E Michael Jones on his book ‘The Holocaust Narrative’
Dr Eugene Michael Jones (commonly known as E Michael Jones) was an Assistant Professor of American Literature at St. Mary’s College and is widely known for his critical views on contemporary cultural and religious issues. I consider him one of the best in his category. He was dismissed in 1981 due to his anti-abortion stance, leading him to leave academia and start a magazine, initially named Fidelity and later Culture Wars, which focuses on the disarray in the Catholic Church including the subversion of the Catholic faith. (As an aside, I recommend listening to my conversation with Frances Leader.) Literature The meaning of the term ‘holocaust‘ has evolved over time, he argues, adding that various literary and propaganda influences including TV shows and films have shaped our understanding of history. The word ‘holocaust’ hadn’t really been used by anyone until around the 1970s, and as Jewish historian Norman Finkelstein pointed out to me, almost nothing had been written about it for the first 20 years. It took about two decades to write a book about 'the Holocaust', but only three months to write about the sinking of the Titanic. I find that very strange. Put another way, what ‘holocaust’ meant a few decades ago is not what it means now. Dr Jones explains what he means in his conversation with me. He points out that some of the most influential WW2 figures like Eisenhower, Churchill and de Gaulle did not mention gas chambers or the genocide of Jews in their memoirs. Hang on. What? Why? Let's pause there. I’ll type it again for emphasis. Adolf Hitler was absolutely hated by the Allies, yet the three most significant Allied leaders—Churchill, de Gaulle and Eisenhower—said absolutely nothing about either death camps or extermination of Jews in their extensive post-war biographies. Why? Wasn’t that a lost opportunity to completely bury the Führer? To make matters more interesting, the Red Cross found no evidence of gas chambers in Germany. More specifically, it’s a three-volume investigation called the Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on its Activities during the Second World War, published in Geneva, 1948. It’s a lot of reading but it’s freely available at archive.org. You can find a summary here. “There is insufficient evidence to justify the statement regarding execution in gas chambers.” - Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1943, Vol. I, pp. 416–417 Conversation He (rightly) suggests that there is extreme suppression and censorship of discourse, allowing pretty much only Jews to openly discuss this particular historical event. Why are people jailed for asking questions about a world war? As of 2019, around 19 countries criminalise anybody questioning the Holocaust. If something is true, why does it require state protection (with force)? It is a criminal offence to question or ‘deny’ the Holocaust in the following countries: * Austria * Belgium * The Czech Republic * Canada * France * Germany * Greece * Hungary * Italy * Israel * Liechtenstein * Latvia * Lithuania * Luxembourg * Poland * Portugal * Romania * Russia * Slovakia * Switzerland Why? I’ll repeat myself: if something is true, why does it require state protection? As Norman Finkelstein (who lost family members in the camps) told me, the Holcoaust is an industry. An industry built on stories that have changed over time? “Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe is a book of 559 pages; the six volumes of Churchill’s The Second World War total 4,448 pages; and de Gaulle’s three-volume Mémoires de guerre is 2,054 pages. In this vast body of writing, which totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory sections), published between 1948 and 1959, there is no mention of Nazi ‘gas chambers,’ a ‘genocide’ of the Jews, or ‘six million’ Jewish victims of the war.” - Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus, University of Ulster, 5 Dec 2005 This is a public epi
