts who slots himself into a most favourable racial category or class.
[Interestingly, in Israel the sexual mixing between imported Asian workers and local Jews has been legally banned, exactly what the National Socialists did during their reign. Sound racial research has found that racial mixing does lead to a genetic decline, as it does in any other animals, something of which any farmer knows. The maxim states there is such a thing as hybrid vigour, but this may apply to the first, perhaps to the second cross, but certainly by the third cross there is degeneration, usually marked by sterility and non-procreative behaviour. FT]
The mechanism of superiority is supported by the social technique of rejection. This is a most unproductive and sterile sttitute of mind because it carries with it a hatred and a denial of human nature. Regard closely those people who believe in class or racial superiority. Look at their eyes. You will see lies and deception flourishing within their hearts and minds. They lack spontaneity; their reactions to life have become stylized. They think ten times before they speak – not because they are deep thinkers but because they are great dissemblers.
Too much is left unexplained about human nature when we categorize by class or race, or caste for that matter. It is a static way of looking at mankind, and this is absurd because no-one, not a single person remains static in his physical or mental development. Hence, a classification by race or class denies human evolution and social development.
In explaining social development the class-thinkers – such as the Communists – have a theory that accounts for human progress. They maintain that the friction caused by the interaction of opposing forces produces change – that inevitable class conflict. The argument states that the wealthy and the poor are in opposition, and ultimately the poor will win this battle because the rich will degenerate. This is the dialectic process in action: thesis – antithesis – synthesis.
That these two poles may not be opponents or opposites but rather mere differences of the human situation, is not given any credence. The relation between people who live in the same society is temporal but not necessarily causal; they co-exist but may never interact (G Leff 1971).
How absurd class or race thinking is, when applied to scientific discoveries and inventions, was evident when Hitler claimed that Albert Einstein’s physics was ‘Jewish’. He made two thinking errors here: a) no natural process, no scientific law can be monopolized by any race, nation or class of people, and b) he confused the term ‘Jewish’.
Many adherents to the Jewish religion would certainly like others to believe that their ‘Jewishness’ is of racial origin. This is what Hitler believed and expounded. But of course the term “Jewish’ refers to those people who embrace the Jewish religion. This elads to a situation where we have European, Semitic, Asian and African Jews.
If we speak of a racial basis, then we must clearly state that most of the people professing to belong to the Jewish faith are of Semitic origin. But the Arabs are also of Semitic origin.
Yet when we speak of Arabs, we refer to those people whose language is Arabic. The Arabs are Semites, and so are the people who call themselves Israelis – but they speak Hebrew.
Thus to confuse the issue totally, when we hear of the Arab-Jewish or the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are totally illogical because we introduce contradictory terminology. If we speak of ‘Jewish’, then we must in our example here speak of ‘Islamic’. If we speak of ‘Arabic’, then we must strictly logically speaking, refer to the ‘Arab-Hebrew’ conflict.
Such obfuscations do not illuminate problem areas at all. But it keeps many people from actually speaking with a clear tongue. One can see the Iranian Revolutionaries attempting to achieve a theoretical synthesis of concepts when they speak of the Islamic Revolution.
But to return to the concept of false consciousness. Have you seen a transistor that could be called middle-class?
It is unfortunately a human weakness to categorize in a most sloppy way – often the motive is simply to fuel one’s own personal sense of superiority. There are many Europeans in a multitude of guises trudging about the globe, feeling sorry for those people who have as yet not come in contact with European culture. Ironically, many of these globe –trotters have themselves done nothing to enrich or extend such cultural stock of which they partake. They stand within a cultural context by mere accident of birth (M S Jimada, 1982). They then dare pass off such personally derived culture as something superior to the indigenous tradition. At the moment, at least, this process has reached a point where the recipients are becoming more critical and discerning. And that is a good healthy sign for both parties because uncritical giving and receiving can only lead to conceptual and moral confusion, which in turn is the seedbed for a nihilistic milieu.
References:
1. Tawney, R H: The Acquisitive Society, 1937
2. A Toynbee: Experiences, 1969
3. W Kraus: Nihilism: Images of a dangerous phenomenon, 1982
4. R Conway: Land of the Long Weekend, 1978
5. New Nigerian, editorial of 21 February 1982.
6. G Leff : History and Social Theory, 1971
7. M S Jimada: Basic Objectives of Establishing the Advanced Teachers’ College, Minna, 1982
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Antisemitic incidents fall, online Jew-hatred increases — report
Australian Jewish News, December 9, 2005
PETER KOHN
THE number of antisemitic incidents recorded in Australia has dropped in the past year, but Jew-hatred is thriving in cyberspace, according to an Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) report, which was tabled at its conference this week.
The report’s author, Jeremy Jones, logged 332 antisemitic incidents between October 2004 and September 2005 — a drop of 10 per cent from the previous 12-month period, continuing a downward trend from a high of more than 500 incidents in 2002.
But the ECAJ report found an “enormous amount of antisemitic invective on various internet discussion groups and bulletin boards”, and Jones, a former ECAJ president, said Jewish individuals and community groups had suffered an onslaught of abusive emails.
“Antisemtic and threatening email has now become the most common means of antisemitic harassment in Australia,” the report stated.
Local websites such as that run by Dr Fredrick Toben’s Adelaide Institute and printed material such as One Nation, the official Queensland newspaper of the One Nation party, were of major concern, Jones said.
The ECAJ has taken legal action against One Nation over an article published in the Nation last year which Jones described as “an antisemitic article and illustrations describing Jews as purveyors of filth, degradation and decadence and alleging Jewish world control”.
This has led to a complaint by the ECAJ under the Racial Hatred Act (1995), which is currently before the Federal Court and is being defended by the paper’s editor, Carl Thompson, who authored the article.
Jones told the AJN the process has been delayed by the death of the presiding judge, Justice Peter Hely, in October, but is expected to resume shortly. [Justice Hely was the judge who found against Mrs Olga Scully and in favour of Mr Jones – FT]
According to the report, this year is the fifth successive year the antisemitic incidents in Australia have been above 330. And although the figure is down from the 445 incidents in 2003-04 it is still 10 per cent above the annual average of 301 since national figures started being collated in 1989.
Among the most shocking incidents was the attack on Newcastle’s only shul [German = Schule – FT], which was covered in anti-Jewish daubings, had its stained-glass windows smashed and race-hate posters glued to its exterior walls in April. Police have failed to apprehend the culprits.
The report noted, however, that one of the culprits of the antisemitic attack on Perth Hebrew Congregation in 2004 was jailed for six months.
Jones praised the speed with which governments and religious groups from the Christian and Muslim communities had condemned antisemitic incidents, adding that the South Australian Parliament passed a motion condemning antisemitism during the period in review similar to that passed by Federal Parliament and the Victorian and NSW governments last year.
The Newcastle attack led a tally of attacks that included arson on synagogues, vandalism and Nazi graffiti on private property, assaults on Jews and antisemitic vandalism of schools and synagogues.
In the United Kingdom, whose Jewish population is almost three times the size of Australia, the Community Security Trust logged 532 antisemitic incidents in 2004 – the highest annual total since records began in 1984. Among them were desecrations of 17 synagogues and five Jewish cemeteries.----------------------------
ECAJ CONFERENEC – DECEMBER 2006: Education preferable to legislation, says Ruddock, AJN, 9 December 2005.
The Federal Government generally prefers community education to legislation when it comes to combating racial and religious vilification, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said this week.
Fielding a question at the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) annual conference, Ruddock appeared equivocal on the issue of strengthening vilification legislation to stop repeat offenders.
“In broad measure, our view has been that education should be preferred,” he said in response to ECAJ treasurer Sam Salcman, who asked Ruddock what remedies could be added to the religious and racial vilification laws to stop recurring offenders such as Dr Fredrick Toben, who continues to publish vilification material on his Adelaide Institute website.
In 2002, the ECAJ won a landmark case against Dr Toben and his associate, Tasmanian pamphleteer Olga Scully, ordering Dr Toben to purge his website of material that vilifies the Jewish community and Scully to cease distributing antisemitic pamphlets.
However, both individuals have since defied the Federal Court of Australia’s ruling without suffering any legal consequences.
Ruddock had earlier said that legal action against the antisemitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, allegedly supplied by the Saudi Arabian Embassy for distribution through Australian Islamic organisations, was available through the new federal Sedition Act.
In his address, Ruddock said people mistakenly looked at “the dictionary definition of sedition” when criticizing the provisions of the new law but gave assurances that they were not therte to stifle criticism, rather to counter incitements to violence against Australians.
Ruddock, who addressed the ECAJ on the climate of terrorism, said that at least 10,000 recruits worldwide had gone to Afghanistan to train with al-Qaeda.-----------------
Fredrick Töben comments
1. The Federal Court of Australia (FCA) case before Justice C Branson was a ‘summary judgment’ case because I could not find am attorney to help me defend myself against the various allegations. I did not contest the matter because I would have had no chance to match the professionalism of legal counsel Stephen Rothman, SC, who appeared on behalf of Jeremy Jones. Rothman is now a FCA judge.
2. After the judgment was handed down I deleted ALL the website’s contents, and began again – in good faith - attempting to abide by the court ruling.
3. I consider the incessant ‘Holocaust’ propaganda that Jewish and non-Jewish interest groups are pushing into the world, is outright defamatory of Germans because it vilifies Germans and spreads hatred against Germans.
4. The Iranian president’s 8 December 2005 comment doubting that the Holocaust happened, is a sign that this incessant hatred propaganda against Germans may be ending.
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Where is Scully? Letter s to Editor, AJN, 23 December 2005.
I was the person who asked the 0045ecutive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) to take on the case against Olga Scully and who collected all the evidence over 10 years until the case was successfully completed by the ECAJ’s lawyers. The way I collected the evidence was easy: hundreds of people who received material would contact me to seek advice what to do with it or about it and of course invariably I collected it from their homes or they delivered it to my home.
Although initially it looked like Scully may ignore her conviction and continue her activities it very soon became apparent that she had turned her attention to another area, namely her theory of a John Howard conspiracy to kill 35 people at the Port Arthur site in Tasmania and her vehement opposition to vaccinations.
I have not received one phone call since
her conviction to tell me she had continued or reactivated her antisemitic and Holocaust denial activities. Therefore I wonder where your reporter got his information that Scully has “since defied the Federal Court of Australia’s ruling without suffering any legal consequences”.
Gershon Goldsteen, Launceston, Tasmania
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Behind bars, but liberals defend Irving
Ian Traynor in Vienna
November 28, 2005, Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/austria/article/0,,1652355,00.html
Behind the neo-gothic town hall in the heart of Vienna sits the Josefstadt jail. This large prison, attached to the city's main criminal court, is a constant cause of complaint from the well-heeled burghers of the district, who would prefer to see the low life accommodated elsewhere.
Now the 1,200 inmates have been joined by an infamous foreigner; David Irving will be confined to a Josefstadt cell over Christmas and the New Year, pending trial on criminal charges deriving from his discredited views on the history of the second world war.
"He's totally fine there, quite comfortable. He has no problems with the other prisoners," said Elmar Kresbach, Irving's lawyer. "He speaks perfect German. He told me, 'I'm patient, I'm writing, I'm reading.'" Irving, the controversial British historian and Nazi apologist, stands accused of denying the Holocaust happened, a criminal offence in Austria. He was barred from the country but, an inveterate risk-taker, he flew from London to Basle in Switzerland this month, rented a car and drove to Vienna.
The idea was to meet up with a bunch of student radicals from an extreme right fraternity. Their hobbies include dressing up in funny clothes and little pillbox caps, then drawing blood by slashing one another's cheeks in fencing duels. They've been at it since Bismarck's day.
According to Mr Kresbach, Irving smelt a rat in the shape of Austrian plainclothes police after a chat with the student leaders in a Vienna coffee house. He headed south to Graz and was stopped by motorway police on the return journey to Vienna. As a result, this morning he is sitting in Josefstadt.
The Austrian police have tape recordings and 60 pages of transcripts of two speeches Irving delivered in Austria in November 1989 and a newspaper interview he gave at the time.
The Guardian has a copy of the indictment which cites copiously from the speeches Irving made in 1989. "There were no extermination camps in the Third Reich," he declared. "Is it not time once and for all to put an end to this fairy tale of the gas chambers." Adolf Hitler "held out his hands to protect the Jews", and knew nothing of the Final Solution. Thirty thousand people were murdered at Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland - as opposed to the accepted figure of 1.5 million. After the war, the Poles fabricated the gas chamber evidence at Auschwitz to match the "fantasies" of survivors. The billions paid in reparations after the war by Germany to the state of Israel were unwarranted. "That is, of course, embarrassing. It was all a huge swindle ... Why does the German people let itself be slandered thus?"
The arguments advanced may be contemptible. But are they criminal? Is the prosecution of Irving justified, or is the looming jury trial and the prospect of a 10-year jail term if found guilty an assault on free speech?
These are some of the questions being asked here. "Dragging fools and falsifiers of history before a court is unworthy of a liberal democracy today," said Christian Fleck, president of Austria's association of sociologists.
In a long commentary in the liberal Standard newspaper, he noted that the Irving case was particularly ill-judged when contrasted with Austria's poor record in apprehending ageing war crimes suspects living in the country.
The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem reckons there are more than 40 Nazi suspects still alive in Austria and complains that Austria has the worst of records in dealing with this issue.
In Britain last week, Lord Greville Janner of the Holocaust Educational Trust applauded the Austrians for arresting Irving. But Austrian liberals beg to differ. While despising Irving for his views, they defend the 67-year-old's right to express them.
Separate from the Irving case, Mr Kresbach, his lawyer, argues that the ban on Nazi revivalism under which Irving is being prosecuted is outdated. The ban was promulgated in 1947 and last amended in 1992.
"This is the only country in the world with this kind of banning law. It's very broad and very harsh. It was necessary back then to clean house legally and politically. But there's no longer any danger of a Hitlerite putsch. Any fool should be able to say what he wants. We don't need a thought police," said Mr Kresbach.
Dozens of cases are heard every year in Austria, resulting in an annual average of 35 convictions for questioning or belittling the horrors of the Nazi era. The Germans, Poles and French also have laws penalising Holocaust denial, though they are not as draconian as in Austria.
Defenders of the free speech curbs argue that demeaning or denying the suffering of the millions of Hitler's victims still needs to be outlawed as the victims are unable to challenge the falsifiers.
Whether Irving is still the Holocaust denier so clear from the 1989 speeches may emerge in court in Vienna in January. That he is guilty as charged is inarguable, his lawyer admits. But it is the outdated law that is the problem.
But if Irving, according to the verdict, is a racist, an anti-Semite, and a wilful twister of the historical record, is he also now a martyr to free speech?
Irving will plead guilty before a Vienna jury, then show repentance, argue he is a changed man, and hope for leniency from the judge. And given the attention it is attracting, the case could have a wider impact, resulting in a public debate and reform of the anti-Nazi laws.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
©-free 2005 Adelaide Institute
