to contribute to the discussion. It IS important to explore these rabbit holes, and to do so not with the idea that of course everything marked "rabbit hole" is in fact an avenue worth pursuing--anyone who has seen enough old bugs bunny cartoons should know this--some are even just black circles painted on the grass. but before this becomes a no-planes type wile e coyote-fest let's get back to the sacred thing that is not to be mentioned...

Yes, David Cole's video (and his appearance on Donahue years ago, which is on the DVD that is available for purchase) are what really pulled me into this particular rabbit hole. One of the first things to capture my attention was the fact that the stories of lampshades and soap being made by the evil Nazis were in fact made up and that that is acknowledged by every serious holocaust scholar, revisionist or not (though by definition the admission that such claims were false make on a revisionist, no?)

These were stories that one heard on TV and in school when I was a kid in the early 1980s and now, in passing, I find out that they were made up, yet no one bothered to tell me until I started reading revisionist work! So if the Nazis were so plainly evil and the evidence of their atrocities so abundant and clear why on earth would anyone have made up stories like the lampshades and soap? And mind you these were DETAILED stories, not little snippets. It just didn't make sense to me that these stories would have been invented, then quietly recanted, and that they would be the only instances of exagerration.

After you see David's video, learn about the Auschwitz swimming pool and theatre where inmates (allegedly waiting to be exterminated in mass gassings) would put on plays and other variety shows for each other (these are also available on video), you kind of end up with some cognitive dissonance from the kafkaesque absurdity of the entire thing.

After you have seen hollywood have its way with other historical events you are left wondering why most holocaust history is in fact dramatized instead of being based on the alleged tons of records meticulously kept by the Nazis that one never seems to see anywhere.

After seeing the trial and hanging of Saddam who can say with certainty that anything and everything Rudolf Hess "confessed" to was true?

But we should not make the mistake that surely some do of assuming that it was either this or that, that Jews either suffered unimaginably or not at all. False paradigms are useful because they force a choice on us between two falsities. That's why I try to imagine what exactly WOULD have been the fate of the Jews who were interned in these camps, and also to compare their experience iwth that of Japanese Americans similarly abused by the U.S. during the same time...