History on Trial: Editorial
Too often modernist post New Agers
claim history doesn’t matter, the die is already cast.
However next this empty space is too easily filled with the
most inaccurate assumptions as described in the introduction
of this web site.
Rather history can be defined as
the product of the discovery and description of past events.
The description can take the form of either narration or
analysis, as long as one’s methods of discovery are as
scientifically rigorous as possible. Along with psychology,
sociology, and anthropology, history adds to our
understanding of human behavior by providing data of what
people have actually done.
Humans are storytelling beings and history is
our story. Since history is an interaction of both
contingencies and necessities, it involves the study of both
unique one-time events and universal repetitive trends:
time’s arrow and time’s cycle.
For both, but especially the
latter, the social sciences are an integral part to finding
the repetitive signals in the background noise, and as such
the study of history can benefit greatly from the social
sciences. The problem is that sometimes historians are
attempting to write about humans and their behavior without
knowing the best science available on these difficult
questions. To really understand history historians need to
test their claims. Unfortunately historians never take any
courses in hypothesis testing.
Historians can still write great
stories, but they must be, stories grounded in facts, not
fiction; in science, not anecdotes. The historian can act as
a psychologist and sociologist of the past by employing
statistical and other scientific methodologies to estimate
the probabilities of events, causes, and our confidence in
them.
This is well described in a 2002
book by Richard Evans, who took as an example the analysis
of the David Irving trial three years ago. In “Telling Lies
About Hitler” he describes why History does matter he
writes: “Let us now move forward into the past with the best
science available, so that the uncertainties of the
historical boundaries will be made as clear as our faculties
allow.”
For truth, the Guardian rightly
said, cannot be assumed, but “has to be worked at ... Even a
casual reader of the case reports could quickly see how
painstaking genuine historical scholarship is; it builds
detail upon detail, avoiding casual inference and thin
deduction It was truth established in this way over many
years that had been vindicated.” The trial demonstrated
triumphantly the ability of historical scholarship to reach
reasoned conclusions about the Nazi extermination of the
Jews on the basis of a careful examination of the written
evidence. It vindicated our capacity to know what happened
after the survivors are no longer around to tell the tale.
It showed that we can know, beyond reasonable doubt, even if
explaining and understanding will always be a matter for
debate. (2)
It is not surprising that exactly
in esoteric circles doubts regarding historical accuracy
reigns and even these circles are not neo-Nazi, still for
example the Nazi UFO myth is nothing else but Nazi
revisionism, which basically says, the Nazis won the war
anyhow. Or the CIA is in fact the Gehlen network, the Atom
bomb came delivered to the US from the Nazis…
Next the same literature
claims about the holocaust that the US Jews just faked that
to get money… Or claim in fact Hitler and most leading
Nazis were themselves Jews, so the truth is the only “bad”
Jews are those banker/Masons in New York that also blew up
the WTC twin towers and so on, they are running the US
Government… and so on.
(The proof is there, just read them) in
the protocols of Zion, leading the world now towards WW III
and the human race towards extinction….(1)
Example: The Editorial staff of
FOHAT a quarterly publication of the Theosophical Society,
mentions in one of its editorials:
“Truth (about the Holocaust) Needs
no Laws to Protect it.”
The editor goes on to say that; “David Irving,
the distinguished British historian on World War II. . . .
This painstaking researcher. . .decided to do research on
the topic of German concentration camps. . . . He discovered
that physical evidence at the camps and the archival
evidence that he examined ran CONTRARY to POPULAR
conceptions on the holocaust. Now David Irving could have
ignored his findings and left the whole matter alone;
instead he published what he found in book form. . .
.
David Irving’s
research and evidence for his thesis are readily accessible
through his book. Any historian of note need only look at
Dr. Irving’s research and then demonstrate how he erred in
his conclusions and the whole matter would have been put to
rest. After all, if Dr. Irving was wrong, historians should
have all of the evidence of truth on their side.
The light of truth has a way of
making the shadowy clear.
Instead of dispelling Dr. Irving’s thesis, Dr.
Irving has been banned from speaking in many countries, he
has been arrested and tried in Germany. In fact, new laws in
Germany have been instituted making it illegal to deny the
holocaust. . . Through all of this, few if any of Dr.
Irving’s professional colleagues have come to his defence or
tried to dispel what he says.
Instead of shedding light on the debate there
has been every effort to push the whole matter further into
the shadows. Dr. Irving is not the only individual to suffer
this fate. . . . This whole matter begs the question as to
why the leaders of a nation [Germany] saddled with this
terrible and heinous crime would want to legislate a version
of history that MAY NOT have a foundation, especially at the
cost of billions of dollars annually in reparation payments
to the state of Israel. Why are nations all over the world
intent on legislating the official version of the
holocaust?”
1) http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/~muehleb9/theprotoc.html
2) See the various left sidebar
links on following, for details about the Irving
trial:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/irving/article/0,2763,191834,00.html
Comments
to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[HOME]
[TOP]
Esoteric and Science News,
December 10, 2002
