On Tuesday, June 18, 2002, at 11:59 AM, Brad DeLong wrote:
>>>
>>> ...[elsewhere] I was asked whether the fact that a person denies the
>>> existence of gas chambers does not prove that he is an anti-Semite. I
>>> wrote back what every sane person knows: no, of course it does not. A
>>> person might believe that Hitler exterminated 6 million Jews in some
>>> other
>>> way without being an anti-Semite. Since the point is trivial and
>>> disputed
>>> by no one, I do not know why we are discussing it.
>>>
>>> In that context, I made a further point: even denial of the Holocaust
>>> would not prove that a person is an anti-Semite. I presume that that
>>> point
>>> too is not subject to contention. Thus if a person ignorant of modern
>>> history were told of the Holocaust and refused to believe that humans
>>> are
>>> capable of such monstrous acts, we would not conclude that he is an
>>> anti-Semite. That suffices to establish the point at issue.
>
> Interesting use of the word "proof." Denial of the Holocaust by someone
> who has done even the slightest amount of reading in history does make
> it overwhelmingly likely that someone is an anti-Semite. Faurisson does
> not deny the Holocaust because he thinks that humans are incapable of
> monstrous acts--he denies it because he thinks the Jews are very
> capable of monstrous acts.
>
> You are digging Chomsky into an even deeper hole. I have never yet run
> into anyone who has done some reading in history, denies the gas
> chambers, and yet is not an anti-Semite.
>
this is precisely what i was referring to in my remark about hairsplitting. it's a tad disingenuous, but it also needn't obsess us, imo. but i don't think i have anything more to add or to say than i already have . . .