A couple of David Neiwert's items that I cited in my previous post add some helpful analysis about some of the statements that Mel Gibson and his father have been making publicly, particularly when it comes to the steamy swamp of Holocaust denial. Hutton Gibson is not just a casual anti-Semite. As Neiwert reports, he is something of a Holocaust-denier activist.
Mel's rollout of The Passion of the Christ have introduced elements of this Holocaust-denial discussion into the mass media. And crackpot extremists like the Holocaust deniers use arguments of a type that are unfamiliar to those who haven't made an effort to look into their particular sewers of the mind. Neiwert quotes Mel from an interview with Peggy Noonan:
I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.
And Neiwert observes:
It's important, of course, to understand that this is exactly the storyline pushed by Holocaust deniers, namely, that yes, there were many Jews killed in Europe during World War II, but they were only a small part of the total who died in the war, and the "6 million" number is grossly exaggerated. Not only is this exactly what Hutton Gibson told the New York Times, you can find the exact same views at such Holocaust-denial organs as the Barnes Review, the Institute for Historical Review, and the Adelaide Institute.
I can't claim any professional credentials for this stuff. But when I read that quote from Mel, it immediately struck me that this is the way German rightwingers who admire Hitler but who want to keep their quotes on the legal side of Germany's anti-Nazi laws would express themselves. If I heard someone expressing themselves this way, I would assume until shown otherwise that they were some kind of anti-Semitic rightwing extremist.
3 comments:
So because Mel says, "The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps," instead of "The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Six million of them were Jews in concentration camps," he's being viewed as Anti-Semitic?
Aren't both statements, Mel's and the suggested example, technically true?
He may be anti-semitic...but it's still an ASSUMPTION to label him that way unless he says specifically that the Holocaust didn't happen.
I know that if I were in Mel Gibson's position, of promoting a film about Jesus' death that could be interpreted as anti-Jewish, and my father who speaks at Holocaust-denier conferences were giving press interviews expressingly overtly anti-Semitic views, I would have no trouble making it clear that I did not share those views. Mel Gibson is playing cutesy on this, but some Christians who are promoting his movie for him may wind up feeling bamboozled. - Bruce
A good point, Bruce. I wouldn't want to find myself in Mel's position at this moment. If he doesn't go far enough to denounce his father because of the elder Gibson's views (whether he shares them or not), he's seen as anti-Semitic. If he does denounce his father, the Christians will be after him for breaking that pesky commandment about honoring one's parents. It's a losing battle. ;)
Post a Comment