Questioning the Thought Police in the Ministry of Truth
E-mail from Bobby Garner to subscriber list
Is Middle East history revision, including the 'Holocaust' ready to go
mainstream?
It has long been noted that history is written by the victor, so we are
not surprised that revision of history is a popular activity. For
example new discoveries can upset long standing historical accounts
indicating that specific changes are needed however, this will almost
certainly cause considerable division. When the victor of a war turns
out to be oppressive, it often becomes clear that its his version of
history that
justifies his oppression, and because oppression is universally
abhorred, there is a strong desire to rewrite that history.
Why is history so important?
British historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) wrote: “History is indeed
little more than the register of crimes,
follies and misfortunes of mankind.” Adding his own modern perspective,
Murray J. Edelman wrote in Politics as Symbolic Action (1971):
"Political history is largely an
account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to
cope with mythical fears and hopes." Dionysius of Halicarnassus
believed that “History is philosophy teaching by example.”, but if
thats true, we have been extremely poor students. While Adolf Hitler
expressed the belief that "The victor will never be asked if he told
the truth." President Harry S. Truman suspected that history was not
recorded truthfully: "There is nothing new in the world except the
history you do
not
know."
About the same time, George Orwell noted that “what is peculiar
to our own age is the abandonment of
the idea that history could be told truthfully.” There is
growing evidence that the age of which Orwell wrote is upon us. In his
dystopian novel
1984 (1949)
he wrote about the Ministry
of Truth
"which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the
fine arts." This would necessarily include history. The concern was to
insure that each of these things conformed to one of the three slogans "WAR IS PEACE",
"FREEDOM IS SLAVERY",
and "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH".
In practice, what we have is a combination of peer pressure applied
through such phenomena as Political Correctness (PC), a
propaganda machine run by the mass media, and new laws making
once normal behavior a punishable crime. Community Policing
(COPS) is the enforcement agency for these crimes. The definition of
crime itself
has been expanded to include many formerly harmless activities such as
writing, speaking, livestock farming, shooting a sick dog, shooting an
intruder,
strangling a cat, smoking, riding a bike without a helmet or in a car
without a seatbelt, driving without insurance and dozens of things
where there is no injured party, and no lose has been incurred. At the
same time, many formerly criminal acts have been sanctioned including
abortion, sodomy and gambling for example.
We saw the institution of "Hate Crimes", where already offensive
criminal actions were expanded to include hate, usually involving race
or gender issues. If 1st degree murder is punishable by law with a
maximum punishment of death or life in prison, what is gained by adding
hate to the charge? Was hate not already evident? Of course it
was, but the
difference is one of jurisdiction. First degree murder is a crime in
every state, but a Hate Crime is a crime not against the victim, but a
crime against humanity. All of humanity claims an injury for a
criminal act involving hate such as the theft of Gay Pride flag or
writing graffiti on
a wall.
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS
death.” — George Orwell
Hate crime is determined on the basis of ones thoughts. Being alert to
hate crime is the function of the Thought Police
especially before it happens.
Proactive and Preemptive Prevention of crime means that legal
action is begun before a crime has even been committed. Sting
operations are one variant where the sting sets up and coordinates a
crime which otherwise would likely not have happened. Preemption means
that
someone can be prosecuted on no more than suspicion and purely
circumstantial evidence, and often on the strength of nothing more than
a "complaint" and/or accusation from a busybody neighbor. Indeed many
people are
presently wasting away in prison cells for no more than being
suspected, accused and convicted of some such crime. Popular Public
Opinion is
routinely nurtured in the news media with rhetoric and call in poles to
prepare the people
for a guilty verdict.
Many countries have made laws forbidding the publication of views
contrary to official positions. The government has decided on behalf of
the people and no debate is tolerated. Such is the case in Germany and
to a lessor extent in other countries. Germany claims global
jurisdiction, and other nations have honored that claim by allowing
extradiction of authors and public speakers who publish their
disagreement with the official version of the Holocaust. Not even
former President Jimmy Carter is exempt.
Lady Renouf calls it JailingOpinions.
She reports on Dr. Fredrick Töben's recent release from a British jail.
Toben was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant issued by German
authorities who wanted to try him in Mannheim District Court.
Australian academic Dr. Fredrick Töben had been held in
London’s
Wandsworth Prison since his arrest at Heathrow Airport on 1st October.
Though not accused of any offence against English law, he was detained
under a European Arrest Warrant issued by the German authorities, who
sought to put him on trial in Mannheim District Court for the “crime”
of publishing historical source critical opinions on the internet.
Lady Renouf has made an interesting observation:
The sudden halt to the extradition process against Dr.
Töben has already prompted diverse commentators, including the Jewish Chronicle and Jerusalem Post,
to call for revisionism to be combated in the classroom rather than
the
courtroom. Dr. Töben and his fellow scholars, freed from the
Damoclean
shadow of 21st century German “justice”, stand ready to take open
debate of historical truth onto this new front.
The Jewish Chronicle believes that Denial
is not a criminal matter (Oct. 30, 2008): "Legislating against
deniers of the Holocaust is part of a dangerous trend."
The Jerusalem Post in Rethinking
Prosecution of Holocaust denial (Nov.5, 2008) comments: "It
may now be timely to rethink the merits of criminalizing Holocaust
denial."
Earlier on August 25th, I notified my readers in an E-mail
that the CFR in a favorable review of a new book by Benny Morris, was
calling for the "discounting of all the propaganda of the intervening
60 years" relating to Israel's existence in the Middle East.
I have now posted a collection of three reviews of 1948:
A History of the First Arab-Israeli War
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