Blaming the Victims

<body> <body bgcolor=#FFFFFF text=#4F2809> <P><FONT SIZE=4><B>   t u r n i n g   t h e   t a b l e s</B></FONT> <P>Several of the websites make the assertion that some of the people in Stalin's regime who perpetrated atrocities were Jewish. Directly stated or strongly implied is this line of thinking: if anyone Jewish anywhere at anytime was involved in perpetrating an atrocity, then in some way that fact undercuts the validity of the Holocaust or the powerful claim that it has on our attention. This example points in the direction of another pattern of manipulation in some of the sites that deny the Holocaust. <P>What happens in turning the tables is simple: the victims are transformed into perpetrators and the perpetrators are redeemed as victims. There's a flip-flop, in which the good guys become bad guys and the bad guys become good guys. Here are two examples: <P><table width=350> <tr><td><img src="sct_imgs/spacer.gif" width=50 height=1></td> <td><font color="#7F4C39" size=3>From "Introduction," The Zionist Terror Network, Institute for Historical Review <P>This booklet documents the background and criminal activities of Jewish Zionist terrorist groups, and especially the Jewish Defense League. Particular emphasis is given here to terror--including murder--against "thought criminals" who question the Holocaust story that six million Jews were systematically killed during the Second World War. <P>Zionist terrorists openly proclaim an arrogant Jewish-supremacist ideology and acknowledge their readiness to use violence against those who disagree with them. With a well-documented record of bigotry and crime, they pose a serious danger to our society, and to men and women everywhere who treasure freedom. <P align=right><i>http://ihr.org/books/ztn.html</i> <P>Institute for Historical Review <P>US Army investigators, working at Buchenwald and other camps, quickly ascertained what was common knowledge among veteran inmates: that the worst offenders, the cruelest denizens of the camps, were not the guards but the prisoners themselves. Common criminals of the same stripe as those who populate US prisons today committed many villainies, particularly when they held positions of authority, and fanatical Communists, highly organized to combat their many political enemies among the inmates, eliminated their foes with Stalinist ruthlessness. <P align=right><i>http://ihr.org/leaflets/liberationofthecamps.html</i></td></tr> </table> <P>It is important to understand that this is not historical thinking. Once again, there are no footnotes, no trail leading to facts, no evidence cited. No case carefully constructed. No scholarship or indication of clear, impartial thinking, no analysis. A "well-documented record" is mentioned but never backed up. We're left with just statements. Rather than being History, this is polemic, emotional assertions. In the end, it is difficult to see most of this type of writing as more than antisemitism. The appeal here is not to reason. It is to hate. </body>