David Duke (R) attends Iranian Holocaust Conference.

[cali]

That certainly puts the stamp of legitimacy on this event. The eminent historian and Louisiana politician spoke to the atendees today about his dedication to hate speech- oops, I meant free speech.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-12-11T085515Z_01_L11639597_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAN-HOLOCAUST.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C3-worldNews-3

[achtung_circus]

1. Come see who debates using facts, and who debates on wishes.

Real Open Debate on the Holocaust.

http://p102.ezboard.com/brodohforum



The wing nuts always seem to default to hatred.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

13. There's some really disturbing shit on that board. n/t

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[trumad]

3. suspicious? You've got to be kidding me.

So I guess you're suspicious about the moon landing to?

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[trumad]

7. No one has ever questioned if the moon landing happened..

Sure they have and they were labeled as idiots.

My question to you is---are you really suspicious the holocaust didn't happen?

[cali]

9. What hysteria?

You seem to be confusing hysteria with condemnation. They're two entirely different things.

[Warren Stupidity]

10. The holocaust happened.

There really was an attempt to eliminate Jews from Europe (and Gypsies and assorted other undesireable groups.)

That said, there is of course nothing wrong with airing the evidence in open and honest debate. No issue should be immune to critical examination. I am not afraid of a holocaust inquiry as it will reveal that the crimes committed were enormous and that it could all happen again. Truth has nothing to fear. The deniers will not have truth and reason on their side, they will not have credible evidence, they will not have solid arguments. They will quibble about irrelevancies, about numbers and rates and methods all the while confirming the broad details.

The Iranian president has a valid point concerning using the holocaust as justification for the establishment of Israel: in effect Arabs were punished for the sins of Europeans. When he conflates that with the idiocy of holocaust denial he defeats his own argument.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15. What If David Duke Initiated A Conference On Slavery

Not to deny it but to argue it was a benign institution.

[The Magistrate]

16. That Point, Sir, Is Less Valid Than It Appears

As Arab Nationalist leaders throughout the Near East openly sided with the Nazis, both before and during the Second World War. The peak of this was the "Golden Square" coup in Iraq in the spring of 1941, leading to several months hard fighting with England. The open collaboration of the Mufti al'Husseini with Hitler is very well known. While there was not a good deal of material benefit to the Reich through this alliance of the Arab Nationalists, it certainly affected the political situation after the war, much to the detriment of the Arab position regarding Palestine: very few people in positions of power were much inclined to listen to arguments put forward by surviving allies of the Nazis.

[endarkenment]

19. Oh please spare me that. nonsense.

Were the arabs shipping jews to europe for extermination? How many extermination camps did the arabs set up?

[The Magistrate]

20. The Alliance Is A Fact, Sir

If that fact is inconvenient to your preferences and attitudes regarding the Near East in the present day, that is unfortunate from your point of view, but unavoidable if the matter is to be considered with an eye towards what actually occured. It remains an uncontested fact that Arab Nationalist leadership did what it could to provide assistance to the Reich in the thirties and early forties of the last century, and that their help proved of little benefit in the event does not alter that. The item is of importance only because of the influence it had on the political climate in the period of the Palestine partition, when most every government in Europe was in the hands of people who had been active in underground or Soviet-sponored resistance to the Nazis. Such people had little patience with persons who had collaborated with the Reich.

[endarkenment]

21. The item is of importance simply

because it is the one miserable shred of justification for taking arab lands to pay for european crimes. Europe was at the time littered with governments filled with folks who collaborated with nazis, from Russia to France, or people who while on the other side did nothing to prevent the holocaust.

[The Magistrate]

25. Not In The Least, Sir

It was a decisive element of the political situation after the Second World War. Your characterization of governments in Europe at the time is simply false: not even Stalin, on the evidence of the Pact of '39, could be properly characterized as a real collaborator by the post-war period, and nowhere in Europe were active collaborators seriously involved in government, though doubtless some survived in local office and in police agencies. The idea anyone in power among the Allied governments could have somehow stopped the Hitlerite exterminations during the war as they were being carried out is simply nonesense, though it does seem a popular idea among the sort of people who seem to have some constitutional difficulty in holding people who actually do something responsible for their actions. When the Arab Nationalists of Palestine and elsewhere pressed their arguments against the Partition, everyone who heard them knew they were listening to people who had enthusiastically collaborated with the Reich, and discounted the words accordingly, so that arguements which might have been considered weighty if pressed by men with clean hands went disregarded.

[Yavin4]

22. We've Already Had A Critical Examination

It was called Nuremburg.

[Warren Stupidity]

28. The point is that there is nothing to fear from

such a conference. Either it will be an open examination of the evidence and will conclude that of course it happened pretty much as described, or it will be a farce and totally discredit its hosts. There is no downside. Claiming that the topic cannot even be discussed is silly and lends support to the bogus claims of the deniers.

[alarimer]

12. The hysteria is called anti-semitism

That is all the "debate" is about. Take a goddamn look at the photos and you will see there is no need for debate.

I personally do not get why people continue to deny it happened, pretty much as laid out in the "final solution"- which happens to be well-documented.

[TexasProgresive]

4. My father was in one of the advanced units that

liberated several "death camps." He and many of the other witnesses to this horror or dead or very elderly. Without living eye witnesses the nay sayers will have more and more strength in their lies.

BTW - My Dad was mildly anti-Semitic. But he sure would get angry at these Holocaust deniers.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cali]

8. This isn't about open debate

and there is no "if" regarding whether it happened. You're naive to believe that "If it happened the way we think it did then the debate is not going to be able to find anything different." People with an agenda are more than open to twisting facts and out and out lying. And speaking of lies, you're repeating one, on purpose or inadvertently, when you state; "If it happened the way we think it did then the debate is not going to be able to find anything different." The Holocaust has been as extensively and openly studied as any event in history. The evidence that it happened is massively overwhelming.

Holocaust denial is an ugly thing. Although I don't agree with the laws in Germany, you managed to mischaracterize them.

The conference in Iran is not about free speech. You may not be aware of it, but Iran has very little of that. Read the official Iranian sites about this conference, and you'd realize that it's about attempting to discredit a documented historical catastrophe to further a political agenda. As I said ugly stuff.

As for your suspicions about whether the Holocaust actually happened as documented, with that attitude, you're not long for DU. The administration isn't fond of Holocaust deniers. Me, I'll chock your disturbing post up to abysmal ignorance, and hope you educate yourself, but there's no guarantee someone else reading your post won't simply hit alert.

[chemenger]

6. David Duke is a terrorist

and should not be let back into this country.

But he will be though ... he doesn't fit the profile.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. "U.S. academic David Duke"?

How on earth has Reuters managed to call Duke an 'academic'? The nearest I can find for that is this:

In 2003 Duke was sentenced to fifteen months in a Texas prison for tax and mail fraud--bilking his supporters out of thousands of dollars, much of which he is rumored to have spent on liquor-sodden nights at casinos and strip clubs. With most of his credibility (such as it was) destroyed by the time of his release, Duke has repositioned himself as a crusader against the "Jewish supremacist" money-power. While explicit anti-Semitism did little to restore his audience in the United States, it has proved to be a hit overseas.

Duke's book, Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question, is selling like cheap vodka on the streets of Moscow. In 2005 Ukraine's largest private university, the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management (MAUP), awarded Duke an honorary doctorate for his thesis, "Zionism as a Form of Ethnic Supremacism." Today, he claims to teach an international relations and history course at the 50,000-student school, which, until recently, included President Viktor Yuschenko on its board of directors. Duke has also been airlifted by a Muslim charity to lecture in Bahrain and appeared in Damascus, Syria, to deliver a public address blaming the "Zionist media" for hyping the war in Iraq. While even many American white nationalists remain suspicious of Duke's motives, he is an international sensation.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060410/blumenthal

So how come he's an 'academic', and not 'convicted fraudster'?

[Ishoutandscream2]

17. Yeah, "academic" David Duke

There's that librul media for ya.

[fujiyama]

29. I just noticed that

WTF is Reuters smoking?

[Freddie Stubbs]

18. Hopefull he stays there

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

23. Let the bombing of Louisiana commence.

No, wait! Iran! I mean Iran!

[ftr23532]

24. The far-Rightists and Islamists have extensive ties

and Duke is http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64385-2002Apr28?language=printer">far from the only one http://fortherecordessays.blogspot.com/2006/11/part-3-down-al-taqwa-rabbit-hole-so_11.html">working this "circuit".

[Donald Ian Rankin]

26. Holocaust denial is an important right to protect.

Having ones pronouncements on that or any other subject taken seriously, on the other hand, isn't.

[slackmaster]

27. The scary thing is, he might turn out to be a "voice of reason"

Truth is stranger than The Onion.

[geek tragedy]

30. How would David Duke be a "voice of reason?"

I gotta hear this.

[LynneSin]

31. So I'm curious, was Mel Gibson's dad there?

He's a notorious denier of the Holocaust