Battleangel

Few could have missed the Holocaust conference held this week in Teheran, Iran. Seldom have so many worked so diligently to belittle and malign a public event. An event which featured everyone from anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews to David Duke and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The latter of course being misquoted once again as he predicted the downfall of the era of Zionist governments in Israel. But here is nevertheless the real gem: A Swedish scholar travelled to Teheran to lecture on the topic of the Holocaust Demography. I.e. the recurring question of how many actually died.

Here is what one of Sweden’s foremost Zionist apologists had to say about the attendance:

Svartvik also pointed out that a Swedish computer science teacher is hardly the best qualified person to give a lecture on the topic.

“He has gone to Teheran not as a specialist but because he holds the right views.”

Jan Bernhoff, billed in newspapers in Sweden as a schoolteacher, does in fact have a solid background in History from the University of Lund. The reason he works as “just” a teacher is that his would-be career as a historian came to an abrupt end, according to his own account, as he defended his master thesis, which dealt with the very same topic — namely the Holocaust — although an infinitely more timid way.

Not surprisingly, Svartvik is trained in the art of Zionist propaganda and turns reality on its head:

Jesper Svartvik stressed that he had not read the whole of Bernhoff’s lecture, but said his attendance represented a tendency among some in Sweden “to instrumentalize the Holocaust for other purposes.”

Because according to doctrine, someone who questions the Holocaust in any way must either be a) an “anti-Semite”, b) a general racist or c) refurbishing the Nazi name as it were. So either you’re a racist, a racist or a racist with a twist. Ironically, most of the attendees are interested in the Holocaust and revising history for an entirely different reason — namely that Israel and and its lobby have instrumentalized the Holocaust for their own purposes. Unfortunately, the Holocaust is judged by the company it keeps so to speak and the consistent use of the event in propaganda at least since the end of WW2 and its role in the subjection of the Palestinian people — not to mention the now discredited myths of human soap and lamp shades — should force people to critically reexamine the story. Put simply, one could say that Israel, the Zionists and their methods are to the Holocaust what David Duke is to this conference — a liability.

Anyway … the latest development is that Bernhoff was suspended from work pending a full review. Not very surprising either considering the considerable pressure trickling down from the highest levels of the Swedish government. That is the new right-wing government that we’ve been bestowed with by the way. And here I was thinking that this sort of political meddling was unconstitutional. What do you know …
So … this would make it the second time Bernhoff has been punished for his departure from doctrine. And it should of course be pointed out that Sweden, unlike some other European nations, has no laws prohibiting “Holocaust denial”. That is perhaps the really the scary thing, to see the informal thumbscrews of social control being turned. Not the sort of thing you’d expect to find in Sweden anno 2006. I would have hoped that we would have had the spine and scientific freedoms to hold a similar conference right here at home. As it stands, Iran has bested us in the very area where we supposedly excel. There are no flimsy excuses that can change that.

So there you have it. Free speech just went out the window — again. And the Zionists have just managed to silence another critic and to work Swedish institutions to such a frenzy that they will see “anti-Semites” around every corner and mindlessly toe the Israeli / Zionist line for another couple of years.

Just a thought: When will we suspend teachers and neoliberal fellow travelers who deny the economic Holocaust? Even if they are deserving, it’s easy to see how quickly this argument turns to the absurd.