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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   28013 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 19, 2025

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David Cole never denied the Holocaust.

Did I get the wrong David Cole at Taki mag? Or are you arguing for some specific definition of Holocaust denial?

I’m not hugely familiar with him but my recollection is that you’re both kind of right. In the early-mid 90s when he was associated with Jim Goad and the Answer Me! counterculture zine circle he was essentially a ‘classic’ holocaust denier, probably mainly out of edginess.

By the time he was writing for Taki he believed (and as far as I know believes) that at least 3-4 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust by various methods that were ultimately the fault of the Nazi government. That probably still counts as denial for Deborah Lipstadt types but neither I nor actual Holocaust deniers of the “only 200,000 died of typhus, the rest either didn’t die or never existed” variety would consider it thus.

Cole takes a very rare position held by, maybe, 2 other people, which is that he is an Auschwitz Denier but a Treblinka Believer. He doesn't believe the Holocaust story at Auschwitz, which would make him a Denier according to any mainstream standard. It's also strange because an "extermination camp" at Auschwitz would be fundamentally more plausible than the Treblinka story. For example, Auschwitz at least actually had real crematoria which could be used to cremate large piles of body (according to Revisionists, not nearly enough but still). But Treblinka had nothing like that at all.

There's very scant evidence that "Treblinka" even existed at all. The total absence of evidence regarding Treblinka is beneficial for the Mainstream, because the large amounts of physical and documentary evidence at Auschwitz and Majdanek have made it easy for Revisionists to reconstruct what actually happened. For example, "oh you said this room was a gas chamber at Auschwitz, but according to all these construction blueprints we found, they all say it's a morgue. If this was just a fake morgue where's the real morgue?" The mainstream says it was really a gas chamber that was a fake morgue according to construction documents and also a fake shower room, the Revisionists say it was a morgue which is what construction documents say it was. So Revisionists have it easy at Majdanek and Auschwitz, but there's basically no evidence regarding Treblinka making it harder for Revisionists to make a more solid case. But of course the inverse is true, it's much harder for the mainstream to make a case but they have political power so they don't need to rely on solid evidence to retain hegemony over the interpretation of those camps.

David Cole vastly overstates his own contribution to Revisionism- he never published a single page in the mountains of volumes of Revisionist research, much less on the camps he "Believes" which are the most ridiculous of all frankly. David Cole's hybrid-position was just a convenient way for him to distance himself from Revisionism while retaining his ego with respect to his prior positions. "I was right about Auschwitz but I totally believe the Holocaust story at Treblinka!" There's a reason almost nobody in the world holds that position.

David Cole vastly overstates his own contribution to Revisionism- he never published a single page in the mountains of volumes of Revisionist research, much less on the camps he "Believes" which are the most ridiculous of all frankly.

Come on. The published word isn't the only word that matters. He made a direct-to-video documentary and local report on the Auschwitz camp back when distribution via VHS was the norm.

David Cole's primary contribution was that, while presenting as a sincere Jew who was studying the Holocaust, he got Franciszek Piper, who was head of the Auschwitz Historical Department, on camera to admit that the Auschwitz Gas Chamber shown to millions of tourists was not an original structure, it was "restored" post-war in Soviet-occupied Poland. The Soviets converted an air-raid shelter to a gas chamber and presented it as all original. That is the reason for certain anomalies, like the infamous Wooden Door that attracts the mockery of low-level Deniers- ("A wooden door with a window to a gas chamber?"). This was immediately after Cole was told by the Auschwitz-trained tour guide that it was an original structure.

But he was never a serious researcher. Piper only admitted what Revisionists had already known. I won't discount the value of that moment, but he just hasn't made any contributions to Revisionist research. He has brought publicity and that's the extent of his contribution.

I'm planning on visiting auschwitz in the summer. What would you recommend I read to prepare me for that trip?

Here's a list of material:

  • Watch David Cole in Auschwitz (1992), of course David distances himself from Revisionism (although he doesn't repudiate anything he's presented in this video) but this film was a pinnacle moment in Revisionist history.
  • Chapter 10 of Dalton's Debating the Holocaust. The whole book is good and provides the best overview of both the mainstream and Revisionist positions but Chapter 10 is on Auschwitz specifically.
  • The Chemistry of Auschwitz is one of the best Revisionist volumes on Auschwitz and was another major moment in Revisionism- a PhD student in chemistry surreptitiously sampled the walls of the alleged gas chambers and found they lacked any trace of cyanide in comparison to the known delousing chambers. This video is created/narrated by the author of that book and is based on that book so it's probably more of a digestible overview than the book it's based on.
  • The Last Days of the Big Lie is a takedown of Seven Spielberg's Oscar-winning Documentary. I would consider this important viewing because the vast majority of the evidence for the Holocaust is composed of postwar witness testimony, often from Jews. This documentary shows how unreliable the entire Holocaust-memoir sphere is as a source of evidence and how it's exploited by Hollywood for political purposes.

David Cole's film and Chemistry of Auschwitz are especially relevant because they surround the alleged gas chamber that you are going to be shown on tour. If you review those materials I think you'll have quite a different perspective when you visit that structure and are shown the "Zyklon holes".

Thank you very much.

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