Red-lining Information and Discussion
Manufacturing Omission
[The image is unmodified, licensed, and such a wonderful picture]
A confession
Some months ago I remember reading a very well considered and supported article at The American Conservative, and being a little surprised. But, impressed I was. In the last few weeks I discover that the geopolitical commentators to whom I listen are also largely Christian (often Orthodox) conservative. I have been wondering about this, and today whilst listening to a Peter Lavelle and George Szamuely podcast the penny started to drop.
Before I get to that, I wish to present a little case study. I regularly view what is available at Unz Review mostly because I enjoy reading Pepe Escobar, but there are other authors published there that I find interesting including Philip Giraldi, Michael Hudson, Ron Paul, The Saker, Whitney Webb, and Jonothan Cook (who I read at his own website) amongst others. This is a diverse collection of writers from nationality and political viewpoint but are all writing in English, and have interesting things to say.
Recently, I looked at an article by Ron Unz himself. In this he reviews the memory holed histories of authors arguing for different interpretations of WWII, one of whom was David Irving. He described that Irving had been completely disappeared from Youtube, but was still available at BitChute and was an entertaining speaker. So, challenge accepted! Yep. Only short videos which are generally attacking him are available at Youtube. Even on BitChute many videos of him speaking are prevented from playing due to "community standards". But, I did watch several hours of video of him arguing his points made in his numerous books.
A Hyper-Brief History of Irving
Between two stints at university in Britain he worked for a year in Germany at a steel factory, and during the time learned German. Following his tertiary educational periods he decided to write, and chose the Allied bombing of Dresden during WWII as the topic. He went there and obtained numerous original materials and statements by witnesses to provide the background to his book, which became a best seller. This gave him two key advantages, a willing publisher and money, and some trust by Germans. He takes on a biography of Hitler (a decade of work) and uses his fair treatment of the Dresden event to obtain more original source documents (especially diaries and letters) of people close to Hitler as his basis for the biography. Upon obtaining the diary of a senior member of the Nazi party or its military wing he may ask the widow "Why didn't you give this to the German national archives?". "They didn't ask", she would reply. He finally comes to the conclusion that the Jewish Holocaust is overblown and a marketing machine. There are obvious consequences for an opinion like this.
Being slandered regularly during the 1990's he decides to issue writs for defamation and is engaged in a trial in which he defends himself against a team of lawyers, academics and their researchers who find 19 points of error in his writings. That’s somewhere between 20 and 30 books at the time, and they review all of them that have to do with WWII and the German Nazi government. So, about 1 error per book, or thereabouts.
He lost his case and was made to pay the costs of the defendant, some millions of pounds, which bankrupted him.
The Opinions and Behaviour of Irving
Irving could be described as a white, male, christian, conservative, British, nationalist who is proud of his nation's achievements and is frustrated by the lack of an open look at why the British Empire was lost. Conversely, I am a white, male, atheist, democratic-socialist, non-British, anti-imperialist.
It could be claimed that his speaking tours were fueling neo-Nazism and that he was preying upon disaffected parties for their monies. His actions seem aligned with his world view. I don’t think he was a charlatan, but believed what he was saying and generally provided evidence for it. In any case, it matters little; Free Speech, my friends.
A Deliberate Lack of Nuance
Not only does Irving produce a biography of Hitler, but also one of Churchill, of which I have read neither, but have listened to what he had to say about Churchill. (Every speech about Hitler is completely erased from Youbube and Bitchute). Irving claims that Churchill was accustomed to a life which he financially could not sustain and was involved in art fraud and became the subject of a foreign influence campaign because of his financial weakness. Little truck seems to be given to these assertions despite some very specific points of evidence claimed by Irving.
Post Modernism
Why am I reading all these conservatives? That is, actually, a mis-question.
I am looking for interesting analysis that comes as close to the truth as I can find, and I don’t give a hoot about the political opinions of the protagonists. The key questions are:
Is their analysis keen?
How well can they back it up with verifiable sources? And, can I corroborate it?
Is it interesting?
Since the recent "RussiaGate" narrative and others have destroyed any latent trust in “western” English media, there seems to be this "woke" thing which I take as western intelligence agency influence operation groups trying to appeal to an audience on a quicksand of morality. It smells of psyop and "divide and conquer".
Thus, the answer to the question "why is a democratic socialist listening to conservatives?" is that they seem to be less affected by this current meta-operation and are sticking to their principles. This misses an entire point. The whole “left” “right” thing is a charade. Its a multi-dimensional space involving lots of different opinions on individual rights and collective decisions, and in which domains one gets prevalence over the other (except in National Security ;-).
My last point to these video publishers (Youtube, Bitchute) blocking viewing is:
Thank you for treating me like a child.
Proverbs
YesXorNo Proverb 1
There are no responses from the DuckDuckGo or Google search engine for the following, so I’ll claim it:
To learn who rules over you, learn what you are not allowed to say
YesXorNo Proverb 1.1
As a corollary, I add:
To confirm who rules over you, learn what you are not allowed to read or hear
Sources