Eric Hunt recants - Conspiracy theories

[EtienneSC]

This continues my review of Eric Hunt's (EH) January 2017 essay "The End of the Line" on why he rejects revisionism (see links below).

On the subject of "conspiracy theories, I think EH is basically right. He writes:

A key flaw is the intertwining of “Holocaust Denial” with other “Conspiracy theories”, some often quite absurd. To a large extent, those involved with believing gassings were a hoax also believe in a multitude of increasingly bizarre “conspiracy theories.” Not only minor figures or followers but more importantly leading figures.

This is correct about several revisionist authors. To give some main instances: Jürgen Graf in White World Awake (2016) accepts the 9/11 Truth theory that the WTO skyscrapers would not have collapsed after Muslim fanatics flew planes into them. Graf also criticizes Darwin's theory of evolution, but in a measured way, given that he is talking about education and not in a revisionist book. Gerard Menuhin in Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil (2015) also accepts some kind of 9/11 conspiracy, describing how the owner of the buildings was not in that day (insinuating prior knowledge on his part) and later claimed excessive insurance. Some of these passages are a diatribe. Nick Kollerstrom in Breaking the Spell (2015) puts his similar views on the 7/7 bombings in London into his book.

These books contain a good deal of accurate information and analysis, but the inclusion of the authors' other views detracts from my sense of their judgment. It seems like they are predisposed to doubt "official" stories. Often this is done in an inappropriately mocking tone. In the case of the latter two, this material has been introduced in the Holocaust Handbooks series, which is the leading source of authoritative revisionist writing in English. This has to count against holocaust revisionism in general.

EH writes about Jim Fetzer (who wrote a preface to Kollerstrom's book):

One would be hard pressed to find someone, anyone, especially as outspoken, in a leadership role in the “truther” community, that believes in more conspiracy theories than James Fetzer. You have the standard and minor ones – 9/11, JFK, Moon Landing – hoax, Sandy Hook, even Senator Paul Wellstone – assassinated. It’s hard to find a conspiracy theory this guy doesn’t believe. Incredibly, Fetzer even still actually promotes the obviously untrue psychedelic-era urban legend that The Beatles’s Paul McCartney died in a car crash and was replaced by a body double.

Here again, if this is true, it is a black mark against the Holocaust Handbooks series and its editorial policies. Not everything EH says is beyond criticism. He writes:

Ernst Zundel also wrote about Nazi UFOs, secret Nazi polar bases and Hollow Earth theories. It appears he came to the wrong conclusions about all of these things. His methods regarding all of these subjects were and are faulty. Zundel claims he did the esoteric stuff for fun, but this is rightly used as a mark against him being a pure truth teller.

Here I think EH simply leaves no room for humor and overstates his case. His remarks about Fred Leuchter are also inconsequential.

The problem affects both the merit of the scholarship and creates a problem in disseminating it, as it can be discredited by association.

This sort of thing seems to be mainly an American/English problem. As far as I know, it is not so prevalent in French or Italian revisionist works, or German ones (though Germar Rudolf who edits the Holocaust Handbooks, is German). It sometimes happens that people from one culture cannot assess the credibility of people from another, through cultural unfamiliarity. Perhaps that is a contributing factor.

EH's original article ("The End of the Line") is here:
http://questioningtheholocaust.com/index.php/2017/01/27/the-end-of-the-line/
There is an archived copy here:
http://archive.is/DoGTn

[Hannover]

This reminds me of the uninformed who think Hitler was the worst human being ever and invoke his name whenever arguing about & against someone, something they do not like, aka: argumentum ad Hitlerum.

One could then assert, 'Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore all vegetarians are genocidal murderers.'
Or, 'J. Graf disputes the official government 9/11 conspiracy theory, therefore his research which debunks the ''holocaust' is not to be believed.'

IOW, the illogical arguments in the OP are an intended distraction and unrelated to the 'holocaust' narrative as alleged.
After all, that is the new, compromised, desperate Eric Hunt speaking.

- Hannover

Dare to examine the absurd & laughable 'holocaust' storyline rationally, logically, scientifically and it falls apart like the house-of-cards that it is.

[Hektor]

The term "conspiracy theory" got various meanings and uses nowadays.

1. Neutrally conspiracy theory refers to a narrative or explanation of events for which there is no or very little real hard evidence. This may involve secret societies, undercover activities or other things that are/were kept hidden from the public.

2. Polemically "conspiracy theory" is used as a label to discredit a model of explanation of events.


The second tries to invoke the weak evidence association of the first meaning of course.

In case of the Holocaust this is quite rich to claim that "Holocaust Deniers" (meaning Revisionists) are "conspiracy theorists", implying that there is lots of hard evidence for the Holocaust core claims, which Revisionists ignore or attribute to a conspiracy of forgers, while at the same time ignoring that there is indeed agenda driven Holocaust promotion by various agencies of governments and civil society groups, which requires organization and planning.

The irony is that the Holocaust assertion itself works like a conspiracy theory, while on the one hand Holocaustians claim that there is "heaps of evidence", but will insist that the Nazis made it vanish, when ask for something that corroborates the claims. That line of argument also exploits on wide ignorance on what the body of evidence relating to the subject is, which includes NS-policies on Jews as well as documentation and artifacts relating to the concentration camps. What helps the Holocaust lobbyists as well is the fact that capacity to do logical analysis of complex facts is a relatively rare skill and using it can be quite labor-some. So they always can count on the ignorance and gullibility of the masses, when anything else fails.

[hermod]

No surprise. When someone was able to see through the Holo-scam, he/she's no longer able to accept unsuspectingly all the state 'truths' sold to him/her by mainstream media and academia. Normal reaction, IMO. I call caution and open-mindedness what EH calls belief "in a multitude of increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories." Excessive caution and open-mindedness in some instances, but still caution and open-mindedness nevertheless if I'm asked.

In case of the Holocaust this is quite rich to claim that "Holocaust Deniers" (meaning Revisionists) are "conspiracy theorists", implying that there is lots of hard evidence for the Holocaust core claims, which Revisionists ignore or attribute to a conspiracy of forgers, while at the same time ignoring that there is indeed agenda driven Holocaust promotion by various agencies of governments and civil society groups, which requires organization and planning.

The irony is that the Holocaust assertion itself works like a conspiracy theory, while on the one hand Holocaustians claim that there is "heaps of evidence", but will insist that the Nazis made it vanish, when ask for something that corroborates the claims. That line of argument also exploits on wide ignorance on what the body of evidence relating to the subject is, which includes NS-policies on Jews as well as documentation and artifacts relating to the concentration camps. What helps the Holocaust lobbyists as well is the fact that capacity to do logical analysis of complex facts is a relatively rare skill and using it can be quite labor-some. So they always can count on the ignorance and gullibility of the masses, when anything else fails.

True. One should know and keep in mind the fact that the terms "Nazi conspirators" and "Nazi conspiracy [to exterminate the Jews, to trigger a second world war, to commit all sorts of crimes, etc.]" were recurring buzzwords, real gimmicks, at the IMT in Nuremberg.

The Soviet-Allied "prosecutors" were of course in Nuremberg primarily to whitewash their own countries of any guilt in the very damaging WW2. To achieve that, they used the old principle of propaganda that says "the guilty is the satanic and the satanic is the guilty" (see the pic below). Accordingly, they insisted heavily on the ill-founded assertion that the alleged Nazi conspiracy to exterminate the Jews (the satanic's misdeed) was a part of the alleged Nazi conspiracy to start wars of aggression (the guilty's misdeed), i.e. that the ‘Holocaust’ supposedly proved that the Nazis were guilty of causing WW2.


https://s25.postimg.org/sh6fqf44f/Holoc ... _First.jpg

The 'Holocaust' itself, not Holocaust revisionism, is a conspiracy theory, according to the original narrative of its own fabricators and advocates !! Later, its advocates moved to another conspiracy theory that everybody was aware of it but did nothing to stop it. But the Nuremberg Holo-scam narrative was that the 'Holocaust' had been a Top Secret conspiracy plotted by a small circle of dead [or missing] leaders, concealed behind cynical code words and euphemisms, implemented by a limited number of murderers in remote places, and physically erased by special cremation units afterwards. But fortunately, the Nazi mass murderers had, Holo-advocates claim(ed), inexplicably left big piles of emaciated corpses in their last operational German concentration camps so that everyone can see their Top Secret 'Holocaust' with his/her own eyes.

[PotPie]

I didn't read all of that but a few things jumped out at me:

1) There are kooky conspiracy theorists in every movement. That doesn't mean the movement itself they belong to is invalid due to that. Some migrate in trying to make money or to push a political agenda.

2) If gassings such as Auschwitz are true, what is the need for the endless parade of false witnesses, kangaroo courts, and confessions under coercion and torture? I've studied Auschwitz-Birkenau in detail and I came out disgusted at how many mainstream holocaust books are citing garbage testimonies that not only contradict themselves and each other, but also surviving camp records.

3) We have contradictive population figures of European Jewry for that time span, so how do we know how many we should be looking for? As someone descended from a family that was scattered after the war, I can say from personal experience that if it wasn't for the internet, I'd have thought more of my relatives were killed by the Communists than actually were. I found relatives from different parts of the US and Western Australia, Germany, and Austria. Imagine how much more difficult family reunions would be if they were separated by the Iron Curtain for decades and lacking access to modern technology or perhaps dying of old age or disease before that tech became available.. Family reunions aren't as simple as Hunt is describing, especially in territorially-vast, historically unfree countries that lack infrastructure.

4) Civilians were caught in the middle of a massive, ruthless war against two powers. Unquestionably, women, children, and the elderly would be most at risk in such a situation. I'm not aware of any attempt at tallying the deaths of those caught in the crossfire. How could such a thing be undertaken? How about those evacuated into the Soviet interior before the German advance?

5) I've not seen indications that anyone other than holocaust revisionists are interested in looking at archives in Russia and other eastern European countries for the fate of people that are not suspected to have been murdered by the National Socialist regime and how deaths at the hand of Marxist regimes may reflect on the war's overall death count.

6) Hunt seems to be conflating all massacres with the claimed "final solution." Nobody is denying war crimes and massacres.

7) Yes, lots of ethnic Germans - including myself - are revisionists. Germans have been deprived of a voice on the war, a right to grieve, and a right to question since 1945. Germans have also been subject to 70+ years of manipulative propaganda by invoking Hitler as an ideological weapon to browbeat them into submission. Germans have been deprived of their pride, their identity, their right to nationhood and even their right to exist as a people. Now that we have the internet and more free inquiry, people of German descent want to know more about what happened in the war and they want as much information as they can get. Thus, many come here. I myself was very resistant to disbelieving in mass gassings but after months of study of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I could believe no more. Disbelief went against my upbringing but I let the belief go in face of what I discovered. People of European descent as a whole are now subject to these types of selective outrages and manipulative historical narratives geared toward mass coercion. We need them ALL questioning what they're being taught.

[Kingfisher]

Some subsequent posters are missing EtienneSC's point which is that Holocaust revisionism has become associated in the public mind with a bunch of other issues which are generally regarded as kooky. Whether they really are kooky or not is beside the point, which is that each of these issues must stand or fall on their own merits. Nick Kollerstrom, for example, does appear to believe in just about every alternative theory going whether about 911, astrology, gardening by the moon phase or fake Paul. On the other hand he has a written is serious analysis of the London bombings which while I am not convinced by it does make a strong case and goes into in-depth investigation which no one else has done.

Speaking on a personal level I find good reason to be suspicious of some aspects of the official version of quite a number of historical events, but I do not rush from suspicions to conclusions and I keep them in separate mental compartments and recognize that for the most part on most of them I just don't know. This is the essence of critical thinking the willingness to accept one's own lack of knowledge.

But to get back to the original poster's point. We would not be here on this forum if we were not people who by instinct ask questions so it is normal that we are asking questions about topics other than the Holocaust. The danger is of making the implied requirement on those we are trying to convince about the Holocaust that they must also accept suspicions or even certainties about other issues to the point where the one becomes almost dependent on the other to be accepted as a package.

Your doubts about the Holocaust may lead you to have doubts about other things. But one issue at a time if you seriously want to try to convince others.

[Hektor]

No surprise. ....
True. One should know and keep in mind the fact that the terms "Nazi conspirators" and "Nazi conspiracy [to exterminate the Jews, to trigger a second world war, to commit all sorts of crimes, etc.]" were recurring buzzwords, real gimmicks, at the IMT in Nuremberg.

The Soviet-Allied "prosecutors" were of course in Nuremberg primarily to whitewash their own countries of any guilt in the very damaging WW2. To achieve that, they used the old principle of propaganda that says "the guilty is the satanic and the satanic is the guilty" (see the pic below). Accordingly, they insisted heavily on the ill-founded assertion that the alleged Nazi conspiracy to exterminate the Jews (the satanic's misdeed) was a part of the alleged Nazi conspiracy to start wars of aggression (the guilty's misdeed), i.e. that the ‘Holocaust’ supposedly proved that the Nazis were guilty of causing WW2.
...

One should indeed make a text analysis of the Nuremberg trial records searching for words like conspiracy, conspiring, etc.
I just recall "conspiracy against peace" as one of the buzzword. Is there anything in the line of "conspiracy to exterminate Jews" or something?

[Lysander_Spooner]

After all the Wikileaks revelations, particularly the Vault 7 stuff, how can anyone NOT believe that all the tin-foil hat wearers were right after all? "Conspiracy theory" is just deceptive word-play, and it always has been. A lot more people today know that our world is, at present, run by Satanists and pedophiles. They lie about EVERYTHING.

[hermod]

One should indeed make a text analysis of the Nuremberg trial records searching for words like conspiracy, conspiring, etc.
I just recall "conspiracy against peace" as one of the buzzword. Is there anything in the line of "conspiracy to exterminate Jews" or something?

The alleged conspiracy to exterminate the Jews was part of the prosecutors' so-called "conspiracy to commit Crimes against Humanity."

"Implementing their master race policy, the conspirators joined in a program of relentless persecution of the Jews, designed to exterminate them. [...] Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators." - Trial of the major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Vol. I, Indictment, p. 33-34.

Below are some quotes supporting my earlier statement that the alleged conspiracy to exterminate the Jews was integrated with the prosecutors' so-called "conspiracy to wage aggressive war" (the demonstration of which was, of course, the primary aim of the Soviet-Allied victors) in order to strengthen the latter.

"the defendants with divers other persons are guilty [...] of a conspiracy to commit Crimes against Humanity in the course of preparation for war and in the course of prosecution of war" - Trial of the major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Vol. I, Indictment, p. 41.

"It was contended for the Prosecution that certain aspects of this anti-Semitic policy were connected with the plans for aggressive war. [...] It was further said that the connection of the anti-Semitic policy with aggressive war was not limited to economic matters." - Trial of the major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Vol. I, Judgment, p. 249 (https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law ... _Vol-I.pdf)

A search for "conspir" gives 379 hits in this volume alone !!

[hermod]

I'm always amazed to see that so many people still use the label "conspiracy theorist(s)" now it's known that this label was coined by the CIA in order to silence those who dared to challenge the findings of the Warren Commission about Lee Harvey Oswald as a 'lone nut' (see the now-declassified CIA memo "Countering Criticism of the Warren Report").


https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

Professor Miller suggests that an attempt was orchestrated by the CIA and their friends in the media to soil the phrase 'conspiracy theorist' with connotations of craziness, noting that since 1980 it has taken on an almost purely pejorative connotation, as if the official narrative is never mistaken or mendacious. As Miller notes, the reverse was assumed to be true in the public discourse only a century or so back; distrust of authority used to be very common place, and formed the backdrop of a lot of political negotiations and some for the laws passed in USA. Conspiracy was formerly understood to be a potent force.[1]

Nowadays however, the label 'conspiracy theorist' has become an ad hominem attack used on those with opinions which threaten the powers that be, as if anyone harboring such thoughts can be safely dismissed as a victim of irrational paranoia, possibly even mentally unbalanced or dangerous. The commercially-controlled media clearly have a commercial interest in casting suspicion on anyone whose primary source of information is elsewhere as inherently suspect, so it is easy to see why they might wish to repeatedly lump together patently absurd ideas together with well-founded doubts about the official narrative under a single label:'conspiracy theory'.

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Conspiracy_theory

As far as I'm concerned, I find the belief & assertion that nothing is a conspiracy (a very widespread contention among the advocates of official state-sponsored theories such as the 'Holocaust') at least as unsound, deceptive and delusional as the belief & assertion that everything is a conspiracy.

[Hektor]

One should indeed make a text analysis of the Nuremberg trial records searching for words like conspiracy, conspiring, etc.
I just recall "conspiracy against peace" as one of the buzzword. Is there anything in the line of "conspiracy to exterminate Jews" or something?

The alleged conspiracy to exterminate the Jews was part of the prosecutors' so-called "conspiracy to commit Crimes against Humanity."

"Implementing their master race policy, the conspirators joined in a program of relentless persecution of the Jews, designed to exterminate them. [...] Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under Nazi domination, it is conservatively estimated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators." - Trial of the major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Vol. I, Indictment, p. 33-34.

Below are some quotes supporting my earlier statement that the alleged conspiracy to exterminate the Jews was integrated with the prosecutors' so-called "conspiracy to wage aggressive war" (the demonstration of which was, of course, the primary aim of the Soviet-Allied victors) in order to strengthen the latter.

"the defendants with divers other persons are guilty [...] of a conspiracy to commit Crimes against Humanity in the course of preparation for war and in the course of prosecution of war" - Trial of the major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Vol. I, Indictment, p. 41.

"It was contended for the Prosecution that certain aspects of this anti-Semitic policy were connected with the plans for aggressive war. [...] It was further said that the connection of the anti-Semitic policy with aggressive war was not limited to economic matters." - Trial of the major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Vol. I, Judgment, p. 249 (https://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law ... _Vol-I.pdf)

A search for "conspir" gives 379 hits in this volume alone !!

Thanks. Indeed interesting the use of the conspiracy related words for "physical annihilation of Jews". But that was before the term "conspiracy theory" was getting some bad rep and negative stereotyping.

[hermod]

Thanks. Indeed interesting the use of the conspiracy related words for "physical annihilation of Jews". But that was before the term "conspiracy theory" was getting some bad rep and negative stereotyping.

Still a good answer to any Holohoaxer or aggressive Zionist troll calling you a conspiracy theorist.

Hasbara Cyber-Warrior: Anyway, all Holocaust deniers are nothing but delusional conspiracy theorists.

Holocaust revisionist: "5,700,000 [European Jews] have disappeared, most of them deliberately put to death by the Nazi conspirators." - Indictment of the Nuremberg 'trials.'

Nazi conspirators?!? Who's the conspiracy theorist now?

[3 days of silence]

Holocaust revisionist: HCW? Are you still with us?

[More silence]

[Proofs please]

It's the holocaust that is the conspiracy theory by definition.

[hdog]

This continues my review of Eric Hunt's (EH) January 2017 essay "The End of the Line" on why he rejects revisionism (see links below).

On the subject of "conspiracy theories, I think EH is basically right. He writes:

A key flaw is the intertwining of “Holocaust Denial” with other “Conspiracy theories”, some often quite absurd. To a large extent, those involved with believing gassings were a hoax also believe in a multitude of increasingly bizarre “conspiracy theories.” Not only minor figures or followers but more importantly leading figures.

This is correct about several revisionist authors. To give some main instances: Jürgen Graf in White World Awake (2016) accepts the 9/11 Truth theory that the WTO skyscrapers would not have collapsed after Muslim fanatics flew planes into them.

Confucius said the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name. The official theory regarding 9/11 is a conspiracy theory. To say the WTC buildings were not destroyed (as anyone can see they did not merely collapse) gravitationally is a scientific argument, not a conspiracy theory. Likewise, to say the single bullet theory regarding the JFK assassination is impossible is not a conspiracy theory. By contrast ,the official Holocaust narrative is a conspiracy theory. I don't dismiss it because it involves a conspiracy, I dismiss it because it's impossible.

Conspiracy theory is a meaningless, intellectually dishonest political term. It's not surprising that a coward like Hunt would try to play that card.

[hermod]

During 5 decades, the orthodox narrative of the Holocaust conspiracy theory claimed that the 'Holocaust' had been "one of the Reich's top secrets" shared only by a handful of people during the war.


https://postimg.org/image/hj7rdhiu3/


https://postimg.org/image/qjccxoexn/

Then the orthodox narrative of the Holocaust conspiracy theory claimed that the 'Holocaust' had been known by some authorities but that "the information was suppressed during the war years" for political purposes.


https://postimg.org/image/f4fvt22l7/

A little later, it was claimed that the 'Holocaust' was known by everyone but not believed because of the lies spread by Allied propagandists during WW1.


https://postimg.org/image/bm3vwo1p7/
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