Just finished on BBC2, but I recommend watching it on iPlayer.

Fascinating and disturbing in equal measure. Interesting conversation with Facebook about the point they take material down, as it crosses from misinformation to hate speech.

Watched it with my 13 year old daughter. She very nearly used the F word at the interview with the Irish holocaust denier. I’ve never heard her swear yet.

Don’t know how he managed to sit there and talk to that denier idiot. I have no Jewish in my history but I wanted to **** kick his stupid teeth in. Evidence, if it was ever needed, that you can’t argue with an idiot.
Good work Mr. Baddiel.

Worth searching out that recent true movie about the court case brought against an “academic” and prominent holocaust denier.

I’ll go find its name.

Here: Denial.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4645330/

Yeah, he interviewed Deborah Lipstadt.
Brilliant that David Irving was boasting about his great life and his Rolls Royce and then the trial bankrupted him. Sometimes there is justice.

I’d forgotten that court case, truly justice was served.

Wasn’t sure about the Facebook interview – FB chap saying that they take down hate speech but not incorrect or mistaken comments, Baddiel seemed to be asserting that any holocaust denial was automatically hate speech. Interesting debate about where the line of free speech falls.

Surely if you are a racist ,bigoted prick you should be proud of the holocaust and not deny it?

There again, they are thick **** .

A point covered at the start of the programme – the Nazis talked of not being able to celebrate their “achievement”

Surely if you are a racist ,bigoted prick

The sort that makes jokes about black footballers you mean ?

I love conspiracy theory believers. They do serve a useful purpose to society by showing us very clearly how flawed human reasoning can be. They just take it to extremes and run with it.

There’s a great little book called “The Psychology of Conspiracy Throries” if anyone is interested in how it’s possible to believe stuff like this. Conspiracy theorists are not stupid people by and large. They might believe in really stupid things, but we all have our own little (mostly benign) conspiracy theories. It’s also a misconception that most conspiracy theorists are right wing/racist. We just live in a time in the West where the prominent head bangers are right wing, holocaust denying racists.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Psychology_of_Conspiracy_Theories.html?id=q8ZUDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

Basically some of the cognitive tricks our brains pull which were useful for our ancestors hunting antelope on an African plane are very much not useful for making sense of the world today. We try and assign “agency” to all sorts of things and look for patterns where there are none. Great for avoiding being eaten by a lion, also great for creating a batshit mental models of the jews/lizards/transpeople taking over the world.

I guess the solution to it probably lies in education, so that we’re better at spotting fallacies and biases.

I’m guessing you didn’t watch the programme, tomd. This isn’t just a harmless conspiracy theory.

Yeah I get that. The trouble with holocaust deniers is it’s such a nasty, extreme subset of conspiracy theory it can be hard to look at what’s going on under the surface because of the harm and upset they cause.

I’m suggesting it’s worth looking at what they share in common with garden variety conspiracy theorists because you can then understand what’s going on and how to tackle it.

Short of holocaust denial, there’re are a decent minority who hold really horrible anti Jewish conspiracy theories. The only time I’ve had to intervene in a act of racism/antisemitism at work was a dickhead union rep circulating anti Jewish propaganda about some kind of global jewish cabal doing down the working man. So I’m well aware of the harm these theories can cause and the need to act.

This guy sums it up quite well.

The Holocaust is the most meticulously documented crime in history – not least by the actual perpetrators of the genocide – the Nazis

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The Holocaust is the most meticulously documented crime in history – not least by the actual perpetrators of the genocide – the Nazis

Which is why I think Germany are wrong to ban Holcaust denial. It’s so easy to prove the Holocaust happened that banning claiming it didn’t just lends credibility to something that can be disproved in seconds.

Many years ago I got into an internet debate with a self identifying denier. The freaky thing was he didn’t dispute any of the facts. He accepted there were death camps, he accepted vast numbers of people died, I gave him examples of high profile people who had definately died in camps all of which he accepted as true. I can’t actually remember what it was he was ‘denying’ about the Holocaust but whatever it was it was purely semantic.

our ancestors hunting antelope on an African plane

Our ancestors flew over from Africa on special planes they’d stocked up with antelopes for food?

I knew it!

Yeah the lizard people gave them the technology but the illuminati covered it up, in cahoots with bigfoot.

The freaky thing was he didn’t dispute any of the facts. 

Conspiracy theories do not rely on any kind of empirical evidence or sound reasoning. Arguing with a conspiracy theorist about facts is a waste of time, it’s like arguing with a 3 year old.

It’s a weird thing, conspiracy theories. I don’t think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK, having read up on it a bit, which I guess makes me a conspiracy theorist. My understanding of reported facts makes me unhappy with the official “sole actor” theory – not that I think I know who else was involved or why it was done.

But I struggle to see how anyone can disagree with the overwhelming facts available on the Holocaust.

I’ll watch it tonight and imagine I’ll be swearing. How can anyone actually deny it. My mind just can’t comprehend denial of such a thing in the face of the evidence at hand.

They don’t truly think it didn’t happen,they just desperately need the attention,even bringing angry attention and arguments upon themselves is better that their real everyday lives.

they just desperately need the attention

No, see that’s things like the flat earth bollocks – this is proper hate speak. They deny it to try to make Jews look like liars. It’s not as simple as attention seeking.

It is all attention and standing out,just some people are more extreme and have realised there is no point banging on about something no-one cares about,they need something real to get their hatered and get a reaction from,if jews didn’t exist they would be doing it about something else.

They deny it to try to make Jews look like liars. It’s not as simple as attention seeking.

It is all attention and standing out,just some people are more extreme and have realised there is no point banging on about something no-one cares about,they need something real to get their hatered and get a reaction from,if jews didn’t exist they would be doing it about something else.

Always impossible to guess motives but my gut feel is Mikey is closer to the truth. The evidence for the holcaust is overwhelming, if you just wanted to attack Jews you’d pick another way. IN contrast it’s an ideal way to attract negative attention. Of course there will be exceptions.

Can someone who saw the show give an idea of the argument(s) the deniers employed? I don’t want to watch the show ‘cos it will depress me but I’m intruged about how you could even begin to make a case against.

Well, one of his strands of argument was- to paraphrase as I can’t remember it exactly- that if Jews were so angry about the holocaust then they wouldn’t buy German goods, specifically Mercedes cars, therefore since they do it can’t have happened.
David stated he had an Audi, and asked if that meant he was denying it happened and I think the Irish guy said yes…

He also started by spouting the usual bollocks about the gas chambers not being big enough and bodies taking too long to cremate for the numbers to be credible ergo all of it was untrue

The evidence for the holcaust is overwhelming, if you just wanted to attack Jews you’d pick another way.

You may not have meant it but that statement sort of gives the idea that there are more ‘convincing’ ways to attack Jewish people, as if holocaust deniers don’t also typically employ a larger* repertoire.

*All on the same theme of course, ie that ‘The (insert minority)’ in general are an ‘evil, dishonest, manipulative cabal that historically lie about even their own oppression, because that’s how evil and dishonest they are…’

Imagine the ‘power’ of wiping out not only millions of a people, but then also by (an attempt at) erasing the memory and deed – to now once again point fingers back at the victims? I’m sure there is such a horror as this somewhere in Shakespeare’s works but it escapes me. Anyway, individual motives for such denial may vary a little in inception (if not by much in practice) and to me it doesn’t make a lot of sense to argue over motives as they will vary. ‘Seeking attention’ vs ‘disseminating malignant racial propaganda’? Why not both, and/or other reasons. Best to ask the one doing the denying.

Well, one of his strands of argument was- to paraphrase as I can’t remember it exactly- that if Jews were so angry about the holocaust then they wouldn’t buy German goods, specifically Mercedes cars, therefore since they do it can’t have happened.
David stated he had an Audi, and asked if that meant he was denying it happened and I think the Irish guy said yes…

He also started by spouting the usual bollocks about the gas chambers not being big enough and bodies taking too long to cremate for the numbers to be credible ergo all of it was untrue

Yeah, he’s got nothing. If they weren’t killed/cremated where did all the people who couldn’t work go? The babies/toddlers/elderly? Why aren’t there hundreds of thousands of 75-80yo people with numbers tattood on their wrists who arrived in the camps as babies and weren’t killed? If he’s saying they didn’t send people who couldn’t work to camps in the first place then again, where did 80pc of Hollands jewish populaton go?

As for buying german goods, clearly people who belive in the Holocaust do buy German goods – I do. So that proves nothing.

I don’t beleive that he believes what he’s saying.

The denier was an utter embarassment. Baddiel said before they met that he wanted to punch him, lord knows how he felt afterwards. SPOILER ALERT – he’s set his views to song

Baddiel was on the right track when he challenged him about what pleasure or comfort he got from spouting his vile bollocks. I got the impression the guy knew he was talking rubbish but was in it so deep he wasn’t backing down out of stubborness

Correct me if I am wrong but it wasn’t just Jews that were arrested, interned and worked to death or were systematically killed
Think they were the vast majority but there were also, and I have no idea of numbers or if I am recalling this wrongly, gypsies , mental patients, Russians, balkans, immigrants, basically anyone who didn’t fit the nazi tick list and you were at risk
Of being carted off
Not sure if I would like to go to Auschwitz or another death camp, even the program on secret nazi bases makes me uneasy but interested at the same time

Even though the things these people spout are a problem and wrong in society the reasons for it lie somewhere else in his life,people like this like to think they are clever predators who are too clever to be fooled and they also know we are all to soft and we will go interview then and make documentaries about them and listen and put them in the spotlight,its their oxygen and consumes their life and builds until they don’t even really know what is real anymore.

Think they were the vast majority

The numbers I was taught at school were 11million total, 6-7 million Jews, the rest “other peoples”

Could the reason that some deny the Holocaust be sheer horror at what it entailed; extensive planning and construction spanning years, coordinating the efforts of thousands of people in not only building and staffing the death camps, but arranging the databases and transportation logistics that gave it such horrific efficiency.

Much of this would never have come to pass if not for Adolf Eichmann’s recruitment by Leopold Von Mildenstein

Which leads us to some awkward questions that even David Baddiel doesn’t want asked:

Just. ****. Off. https://t.co/IEt7bHyPNn

— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) April 6, 2017

Correct me if I am wrong but it wasn’t just Jews that were arrested, interned and worked to death or were systematically killed
Think they were the vast majority but there were also, and I have no idea of numbers or if I am recalling this wrongly, gypsies , mental patients, Russians, balkans, immigrants, basically anyone who didn’t fit the nazi tick list and you were at risk
Of being carted off

Yup, and political prisoners, SOE people. Jehova’s Witnesses. [1] There were even occasional groups of of Allied POWs at times. (USA Airmen at Buchenwald.)

[1] …and these are interesting because unlike Jews they were allowed to renounce their faith and get out. So they will often be witnesses who survived. Clearly they won’t have seen gas chammbers but they will have seen people being randomly murdered and worked to death.

Which leads us to some awkward questions that even David Baddiel doesn’t want asked:

Not awkward questions at all. After the war the Soviets were more of a threat and Germany needed men to rebuild. So hundreds of thousands of guilty people were not prosecuted for practical reasons.

It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just what they did.

I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau 2 weeks ago. The scale of the murder is incomprehensible and as Baddiel said at the end this is one of the problems. Because it’s almost impossible to believe that human beings could murder 1.2 million other humans at Auschwitz-Birkenau alone, some choose not to believe it at all.

Our ancestors flew over from Africa on special planes they’d stocked up with antelopes for food?

It was the inspiration for the Hollywood Blockbuster Snakes on a Plane.

o hundreds of thousands of guilty people were not prosecuted for practical reasons.

Indeed … but modern Germany doesn’t try and cover this up – check out Topography of Terror museum in Berlin: there’s a whole section on what happned to many of the people in ‘involved’ in the Holocaust after the end of WWII and the positions in post-war German society that they held.

The scale of the murder is incomprehensible and as Baddiel said at the end this is one of the problems

This … I remember first reading about the Holocaust as a young boy. Up until that moment, I believed the basic premis of Western Christian idiology that teaches children that people are good and kind etc … initially I struggled to rationalise and comprehend the sheer scale and monstrosity of the cruelty metered out by human beings on other human beings. It was a steep learning curve.

In the 1980s I then discovered that I had elderly Polish relatives that has survived the concentration camps. In 1989 (the same year as the Berlin Wall fell) I visited the site of the Bergen-Belsen camp, which had a profound effect on me.

Well done David Baddiel for continuing the education …

just watched it whilst on the turbo trainer. horrific. and so was the program! IGMC

I struggled to rationalise and comprehend the sheer scale and monstrosity of the cruelty metered out by human beings on other human beings.

And the Nazis even devised ways of murdering people in such a way as to not to emotionally impact the soldiers carrying out their orders (they didn’t start by gassing people – they initially shot them and this often upset the soldiers). The gassing then came about as they wanted a way to mass execute people but then the people would often become hysterical knowing what was about to happen so they wrapped it up in the story that they were simply having a shower to clean them for their time in the camp, then they would pour in the Zyklon B through the showerheads.

And another thing to bear in mind, many of the soldiers were simply following orders, it was a few very sick individuals like Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler and Hess.

Yeah, he’s got nothing. If they weren’t killed/cremated where did all the people who couldn’t work go? The babies/toddlers/elderly? Why aren’t there hundreds of thousands of 75-80yo people with numbers tattood on their wrists who arrived in the camps as babies and weren’t killed? If he’s saying they didn’t send people who couldn’t work to camps in the first place then again, where did 80pc of Hollands jewish populaton go?

Baddiel made the same mistake, and recognised that he was making it. You can’t win this argument with rational facts and reason. All you do by joining the debate is legitimise it by colluding with the idea that there is a debate there to be had. There’s a phrase about wrestling with pigs that springs to mind.

Yeah, he’s got nothing. If they weren’t killed/cremated where did all the people who couldn’t work go? The babies/toddlers/elderly? Why aren’t there hundreds of thousands of 75-80yo people with numbers tattood on their wrists who arrived in the camps as babies and weren’t killed? If he’s saying they didn’t send people who couldn’t work to camps in the first place then again, where did 80pc of Hollands jewish populaton go?

Much depended on who you were – gypsies got off much lighter than Poles, Poles got off lighter than Jews. They started by killing fewer prisoners but, as the war dragged on and they perfected techniques, they became more prolific. There wasn’t much in the way of judgement carried out, it was often the ‘luck’ of the draw as the train pulled in and the prisoners disembarked. Some younger people (therefore unable to work) were killed immediately, other days they would keep them for Mengele’s scientific experiments.

@outofbreath The entire NASA/US Nuclear program was full of former German scientists, which I was unaware of until we had a presentation on the shuttle disasters including a full brief on all the main players. It was eye opening just how many the US hoovered up, all with immunity from prosecution.