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Originally Posted by v3d4
my objection to such discussion is that there is no clear objective place to draw the line between what is or isnt as it appears. maybe the moon landings were fake. maybe the holocaust never happened. we can make up speculative skepticism about anything: maybe the war in mexico is a hoax. maybe the unrest and hunger in africa is a clever deception to drain charity dollars from well meanig ppl for some other less noble purpose. maybe katrina never really happened but was the cover story for racist ethnic cleansing. at some point it just becomes silly
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This is also, unfortunately, the trouble with looking at history in a very black and white, two dimensional manner; in reality history is a very complex web of narratives, some mainstream, some not, and most of what is not mainstream, or even considered taboo is actually acknowledged by mainstream scholars in academic circles but simply never given any mainstream coverage in schools or the corporate media.
For example, you mentioned the holocaust. The holocaust represents the ultimate blurry line between traditional history and revisionist history. You may be surprised to learn that even mainstream historians are "holocaust revisionists" in the "taboo" sense of the word. Every single holocaust scholar is in agreement, at this point, that there were
no homicidal gas chambers in any of the camps inside Germany, such as Dachau and Buchenwald. Never mind that one of the US propaganda films, created at the end of the war, states: "Dachau: Factory of Horrors. Each prisoner was instructed to undress and fooled into believing they were going to take a shower, for which soap and towels were provided." Many former US soldiers, as well as survivors, still speak of "gassings" at the Dachau and Buchenwald camps, even though it is no longer held than any gas chambers functioned at those camps. It is now claimed that only the camps in Poland (occupied by the Soviet Union after the war) had homicidal gas chambers, and even these have been called into
serious question, the most famous of the doubters being Jewish himself - David Cole. Now THAT is interesting!
It is also a well known fact that in 1989, upon the fall of communism in Poland, that the official Auschwitz death toll (displayed on a plaque in many languages) was officially revised from 4 million to 1.5 million.
The old figure: 4 million
The new figure: 1.5 million
It is also universally acknowledged among mainstream historians that victims were never turned into soap and lampshades as I was originally taught as a child. Why would the Allies have exaggerated the Nazis' crimes if they were already so awful? (No one denies that people were shot, starved etc.) Various groups with their own agendas (WWII Victors, Zionists, etc.) would have had their own reasons to tweak the already inhumane events under Naziism. The well known film, Night and Fog, produced in the early 50's, claimed that 9 million died at Auschwitz and that victims were turned into lampshades and soap. I was shown that film in high school and took every word as gospel. Later, after looking at the "revisionist" history, I realized that Night and Fog is well manufactured propaganda.
Anyway, this is a major side track but my point is that history is a very multi-dimensional thing, and when we look at it extremely 2-dimensionally, we do ourselves a disservice, as do the angry people who equate questioning the veracity of the murder weapon (gas chamber) with ridiculous hyperbole like "the holocaust never happened."