Ron Unz has come out as a Holocaust denier in this article.
No surprise there, we've already pointed out the signs before.
I'll just comment on a few factual points.
Unz is obsessed with folks allegedly not mentioning the Holocaust. There is no logical argument here, so this shows the irrationality of his denial.
See here on the memoirs of Churchill et al., it's a common denier meme.
Unz then complains about the historians not paying much attention to Milch's Jewish roots. The argument is of course sheer nonsense since Milch's exception doesn't somehow disprove the rule.
He doesn't fail to mention Rigg's book about Hitler's "Jewish" soldiers. Actually the absolute majority were not Jewish by the Nazi laws, but Mischlinge ("mongrels"). The majority of the "half-Jews" were dismissed from the Wehrmacht in 1940.
No surprise there, we've already pointed out the signs before.
I'll just comment on a few factual points.
Unz is obsessed with folks allegedly not mentioning the Holocaust. There is no logical argument here, so this shows the irrationality of his denial.
See here on the memoirs of Churchill et al., it's a common denier meme.
Unz then complains about the historians not paying much attention to Milch's Jewish roots. The argument is of course sheer nonsense since Milch's exception doesn't somehow disprove the rule.
He doesn't fail to mention Rigg's book about Hitler's "Jewish" soldiers. Actually the absolute majority were not Jewish by the Nazi laws, but Mischlinge ("mongrels"). The majority of the "half-Jews" were dismissed from the Wehrmacht in 1940.
Here are some citations from the book Lives of Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military:
The reader will therefore not find it surprising that the Nazis deported countless converted parents, grandparents, and other relatives of the Mischlinge documented in this study to Hitler’s death camps, even though, as Martin Gilbert wrote, “tens of thousands of German Jews were not Jews at all in their own eyes.”Unz then complains that some authors do not extensively examine the Nazi myth of the Jewish Bolshevism. Well, what do you know, Unz actually accepts this myth.
[...]
People often ask, “How could those affected by these laws serve?” Most Mischlinge served because they were drafted by the Wehrmacht, which, until 1940, required half-Jews to serve. However, they could not become NCOs or officers without Hitler’s personal approval.
In April 1940 Hitler decided to order the discharge of half-Jews from the armed forces because their presence created problems. Many came home after the Poland campaign in 1939 to find that the authorities had severely persecuted their relatives. Hitler did not want to protect Jewish parents and grandparents because of the service of their children and grandchildren, so he discharged the half-Jewish soldiers. Many, however, remained on active duty, with exemptions from Hitler or because they had hidden their Jewish ancestry. Also, several stayed with their units for months after this discharge order, due to the war with Norway in April and the invasion of France in May 1940, which slowed the bureaucratic process of discharging them.
The authorities did not widely enforce this discharge order until late summer 1940, and even then, many officers ignored it. In addition, the search for half-Jews in the service often consisted solely of requiring soldiers to sign ancestry declarations stating they were not Jews. Many Mischlinge signed this statement in good faith, since they were not Jews according to their understanding. Others just lied and remained with their units. Known half-Jews who had won combat medals or battlefield promotions could apply for an exemption from the racial laws, enabling them to remain in the Wehrmacht because of their valor. Thousands submitted applications. Even before 1940 several half-Jewish officers had received exemptions from Hitler and obtained high ranks.
The military also drafted quarter-Jews. Unlike the half-Jews, they had to serve throughout the entire war. Yet they, like their half-Jewish counterparts, could not become NCOs or officers without Hitler’s approval.
[...]
The passionate patriotism felt by many Mischlinge is ironic. When drafted, most thought it their duty to obey, even though the Nazis persecuted them and their families. As half-Jew Dieter Bergman said, “I loved my Fatherland, and most half-Jews I knew all believed they were fulfilling their duty to Germany. We loved Germany and wanted to see her become great again. Unfortunately, we were lied to and were abused by the very country we held so dear.” Nazi policy toward Mischlinge gradually worsened and pushed them toward the world of the Holocaust.
Hitler refused to use these patriotic citizens to help win the war. This demonstrates how Hitler valued racial purity over military victory.
[...]
Hitler had discharged tens of thousands of half-Jews from military service by late 1942, when Germany encountered severe setbacks at Stalingrad. He could have recalled these men, and most would have fought bravely. Did Hitler have nothing better to do at the height of the battle of Stalingrad than to examine applications from Mischlinge to see if they were worthy of Aryanization? Only he could grant such an exemption, since he believed only he, like God, could discern a person’s true racial makeup. Hitler’s racial policies turned most Mischlinge against him and his government. The majority of them looked forward to the day of Hitler’s demise. Krüger admitted that had Hitler not discriminated against him, he probably would have become a Nazi. When asked why, he simply explained how difficult it is today for people to understand how attractive the movement was to young men. In front of “the evil goals of the Nazis stood the wonderful activities for young men of camping, war games, and community. It all just felt so good.”
He even repeats Putin's ignorant claim about 80-85% of the first Soviet government having been Jewish and mentions Robert Wilton.
Too bad that Putin's claim is pure bunk because there was only 1 Jew in the first Soviet government, Trotsky. Official pic of the first Soviet government with the official list:
Putin relied on no other than Robert Wilton (most likely indirectly, though Andrey Dikiy), who was a known fraud who simply made up his lists. Those will be the subject of a more detailed study, but it will suffice to mention for the time being that he made up non-existent commissariats and lied about non-Jewish commissars being Jews, to wit: Lurye-Larin was never a commissar; Shlikhter was fully non-Jewish (German and Polish ancestry); Karl Lander came from a family of Latvian peasants; no "Kaufman", "Spitsberg" or "Lilina" has ever been a commissar; Shmidt was an ethnic German; Zinoviev was Jewish but never a commissar; no "hygiene" commissariat ever existed; Anvelt was an ethnic Estonian; Volodarski and Uritski Jewish but never SNK commissars; Shteinberg indeed Jewish, albeit not a Bolshevik; no "refugee" commissariat existed. So much for Wilton and Putin.
In between his Holocaust denial rants Unz takes some time to go full neo-Nazi, to wit:
Anyone who reads serious history books knows that Jews have generally enjoyed a reputation for producing many of the world’s greatest swindlers and frauds, hardly surprising given their notorious tendency to lie and dissemble.
[...]
But combine them together with the relatively tiny size of worldwide Jewry, around 16 million prior to World War II, and the inescapable conclusion is that in per capita terms Jews were the greatest mass-murderers of the twentieth century, holding that unfortunate distinction by an enormous margin and with no other nationality coming even remotely close. And yet, by the astonishing alchemy of Hollywood, the greatest killers of the last one hundred years have somehow been transmuted into being seen as the greatest victims, a transformation so seemingly implausible that future generations will surely be left gasping in awe.Unz complains about some Holocaust fakes - obviously, every huge and significant events produces those, only a primitive mind would claim that those prove anything. Extensively addressed here.
He also repeats the debunked Auschwitz death toll canard:
...sudden reduction in the official Holocaust body-count by 3 million has had so little impact...In fact he liked it so much, that he repeated that debunked nonsense twice:
Indeed, so much space was devoted to those issues that he was forced to entirely skip over the official reduction of the Auschwitz body-count by 3 million just a few years earlier, thus avoiding any need to explain why this large shift had had no impact on the canonical Holocaust figure of Six Million.The Holocaust body count was not reduced since Communists did not claim all those 4 million were Jews in the first place. Most deniers fail at basic math, and Unz is not an exception.
Unz promotes the hoaxer Butz, who denied the extremely documented deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz basically for the sole reason that he couldn't explain where most of them went afterwards. Needless to say, the modern denier gurus like Mattogno and Graf accept these deportations (though they are just as at a loss to explain the fate of the 320,000 Jews not selected for work and not registered in the camp).
Unz promotes the fraud Sanning, fully debunked here, and Fred Leuchter, a proven liar.
Unz promotes the hapless liar Faurisson, whose lies have been documented here in French and here in English. Here's a small demonstration of Fauri's level of "scholarship".
Unz mentions the denier claims about the Anne Frank diary, forgetting to mention that they were decisively refuted by a full forensic testing of the diary.
He repeats the usual denier nonsense about Anne's fate. Actually she fell ill with typhus only in Belsen, in Auschwitz she was not sent to the gas chamber since she was old enough and thus could join the slave lavor pool. Scabies were not a reason for a gassing at that time.
Unz promotes the proven liar Irving, without bothering to address the evidence that he's a liar.
He also promotes Rudolf, fraudulently calling him a "Dr." despite him not having a PhD (his chemical nonsense is debunked here, among other places).
Unz promotes Kollerstrom,, who repeatedly and shamelessly lied about the Red Cross report, as shown here and here. And through him Unz regurgitates the denier meme about the British decodes, debunked here.
He then reveals his absolute ignorance and cluelessness by saying he was shocked to learn the well-known and uncontroversial fact that Zyklon B was a delousing agent.
One would think he would blame his ignorance on himself, but hey, that's "personal responsibility" for you.
However, as an outsider exploring this contentious topic I think it far more likely than not that the standard Holocaust narrative is at least substantially false, and quite possibly, almost entirely so.Well, no surprises there.
Too bad it is completely based on lies, as we've already seen.
And, being a neo-Nazi that he is, he adds this cherry on top of his pyramid of lies:
Then one day, a gust of wind came along, and the entire gigantic structure collapsed. I wouldn’t be surprised if our current Holocaust narrative eventually suffers that same fate, perhaps with unfortunate consequences for those too closely associated with having maintained it.So much for Unz, who has repeated the most low-brow denier arguments (and never even mentioned the most "academic" denier). He has failed not only at basic history (that's a given), but even at basic denial.