rednordman
3rd February 2009, 15:12
Recently, I have begun to take notice of how the far-right on particular subjects responds to accusations against them. The most prominent example of this is that of holocaust denial. When people condemn them for denying it ever happened, they come back with a rather determined confident response. This is usually along the lines of you cannot handle the truth or even go further on and blame society as a whole: people just cannot accept that the Nazis where not as bad as they have been taught and they where actually the good guys fighting communism (the real enemy in their eyes) and then finish of with their favourite: the world just cannot accept the truth, and want to believe the lie at people are equal and deserve to be treated the same.
There are quite a lot of these sorts of things, and sure to us they sound totally ridiculous, but what kind of responses to we have to this. I do sometimes worry that this kind of resilience though totally wrong, could give the far-right an almost unquestionable pedestal to place their arguments on as they will always use stuff such as crime statistics and education results to try and breed a collective consciousness of intolerance and race hatred. This could then pave way for the so-called far-right intellectuals such as David Irving to be taken credibly, which could be a disaster.
Funnily enough, it was reading on his wiki page about him getting axed from a Norwegian arts festival that got me thinking about this topic:
In October 2008 a controversy erupted in Norway over David Irving's invitation to The Norwegian Festival of Literature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Festival_of_Literature) taking place between 2631 May 2009 in Lillehammer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer). The festival is the largest literature festival in the Nordic countries. Several of the country's most distinguished authors protested the invitation. (see article on Festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Festival_of_Literature#David_Irving_cont roversy) for details)
In a matter of days after the controversy had started, the invitation was withdrawn. This led author Stig Sterbakken (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stig_S%C3%A6terbakken), who had invited Irving, to resign from his position as director of program content for the festival in protest of the decision. The head of the festival, Randi Skeie, deplored what had taken place, stating "Everything is fine as long as everyone agrees, but things get more difficult when one doesn't like the views being put forward Link - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Snubbed_by_Norwegian_arts_festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Snubbed_by_Norwegian_arts_festival))
Ive bolded the bottom end of the quote for a reason. Though they are not directly defending Nazism and holocaust denial, they are doing more harm than good by criticizing the decision, as in my view they are showing a very light sympathy with Mr. Irving. Obviously, by banning him they where enticing people to say things like mentioned at the start of the post, but if he was allowed to express his opinion at the festival, and people didnt like it, I just get the feeling that a lot of his supporters would still come out and state that they just cannot handle the truth etc.
I would guess that these particular occurrences would have been discussed in the no-platform post that was on this forum not so long ago, but I believe that either way it will not solve the problem or stop the far-right from spreading hate if they can always use the appropriate responses to defend themselves.
What are your thoughts and do you think that there is a big danger of revisionism getting taken seriously because it is seen in some corners as being 'daring' and 'anti-pc' and some cases even philosophical? Im not totally aware of the public perception of such things at the current moment. I just imagine that it would not be taken seriously but am not that sure. Around 20 years ago, such revisionism would have been ripped apart, but nowadays, i seem to be seeing more and more people falling for the altered 'it didnt actually happen this way' response to the traditional hammerings that they would get for such claims.
There are quite a lot of these sorts of things, and sure to us they sound totally ridiculous, but what kind of responses to we have to this. I do sometimes worry that this kind of resilience though totally wrong, could give the far-right an almost unquestionable pedestal to place their arguments on as they will always use stuff such as crime statistics and education results to try and breed a collective consciousness of intolerance and race hatred. This could then pave way for the so-called far-right intellectuals such as David Irving to be taken credibly, which could be a disaster.
Funnily enough, it was reading on his wiki page about him getting axed from a Norwegian arts festival that got me thinking about this topic:
In October 2008 a controversy erupted in Norway over David Irving's invitation to The Norwegian Festival of Literature (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Festival_of_Literature) taking place between 2631 May 2009 in Lillehammer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer). The festival is the largest literature festival in the Nordic countries. Several of the country's most distinguished authors protested the invitation. (see article on Festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Festival_of_Literature#David_Irving_cont roversy) for details)
In a matter of days after the controversy had started, the invitation was withdrawn. This led author Stig Sterbakken (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stig_S%C3%A6terbakken), who had invited Irving, to resign from his position as director of program content for the festival in protest of the decision. The head of the festival, Randi Skeie, deplored what had taken place, stating "Everything is fine as long as everyone agrees, but things get more difficult when one doesn't like the views being put forward Link - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Snubbed_by_Norwegian_arts_festival (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#Snubbed_by_Norwegian_arts_festival))
Ive bolded the bottom end of the quote for a reason. Though they are not directly defending Nazism and holocaust denial, they are doing more harm than good by criticizing the decision, as in my view they are showing a very light sympathy with Mr. Irving. Obviously, by banning him they where enticing people to say things like mentioned at the start of the post, but if he was allowed to express his opinion at the festival, and people didnt like it, I just get the feeling that a lot of his supporters would still come out and state that they just cannot handle the truth etc.
I would guess that these particular occurrences would have been discussed in the no-platform post that was on this forum not so long ago, but I believe that either way it will not solve the problem or stop the far-right from spreading hate if they can always use the appropriate responses to defend themselves.
What are your thoughts and do you think that there is a big danger of revisionism getting taken seriously because it is seen in some corners as being 'daring' and 'anti-pc' and some cases even philosophical? Im not totally aware of the public perception of such things at the current moment. I just imagine that it would not be taken seriously but am not that sure. Around 20 years ago, such revisionism would have been ripped apart, but nowadays, i seem to be seeing more and more people falling for the altered 'it didnt actually happen this way' response to the traditional hammerings that they would get for such claims.