On Nate Phelps and "Leaving Hate Behind"

[The purpose of this post is mainly catharsis on my part, and I'm writing it in the full knowledge that describing my emotional reactions to some else's suffering is a self-indulgent frippery.]

As the final item on the schedule of this year's QED convention, Nate Phelps spoke about his childhood in the Westboro Baptist Church, and the series of "aha moments" he has experienced both while living under his father's rules, and since leaving home. It is an intensely moving story, told with great humanity and not without humour; his family are the butt of many scornful jokes, but his explanation of the often ridiculous inconsistencies in their interpretation of the bible are entirely without hate or derision.

I listened, unable to cry but full of tears and saturated with anger, sadness and impotence. It took every effort not to shout "Stop!" not at the speaker but at the past. All that mattered for much of that hour was pausing the story, removing the characters from this setting which was so desperately wrong, and setting the plot on a different course. And there was fear too - a plummeting sense of futility - once I realised when I'd last experienced the same feelings.

For several months last spring and summer, I did an internship at the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire. There is an exhibition there and a memorial garden, but its main work is as a venue for survivors of the Holocaust to talk to school groups about their experiences. While there, I sat in on two of these talks, neither of which will ever quite leave me.

There is a sad and inevitable shift in Holocaust education and remembrance approaching as the number of living survivors decreases. It was pointed out by (I think) both speakers that the children present were realistically the last generation who would be able to listen to a Holocaust survivor in person. There is a great deal of work being done to record survivor testimony in order to give as close an approximation of this experience as possible to future generations, and this work is very important. However, no digital recreation could ever have the same emotional effect as being in a room with someone who is reliving, for you, the darkest episodes of their life.

My feeling on finishing the internship was gratitude that I had been given this opportunity, but also a sense that I could put a lid on those paralysing feelings. I assumed that unless I deliberately looked for an emotional response from myself, humanity's darkest episode* could become an increasingly distant (but nevertheless essential) object of study.

Nate Phelps has proven me wrong. Through his calm, measured explanation of his experiences, told with gut-wrenching self-control, he drew for his audience a picture, the essence of which was the same as that of the survivors' stories. They are stories of children forced to adapt to a situation in which family and community life was disrupted and destroyed by incomprehensible forces of hatred and blind, uncompromising conviction. They are also stories of survival, which show the deep scars which inhumanity leaves on those it doesn't kill, but also show what "leaving hatred behind" actually involves.

The fear I felt today was caused by realising that the "event" I dread the repetition of is not one massive occurrence which exists only in the past. I realised that there will always be an inexhaustible supply of "survivors"; incredible people who will retell and so relive everything that they want to forget, because we need to understand that their humanity was not stamped out. Every day, whether by individuals, groups, or whole nations, future survivors are being created through hatred, misplaced faith, indifference and inaction. The crimes and tragedies which create them will look very different, the scale will vary enormously, and comparisons will often seem sensationalist and distasteful, but the basic units will be the same; individual lives marked by violence, fear and a complete loss of self, where there should have been love, trust and hope.

I've thanked all three speakers for speaking, but couldn't explain that I was thanking them for making me feel this anger, sadness, impotence and fear. I couldn't possibly explain to someone's face how grateful I am to them for surviving not once, but every time they tell their story. I couldn't thank them for the way they carry their pain or the way they rebuilt themselves and their lives according to models they were never given but had to find for themselves. It seems such an inadequate, self-serving thing to do to say that they are an inspiration to someone who hasn't suffered at all.

I'm going to push all of this down again tomorrow, and get back to my thesis-writing and strategic cynicism and all the rest of it. But when I start to forget what's really important, I'll be forever grateful to have three borrowed memories to remind me, the newest of which is of a little boy being beaten by his father for refusing to hate enough.


*As many people view it, and it is a perfectly valid description in many ways. It's not the way I'd  describe the Holocaust when speaking as a researcher, but this is my gut reaction.

Eight Signs of a Bogus Historical Narrative

On Saturday afternoon, as an attendee of the QED convention in Manchester, I sat through a panel discussion entitled "Is Science the New Religion?". At least, it was intended to be a four-way discussion. Despite the moderator's best efforts, it quite quickly deteriorated into an exasperated and highly entertaining bun-fight between the journalist who made the opening statement (which he has posted as a "speech" here) and the comedian and critical-thinking promoter Robin Ince (who has blogged about the exchange here).

I spent the time playing "Bullshit Narrative Bingo" as the journalist obligingly ran through nearly every one of the tell-tale signs of a bogus fall-from-grace story. These red flags are the narrative tricks I look for whenever I suspect that someone is seeking to rail against the current state of affairs, but knows absolutely nothing about how, when or why it came about, or what can be done to change it. I thought I'd share my observations, because these are useful indications of Bad History, in the same way that incomplete or misinterpreted statistics are indications of Bad Science.

My notes are rather sketchy, and I don't wish to misrepresent the journalist's arguments (much of the fun happened when he was asked to elaborate on the points made in his opening statement) but here are the items I ticked off, and the examples I wrote down at the time. Hopefully, there will be an official recording or transcript available, at which point I will amend anything which I have reported incorrectly.

1. A "look how far we've come" introduction, establishing the speaker's credentials as a lover of the right kind of progress. In this case, it is the gradual extension of voting rights to people who were not considered to have specialised knowledge; In the past, working men and all women were excluded from the political process because it was assumed they did not have the intellectual capacity for it. Nothing to disagree with here, but for an opener, it was suspiciously unrelated to the question.

2. Assumption of novelty, without recourse to actual facts. The argument seemed to be that politicians nowadays lack the moral confidence to argue for their preferred course of action, and so are looking to scientific authority instead (I think this was when the smoking ban was mentioned as an example of when scientific arguments trumped moral ones). In fact, medical research and scientific developments were used by politicians back in the Victorian era and almost certainly earlier.

3. Description of a previously unbroken tradition. I can't remember if the number given was 2000 or 3000 years of politics being driven by morality and a sense of responsibility, but either way, this would be something of an oversimplification. Quite often in a bogus narrative, it is the 1950s which is described as the pinnacle of any such trend, and therefore as a golden age destroyed by the excesses of the 1960s. Which brings us to...

4. Call for a return to a more 'natural', 'traditional' or 'healthy' state. When asked, repeatedly for some indication of what scientists should do instead, one of the answers given was, "We need a healthy public space". I have no idea what this means, exactly, but who could possibly argue against health of any kind?

5. Magic keywords. Pro-tip: If you feel that your argument is looking a little thin in places, or that your audience may have forgotten that you're on the Right Side, sprinkle in some references to undeniably positive qualities such as "individual freedom" and "moral autonomy", even though these have little to do with the matter being discussed.

6. Unsubstantiated turning point. My recollection of this part is hazy, as there was a lot of grumbling, shouting and laughter from the audience and the argument seemed too ridiculous for anyone to make... but I think it was argued that since the 1970s, we've stopped pushing for economic growth because we've prioritised science-led environmental concerns instead. There may also have been something about a recent hatred of industrialisation around the same time because 'science' makes us worry about public health? In any case, the golden age of responsible, morality-based politics at some point changed to the current technocratic tyranny. Evidence for when and how this is supposed to have come about was not provided.

7. Ignoring other, obvious factors. In this case, I was surprised that nobody mentioned the development of the environmental movement, which is not known for having completely overlapping aims with all scientists.

8. Accusations.Veiled (or not) suggestion that the other side's argument is very like racism. From what I can remember, arguing that politicians should understand the probable impact of their policies (and gain this understanding via solid, scientifically-tested research) was compared to the introduction of tests designed to exclude minority voters in the American South. Understandably, this did not go down well.

All of this means that the only thing preventing me from shouting "house" was a lack of mention of the Nazis, and a reference to "authoritarian governments since Labour", combined with the racism comparison, came pretty damn close.

___

For some further reflection on the panel: http://geekdom.daphshez.com/2013/04/i-went-to-manchester-and-all-i-got-you.html

A long-overdue follow-up

...to my post back in April about David Cameron's utterly infuriating immigration speech. This one's over on my history blog because it includes a quote from the olden days and a picture of Frederick the Great.

One of the benefits of disorganisation...

...is that sometimes it saves you from having to retract a hasty post.

I was going to blog about this Observer article earlier today, under a title along the lines of "Government significantly improves the relevance of my research into the pressures placed on Third Reich academics". The gist of the article is that the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) had been coerced into making research on the "Big Society" a priority, in order to secure funding. If true this would be utterly reprehensible, starting universities down a path to becoming little more than Conservative Party think tanks (as if that wasn't enough of a problem already).

As it happens, the AHRC has issued a statement rebutting the claims. Their position is that there was a pre-existing programme of research into a related area, and that although any conclusions from this now have increased relevance to current government policy, funding for individual research will continue to be decided by peer review based on its quality:

The AHRC has been working for over two years, since 2008, with four other research councils, on the Connected Communities Research Programme which has been developed through extensive – and continuing – consultation with researchers. At the core of this Programme is research to understand the changing nature of communities in their historical and cultural contexts, and the value of communities in sustaining and enhancing our quality of life. These issues are serious and of major concern. They also happen to be relevant to debates about the ‘Big Society’ which came two years later. To imply that these important areas for investigation constitute a government-directed research programme is false.

I'm not prepared to breathe too huge a sigh of relief. As Iain Pears explained in an excellent piece earlier this month, there are still plenty of reasons to be concerned about the preservation of independence in academic research. Even if this particular claim turns out to be unfounded, there still remain other hoops that applicants for funding need to jump through, including proving the 'impact' of the work (particularly difficult to prove when the research hasn't been done yet and won't be read by anyone for another four years). With so little funding now available, there is an enormous amount of pressure to make proposed research sound as relevant and economically beneficial as possible.*

What I have been seeing in my own research (funded by the AHRC) into historians and non-fiction publishing in the Third Reich, is that censorship and suppression were by no means the only ways by which Nazi ideology gained respectability as areas of academic consensus. Funding was made available for researchers to find evidence for and 'prove' the regime's foregone conclusions. By shifting the focus of research in a few small ways, academics in all manner of fields - from anthropology to Ancient Greek archaeology - could retain their status and funding, meaning that even the most seemingly apolitical papers would lend their support to the regime, and to its main goal of creating a "people's" or "racial" community (Volksgemeinschaft) in which all Germans would work together to reverse Germany's social degeneration.

Godwin's Law makes it tricky to invoke a comparison with the Nazis and still be taken seriously, and I'm wary of sounding more than a little hysterical in my concluding sentence. The fact is that every time I hear "Broken Britain" and "Big Society", I'm reminded of the ongoing debate about the role of the Volksgemeinschaft ideal in securing support for the Nazi regime, and this latest suggestion of academic meddling rang all too true as a result.


*It's difficult to say that in a way that makes it clear why this is not a good thing. Basically, if the benefits of the research are that obvious from the outset, there are chances of funding from private sources. AHRC funding should be for projects which fill a gap in current research, the impact of which we won't necessarily know until it's been completed (and will be tricky to quantify even then).

EDIT: Iain Pears has posted more on this topic today: http://boonery.blogspot.com/2011/03/ahrc-observer-and-mr-haldanes-principle.html

If an infinite number of historians...

I've been trying to catch up with podcasts from the skeptical community, and something in the latest* Righteous Indignation niggled at me for slightly the wrong reasons. It was an item on the proposed revisions to social studies textbooks in Texas, and this was the end of host Trystan Swale's bit:

George Orwell, of 1984 fame, famously said that, “He who controls the present, controls the past. And he who controls the past, controls the future.” Of course there are rational people on the state education board fighting these changes, and any insidious changes will be slow and creeping, but this is one of the reasons why I think that the continual promotion of the ideas of the Enlightenment and scientific reasoning, and investigation into bullshitters and snake-oil salesmen needs to continue through vehicles such as this tremendous podcast. Rewriting history to agree with your rhetoric to me is morally bankrupt and intellectually bankrupt, and ironic coming from a religion that lays claim to moral superiority.

While I agree that the proposed changes to the curriculum are clearly an act of politically-motivated revisionism, and could have a very negative effect on the quality of education, I can sense an underlying assumption on the part of the podcasters here which needs to be examined. This is the assumption that there is a 'correct' version of history, which should be found in all textbooks. In other words, that there is a fixed benchmark against which the accuracy of the information in these books can be measured.

Sorry to go all postmodern on yo' asses, but there isn't. Or at least, it's not as fixed and clear as you might hope. Yes, if a book states that the American War of Independence was started in 1509 by a secret society of Welsh feminist trumpet players, it can be pretty conclusively disproven with reference to a vast body of archival evidence. On the other hand, when it comes to assessing which factions of revolutionaries deserve the most credit for victory, and the creation of the United States... there is no 'fact' to be uncovered, just a mass of different interpretations to be weighed up. If this sounds like I'm working up to the line “teach the controversy”, it's probably because I am. But I'd like it taught well.

When 'science' is taught, it is really the scientific method which is being learned. Ok, you get some facts like the structure of cells, or that some stuff floats, but wherever possible this is not taken out of a book, but demonstrated practically. Even better, the kids perform the experiment themselves and discuss their findings (before being told what it was they did wrong). 'Science' is not a static, monolithic thing you can memorise for an exam. It's a system, an engine, constantly adding new knowledge to the pool, or designating previously held 'truths' to be false.

History is the same. The idea of kids learning 'history' from a single textbook, or even a limited selection of textbooks, fills me with horror. History is not a 'story' to be learned by heart and recited. History does not, strictly speaking, exist to be learned. What can be learned is the discipline of history, the methodology of historians, and – as a basic starting point – some of the main things that the majority of historians would consider to be accurate: key events, dates, and actors; probable causes and consequences; aspects of everyday life at different times – whatever gives the lessons some substance, and interest. This should be done, at all levels, via proper engagement with sources (not just texts), examination of locations and artefacts where possible, and the development of critical thinking skills. Something like:

“Right kids, based on this information about French and English weaponry and on the location of the armies, who do you think won the battle of Agincourt? Discuss it in groups for a bit; your homework is to find out the answer – and remember to double check with at least two different books! Next week, we'll discuss a little how historians define one side as 'the winner'.”

What should emerge from this is a sense that history isn't something which is remembered and preserved down the ages, but something which is constantly being pieced together, reshaped and reinterpreted by new information or different methods of analysis. The most useful thing which can emerge is the knowledge that everyone, however well-intentioned, 'rewrites' history, and that statements along the lines of “x was our past, therefore y should be our future” are always total hogswash.

*Second to last, i.e. episode 49. I'm a slow proof-reader.

Soapocalypse.

Hang on a sec, Dettol. When I do go and "touch a germy soap pump", it tends to be just before I wash my hands. With the soap from the dispenser. Are you telling me your soap alone isn't good enough to protect me from the hazards of your packaging, hence the need for your otherwise pointless motion-sensing gadget?

I'm sorry to say that modern advertisers, however hard they try, will never match the glorious efforts of a hundred years ago: www.vintageadbrowser.com

Cameron wants a return to narrative history in schools. I don't.

David Cameron has pointed out that the BNP "are not pleasant people". Well done him. On the other hand, the same Q&A session brought up this:

A mother raised the issue of her two children not knowing what it was to be British because they did not learn history at school.

Mr Cameron said: “It is one of the great betrayals of school children that we have swept away with narrative history.

“We should be proud of what we have achieved as a country. Teaching people about the British Empire does not mean covering up the bad things that happened. It means having an honest explanation about the good and the bad.”

Now, I'm seriously contemplating a whole academic career of looking at narrative history and the problems it throws up, especially when it's the main way that history is spoon-fed to children, and especially when one of the aims is to "be proud of what we have achieved as a country". Naturally it would be unthinkable to cover the history of the British Empire without bringing up "the bad things that happened", but simply covering the negative sides isn't necessarily enough.

I'm currently reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which has some brilliant observations about the way in which atrocities can be trivialised or brushed over, even when the events are described accurately (very long quote coming up, but it didn't seem fair to cut it down):

Samuel Eliot Morison, the Harvard historian, was the most distinguished writer on Columbus, the author of a multi-volume biography, and was himself a sailor who retraced Columbus’s route across the Atlantic. In his popular book Christopher Columbus, Mariner, written in 1954, he tells about the enslavement and the killing: “The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.”

That is one page, buried halfway into the telling of a grand romance. [...]
One can lie outright about the past. Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions. Morison does neither. He refuses to lie about Columbus. He does not omit the story of mass murder; indeed he describes it with the harshest word one can use: genocide.
But he does something else - he mentions the truth quickly and goes on to other things more important to him. Outright lying or quiet omission takes the risk of discovery which, when made, might arouse the reader to rebel against the writer. To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: yes, mass murder took place, but it’s not that important - it should weigh very little in out final judgements; it should affect very little what we do in the world.
It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others, This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographical information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map.
My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the mapmaker’s distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economical or political or racial or national or sexual.
Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in the way a mapmaker’s technical interest is obvious (“This is a Mercator projection for long-range navigation - for short-range, you’d better use a different projection”). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had a common interest which historians serve to the best of their ability. This is not an intentional deception; the historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations.

I don't have enough information on current history teaching in schools, and I know that many people are scathing of the 'transferable skills' approach which has taken time away from providing children with an overview of British history. On the other hand, I don't want to see a return to the situation 100 years ago, when history was taught to the proles primarily to foster unquestioning patriotism and respect for the all-important drive for 'progress'. I'd much rather children learned that one narrative, from a single narrator, is never enough to understand past events, that every historian has a point of view and limits to their knowledge and understanding, and that critical thinking skills are the only real protection against the bullshit they'll have to deal with when they enter adulthood.

It doesn't surprise me all that much that the leader of the Conservative Party might prefer the Victorian approach.

"simple, unpolitical children's stories"

I've recently been reading ,,Lügendetektor" by Saul K. Padover. Padover was a US intelligence officer responsible for interviewing German citizens or foreign workers recently returned from Germany, in areas occupied by American forces. It looks like it was published in 1946 under the title "Experiment in Germany" (or "Psychologist in Germany" in the UK) but is out of print, and only available as an expensive second-hand hardback. I bought the 1999 German translation from a bargain basement for 2 Euros, funny old world.

Even though it may be a monumental waste of time to translate something into English which was recently translated into German from an English transcript of interviews conducted in German... that's exactly what I've done. While the actual words the interviewees used have been repeatedly mangled, hopefully the meaning has been passed down intact. Just imagine it's been written by a 12th Century monk.

Chapter 17 - Padover and his men are stationed in Roetgen, recently captured without too much trouble:

As a matter of fact it was here that we first noticed a phenomenon which we would often encounter in Germany; the level of skepticism and defeatism stood in direct relation to the suffering that people had experienced. In largely destroyed towns, attitudes of defeatism or criticism of the regime were widespread, while untouched areas were filled with fascism and confidence of victory. In the small, undamaged town of Roetgen, around one third of the population counted as between convinced and fanatic Nazis. Those left over were running with the pack.

(p. 67-8)

Tatsächlich bemerkten wir hier erstmals jenes Phänomen, das wir in Deutschland noch sehr oft vorfinden sollten: der Grad an Skepsis und Defätismus stand in direkten Bezug zu dem Leid, das die Menschen erlebt hatten. In schwer zerstörten Städten waren regimekritische und defätistiche Haltungen sehr verbreitet, während unversehrte Orte von Faschismus und Siegesgewißheit erfüllt waren. In dem kleinen, unzerstörten Roetgen bestand etwa ein Drittel der Bevölkerung aus überzeugten bis fanatischen Nationalsozialisten. Die übrigen waren Mitläufer.

A local boy who runs errands for them urges them to interview his old school teacher, Agnes Pernitz. He describes her as one of many "Mußnazis" - people who claim they supported the Nazi Party out of necessity:

She had worked as a teacher in a Volksschule [standard state primary school before 1968] for forty years and claimed to be unpolitical. “In political matters,” she said, her whole face beaming, “I am like a child, like a real child. All that I know about this complex subject matter, I have from my husband.”

(p.72)

Sie habe vierzig Jahre lang als Volksschullehrerin gearbeitet und sei unpolitisch. „In politischen Dingen,” sagte sie und strahlt über das ganze Gesicht, „bin ich wie ein Kind, wie ein richtiges Kind. Was ich über diese komplizierte Materia weiß,habe ich alles von meinem Mann.”

Had she taught any political subjects or told her pupils about political events?
“For heaven’s sake, what can you be thinking?” she cried, as if shocked. “I only taught reading and mathematics. I read simple, unpolitical children’s stories to them, from the life of the Leader*, for instance.”

(p.73)

Ob sie politische Fächer unterrichtet oder ihren Schülern von politischen Begebenheiten erzählt habe? „Um Gottes willen, wo denken Sie hin?” rief Frau Pernitz wie schockiert. „Ich habe nur Lesen und Rechnen unterrichtet. Vorgelesen habe ich einfache, unpolitische Kindergeschichten, etwa aus den Leben unseres Führers.”

Did the party exert its influence on the syllabus in any way?
“Not at all. No-one laid down rules for the teachers to follow. Naturally the school books were all changed after the Leader came to power, but we teachers had complete freedom. We were completely at liberty to choose different topics from the teaching materials provided for us and nobody supervised us in any way.

(p.74)

Hat die Partei in irgendeiner Weise Einfluß auf den Lehrplan genommen? „Keineswegs. Niemand hat uns Lehrern Vorschriften gemacht. Natürlich wurden nach dem Machtantritt der Führers die Schulbücher ausgetauscht, aber wir Lehrer hatten völlige Freiheit. Wir konnten aus dem Lehrmaterial, das uns zur Verfügung gestellt wurde, ganz nach Belieben die verschiedensten Themen auswählen, und niemand hat uns in irgendeiner Weise kontrolliert.”

She offers a schoolbook description of Germany’s recent history:

Wilson didn’t keep to the Fourteen Points. Germany needed a rescuer. Then Ebert came, who was a socialist, and everything got worse. Then came the inflation and the situation got even worse. The German people yearned for better times, and then came Field Marshal Hindenburg. He was getting older and suddenly the Leader came forward. He promised the workers a better life. Hindenburg named him Chancellor and after Hindenburg’s death he became the Leader of Germany. He won over the people because he gave then work and because they could go travelling with the organisation “Strength through Joy”. Ordinary Germans were overjoyed at the Leader. And when industrialists recognised that the Leader had brought them a better life, they joined with the workers and adopted the new ideas as their own. In the end, the whole German population was behind the Leader.

„Wilson hat sich nicht an die Vierzehn Punkte gehalten. Deutschland brauchte einen Retter. Da kam Ebert, das war ein Sozialist, und alles wurde schlimmer. Dann kam die Inflation, und die Verhältnisse verschlechterten sich noch mehr. Das deutsche Volk sehnte sich nach besseren Zeiten, und dann kam der Feldmarschall Hindenburg. Der wurde immer älter und plötzlich trat der Führer hervor. Er versprach den Arbeitern ein besseres Leben. Hindenburg ernannte ihn zum Reichskanzler, und nach Hindenburgs Tod wurde er Führer des Deutschen Reiches. Er gewann die Menschen, weil er ihnen Arbeit gab und sie mit der Organisation „Kraft durch Freude” verreisen konnte. Die Masse des deutschen Volkes begeisterte sich für den Führer. Und als sie Industriellen erkannten, daß der Führer den Arbeitern zu einem besseren Leben verhalf, schlossen auch sie sich den Arbeitern an und machten sich die neuen Ideen zu eigen. Am Ende stand das ganze Volk hinter den Führer.”

On the factors which led to the war:

“That's quite simple. England started the war. The English wanted to dispute Germany’s rightful position in Europe. They have their own great empire of colonies but again and again, when Germany tries to gain more space for the population*, they put obstacles in the way.”
And how did the war with Russia start?
“The Russians,” she said darkly, “had been arming themselves for a long time because they wanted to launch an assault on Germany. And so we defended ourselves by attacking them. We’ve always found the Bolsheviks to be abominable, there’s no place for them on German soil. That’s why we attacked them before they could attack us.”
And Poland?
“That was purely a defensive war. Germany needed to protect herself from the Poles.”

(p.75-6)

„Das ist ganz einfach”, sagte Frau Pernitz. „England hat mit dem Krieg angefangen. Die Engländer wollten Deutschland seinen rechtmäßigen Platz in Europa streitig machen. Sie selbst haben ein großes Kolonialreich, aber wenn Deutschland versucht, Lebensraum zu erwerben, legen sie uns immer wieder Hindernisse in den Weg.”

Und wieso kam es zum Krieg gegen Rußland?

„Die Russen,” sagte sie düster, „hatten schon seit langem aufgerüstet, weil sie Deutschland überfallen wollten. Also haben wir uns verteidigt, indem wir sie angegriffen haben. Die Bolschewisten sind uns schon immer ein Greuel gewesen. sie haben auf deutschem Boden nichts zu suchen. Daher haben wir sie angegriffen, bevor sie uns angreifen konnten.”

Und Polen? „Das was ein reiner Verteidigungskrieg. Deutschland mußte sich vor den Polen schützen.”

---

*Due to the overwhelming extra connotations the words Führer and Lebensraum have acquired since World War Two, I’ve decided to translate them as everyday English terms. I believe that that’s how an “unpolitical” person such as Agnes Pernitz would have used them.

Extra, extra: I was wondering how Germany's invasion of Poland could have been seen as self-defence and came across this info on "Operation Himmler", a false-flag campaign in which German positions close to the Polish border were attacked by German soldiers, who left dead concentration camp prisoners at the scene dressed in Polish uniforms. I'm not sure why this didn't come up in any history lessons.

The enemy of your enemy still hates your guts

The reassuring thing about rabid xenophobes is that they have difficulty forming long-term international alliances.

Take for example Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty (ITS), an EU coalition of right-wing parties, which fell apart when an Italian MEP (Mussolini's granddaughter) called Romanians "habitual law-breakers". The Romanian members were shocked to discover that other people viewed them the way they viewed the Roma population, and went off in an indignant huff. I've a prediction that Metapedia, online reference point for people who consider Conservapedia to be a little too left-wing, will have similar problems if its supporters ever learn a foreign language.

A little back story: this week's flea market trip has convinced me that what I really want from Santa Claus is Raubstaat England ("England the Robber State"). It's a very large album for cigarette cards published in 1941, featuring all the least flattering parts of England's history and confidently predicting our imminent downfall. For a few examples of the pictures see this site. The copy I found was more than a little over my budget so I've been hunting down incomplete copies over the internet. This brought me to the entry for "England" on the German language version of Metapedia:

England ist ein Land (kein Staat) in Europa, das durch Willkür das Vereinigte Königreich Großbritannien und Nordirland erschaffen hat. England ist somit das größte und am dichtesten besiedelte Landesteil dieser Konstruktion. Oft wird England fälschlicherweise auch als Synonym für den Staat des Vereinigten Königreichs oder für die gesamte Insel Großbritannien gebraucht. Der Name England stammt vom westgermanischen Volk der Angeln (altengl. Englas) ab.

Translation: England is a country (not a state) in Europe, which arbitrarily created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. England is consequently the largest and most densely populated area of this construction. England is often also used wrongly as a synonym for the state of the United Kingdom or for the whole island of Great Britain. The name England comes from the West German people the Angles (old English: Englas).

... And that's it. Compare and contrast this paltry offering with the reams of patriotic information on the English language page, and you can almost feel sorry for two contributors in the discussion section, who have such a very long way to go before their "Projekt" will be complete. Apparently the only literature they have to go on is an official document holding England solely responsible for the bombing of civilians during World War 2, and their trusty copy of Raubstaat England. Maybe they could ask the English contributors for some help.

Picture "knights 4" from stock.xchng.

Update: More information and extracts from Raubstaat England on my other big blogging project, Tatty Jackets. It's good. Take a look. Now.

Matthias Rath's websites: Concerns

Update

Angryyoungalex has looked into the claims that the records of the IG Farben trial are being purposefully buried. Results here.

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In my previous post I described a close-knit group of websites for various campaigns, initiatives, awards etc. all of which have been set up either partially or entirely by the Dr Rath Health Foundation. Having looked at yet another other official Dr Rath site this morning (clearly this is what Sunday lie-ins were made for), I've decided there's enough *ahem* interesting aspects to fill a whole book. I'll just stick to the points I was planning to make yesterday:

• There seems to be a deliberate attempt, through repeated use of the phrase "the Auschwitz Survivors", to suggest that the foundation have been singled out for an official award from a group representing all former prisoners of Auschwitz. I've carried out several searches, including on the official website for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. There's a brief mention of the hospice foundation stone being placed but nothing on Rath or the "Relay of Life" award.


• The relationship between the small group of Auschwitz survivors and the Dr Rath Health Foundation could be described - depending on what you've read elsewhere - as anything from ironic to utterly sick. If reports of his actions in Africa are accurate then "profit before life" would be a fitting mission statement. Although I should probably add here that his foundation is reported to have distributed dietary supplements for free, not to make a profit, and this statement appears prominently on drrathvitamins.com:
  

  All profits from the sales of our natural health programs go to the Dr. Rath Foundation.
  This Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to research and education in natural health worldwide.



• The scale and complexity of this operation is staggering - to accuse regulated medicine of deliberately murdering countless patients, to gather 'proof' that World War II was started by a pharmaceutical company, to warn us that the 'oil and drug cartel' ruling the USA and France are planning a nuclear war (either before November 4th 2008 or October 2007, depending on the website) or that subjecting dietary supplements to "unreasonable and arbitrary risk/benefit assessments" is a danger to democracy - all of this is an impressively wide range of goals. There have been other organisations in history who adopted a similar approach and they've rarely changed the world for the better.


• All the websites I looked at were well designed and had their own, individual style. Clearly, a great deal of effort has gone into widening the foundation's online presence; buying appropriate domain names, choosing the right message, the right pictures and layout, adding content from other sites in a different format etc. There are campaigns to appeal to various different groups of concerned citizens. Decisions have clearly been made about whether the links between sites should be obvious or hidden. For example, Profit Over Life has a link to the Avenue to Life funding appeal whereas visitors starting at the Avenue to Life site would only know that 'Dr Rath Health Programs' have bought a tree. There are also significant differences between different language versions of the same sites. For example, the foundation's German site doesn't seem to mention the 'award', or at least not as prominently as the English version.


• Opponents of Matthias Rath could view this creeping network of semi-independent campaigns website as a cross between a hydra and Voldemort's horcruxes. Should it come to the point where legal action is taken against Matthias Rath, dismantling this massive operation could be an impossible task. If the man is removed but others pledge to carry on work in his name... this is how new religions form.


• Before I get too carried away with Da Vinci Code style international plots, I have a small legal concern too. The Avenue to Life site is calling for donations from English speakers without providing information about the project in English. The project is a memorial - and it's excellent that a memorial is being built to those who helped escaped prisoners from Auschwitz - but it will also be a working hospice. Before they collect more donations for the project, they should make it clear - in all relevant langauges - how the hospice will be run, who will pay for the staff and equipment, whether treatment will be provided for free, and who will provide the medication required by the terminally ill residents.

Matthias Rath: An online self-portrait

Matthias Rath has been in the news this weekend after ending a long-running legal dispute against the Guardian and columnist Ben Goldacre. Having read quite a lot of what other people say about him, I thought I'd take a look at what he says about himself. The results were something of an eye-opener.

The first part of this post sets out the route I took through the various websites, with several illustrative extracts. The second part (probably a separate post, this is turning out to be very long indeed) explains why parts of this made me slightly uneasy, to say the least. I've tried, as far as possible, to stick to facts and direct quotes, though it's been extremely tempting to jump to conclusions along the way.

The trail:

A large banner on the Dr Rath Health Foundation website reads:

Recipients of the "Relay of Life" from the Auschwitz Survivors

This sounds like an excellent achievement and one worth finding out about. The page this links to explains how a group of more than 30 survivors of Auschwitz and other concentration camps proposed their own constitution for Europe at a ceremony in Auschwitz in November 2007. here are some extracts from the constitution (full document here):

Today, the building of a New Europe occurs at a time when, we, the „witnesses of time” are still giving our testimony as to the consequences of the disregard for human lives and the needs of people. Our lives were shaped at the time when human life did not have any value and the slave was needed only for his labor. The absolute owners of a human being were not so much SS-men but the robots of money and power from IG Farben Auschwitz.
[...]
The most fundamental human rights are the rights to health and life. These rights are not only threatened by military conflicts, but also by corporate interests and their increasing attempts to exploit the human body and knowledge of it as their exclusive property and source of profits.
WE THEREFORE PROCLAIM AS INALIENABLE RIGHTS FOR EVERY EUROPEAN:
THE RIGHT TO HEALTH
Our health and our bodies are the most valuable goods we have. They must not be exploited as a marketplace for patented drugs or any other form of commercialization. The expansion of diseases as markets for drugs is unconstitutional. Any healthcare system based on these principles and promoting them should be outlawed.
[...]
THE RIGHT TO NATURAL FOOD
The genetic information of all plants and the food that has been growing in our fields and gardens for millennia belongs to all mankind. Manipulation and alteration of the genetic code of plants with the goal of patenting them and creating global market monopolies bears the danger that our food supplies are controlled by corporate interests. As with health and life, the monopolization of food leads to the control of entire societies.
SUCH ACTIVITY IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL
The reason why these fundamental human rights are not yet universally accepted and applied is the principle of patenting. Patents are the economic instrument of inflating returns on investments for entire industries including those industries that directly affect human health and life.

The "Auschwitz Survivors" (as capitalised on the original banner) presenting their ideas for an EU constitution sounds like interesting and important news but I don't remember hearing much about this at the time. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention. The award sounds impressive though, and the recipient clearly considers it worth shouting about. Strangely enough, a Google search has yielded no information on other individuals or organisations to have been given this award, as both hits lead back to this website.

The Dr Rath Health Foundation wasn't just marked out for a special mention at this conference, they took a very active part in it:

The conference was jointly organized by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation a long time critic of the pharmaceutical business with disease. For their work in the service of humanity this organization also received the “Relay of Life” from the survivors of Auschwitz, with the symbolic request to carry the remembrance of Auschwitz into the future.

In his speech Dr. Rath stated that the same corporate interest groups, namely the oil and drug cartel that already prepared WWII, are now openly discussing WWIII – including nuclear holocaust. “After the exposure at this conference these plans can no longer be executed.”

At the bottom, we are invited to go to www.relay-of-life.org for more information. At first I was surprised to find exactly the same text, just with the well-known photograph of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gates of Auschwitz above it. However, this was easily explained by the copyright notice: "© 2008 Dr. Rath Health Foundation". On other pages we can find Matthias Rath's speech, photos of the event, and a speech by Helena Wisla, President of the Auschwitz Hospice Foundation (probably about the constitution, although it's in Polish, with no English transcript).

Hospice? There's a link to that too. Blast, it's all in Polish.

Another google search turns up the website Avenue to Life:

A new website offering you the unique opportunity to participate in a worldwide project to help preserve the memories of the people who survived the WWII concentration camp at Auschwitz. By filling in the registration form on this page, and donating to the Auschwitz hospice fund, you can learn about history directly from those who experienced it and, in so doing, help carry their ‘relay of memory and life’.

The idea seems to be that you donate money to help build the memorial / hospice and a picture of a tree with your name under joins the others at the top of the screen. One of the six so far is Dr Rath Health Programs. That's nice of them. In fact, back on the hospice site we can learn (with the help of a Polish - English dictionary and a rudimentary knowledge of the grammar) that the Dr Rath Health Foundation are the third on the list of "Honorary memorial builders", right after the Italian and Japanese governments. Impressive stuff, and clear evidence that they deserve that "award".

For people who prefer to find out more before buying a virtual tree, there's handy links scattered around the site... all of which take you back to that page in Polish. It's actually not that bad though, as there's also a page in German, and - in common with all potential donors from the UK - that's a language I speak fluently. Here's my translation of the first few paragraphs (originals underneath, criticism from other German speakers more than welcome):

For half a century, the former prisoners of the concentration camp at Auschwitz have attested to the good which was born in the shadow and in the neighbourhood of the gas chamber. This has been achieved through every imaginable type of documentation - in the form of books, press articles, memorial plaques, and documentary and other films, but also through annual festivals, radio and TV broadcasts, and so on.

However, in the opinion of the former prisoners, all these tokens have not been capable of remembering the names of all those who provided life-saving, spontaneous help throughout the whole 5 years of the Auschwitz concentration camp's existence.


After taking off the prisoner uniform and returning to freedom, the former prisoners of Auschwitz still felt indebted to the inhabitants of the town of Auschwitz and the surrounding area because these very people had contributed to the fact that so many human lives were saved.


[...] In order to thank the inhabitants of the town of Auschwitz and the surrounding area who helped the prisoners of the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau, an initiative was started to build a memorial to them

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Ein halbes Jahrhundert lang haben die ehemaligen KL Auschwitz- Häftlinge ein Zeugnis vom Guten abgelegt, das im Schatten und in der Nachbarschaft der Gaskammer geboren ist. Das geschah durch jede erdenkliche Art von Dokumentation - in Form von Büchern, Presseartikeln, Gedenktafeln und Dokumentar- und Spielfilmen, aber auch durch Jahrestagfeierlichkeiten, Radio- und Fernsehsendungen, usw.

In der Meinung der ehemaligen Häftlinge jedoch waren alle diese Zeichen nicht imstande, an alle Namen derjenigen zu erinnern, die lebensrettend spontane Hilfe geleistet haben, durch die ganzen 5 Jahre des Bestehens des KL Auschwitz.

Nach dem Ausziehen des Sträflingsanzugs und nach der Rückkehr zur Freiheit fühlten sich die ehemaligen KL Auschwitz – Häftlinge immer noch als Schuldner der Bewohner der Stadt Oświęcim und der umliegenden Ortschaften, weil eben diese dazu beigetragen haben, dass viele menschliche Leben gerettet wurden.

[...] Um der Einwohner der Stadt Oświęcim und der Einwohner der umliegenden Ortschaften, die den Häftlingen der KL Auschwitz und Birkenau geholfen haben zu gedenken, entstand eine Initiative, ihnen ein Denkmal zu errichten.

It goes on the describe the founding of the Memorial Hospice Foundation by the well-known Polish actor August Kowalczyk, who was brought to the camp in November 1940, escaped during an uprising in 1942, and survied due to the help of local residents. His tremendous efforts to maintain a dialogue between Germany and Holocaust survivors and to keep the memory of the events alive are well documented, (here, for example).

Further down the page we can see an artist's impression of the finished hospice, photographs of the building work so far, and a breakdown of the funding needed to complete the work. It explains that using a hospice as a memorial is a particularly potent symbol, being a place where "those who are ill and suffering can be helped in the last phase of their illness". The project had the support of Pope John Paul II and the foundation stone was laid by Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski. Unfortunately, the project seems to have run into serious financial difficulties.

I'll try to get further paragraphs translated over the next few days but there are two other avenues to explore first, and very interesting avenues they are too. First of all, there's another official-looking hit for the EU constitution proposal. The address is www.eu-referendum.org, very impressive, and it's the site of the "European Referendum Initiative". There are seven language options on the front page. It's stated aim is for every citizen:

to have the right to vote in a referendum whenever significant changes to laws affecting them are made at either national or European level. In particular, we believe that all citizens should immediately be given the opportunity to vote in referendums on the Lisbon Treaty.

The petition from the "Auschwitz Survivors" has a prominent position here so this could be evidence that I'm just being pig ignorant when it comes to the big splash the conference must have caused. I wonder who wrote the website though... "© 2008 Dr. Rath Health Foundation". Hmmmm.

Here's an extract from the blurb about their other big campaign, "A Referendum for Natural Remedies":

Draconian laws, intended to ban information on many natural health remedies and their uses, are increasingly being introduced throughout Europe under the guise of the "protection of public health." This is being done despite the fact that millions of people die every year from chronic diseases such as heart attacks, strokes and cancer and that thousands of clinical and scientific studies already show natural remedies (including vitamin therapies) can prevent the occurrence of these diseases.

.
One more chance to break out of this maze of circular links. On the Avenue to Life site, one of the very few links takes you to www.profit-over-life.org. This is an online academy, no less, containing "The Authentic Records from the Nuremberg Tribunal against the Oil and Drug Cartel", by which they mean the trial against pharmaceutical company IG Farben (maybe I should be more wary of adding wikipedia links, after reading what Matthias Rath thinks about them. On the other hand, as this entry references his own foundation's website it's probably more reliable than the rest). As this site explains, the evil activities of the "oil and drug cartel" is one of Matthias Rath's favourite topics and this site would certainly seem to confirm his view. Take this page, for example:

The US prosecution during the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals made clear that neither the rise of the Nazis, nor WWII nor the holocaust would have been possible without the financial and logistical support of IG Farben.

Today, more than six decades since the end of WWII, mankind has yet to solve one of the greatest riddles: How come that none of the international organizations that set out to preserve the memory of this war and the holocaust has not pointed their fingers at these historic facts?

Until today these organizations chose neither to publish the important proceedings of the decisive Nuremberg trial against IG Farben nor the tens of thousands of pages of trial evidence connecting this chemical/pharmaceutical cartel to these crimes against humanity.
[...]
The purpose of this website is to call on the people of the world to go one step further and expose the economic interests that helped to finance the holocaust, those forces that used the hatred against the Jewish people and other ethnic groups as a tool for the psychological mobilization for a war of conquest and those groups that benefited economically from the holocaust. Among those economic interests one name stands out above all: the chemical cartel IG Farben.

There is a burning reason why the exposure of IG Farben Industries as the economic interests behind WWII is important now.

Today, in October 2007, the world may only be weeks away from another World War deliberately launched by the very same interest groups that brought the Nazis to power and sought to control the world then – the chemical/petrochemical/pharmaceutical investment business.

70 years after the political puppets of the chemical investment business launched World War II, their stakeholders today – namely George Bush (USA) and Nicholas Sarkozy (France) – are openly preparing a nuclear attack against Iran with the deliberate risk of throwing the world into a nuclear abyss.

Perhaps this other online archive is just a figment of my imagination then, anything seems possible now, but there's a more urgent question on my mind. In the face of such dangerous, well connected and clearly insane enemies, who would be brave enough to fund such a heroic archive of earth-shattering truths?

This online archive has been made possible by the Dr. Rath Health Foundation, a non-profit organization.

Not suprisingly, "Profit Over Life" links directly back to both "Avenue to Life" and "Relay of Life". How long, I'm beginning to wonder, before a certain foundation tries to claim "Life" as a trademark? Only joking, in fact I'm just trying to cover up the intense awe inspired in me by this one man: whether you want to explore both the horror and the humanity during the Holocaust, or destroy the democratic deficit within the EU or uncover the real reason behind the impending (or slightly overdue) nuclear world war, all roads inevitably lead to Rath.

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Other links

Here's another of Rath's websites, this time it's not a foundation or initiative but an institute.

And for the sake of balance, here's some of the less glowing interpretations of Matthias Rath's achievements:

Gimpyblog

Holfordwatch

Quackometer

In fact, go to any "bad science" blog and you'll probably find a similar, completely justified, display of glee.