Truly Amazin’

At some point the peaceable types are going to have to do something about their schism between Shia and Sunni, otherwise their Caliphate ain’t going to be so peaceable, is it?

The struggle to control oil is clearly in play.

It’s not, but sounds like a plan for Israel. Conquer Iran and nick its oil. Give them some real ‘settler colonialism’ to shout about.

I had a fascinating pub conversation a few years back in a city centre pub in Jewhate Central: Liverpool. “America only fights wars for oil” proclaimed my lefty Scouse associate. “So why does it support Israel?” I asked, “Israel has no oil”.
The answer is best summed up as Rabbit-hole.

The Middle East is about religious fanaticism and the struggle between Shias and Sunnis for power. Little else. If the potato can’t or won’t see that then he’s too thick even to be a Puckoon character.

This man never ceases to amaze. How can one man be so greedy and hold on to so much of the world’s supply of stupid? The level of density is in danger of creating its own event horizon. A man so thick, he makes Diane Abbott look like a towering intellect.

Norm,

“The Middle East is about religious fanaticism and the struggle between Shias and Sunnis for power. Little else. If the potato can’t or won’t see that then he’s too thick even to be a Puckoon character.”

Yarp. The situation with Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah is best seen as pro-Shia PR. It’s about making the sort of Arabs who are knuckle-dragging chavs look more favourably towards Iran than Saudi because Iran are going to kill the Jews.

These attacks on Israel are really just a firework show. It’s politics, like some minister putting on a hard hat and visiting a factory. Or making Prescott a minister so old Labour voters still think you’re all flat cap and whippets. They launch a bunch of shit rockets at military bases and so, they’re going to get blown to bits by defences. It looks like Iran are the people who are going to kill the Jews, if that’s what you care about, but more Jews died falling down the stairs yesterday.

Going into full-on war with Israel would be utterly retarded and I’m pretty confident that the people at the top of the government and military in Iran are not utterly retarded. It would lead to half a million dead Iranians and even if they won, they get no oil and more land to grow some fruit and veg.

Longrider:

This man never ceases to amaze. How can one man be so greedy and hold on to so much of the world’s supply of stupid? The level of density is in danger of creating its own event horizon. A man so thick, he makes Diane Abbott look like a towering intellect.

I always thought Owen Jones was his closest rival in terms of stupidity and propensity to evil but Abbott’s certainly up there….

It’s worth quoting this piece in full for reasons that will become clear:

Meanwhile, Israel plays the role of the threatened western democracy, and is exceptionally well armed to do so.

So is the contention that Israel is not democratic? It has one of the purest forms of his beloved PR there is – and to deem that a country which has had 20,000 rockets launched into its territory over the last year is ‘playing threatened’ suggests either complete stupidity or Dachau levels of anti-semitism (maybe both)

Russia, and other states, are arming those opposing Israel. They win influence as a result.

Although the issues on the ground are very real, and few seem to really want to understand them, at one level this is yet another classic proxy war between the West, Russia and its allies, with China offering Russia at least tacit support.

I doubt the Mullahs give a flying fig for Putin’s opinion but perhaps expanding NATO had consequences of which those who foolishly advocated it were unaware.

The big, immediate, issue is to end this proxy war which no one can win and from which many can lose. The way to do that is quite simple. It’s not even rocket science, because the answer is to stop supplying the rockets that are fuelling this war at present.

I am happy to stand accused of being naive for saying this. I am a Quaker. Of course I am on the side of peace. But it’s not naive to be so. This war will have to end in talks. There is no foreseeable alternative. Israel, for example, is not going to cease to be, and nor should it, even if any reasonable observer might wish for a different government there, as will in all likelihood happen as a precursor to peace.

Well I’m happy you’re happy – if my 9 year old daughter came back with that level of analysis I’d start by pointing out the complications – for someone who claims to be an authority on ‘political economy’
to have such an analysis beggars belief, especially someone of retirement age. Maybe he needs to be appointed ‘special envoy’ – Please do it TTK, it might spare us any more ‘insights’ of this calibre.

The point is very much that Hamas/ Hezbollah/ Iran will not accept Israel’s continued existence – even if it were run by Caroline Lucas – they would still want every last Jew dead. That’s their baseline point for negotiations. Perhaps at some point you, and other dimwits who are ‘in favour of peace’ might realize that’s only an option on quite clear terms.

Nor will those seeking Palestinian homelands drop their claims.

It is only by negotiation that these matters can progress. In that case stopping the supply of armaments makes sense when no one seriously thinks there is a real risk to Israel at present if that were to happen.

The only two questions are how many must die before those talks happen, and is Netanyahu doing this to support his fellow neofascist, Trump? I fear that the answers are many, and yes. Both are distressing and a massive cause for concern.

So the unilateral withdrawal of Israel from Gaza in 2005, even taking out dead bodies and remains, accomplished through negotiation had no long term impact. So there is a very clear and present danger if Israel loses its weapons supply and Iran steps up military support. The talks are ongoing – at every stage Hamas/ Hezbollah block any talk of a ceasefire. So he’s even more ignorant than I thought. As for the dig at Trump, to fail to mention the horrific anti-semitism of Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the enthusiastic embrace of genuine Neo Nazi Holocaust denial by Iran is either wilfully ignorant or confirms Murphy as one of the leading anti-semites in the UK.

As this post was shorter I could stick with it but as Mark says, the man is the most completely ignorant (as well as the most manifestly evil) contributor extant in cyberspace and I’m sorry Editor, the sooner he is abducted and airlifted to Shin Bet or Mossad headquarters the better off the world will be.

Andyf

Oh of course – I think Green defence policies have mutated from building a Green hedge around the country (partly because the migrants might scratch themselves on it) to unilateral disarmament (not that is removing all conventional weapons) so of course they’d be dead in a day. My point being Caroline Lucas is probably the contemporary equivalent in anti-semitic terms of a Hitler but even if she was leading them these anti-Semites wouldn’t care as they’d want to carry out the murders personally.

Van_Patten,

“I am a Quaker. Of course I am on the side of peace.”

My only condition with pacifists is that anyone gets to rape their wife and steal their property. You don’t want to go to the front because you don’t approve of the use of violence? Fine. But then, then you don’t get to phone the police, which is requesting the use of violence.

A man so thick, he makes Diane Abbott look like a towering intellect.

I always thought Owen Jones was his closest rival in terms of stupidity and propensity to evil but Abbott’s certainly up there….

I believe the new official standard of stupidity is the Lammy: “He’s as thick as two short Lammys”. Though I reckon he falls rather short of the above two on the ‘evil’ scales.

Ivor Name – so furious you couldn’t. punctuate.

Lol.

Dennis – I’ve been waiting for you to reveal yourself. Now you have.

That could be anybody’s willy.

When do you start measuring knees?

Idk what you’re talking about, but David Irving didn’t suddenly stop being an expert on WW2 just because he got cancelled.

Were you even aware of who he was before the lawsuit and associated media attention? Seems doubtful.

Were you even aware of who he was before the lawsuit and associated media attention? Seems doubtful.

What specifically do you know about my education and pool of knowledge that would lead you to such a conclusion? Other than I’ve called you on your bullshit?

I’ve been reading history all my life (I’m 67) and had I finished the language requirement, I’d have a degree in American History to go with my degree in Economics.

David Irving was notorious when I was in college. My introduction to him came in the form of a lecture from one of my professors. Irving was held up a the poster child of how not to be a competent professional historian.

And no, Steve, the professor giving the lecture wasn’t Jewish.

Dennis

Regarding David Irving – I can recall reading ‘The War Path’ as part of an Essay when I was an undergraduate and being encouraged to do so my professor at Cambridge (A well known ‘Right wing’ axis) – but I will agree with you he accompanied the recommendation with a view that elements of it were ‘self-evidently wrong’, and that the man went completely off the rails in the 1980s and beyond.

I do think he has more credibility and intellectual substance than Murphy however. Besides which it’s not as though the passage from the cretin is in any way not anti-semitic or attempting to imply that Israel can co-exist peacefully exist with people whose sole raison d’etre is their annihilation.

It’s a sad day when Murphy’s evil extends to causing division on here.

“Irving is a legitimate expert, he was the one who sussed out the Hitler Diaries fraud.”

Well I’m a legitimate expert and I too sussed out the Hitler Diary fraud.

True my expertise has nowt to do with history but still. Dear God you’d have had to be moronic to believe that the Hitler Diaries weren’t fraudulent.

Indeed I remember a conversation at High Table in a Cambridge college. Fellow: What do you make of the Hitler diaries? Guest (me) – Obviously bogus but people probably won’t accept that as conclusive until the paper or ink prove too young. Fellow: you’re quite wrong, it will be settled on internal evidence. Me (but only in thought): You prattish young historian, you.

Difficult subject Irving. Whilst not in anyway wishing to endorse Irving, the whole history of pre-war & wartime Germany has been so extensively rewritten for public consumption, it’s hard to work out what actually happened & why.
The UK has just elected an extreme hard left government. The historical explanation for that is going to depend on the political consensus when the history is written. And eventually, it may well provide its Irvings.

Mein Stevenfuehrer –

I used Wikipedia for convenience. I will only note that you haven’t offered a factual refutation of anything I have posted (Wikipedia or no). Nor have you shown that I am ignorant of history. All you’ve shown is that you’re willing to ignore historical fact to defend a vicious anti-semite.

How many critically and commercially successful books on WW2 have you written?

It’s worth noting that if you started arguing tax and economics with Richard Murphy, he’d probably resort to pointing out that he’s written more “critically and commercially successful” books than you have. Are you ready to acclaim Richard Murphy as a “talented economist and scholar”?

There’s nothing difficult about this: David Irving is, and always has been, a morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest hater of Jews. That hatred has lead him to the level of disrepute he enjoys today. If you want to make excuses, make excuses. But don’t pretend that the evil in others somehow mitigates Irving’s evil, or more to the point, somehow make excusing Irving’s evil acceptable amongst those in polite society.

Two fairly ‘normal’ historians of the time (who could in no way be described as woke) John Keegan and Hugh Trevor – Roper all pointed out that if you take the exculpation of Hitler out both the ‘War Path’ and ‘Hitler’s War’ are relatively well researched and good on aspects of the Lead – in to War.

That’s like an engineer surveying the ruins of a collapsed 40 story apartment building that killed 200 dwellers and noting that the foundation held up well.

DM – Hugh Trevor-Roper thought they were genuine.

PJF – I know, right? I have plenty of opinions that are a lot more offensive than acknowledging David Irving as an expert in his field.

VP – I still do think from a historical perspective, Irving had a fixation with somehow proving Hitler’s relative lack of influence over the Holocaust and finding evidence to fit that hypothesis

I think he fell into the trap of sympathising with his subject, to some degree. Hitler was a clown who made incredibly foolish decisions which brought catastrophe to Germany and Europe. We’d have been better off if they hanged the little bastard after the Beer Hall Putsch.

Unfortunately our present rulers are doing their best to rehabilitate the Nazis by being so awful in the opposite direction.

Dennis, the wokescold –

Mein Stevenfuehrer

Das ist gut.

All you’ve shown is that you’re willing to ignore historical fact to defend a vicious anti-semite.

Is he a vicious antisemite? I don’t think David Irving has ever physically harmed or tried to harm any Jews.

It’s like when the Jewish press in the UK declared poor old Jeremy Corbyn to be “an existential threat to Jewish life” (sic!)

Rilly?

I am in the habit, more often than not, of skipping over what Der Stevenfuehrer posts.

Your loss.

David Irving is, and always has been, a morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest hater of Jews.

What, like Mel Gibson? I like his movies.

PJF

How’s the Kursk salient doing? You’re out there, right??

BiS

As ever spot on – there must have been at least three dozen major works on Nazi Germany in the 20 years since I was an undergrad. More are commissioned annually by the EU across Europe to illustrate the dangers of ‘Nationalism’ and ‘Populism’ – very difficult to get an accurate picture of the lead in to war.

I think Irving’s probably obsolete in the relative moderation of his anti- semitism by this point (and I’d pay any mainstream journalist big money to find out what the 5 Green and 5 Muslim
block MPs think about the Holocaust ) my guess is Irving might even get rehabilitated in the coming years….

We must never forget the Hard Left killed 5 times the Nazi toll ( at least) and judging by this government they fancy upping that total, including most of the contributors on here.

I read ‘Hitler’s War’ some years ago and while finding many contentious points, it did puncture the relentless revisioniost propaganda of Hitler as being a stupid Bond Villain of meglomaniac simplicity. There was much in it that made one look at historic and current events with a more open mind.

For example, just being No.1 doesn’t mean your are in total comamnd, or indeed, anything more than riding the tiger. Kristalnacht makes it pretty clear that Himmler was the one actually pulling the strings, and since he was in charge of the Praetorian gaurd, this was Cannon Law in action. It isn’t just cream that floats.

The antisemitism he built on and rode to power was widespead across the western world and much emulated, especially in the USA. War capitalists, and international financiers etc. Someone had to be blamed for WW1 and it wasn’t going to be the politicans.

I haven’t read any of his more recent work, and it’s quite possible he went mad & bad. But Irving the Historian was a balanced read that avoided the cartoon name calling. In no way was ‘Hitler’s War’ a backing of the Nazi’s or their doctrine. It was indeed a lesson of what happens if power is gained and not controlled. And Hitler was largely a creation of the WW1 result, so the Brits and the French had a hand in it. The Yanks gave up and went home, and who’s to blame them?

And to fight him, UK and USA allied ourselves with Stalin’s USSR, which was far nastier by an order of magnitude. Moral High Ground? I think not.

Irving was ‘cancelled’ for daring to speak unpleasant truths. Oh, and no single person kills millions of Jews – or any other class enemy by themselves. You need the active support of a population of millions to do that. Well, up to H bombs appeared, I guess.

It’s not just Germany, V_P. It’s the airbrushing out of the pan-European anti-Semitism in the first half of the C20th. And I’d include the UK in that. I grew up in 50s & 60s in a very Jewish part of London & anti-Semitic attitudes were still not only common but predominate. WW2 is now painted as a fight against the evil anti-Semitic fascists yadda, yadda, yadda. It’s complete bollocks. You would not have got Brits to put on boots & uniforms & fight for that cause. It was the result of the historic British foreign policy of not tolerating a single dominant power in Europe & thus the treaties with France & Poland against a powerful Germany. So the incentive was patriotism to the nation, not righting foreign wrongs. On that basis, the UK could have gone to war with any country in Europe or all of them.
The problem with Germany is if you concentrate on the anti-Semitic trope, you haven’t a chance of understanding what brought the Nazis to power. In the interwar years democracy was largely failing. Fascism did seem a valid alternative. Franco’s victory in the Civil War was definitely a better outcome than the internecine warfare between the anti-Fascist factions would have followed their triumph.

For those, like me, of a maritime bent, Irving was of questionable repute long, long before he tried to bring a libel case against Penguin Books.

Irving had, in 1968, persuaded Cassell to publish his book “The Destruction of Convoy PQ17” in which Irving accused the convoy commander, Jack Broome, of incompetence and cowardice which caused the heavy losses to the convoy in 1942; apparently Broome had carelessly allowed the convoy to be detected, retreated in terror when he suspected the Tirpitz had sortied, collapsed in a shivering funk as he fled the field, and was utterly indifferent to the fate of the ships he was supposed to protect.

This was… not entirely in accordance with the facts as they were known (where Broome had been directly ordered by the First Sea Lord to scatter the convoy, despite a Nelsonic effort at “signal not understood?”; having obeyed the order to scatter, he then mustered the escorts to give the Tirpitz a hot welcome.

As Admiral Tovey said of the incident, “I do not consider that the commanding officer of the Keppel (Broome) was in any way to blame for the subsequent heavy losses. From the signals which he had received, he deduced, quite reasonably, that surface action was imminent: and was correct in his decision to concentrate his destroyers and join the rear-admiral commanding First Cruiser Squadron.”

Irving’s usual publishers had refused to touch it with a bargepole, and Cassell sensibly insisted on an indemnity that if they were sued, Irving would shoulder any costs and damages.

Jack Broome did, indeed, sue: the case went to court in 1970.

After assorted participants tore Irving’s account to shreds, when it came to the defence… Irving declined to take the stand or offer any defence.

The jury found for Broome, and awarded him £1,000 in compensatory damages for the publication of the 60 proof copies. It also awarded him £14,000 in compensatory damages for the publication of the hardback edition; and, making legal history, £25,000 in exemplary damages. This was a record award for libel, and stood for 17 years (only beaten by Jeffrey Archer vs the Daily Star in 1987…)

Calling David Irving “an expert in his field” is like calling Richard Murphy “the greatest economist of all time”…

And yet when he was put before the press to explain the affair of the diaries it turned out that his German wasn’t good enough to let him understand the idiomatic German used by the German reporters. But his hearing was OK: he had no trouble with questions in English. All very strange.
I wouldn’t put much weight in that, dearieme. I’m far better in comprehending written languages than spoken. And far better understanding with people I’m used to speaking with. But I’ve managed to cope quite comfortably with living in the countries. Not everyone becomes fluent. Particularly with idiomatic.I’m currently having problems understanding an Argentinian house guest. Yet they’re speaking the same language as Colombians, Venezuelans or most of the Spanish here. Although I’ll never be able to hack Andalus. But then a lot of Spanish can’t.

[David Irving] went completely off the rails in the 1980s and beyond.

I suspect he’s never been on the rails. I knew him at Imperial College in 1958/59 and he was a deeply unpleasant character even then.

Of course all of Irving’s work must be dismissed. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

Tim the Coder,

A big problem with history is that we do not live as our ancestors did.

We generally can’t comprehend the mindset of a farmer in Saxony in 1932. Just how poor they were, just how small their world was. They would have spent most of their time in a village, doing a trip to the local town now and again. Going to Leipzig would have been a big deal. You were mostly governed by the district or state. You probably viewed Bavarians as a bit foreign. Jews in Poland were just some weird aliens.

Or that it was worth raising an army, stealing the land from the weird aliens.

You figure that out, you see why they wanted a bloke like Hitler, why anti-semitism was OK with them, why introducing the Nuremberg laws which caused a lot of Jews to leave was OK with them. When you get that war causes food supply problems, you understand one of the motivations of The Final Solution. That people were going to starve, so either people generally do, or you remove the people who you don’t like, leaving more food for everyone else. It’s why they killed the elderly immediately at Auschwitz. They weren’t going to be productive workers.

Hitler had bad economics, flawed thinking. He thought he could rearm and take over a lot of eastern Europe and the British, Americans and French wouldn’t care, but they did, at which point, war became a huge expense. Everything that happened after invading Poland was inevitable. It was what any politician in Germany would have done. Britain blockades your oil, the USA refuses to sell it to you. Whether you like it or not, you have to invade Russia sooner. Which fails, so the situation gets even worse. Do millions of Germans die from starvation, or do you select a group that most people don’t like (including in the countries you invaded, not that they like to talk about that)?

Most people making references to the 1930s are just talking out of their arse. It’s like this thing of sending kids off to visit Auschwitz “to stop it happening again”. No. Tractors, trucks and the haber-bosch process did that. The incentives to gas Mrs Cohen down the road don’t exist. Even if you think she’s a bitch, you’re not going to literally want her to be dead, or to starve. The SNP and the National Rally in France are national socialists. Big state, pro-Autarky, obsessed with national culture, romantic about an imagined past. But they aren’t going to be killing the English in Dundee or the Dordogne.

“I wouldn’t put much weight in that, dearieme.” Oh but I do, BiS. Recall: he made his reputation by writing about stuff he learned from interviewing Germans in Berlin. How did he do that if his German was poor?

And don’t say “but they’d never have given that job to someone with poor German.” After the fighting had ended, and training to invade Japan had ended too, my father was set to intelligence work. He spoke no German at all. Maybe he interviewed only people who spoke English, or French, or Latin. I don’t know because it was yet another aspect of the war he didn’t want to talk about.

“the compelling stories of the 10,000 Germans and Austrians who fought for Britain.”

A while ago I met this chap whose name and address I had to write down. He spelt his surname out, it was a Polish sounding name. I asked about his background, and he told me the story of his father, who had been born in a part of Poland that was culturally quite German. And when the Germans came in 1939 his father was rounded up and given the choice of joining the Wehrmacht or being sent to a camp of some kind. He chose the Wehrmacht, and ended up in the Luftwaffe, as some sort of ground staff. He was sent to North Africa, where he eventually ended up as a prisoner of the British. He was shipped to the UK, whereupon they discovered he was actually Polish. So they gave him a choice, join the British Army or go to a POW camp…….he chose the Army, so ended up in khaki uniform on the opposite side to the one he started on. He wasn’t allowed to fight, so spent the rest of the war as a driver, chauffeuring high ranking officers around. After the war he met and married an English woman and settled here, and discovered that his father in law was one of the officers he’d being driving about during the war……….

Incidentally, unless you’ve lived alongside these people you’ve no idea how much they can get up your nose. There’s been continuing problems in Finchley for years. They start stringing wire everywhere. If they can enclose an area with their wire or string, in their Law it becomes an eretz (think I got that right) Roughly, a Jewish home according to Law. So being “at home” within the area, they are free to do certain things, like carrying something, they can’t do “outdoors ” on Shabbat etc. But then that means you are now living in a Jewish “home”. (You can imagine how well that goes down with the rag heads?) And they do have a history of not actually telling anyone, let alone asking, before they do it. The Law is more more important than anything & without the apology, you ain’t.

Yep eruv. There were whole villages in Russia were eruvs.
Jewish story: Davud comes across Mannie sitting on a chair in the village square reading a newspaper. “Where did you get the newspaper, Mannie?”
“It fell from the train from Moscow. It says here the Jews rule the world”
“Does that mean we can get a goat?”