The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

Notes on a Discourse Analysis
of Selected Zündelsite Materials
(Part 9 of 13)


Tab 19. Power Letter - September 1996 - Part A

Passage 1

"The enemies of freedom, civilization, culture and our race, so clearly and courageously identified by Germany's government from 1933-45, are still at war with us - all those of us, be they German, Canadian, American, Russian, British, French, Italian etc. who defend and want to protect Western civilization from Judiazation and mental and spiritual circumcision of all we hold dear. Our enemies are relentless in their destructive drive. They know what is at stake."

"They CAN'T win this Holocaust debate. That's why they slink away like thieves in the dark, only to sick their dogs of war (read ARA, for instance!) and persecuting (read governmental institutions and lapdog media!) on us, using one government body, toady and opportunist after another."

Analysis

This passage expresses a positive attitude on the part of the writer toward the Third Reich and a negative attitude toward the enemies of the Third Reich. The positive attitude is revealed in the use of clearly and courageously in the first sentence, while the negative attitude toward those who opposed the Third Reich is reflected in the terms enemies of freedom ... relentless and destructive. The opponents of the Third Reich are also cast as the writers enamels as well, through the use of the possessive pronoun our in the second sentence. The use of our is interesting in this passage. Two distinct types of first person plural pronouns (we, us, our) exist: the inclusive sense in which the pronoun is used to include the hearer/reader into the group, and the exclusive sense in which the hearer/reader is excluded from the group. The use here is inclusive in nature, inviting the reader to consider him/herself to be a part of the same group as the writer. This use establishes a dichotomy between "our race" and "our enemies", namely the Jews. The writer associates himself (?) with the policies of the Third Reich and claims that it and the writer are united in their opposition to the enemies of the Third Reich.

The enemies of the Third Reich and of the writer, and in fact the enemies of all of us who defend Western culture, are implicitly Jews, as the use of the term Judiazalion to characterize the enemies expresses. This implication is strengthened by the use of the code term (mental and

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spiritual) circumcision. While circumcision is clearly not a practice unique to Jews, it is nevertheless used as a buttressing epithet. Similarly, the use of Holocaust debate again directs attention to an issue associated with Jews. Moreover, Jews are characterized as ignoble through the use of the verb slink away and the noun thieves.

A central theme of the passage is the attempt to dignify the government of the Third Reich and to denigrate its enemies, the Jews. It attempts to deny the reality of the Second World War, replacing it with an imagined conflict between Jews, the enemies of Western civilization, and the non-Jews, who champion Western civilization. Moreover, the writer asserts that this real war is still in progress and the members of "our" group should rally in support of the cause to eliminate the enemies of Western civilization.

Passage 2

"We were going full blast, on KXEL, having finished a 34-segment show on the theme "Did Six Million Really Die?", another long segment on the "German Contribution to American", another series on "Jewish-German (Nazi) Relations Before the War" - until we did a tough show on "The Holocaust of the Germans by the Allies" and were just finishing our toughest topic yet: "The Holocaust Reparations Racket". I talked clearly and freely about how this extortion system was perpetrated to defraud the German people and the world - by people who milk an alleged tragedy for tremendous political advantage and mega-billions in dollars and marks!"

Analysis

In the expression Holocaust Reparations Racket, the writer uses the negative term racket ("an organized illegal activity, such as the extortion of money by threat or violence; a dishonest scheme, business activity, etc." Random House Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1991) to stipulate the existence of an organized entity which is criminal in nature (reflected in the NP extortion system) and which has as its intent to defraud Germans. The writer also expresses the attitude that the Holocaust is not true, through the use of the expression alleged tragedy. (allege "to assert without proof", Random House Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1991). The tragedy under discussion, via the principle of relevance and via the reader's assumed pragmatic knowledge, is the Holocaust. Since the Holocaust tragedy affected Jews, the writer implies that the Jews are the source of the Holocaust Reparations Racket, thereby singling out Jews as a group and accusing them as a group of criminal activity.

Tab 20. Power Letter- October 1996

"There will be more in future Zgrams about this topic - but very briefly, here: THAT policy of Adolf Hitler's was the real reason why the established Old Order of Bankers went to war

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against him. The world cared little about the fate of the Jews - that only supplied the excuse and world- wide, well organized lobby and the boycott agitators. World War II was not about this so-called "Hitler Anti- Semitism" - it was about the loss of interest, obtained without labor."

Analysis

The crucial issue here is who does the writer mean by the "established Old Order of Bankers"? Whoever they are, the writer asserts it was they who went to war against Hitler (and not vice versa) The Old Order of Bankers is most relevantly identified with Jews (by the Gricean maxims of manner and relevance and via Sperber and Wilson's theory that the reader/hearer makes identification of new information expressions in such a way as to be maximally congruent with the on-going context). The use of capitalization in Old Order of Bankers also lends a sense of long-term conspiracy to the group. This identification is specifically supported by the use in the second sentence of the expression the fate of the Jews. This sentence would have no relevance if it did not fit into the context in a coherent manner (e.g., replace it with The world cared little about the fate of the penguins to see that the expression Jews must be associated with the Old Order of Bankers). This identification is further enhanced through the next sentence's use of Anti-Semitism. Finally, this group is accused of ill-gotten gains, namely interest, obtained without labor. Such an expression also serves to activate the semantic field earlier established in which Jews are seen as parasites feeding upon society and making no worthwhile contribution to it. This negative attitude thus singles out Jews as a group which is characterized by as seeking illicit financial gain.

Using the inversion strategy, the passage constructs a representation of Jews as the cause of World War II, with the stipulated implicit warrant that the Jews were attacking Hitler rather than vice versa, thereby inverting the victims, the Jews, into the victimizers, and the Nazis into the victims. Since the implicit warrant has no status, it singles out Jews as war-makers and isolates them as a group subject to be treated with derision and abhorrence.


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