CLAPPING FOR TINKERBELL By John Weir

CLAPPING FOR TINKERBELL
By John Weir

Toward the end of January 2009, Bishop Williamson, a Roman Catholic clergyman associated with the Society of Saint Pius X, was quoted as saying in a television interview, “I believe that the historical evidence is strongly against--is hugely against—6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.”

This quote appeared in a January 26, 2008 CNN website news article. A response from an apparent “Jewish leader” who—according to the headline—was “outraged” got a one-word quote: “Rabbi David Rosen of the Ameri-can Jewish Committee called the move by the Catholic Church [to lift the excommunication of Bishop Williamson] ‘shameful.’”
That about sums up the Holocaust story and why belief in it persists long after it should have become defunct.

After the taboo was broken by Bishop Williamson, a parade of editorials and quotes professing belief in the gas chambers and six million dead Jews story appeared in the news. During the first week of February, prodded by who knows who, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a Protestant, released a statement to the press that stated “… the Pope and the Vati-can must make it unequivocally clear that there can be no denial that the Holocaust happened.” The official position then is that the Holocaust is an article of faith and a litmus test for anyone who wants to be in a position of authority, whether it be in a religious or secular institution. Chancellor Merkel told Pope Benedict that she is to have veto authority over Roman Catholic staff and dogma. Not bad for someone whose country is sliding into an economic depression.

PASCAL’S WAGER

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

Belief in God is a bit different from a belief in the Holocaust. You have to wait until you die to discover your reward for belief in God. With the Holocaust you find out a lot quicker your punishment for disbelief. Along with the professions of belief in the Nazi gas chambers were calls for Bishop Williamson’s renewed excommunication, and denunciation by the Pope of what he said. There can be no positions of authority for people who do not believe. Within a few days, after the bishop refused to retract his statements—only promising to review the historical evidence—he was stripped of his position as head of a seminary in Argentina.

This has been the pattern regarding anyone with a position with any institution, be it church, school, or government. Once someone has been identified as being employed by someone that can be publicly, politically pressured, the pressure starts. This indicates that the belief in the Shoah is very important for several interrelated power structures to maintain. The Shoah has certainly been called the founding myth of Israel, but it appears to be the founding myth of the modern German republic as well. American foreign policy is also heavily influenced by the Hitler paradigm, and Nazi Germany analogies are made any time the U.S. State Department wants to threaten another country.

PROFESSION OF FAITH

Group activities, like singing or marching together, have been shown to promot group cohesion. Likewise, the rapid punishment of nonconformity discourages the questioning of authority. Ritual is established to give insiders a sense of worth and security. In hierarchical structures, ritual plays a huge role in establishing who is in authority. These associations and institutions are intolerant of anything that undermines the credibility of those in control. The Holocaust myth is official. It is the state-sponsored foundation of the German Republic. In addition, it is protected like an endangered migratory bird in a growing number of countries. As a result, when someone in a position of authority questions the myth, that person is denounced quickly and forcefully to protect a stupid story that would have long ago been forgotten if it had not become an important political myth.

The ritual has been set in place. And we will see it again and again. It is reminiscent of the scene from Peter Pan (by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie [1860–1937]) when the faerie, Tinkerbell, swallows poison intended for Peter. Peter then gets the audience to demonstrate its belief in faeries by clapping in order to restore her to life. Not clapping would mean you are guilty of fatacide—the murder of a faerie (I just made that word up). Anytime the dying Holocaust story is questioned, we will be told we must demonstrate our belief in the story by clapping for the gas chambers.

PRAESTET FIDES SUPPLEMENTUM SENSUUM DEFECTUI [“Let faith supply what the senses cannot”]

In the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) a belief is an emotionally held opinion that is treated like a fact by the person who holds it. NLP is a spin-off of hypnotherapy devel-oped around thirty years ago, but the principles upon which it is based are as old as human behavior. One of the major principles of NLP is fixing an association between an action or an object, and an emotional state. For instance, the sense of smell is strongly associated with emotions. People smell cookies baking and think pleasant thoughts about childhood. The smell is associated with mem-ories and an emotional state. To make one of these associations is called “anchoring.” It is like Pavlov’s dog experiments where the dogs associated the sound of a bell ringing with being fed and would salivate when a bell was rung whether there was food present or not. People operate the same way, only people communicate with each other better than they can with animals. Therefore, much more complex anchors can be created in people.

The gas chamber story and the Holocaust myth are beliefs. They compose part of an emotionally held opinion that is treated as a fact. Many negative emotions are associated with both the story and any challenge made to it. These emotions are purposefully anchored to the story to protect it from any challenge. A great example of this technique is the single-word quote uttered by Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s International Director of In-ter-religious Affairs: “Shameful.” Shame is now associated with any person who does not accept the gas chambers and the six million dead Jews as a fact, and for anyone who tolerates that person. This is one more layer on the taboo. With that one word, Rabbi Rosen created an anchor. Even considering listening to someone who would like to present revisionist information is now meant to create a feeling of shame. This is not new. I loaned some of my revisionist material to a friend a few years ago and he said he felt guilty reading it. This is how the taboo is self-enforced. People are taught in school and in the media to associate strong emotional states with propaganda of all sorts. It not just with the Holocaust that this technique is used. How do you feel when you see your national flag? Why do you think it is waved on TV news? You have been trained since childhood to stand at attention and feel respect when you see the flag. The flag is there to enhance credibility. When it comes to the news media, one rule of thumb is to understand the more flags and uniforms you see, the bigger the lie you are being told.

Credibility is a major compo-nent in the success in setting an emotional anchor and establishing a belief. Bishop Williamson should know this: As a member of the clergy his business is the promulgation of his faith. This is why the first thing that is attacked by the promoters of the gas chamber nonsense is a revisionist’s credibility. If there is no credibility, no new belief can be anchored. Because the recipient has been told by a source he regards as reliable not to trust revisionists, and has a strong emotional attachment to his beliefs, any information presented to the contrary is rejected. This is how the taboo is set and enforced. There is a NLP practi-tioner who specializes in teaching men “speed seduction.” One of the things he tells his students is the techniques he teaches works even on those women who are familiar with how they work. They do not work on every woman, however. So, even though a person understands someone is using an anchor in an attempt to manipulate feeling, an emotional state may be induced despite this awareness.

BELIEF VERSUS KNOWLEDGE

A problem with Bishop Williamson’s answer to the question posed to him about a statement he made years ago is that he introduced his reply with the phrase “I believe.” While I am sure Bishop Williamson has no interest in teaching mid-twentieth-century history, and has no desire to become an expert in revisionist research, if he is going to express an opinion on the topic of Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz and the number of Jews who died as a result of a Hitler government policy, he has to tell the interviewer what he knows, and not what he believes or believes he knows.

When he says “I believe,” Bishop Williamson is challenging an established set of beliefs with one of his beliefs. That sort of approach puts the Bishop, or anyone who might doubt the gas-chamber story, at a definite disadvantage. Remember, a personally held belief is treated by its holder as fact. The holder is also emotionally attached to it. Anyone hearing someone say “I believe” will view what is being expressed as an opinion. Since the hearer will understand his own belief as “fact,” he assumes any contrary “opinion” or “belief” would only be expressed by someone in an inferior position, and will immediately discount anything said due to the qualitative difference between a presumed “fact” on the one hand and a mere “belief” on the other.

People who have not read enough about gas chambers to understand the subject should defer the question to someone who does. Bishop Williamson referred to the Leuchter Report and air photos in his reply. While the Leuchter Report is great and presents much necessary information, invoking it pits the credibility of sources for one opinion against the credibility of another. What the Leuchter Report presents is an expert opinion. At the time it was written, 1988, the Soviet Union still existed. Few people in the West had access to the Internet or Eastern Europe. It doesn’t take an expert to recognize a car, even a wrecked car. Looking at a set of blueprints for a building and reading that a room is labeled “morgue” instead of “gas chamber” does not demand the expertise of an engineer. It doesn’t take much research to figure out that cremators running on something other than faerie dust cannot reduce three bodies in fifteen minutes. Revisionists have attempted, well before the publication of the Leuchter Report, to show that it is possible to do chemical tests to determine if cyanide was used in a room because it leaves a stable chemical residue that can be measured decades later. Those who defend the gas chamber story reply that nobody can tell by looking at a space, or chemically testing it, whether it was ever used as a gas chamber and that the only dependable source for such proof are eyewitness accounts. Revisionists want to verify or discredit the eyewitness accounts. Those that rely on those accounts for their beliefs will never accept that the stories are not, at least in a general sense, true.

It is obvious that the Holocaust is a taboo that will not be dislodged by pitting one set of sources against another set of sources. New approaches need to be tried with the knowledge of how people view beliefs and how emotions have been anchored to them. The gas chamber story is a clumsy lie. That is not a belief. That is a fact. It is knowledge. There was constant communication between the concentration camp, its inmates, and its staff with the outside world up to its abandonment in January 1945. Packages and letters went in and out of the camp. Staff came and went. Prisoners were transferred and released from the camp. Photos were taken of activities there: both by people on the ground and Allied aircraft. As late as September 1944 inspectors for the International Red Cross visited Auschwitz. There was nothing secret about Auschwitz and Birkenau. Every day the SS office at Auschwitz sent radio messages to Berlin headquarters giving prisoner tallies. The British intercepted and read at least some of these transmissions throughout the war. This is a fact. As late as August 1944 the British RAF called a suggested mission to bomb the Auschwitz gas chambers “fantastic.” They did not mean that the suggestion was “terrific.” They meant “fantastic.”

The clapping for Tinkerbell had not yet begun.