Berg's Big Lie

If anyone needs proof that Fritz Berg is a charlatan, look no further than this thread which he started on the RODOH forum. In his introductory post, Berg cited a study by Risser and Bjonsch which he claimed "completely supports my view that the vast majority of Reinhardt Camp victims would have appeared RED if they had been killed with carbon monoxide from either diesel exhaust or from gasoline engine exhaust".

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Anyone who reads Risser and Bjonsch's abstract, cited in that first post, can see quite clearly that this is a lie. The first sentence of the abstract states that:

The aim of this retrospective survey of unintentional carbon monoxide-related deaths in Vienna was to determine whether the cherry-pink coloring of livor mortis is a reliable finding for the coroner to suspect a carbon monoxide-related death immediately at the death scene.

Risser and Bjonsch were therefore studying the ability of coroners to detect the cherry-pink colour associated with livor mortis. A simple internet search reveals that livor mortis is a condition that takes hours to produce the full cherry-pink coloration. For example, as this medical expert explains:

...the color of death, or liver mortis, starts coming on in about two hours and gets more and more intense for about eight to ten hours and then just remains there

It is therefore dishonest to apply this study's finding to a critique of the Reinhardt eyewitness testimony, because the latter is describing corpses immediately after death.

Defenders of Berg may claim that this is an honest error. He's an old man and maybe his failing eyesight did not pick out the words 'livor mortis' in the text, despite it being in the first sentence of the abstract. If this were the case, however, one would expect Berg to stop using the source as soon as the error was pointed out to him. However, a quick visit to the CODOH forum, hosted by the dim-witted faker Jonnie 'Hannover' Hargis, reveals that the 'error' was exposed before Berg started his RODOH thread. On Tuesday September 18th, 2007, 'jnovitz' posted this information:

A distinction should be drawn between liver mortis, which is blood leaking out of the vessels and infusing the tissue - a process that happens several hours after death and the distinctive cherry pink of carbon monoxide poisoning, shown in the top photo.

Berg read this post because he responded in part to it, so he must have known that a study of livor mortis could not be applied to Reinhardt eyewitness testimony, in which the corpses were being described immediately after being gassed. Despite this knowledge, however, Berg started his RODOH thread on Saturday October 13th, 2007, 25 days after his central claim had been debunked on CODOH.

Is it a tribute to the rank stupidity of Hargis that he allowed this clear evidence of Berg's dishonesty to remain on the CODOH forum for us all to discover? Or was he hanging Berg out to dry, bearing in mind that Hargis and Bradley Smith were very critical of Berg here?

Fratricide

In recent months, the denier movement has engaged in numerous episodes of family squabbling and backstabbing. Fritz Berg has attacked Weber; Berg in turn has been rebuked by Bradley Smith; and Grubach has conducted a nasty campaign of open letters against Irving. What are the causes of these squabbles, and what do they tell us about the current state of the movement?

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I would argue that there are two key trends at work. Firstly, deniers tend to conduct turf wars during periods when denial is enjoying brief public exposure. Secondly, denial is simply exhibiting the same factionalism and essentialism that can be found in any other cult or extremist political movement. The difference is that 'revisionism' claims to be an intellectual movement based on 'evidence', rather than the faith position that it clearly occupies in reality.

With regard to turf wars, it is no coincidence that two of the bitterest periods of denier backstabbing coincided with the Irving-Lipstadt libel trial and the Tehran denial conference. The former led to accusations that Irving had not deployed the full range of denier arguments. The latter led to Mark Weber making a TV appearance that caused Berg to fulminate against his failure to deny the Holocaust unequivocally. These episodes require deeper exploration.

The Irving trial was exploited by Rudolf to position himself as, effectively, the denial guru of the moment. In so doing, Rudolf neglected to mention that Irving had been obliged to ditch Rudolf's fatuous 'report' from his appeal due to Rudolf's fraudulent use of sources in the report. However, Rudolf's new guru status did not protect him from denier feuds for long. In 2004, Fritz Berg launched a scathing public attack on Rudolf for publishing a paper by Charles Provan that debunked Berg's crackpot theories on gassing:

Dear Germar,

What was your purpose for publishing that essay by Provan? Do you think there is any merit to what he has written? You dummy! You obviously still think there might be some merit to Provan’s horseshit. Go adjust your head. You should have seen through Provan’s drivel the moment you read it.

This brings us to the current fratricide post-Tehran. Berg has predictably been at the forefront of attacks on Weber's evasions and backsliding. However, Berg's own conduct brought a public rebuke from Bradley Smith:

Fritz, that includes you. One of the reasons you are unable [to] help create such an organization is demonstrated by how you have addressed the issue of Weber and IHR in this thread. I am not saying that you are saying anything that is false. I am saying that the way you address these issues is so divisive that I do not believe you will ever be able to participate, much less spark, the organization that we all have a sense that we need. You do brilliant, unique, independent work, you have done it for years, for decades, you are one of the major contributors, internationally, to revisionist studies, but you have no idea how to deal publicly with organizational or personal issues that you want to address.

So where does this leave us? I would draw an analogy with the fate of fascist groups in western politics. These groups enjoy occasional bursts of publicity that are invariably followed by internal squabbles, essentialist discussions of ideology, and the rooting out of heretics. The witch trials of Weber and Irving are simply the latest manifestations, albeit highly entertaining, of this factionalism in the faith-based cult of Holocaust denial.

Hargis and Grubach: The Laurel and Hardy of Holocaust Denial

You may be wondering why Holocaust Denial has less credibility these days than Lord Haw Haw, Tokyo Rose or Comical Ali. Part of the answer is that its intellectual cupboard, which was already thinly populated, has been all-but-deserted, and is now being guarded by two charlatans whose embarassing antics have even caused that paragon of honesty, David Irving, to complain about their behaviour.

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A survey of their recent exchanges with Irving suggests that entrusting the defence of revisionism to these clowns was the equivalent of asking a man with two broken arms to catch someone jumping from a burning building.

The first of these jokers, Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis, is described by Irving as "not the most cerebral of my supporters". The dim-witted Hargis once sent Irving a doctored photo that offended even this veteran denier:

The photo had two identical columns of smoke, obviously created in Photoshop; I recall that that gentleman, also called Hannover, admitted later, when I exposed the fakery to him, that yes, he was responsible, hoping to prove how easily photos could be faked.

Hargis 'moderates' the CODOH forum with a lack of subtlety that would have made the editor of Pravda blush. Andrew Mathis and Nick Terry have both had posts on CODOH censored. Moreover, Hargis carries out this censorship in the name of 'free speech'. This is Orwellian doublethink at its finest: an advocate of open debate who refuses to tolerate open debate.

Just in case the he hypocrisy meter has not already shot through the roof, Paul Grubach has come along to reinforce the point that revisionism is being defended by arguments that are as sturdy as a chocolate kettle. Grubach has made a public nuisance of himself over the last few years by sending open letters to notable writers challenging them to debate. Having exhausted the list of notable writers, Grubach has recently turned his attention towards a notorious one: the aforementioned D. Irving. However, when RODOH forum member Steve Mock challenged Grubach to a debate on the RODOH site, Grubach suddenly adopted the evasions and excuses that he normally accuses the reluctant recipients of his illiterate ramblings of deploying.

In conclusion, therefore, if history really does repeat itself first as tragedy then as farce, Hargis and Grubach are actors in the latter.