The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Notes on a Discourse Analysis
of Selected Zündelsite Materials
(Part 5 of 13)


[Page 13]

Passage 3

"Along with the repetitions screems [sic] of the old lies, the weapon of silence is used rather successfully in combating counter-evidence. It is very crucial, therefore, to emphasize the importance of propagating Zundel's (and others) evidence and research materials, even if the politicians of our nations are total and complete puppets, subservient to the Dark Powers, who never miss an opportunity to affirm their guilt complex draped in nebulous dogmas, even banning the doubting of the official governments as "...indisputable facts which need no evidence."

Analysis

This third passage uses the pejorative term repetitious, the dismissive term old, and the term weapon, a metaphor for war. Moreover, use of the term screem [sic] evokes anguish, that of the victims of the Holocaust, but now the meaning is inverted to suggest that the term refers not to anguish of victims but unwarranted outrage of victimizers. The term official government suggests the existence of an unofficial, hidden government. The only candidate for this position, via the principle of relevance, is the Dark Powers who in turn control the official government. The expression Dark Powers by itself evokes the concept of a deliberate, organized entity which is inherently evil (versus the virtuous sense of light) and nefarious.

The passage asserts the writer's view that it is important to propagate "Zundel's (and others) evidence and research materials". The warrant for this importance is two-fold.

The first warrant is the assertion that unspecified opponents of Zundel's position employ weapons of screams and silence. The opponents, while not overtly specified in the discourse, can be identified as related to the cataphoric NP the Dark Powers. By the use of an agentless passive in the first sentence, there is the discourse requirement that the agent is unspecified because it can be recovered from the context: it is either given information (shared by the writer and reader) or is pragmatically available. The maxim of relevance directs the reader to the simplest analysis congruent with the overall context. Accordingly, the unspecified agent is linked to the NP the Dark Powers, again an epithet for Jews. The association of this term with Jews is buttressed by the writer's use of expressions such as guilt complex and the allusion to the Holocaust via the quoted expression "...indisputable facts which need no evidence ", a code expression for the assertion that the Holocaust is not true. This in turn leads the reader to conclude that the Jews are indeed guilty and are deserving of the punishment meted out by the Holocaust.

The second warrant for the need to propagate the materials is the allegation, offered without explicit evidence (thereby violating quality) that governments are instruments of Jews. Here again, the implicit assertion is that Jews are maliciously manipulating governments.

[Page 14]

Tab 12. Power Letter - July 1995 - Part A (p.4)

Passage 1

"The problem is, very simply, that the German oligarchy and the Jewish/Zionist/Marxist racketeers who have conned the Germans, the Americans and, for that matter, the whole world with their Holocaust extortion scheme, are both dependent for their own survival on the non-exposure of this fraudulent, parasitic enterprise."

Analysis

The writer associates Jews with Zionists and with Marxists, creating a group which is asserted to be engaged in criminal activities. The particulars of the criminal activity are signalled by the use of the term racketeers, coupled with the expressions conned and extortion scheme. This first assertion is taken as the premise upon which the second is based. That is, the specified group's activity is asserted to depend on the secrecy of their criminal (fraudulent) and immoral (parasitic) undertaking. The expression parasitic is especially salient here, serving as a code word to refer to Jews who, in Nazi propaganda, were asserted to feed off the body politic.

The expression Holocaust extortion scheme is used here again as a code term for a criminal activity associated with Jews. The passage casts Jews, Zionists, and Marxists as an identifiable group of immoral criminals and establishes the interchangeability of the three groups (Jews, Zionists, and Marxists), thereby defining a network of concepts (criminal, extortionist, etc.) associated with the three groups. The assertion is made via assertion and without offer of evidence thereby suggesting to the reader, who in accepting the maxims of the cooperative principle in good faith, must assume that such evidence is available.

Passage 2

"...Individual Jewish people, organizations, groups, and the State of Israel have received huge sums-over 100 billion Deutsche Marks! - so far from the Germans alone in induced guilt money. If the Holocaust is not true, they have received from the United States taxpayers an almost equal amount in fraudulently based and obtained "sympathy contributions," foreign aid, military aid, grants etc. "

Analysis

The writer asserts that Germans have given Jews and Israel large sums of money by virtue of convincing Germans that they are guilty of the Holocaust. The writer similarly asserts that the United States has also given these same groups (since `they' refers to the conjoined NP subject of the first sentence) similar funds, for fraudulent reasons. The expression induced guilt money is crucial here: induced guilt evokes the sense of "not real guilt", implying, by

[Page 15]

the reversal strategy, that the Jews are the guilty party, not the Nazis. Moreover, Holocaust now is taken to mean the destruction of the Jews, a change in meaning from its earlier use where it was asserted to be a propaganda scheme of the Jews.

The second sentence represents a conditional structure of the form: If A, then B. In this case, A has a negative propositional content (namely, the Holocaust is not true, which can be represented as: NOT (TRUE (Holocaust) ).

B has the propositional content that US taxpayers have provided them (the same group) with large sums of money, for illicit reasons. The writer asserts that the reasons for the transfer of money are fraudulent. The use of scare quotes around "sympathy contributions" reflects the writer's attitude that this concept is highly questionable.

This passage promotes the Zündelsite as the proclaimer of the real truth, with its associated reversal of victims and victimizers. The structure of the passage is roughly:

I (= the writer)

1. assert that Germans have given a large sum of money to a specific group (Jewish groups, Israel)

2. assert that

a. the reason for this transfer is illicit and

b. resides in the fact that the group convinced the Germans of false information

c. Ieading to a sense of guilt in the Germans

3. assert that it is false that the Holocaust is true (i.e., that the Holocaust is not true)

4. assert that the US also gave a large sum of money to the same group (they)

5. assert that this transfer of money is also illicit and fraudulent for the same reason, namely (3).

In summary, this passage attributes to Jews, individually, and in groups, as well as to the State of Israel, intentional deception in order to extract large sums of money from Germany and the United States. Thus from a discourse analytic perspective, the passage associates Jews as an identifiable group with criminal behaviour and thereby singles them out for loathing, scorn, and revulsion.


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