Assassins of Memory

Bp. Williamson, the gift that keeps on giving, shoved a reporter the other day. Apparently, the ADL is finding all sorts of kooky remarks from this guy (as is not surprising), but the one that really sums up my objection to the guy (and to the nutty anti-semitism that tends to characteristic of Rad Trads (as distinct from sane devotees of Traditionalist piety) is this:

Jews created the Holocaust so we would prostrate ourselves on our knees before them and approve of their new state of Israel.

That’s what lies behind all the pettifogging about how Holocaust Denial is not an article of faith and so it’s all just a minor quibble about exact numbers.

No. The agenda is this: claim that hardly any Jews were murdered (300,000 vs. 6 million). Claim that Jews radically exaggerated the numbers in a vast and sinister conspiracy to rationalize the founding of Israel. Claim that Jews “created” the Holocaust: a phrase open to a number of interpretations, all of them malicious. It could mean Jews actually perpetrated the Holocaust so as to further their nefarious designs. It could mean that they created the Legend of the Holocaust so as to further their nefarious designs. What it does not mean and never will mean is “I’m just an honest and dispassionate inquirer who has a minor disagreement about historical statistics.” Holocaust denial like Williamson’s is malicious to the core and means to murder the memory of millions of innocent people. He’s a bad man and unworthy of the episcopacy. And so, far, he still refuses to recant his malicious embrace of lies in the service of his hatred of Jews.

That said, he holds no power to do anything but keep on embarassing the Church. Whatever he thinks or does, no more Jews will be murdered because of it. Only their memory will be murdered by the fools who take this horse’s ass seriously.

Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, is committed to perpetuating a Holocaust that is going on right now and she actually has the power to expand it and help directly in the murder of millions more innocents. Of the two Holocaust deniers, she is the far more dangerous and pernicious. That’s why I’m glad Benedict took her to the woodshed.