I have no idea why anyone on the right would associate with Jones as doing so covers you in his stink and will ABSOLUTELY be held against you and used to ruin you. It makes me think of another boil on the ass of humanity (Fuentard): the dumb kids going to his rallies are tarring themselves in his unique and toxic brand of groyper stink that will follow them everywhere they go. It's the biggest reason why I can't stand people trying to defend him.
Also why the fuck do people on the right decide to die on the stupidest hills imaginable and not any that mean something? This clown was 1000% guilty as hell of doing something really messed up and all these figures on the right are rushing to his defense. Hey guys, where the hell were all of these clowns during the Mannboob vs Steyn lawsuit that was a very real and disgusting travesty of justice that ruined a good and decent man fighting a meaningful fight way too many on our side refuse to?
Well-said, Mike. And true. Yes, our "leading lights" pick the worst hills to die on - the hills that help the least, the hills that alienate voters the most. It's incredibly frustrating.
Thank you again for call this out, I have long wondered if Alex Jones is part of the very thing he never shuts up about, like he plays the part of crazy conspiracy guy, loud, obnoxious, dramatic like a drag queen in a flannel shirt, talk about "crisis actor". He provides a great distraction from things going on right on cue. He seems to know how to stir up histrionics at the perfect time. He makes a ton of $ at it. When I meet conservatives that start up with the "crisis actor" stuff or the 15 minute city thing or the 5G theory stuff I just avoid them, which is sad because I do appreciate conservative thought & find that there are decent people there, even the ones who are spouting off this stuff are actually sweet people but it is a major turn off to regular people.
Mike Tyson and Mike spink smiled and laughed in a photo, years after their fight. So there fight in1988 was fixed. Because no one smiles and laughs decades after a fight.
Describing someone as "a bitter, anus-mouthed Leno-chinned bridge troll" is some top-tier trash talk. I love it. Maybe you could raise some money for yourself by inviting readers to pony-up to be the subject of a piece: "David Cole roasts StonerDude42069" or whatever. I think there's gold in them hills.
Random thought when reading this: Why do people, writ large, tend to take the position that whenever two idiots are arguing, one of them has to be "right." Taking sides is ingrained in human nature - but when I see 2 dipshit parents (for instance) getting in a fight at a little league game - odds are they're both wrong and both retarded. I'm reminded of the old George Carlin chestnut (which I'm paraphrasing): "Think about how dumb the average person is... Now remember half of 'em are dumber than that."
In small doses I find Jones enormously entertaining. I'll watch him sometimes for the same reasons I look forward to your videos - rhetorical surprises, unique delivery, unexpected side topics, zany personal stories, etc. - the main topic and opinion are secondary. And sometimes he drops in these ancient references from our age cohort's childhood: he described the Hamas sky attacks as being "like an episode of GI Joe where Cobra troops swoop down in hang-gliders yelling 'Cohhbrrraahh!' " Cracks me up.
I've got no idea what's normal in defamation law, so nothing intelligent to add about that.
His video game is a trolling work of art, too. Gameplay is no great shakes, but blasting your way through gay frogs to save beagles from Dr. Fauci, picking up the pills he hawks to regain health points, all the while he's randomly saying stuff like, "the police don't want you to know this, but the ducks in the park are free. I have 500 ducks." It's next-level self-aware absurdism.
Jones was funny until he wasn't. I think he's the one who helped Jon Ronson infiltrate Bohemian Grove. It's in Ronson's book "Them," which is all about conspiracy theories.
Jones went from being someone a mainstream figure like Ronson would team up with to being beyond the fringe. It's weird to watch someone shoot himself in the foot that way. Of all the hillsides to die on, parents mourning their little kids was a weird choice.
Apart from any moral considerations, it's amazing to see anyone just chuck a viable career away like that.
Jones seems surprised by the civil judgment. I mean, of course he has to ACT shocked to his viewers, but I think he'd become so deeply-buried in his own lunacy, he forgot the basic rules of U.S. defamation law, which are generally very pro-defendant (as opposed to in the UK), but there are a few things that if you do them, a defendant is guaranteed to lose. And Jones did ALL of those things!
That was a great column Dave. Alex Jones is filth. Walk around Times Square and the NY subway and whatever you scrape off the bottom of your shoes is better than Alex Jones. He deserves much worse than to be bankrupt but that is all that is available in civil court.
You are much too easy on Tucker for his flirting with Jones. You have hit him much harder (in my opinion) for lesser transgressions.
I know...but I have my reasons. Without betraying any confidences, let's just say Tucker had some kind words for me a week ago, and I just didn't feel right following that immediately with more slams. It's just a personal thing; I would've felt like a dick. So I added the "amiable and decent" thing before the slam. It made me more comfortable with proceeding.
Understandable and commendable. I generally like Tucker . His takes on populism and the rise of Trump are generally spot on. I'm even ok with the UFO stuff, we all have our harmless idiosynchroncies. But engaging with Jones and that guy from the African Peoples Socialist Party and the other fringe guys is ultimately self defeating.
There are so many legitimate criticisms of the Dems and our government that when "leaders" on the right wander off into the conspiracy forest they discredit all their positions.
My take was, now that I know his feelings toward me, perhaps a softer touch on my part could help bring him 'round a bit. At least it's worth a try. But I just felt going too hard only a week after he communicated positive things about me would be too dickish, even for me!
One thing in Tucker's favor you could consider is he dislikes black trannies, and those who promote them.
My own opinion of trannies is that they and the gays should take over a few former leper colonies and do their thing away from sight while they biologically eliminate themselves.
I get giving Tucker some slack. I watched Joe Rogan's really LONG interview w/ him and I came away w/ a much deeper understanding. He did WAY too many hallucinogens back in his formative years (hell he's still probably overdoing it!) I do think that he's basically a smart guy w/ a good heart and too willing to give assholes ( I'm referring to Jones and the African Socialist, not you Dave!! )an even break!!
Nobody, and I mean *nobody* I know, who has ever considered themselves a Jones fan in any kind of unironic way (and by this I exclude those who actually are ironic Jones fans, and consider his antics a kind of spectator sport / drinking game), has ever in the long run proved themselves to be stable.
I asked a friend and long-time Jones devotee how he actually feels after watching Jones or spending time amongst his fans (this guy was really hardcore, met Jones, went to some of his shindigs), and his answer was that he always came away feeling edgy, paranoid, depressed, and unstable. "And how do you feel when you've not tuned into Jones for a couple of week?" He said he felt better about himself, more optimistic, able to focus at work, etc.
"So why do you keep tuning in to that crapweasel?"
"Because he tells the TRUTH about things!"
"Really? What "truth" is that? How has your life been following his truth?"
"Crappy. And I have spent a lot of money on his show, and stuff he endorses."
"So, you're saying that Jones is like a drug, and when you've stayed clean you're more your own self?"
"You know, when you put it like that..."
"Son, don't do drugs, and don't do Jones. They're the same damned thing."
Jones is therefore auditory PCP, and it shows. It's why his fans keep chasing that "high".
Jones’ claim on Comet Pizza (which he later apologized to the owner for) should’ve been a wake up call for him. A listener, Edgar Maddison Welch, actually bought Jones’ tall tales of child trafficking in the pizzeria as the front and armed with a rifle stormed the place to save the children. To his surprise he didn’t find any trafficked children and landed in jail for shooting his rifle inside the restaurant. He got 4 years for it. Jones inadvertently caused this misfortune for a simpleminded man with good intentions. Unfortunately Jones didn’t learn his lesson and I have no sympathy for him.
> Irving was the instigator — the plaintiff, not the defendant.
This was the case I thought of when reading the Taki piece, so I'm glad to see it mentioned here. That really was one of the dumbest lawsuits in history. Whatever one makes of the historical record of the Third Reich, it was always clear that Irving had no case against Lipstadt.
Aside from some general rhetoric about "denial" which someone might or might not wish to rephrase, the core of Lipstadt's case was that many professional academic historians had made critical statements about, sometimes with a friendly tone, sometimes not. A good example: AJP Taylor noted how Irving was willing to charge Churchill with having had a hand in the death of Sikorski, despite the lack of documentary evidence, yet he fervently claimed a lack of documentary evidence relating to Hitler and the Final Solution as decisive. Taylor's criticism was softly phrased, but it was clear that Irving was applying a double-standard to Churchill and Hitler.
Lipstadt went combing through a lot of old reviews by various historians and put together a bunch of critical statements about Irving. Irving suing her meant that Irving would have to show that she had somehow misrepresented what these earlier reviewers had said. It wasn't even relevant whether those earlier criticisms were entirely accurate (though they generally were). It was sufficient to show that Lipstadt had made no serious misrepresentation of those earlier criticisms. She had not, so her case was solid.
Supporting Irving's lawsuit simply took credibility away from the 'free speech' argument which had been popularized around Zundel in the 1980s. You can't say that the laws used against Zundel are a priori bad while supporting the suit against Lipstadt. Zundel made an ample share of wacky statements which are much harder to defend than Lipstadt's own categorization of criticisms of Irving made by different historians.
Great comment, Patrick. Thank you very much for leaving it. I go into a lot more detail about the Irving trial in the obit I wrote for him (morbid, I know, to write an obit when someone's not dead yet, but all the news orgs do it, and Irving's in poor shape, so I wanted to be ready with something well-thought-out and not written in haste). True to form, Irving could never bring himself to admit that suing Lipstadt was an error.
The point I make in the obit is that ironically Irving didn't learn from history. He'd BEEN there at the Zundel trials, so he knew how badly Hilberg and Browning came off under oath on the stand. And what did Irving do? Volunteered to go under oath on the stand at the Lipstadt trial, and he suffered the same fate. Pure hubris to think that he wouldn't be confronted with flaws in his work, just as Hilberg had been in '85.
Yeah, to put it crudely, being put on the stand is like having one's undershorts examined for stains: "While there may be no fecal matter visible to the naked eye, the odor present is indisputable. I rest my case." Who can look good after being grilled by professional nitpickers?
One of the best lawyer perf's I've ever seen was Robert Culp in an episode of Columbo-- every freaking particle, every cell of the guy's body and mind, was devoted to humiliating his interlocutor, in this case Our Beloved Lt. Frank C. (RIP):
I bet you ratidor eating the gout off of your toe that Jones is gonna not only stay on the air but profit. Watch him sell Infowars for millions of dollars and the asshole who buys it makes him CEO and he keeps his show. Watch Musk pay 2 billion for it because "free speech" and then they IPO Infowars and Jones become a billionaire.
There's a lot of currency in being the most oppressed right now. Really there has been at least since "intersectionality" started. When I was in college I took a women's studies class (I know...). The second wave feminists included the nuts who wanted to have separatist societies with no men. I went and read some of their full manifestos, because I had to know what happened to them. And reading it, you can see they were mostly people who were molested as girls and couldn't get help. They'd tell their mom or the doctor and get ignored, and all of this pain festered within them until they grew up and feared and hated all men.
In a way it's sad, you can tell that they have these truncated little lives. At the end, if the writer's a minority, they always close with "and when I'm free, I'll know everyone's free, because [ethnicity] women are the most oppressed people in the world!" At first you read it and it's moving, you're like damn these poor ladies! After the second or third one you're like, okay, this wording is just a power play. That whole framework - the oppression Olympics - has gone mainstream now.
The Holocaust was this nightmare event that people wanted to document and publicize and be on the lookout for anything close to that building up ever again. The public found it very compelling, especially in the US. Later immigrant groups saw it and understood its power in the culture. The Armenians understood that the Jews get attention for their genocide, so they demanded recognition for theirs. They used factual documentation, appealed to emotions, they used the same playbook as the Jews because they saw that it worked and they felt they had a legitimate axe to grind, too. The subcontinental immigrants to the US & UK are, I think, trying to reframe Churchill as a famine enthusiast for a similar if maybe less honest reason - they grasp the power of a Holocaust level event and want one of their own, and you need a baddie with ill-intent for that. So even if he was getting bombed on his little island and doing his best, they have to make it seem like he wanted them to starve and cackled about it.
Latinos are desperate to be oppressed by whitey, Jews, whoever - but usually are more oppressed by their lack of ability to think in the abstract. ("The Partido Revolucionario Institucional will never sell us out!"). Black Americans may resent Jews in some ways, but they also sort of respect them. (Black actors will openly ask if you're a Jew before they consider signing with you as an agent or manager; many Black people will also openly talk about wanting a Jewish doctor or accountant.) They also know Jews were a big part of the Civil Rights movement in the US.
I went to a mostly white school on the East Coast. Boys were usually annoyed by the constant Holocaust references in every class. Sometimes they'd grumble about "whining" but they weren't deniers; they were just sick of hearing about it. Girls were largely just sympathetic. It was a LOT - it really did seem like we had a Holocaust lesson in every non-math subject - people got annoyed by the volume of it at times, but we all accepted it happened.
The Jews and whites I knew in LA - a lot of them were pretty self-hating. One sent her son to public school in a part of the county with failing schools because she felt the solution was more involved parents. Her vision was that as a super mom she would save the school and the district, basically. People were telling her, "Go private all the whites and Asians go private" but she felt that would somehow be "racist." There is a lot of pressure right now on people with means and/or light skin to go against their own interests and even their children's. A lot of gullible people are buying in, and I don't get why people have lost all their common sense on these issues.
So it will be interesting to see how THEY cope with denialism/Holocaust criticism as it goes mainstream (thanks Elon!) Will they react like "this is missing white girl syndrome all over again, and we must now amplify the other holocausts" or will they stick to their guns and insist it was a massive tragedy we can't forget.
With the weird Palestine movement - people are chanting for an Intifada and intimidating Jews on the subway; they're leaving QR codes on lampposts at crosswalks asking you to donate to "Palestinian college students" (which...this seems like a propagandist backdoor to fund Hamas possibly, or am I just paranoid?) I'm honestly wondering if that movement is coming with Holocaust denialism next. I wonder if that's the next well-funded arrow in the quiver of the Arab world trying to remake the West, after the soft launch of a new golf league and trying to eradicate Israel didn't work.
I don't know what the answer is to the growing denialism, but I think it basically comes from a place of resentment. The Holocaust has currency. It's a massive human tragedy, but it's also becoming more distant as the survivors die off. I think the deniers feel this is their moment to drive a wedge into the culture and claim their own victim moment. They're not interested in facts - they don't care if your parents are survivors or even whether you're Jewish - they just want to say anything to burn down the status quo. It's interesting to me that the profile of the stereotypical denier has changed - it used to be racist "the South will raise agin!" whites and now it seems more like it's angry young Latinos.
Interestingly, these deniers haven't considered what they're doing as far as setting a precedent. If they're able to unseat the Holocaust, how long until someone unseats their pet tragedy (Malinche selling natives out; banana company massacres etc) and they lose their seat at the victim table, too. Because these guys aren't as smart as the Indians or Armenians or even the second wave feminists; they're going to cut themselves on their edge if they're not careful.
I came here for Ratibor updates, and all I got was an Alex Jones-Tuck-Deniertard-bromance . (I even wrote an amazing script starring Ratibor and his gang gloating about faking his death...in the home of a guy who faked his death.)
In WW2 we laid down with the Commies to defeat the Nazis. When you lay down with dogs….look at us now getting lectures from the former Soviet Union on the dangers of going down their old road.
Now the right is laying down with the loonies on the right to defeat the Commies in this country and no surprise, they are waking up with fleas - in the form of ant-semitism, assorted conspiracies, holocaust denial, etc.
Not saying either decision to lay with dogs was wrong just that there is no free lunch.
Dave, you may be aware that the TV show "Forensic Files" (excellent show, in my opinion) did a story on Kevin Green many years ago. If the show is accurate in what happened, and if I recall correctly, it was Greens wife who accused him of the assault. It also just so happened that she had received extremely severe head injuries in the attack but the jury bought her story nonetheless. A two-by-four can do some real damage on a skull. And apparently even when Green was eventually exonerated with DNA evidence, his wife continued to accuse him of having been the attacker. But do you think Kevin would have brought home some cold-assed fries from Burger King? Heck, no.
Yes, investigators told her he did the beating, and, as she remembered nothing after the argument, she believed them. She lived with that "certainty" for 17 years, and it was hard to let go of it, as it had become a "fact" to her.
Have a few thought on this:
I have no idea why anyone on the right would associate with Jones as doing so covers you in his stink and will ABSOLUTELY be held against you and used to ruin you. It makes me think of another boil on the ass of humanity (Fuentard): the dumb kids going to his rallies are tarring themselves in his unique and toxic brand of groyper stink that will follow them everywhere they go. It's the biggest reason why I can't stand people trying to defend him.
Also why the fuck do people on the right decide to die on the stupidest hills imaginable and not any that mean something? This clown was 1000% guilty as hell of doing something really messed up and all these figures on the right are rushing to his defense. Hey guys, where the hell were all of these clowns during the Mannboob vs Steyn lawsuit that was a very real and disgusting travesty of justice that ruined a good and decent man fighting a meaningful fight way too many on our side refuse to?
Great job as always.
Well-said, Mike. And true. Yes, our "leading lights" pick the worst hills to die on - the hills that help the least, the hills that alienate voters the most. It's incredibly frustrating.
Don’t die on the grassy knoll
Thank you again for call this out, I have long wondered if Alex Jones is part of the very thing he never shuts up about, like he plays the part of crazy conspiracy guy, loud, obnoxious, dramatic like a drag queen in a flannel shirt, talk about "crisis actor". He provides a great distraction from things going on right on cue. He seems to know how to stir up histrionics at the perfect time. He makes a ton of $ at it. When I meet conservatives that start up with the "crisis actor" stuff or the 15 minute city thing or the 5G theory stuff I just avoid them, which is sad because I do appreciate conservative thought & find that there are decent people there, even the ones who are spouting off this stuff are actually sweet people but it is a major turn off to regular people.
Very much agreed.
Alex Jones looks like something out of central casting for a conspiracy nut with a huge following.
Indeed. Almost TOO right for the part!
Mike Tyson and Mike spink smiled and laughed in a photo, years after their fight. So there fight in1988 was fixed. Because no one smiles and laughs decades after a fight.
LOL!!!!
I remember you bought that fight. So I thought you might find that about as solid a Jones's logic
Tyson knocked on Spinks in 91 seconds!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuaFIRD7_5Y
He lasted a minute longer than Marvis Fraiser.
Describing someone as "a bitter, anus-mouthed Leno-chinned bridge troll" is some top-tier trash talk. I love it. Maybe you could raise some money for yourself by inviting readers to pony-up to be the subject of a piece: "David Cole roasts StonerDude42069" or whatever. I think there's gold in them hills.
Random thought when reading this: Why do people, writ large, tend to take the position that whenever two idiots are arguing, one of them has to be "right." Taking sides is ingrained in human nature - but when I see 2 dipshit parents (for instance) getting in a fight at a little league game - odds are they're both wrong and both retarded. I'm reminded of the old George Carlin chestnut (which I'm paraphrasing): "Think about how dumb the average person is... Now remember half of 'em are dumber than that."
I'm
In small doses I find Jones enormously entertaining. I'll watch him sometimes for the same reasons I look forward to your videos - rhetorical surprises, unique delivery, unexpected side topics, zany personal stories, etc. - the main topic and opinion are secondary. And sometimes he drops in these ancient references from our age cohort's childhood: he described the Hamas sky attacks as being "like an episode of GI Joe where Cobra troops swoop down in hang-gliders yelling 'Cohhbrrraahh!' " Cracks me up.
I've got no idea what's normal in defamation law, so nothing intelligent to add about that.
I can't lie: Him calling Dan Crenshaw a "gay pirate" was one of the funniest things ever.
His video game is a trolling work of art, too. Gameplay is no great shakes, but blasting your way through gay frogs to save beagles from Dr. Fauci, picking up the pills he hawks to regain health points, all the while he's randomly saying stuff like, "the police don't want you to know this, but the ducks in the park are free. I have 500 ducks." It's next-level self-aware absurdism.
Oh that's hilarious, I haven't seen that one.
Jones was funny until he wasn't. I think he's the one who helped Jon Ronson infiltrate Bohemian Grove. It's in Ronson's book "Them," which is all about conspiracy theories.
Jones went from being someone a mainstream figure like Ronson would team up with to being beyond the fringe. It's weird to watch someone shoot himself in the foot that way. Of all the hillsides to die on, parents mourning their little kids was a weird choice.
Apart from any moral considerations, it's amazing to see anyone just chuck a viable career away like that.
Jones seems surprised by the civil judgment. I mean, of course he has to ACT shocked to his viewers, but I think he'd become so deeply-buried in his own lunacy, he forgot the basic rules of U.S. defamation law, which are generally very pro-defendant (as opposed to in the UK), but there are a few things that if you do them, a defendant is guaranteed to lose. And Jones did ALL of those things!
"parents mourning their little kids was a weird choice."
It makes me think that perhaps some substance abuse was involved in the decision-making.
That was a great column Dave. Alex Jones is filth. Walk around Times Square and the NY subway and whatever you scrape off the bottom of your shoes is better than Alex Jones. He deserves much worse than to be bankrupt but that is all that is available in civil court.
You are much too easy on Tucker for his flirting with Jones. You have hit him much harder (in my opinion) for lesser transgressions.
I know...but I have my reasons. Without betraying any confidences, let's just say Tucker had some kind words for me a week ago, and I just didn't feel right following that immediately with more slams. It's just a personal thing; I would've felt like a dick. So I added the "amiable and decent" thing before the slam. It made me more comfortable with proceeding.
Understandable and commendable. I generally like Tucker . His takes on populism and the rise of Trump are generally spot on. I'm even ok with the UFO stuff, we all have our harmless idiosynchroncies. But engaging with Jones and that guy from the African Peoples Socialist Party and the other fringe guys is ultimately self defeating.
There are so many legitimate criticisms of the Dems and our government that when "leaders" on the right wander off into the conspiracy forest they discredit all their positions.
My take was, now that I know his feelings toward me, perhaps a softer touch on my part could help bring him 'round a bit. At least it's worth a try. But I just felt going too hard only a week after he communicated positive things about me would be too dickish, even for me!
One thing in Tucker's favor you could consider is he dislikes black trannies, and those who promote them.
My own opinion of trannies is that they and the gays should take over a few former leper colonies and do their thing away from sight while they biologically eliminate themselves.
Yep! Found their own autonomous colony -- Nonbinaria -- and live in peace while leaving US in peace.
Damn fine name you invented there!
The People's Republic of Tranistan.
I get giving Tucker some slack. I watched Joe Rogan's really LONG interview w/ him and I came away w/ a much deeper understanding. He did WAY too many hallucinogens back in his formative years (hell he's still probably overdoing it!) I do think that he's basically a smart guy w/ a good heart and too willing to give assholes ( I'm referring to Jones and the African Socialist, not you Dave!! )an even break!!
I don't see Tuck as unsalvageable, as I see, say, Unz, who went so far 'round the bend he pureed his brain.
I can’t drop fast-food violence stories on you anymore since your Twitter ban.
But here’s a new one from my town, in an area you just don’t go to at 1 a.m.
https://www.wfla.com/news/polk-county/lakeland-mcdonalds-employee-threw-drinks-shot-at-customers-after-order-dispute-police-say/
Nice one! Thank you! I'll have to combine that with the Hammertime bikini barista in a piece about employees fighting back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCqHDdaHVz8
Man, I hope the bikini barista doesn't get charged, but I'm less than sanguine about it....
“Women are allowed to respond when there is danger in ways other than crying.” That chick is my new hero.
Darn it! I was expecting a "because we ran out of bullets" ending.
Wait a few days, especially if Grady Judd hasn't seen a camera in a while.
Hey neighbor, I'm over in Pinellas County
*wave* sorry to hear that
By their fruits ye shall know them.
Nobody, and I mean *nobody* I know, who has ever considered themselves a Jones fan in any kind of unironic way (and by this I exclude those who actually are ironic Jones fans, and consider his antics a kind of spectator sport / drinking game), has ever in the long run proved themselves to be stable.
I asked a friend and long-time Jones devotee how he actually feels after watching Jones or spending time amongst his fans (this guy was really hardcore, met Jones, went to some of his shindigs), and his answer was that he always came away feeling edgy, paranoid, depressed, and unstable. "And how do you feel when you've not tuned into Jones for a couple of week?" He said he felt better about himself, more optimistic, able to focus at work, etc.
"So why do you keep tuning in to that crapweasel?"
"Because he tells the TRUTH about things!"
"Really? What "truth" is that? How has your life been following his truth?"
"Crappy. And I have spent a lot of money on his show, and stuff he endorses."
"So, you're saying that Jones is like a drug, and when you've stayed clean you're more your own self?"
"You know, when you put it like that..."
"Son, don't do drugs, and don't do Jones. They're the same damned thing."
Jones is therefore auditory PCP, and it shows. It's why his fans keep chasing that "high".
Thanks for a very perceptive comment.
Jones’ claim on Comet Pizza (which he later apologized to the owner for) should’ve been a wake up call for him. A listener, Edgar Maddison Welch, actually bought Jones’ tall tales of child trafficking in the pizzeria as the front and armed with a rifle stormed the place to save the children. To his surprise he didn’t find any trafficked children and landed in jail for shooting his rifle inside the restaurant. He got 4 years for it. Jones inadvertently caused this misfortune for a simpleminded man with good intentions. Unfortunately Jones didn’t learn his lesson and I have no sympathy for him.
Excellent point.
Welch stormed Comet Pizza with a rifle because he believed a nutty conspiracy theory.
I stormed Comet Pizza with a rifle because they forgot to include blue cheese with my buffalo wings.
We are not the same.
Since violence was involved, it's imperative for us to know: were your fries served at the correct temperature?
They shouldn't get away with sloppy service like this. The only tip they deserve to get with this kind of attitude is the muzzle of a gun.
LOL!!!!
> Irving was the instigator — the plaintiff, not the defendant.
This was the case I thought of when reading the Taki piece, so I'm glad to see it mentioned here. That really was one of the dumbest lawsuits in history. Whatever one makes of the historical record of the Third Reich, it was always clear that Irving had no case against Lipstadt.
Aside from some general rhetoric about "denial" which someone might or might not wish to rephrase, the core of Lipstadt's case was that many professional academic historians had made critical statements about, sometimes with a friendly tone, sometimes not. A good example: AJP Taylor noted how Irving was willing to charge Churchill with having had a hand in the death of Sikorski, despite the lack of documentary evidence, yet he fervently claimed a lack of documentary evidence relating to Hitler and the Final Solution as decisive. Taylor's criticism was softly phrased, but it was clear that Irving was applying a double-standard to Churchill and Hitler.
Lipstadt went combing through a lot of old reviews by various historians and put together a bunch of critical statements about Irving. Irving suing her meant that Irving would have to show that she had somehow misrepresented what these earlier reviewers had said. It wasn't even relevant whether those earlier criticisms were entirely accurate (though they generally were). It was sufficient to show that Lipstadt had made no serious misrepresentation of those earlier criticisms. She had not, so her case was solid.
Supporting Irving's lawsuit simply took credibility away from the 'free speech' argument which had been popularized around Zundel in the 1980s. You can't say that the laws used against Zundel are a priori bad while supporting the suit against Lipstadt. Zundel made an ample share of wacky statements which are much harder to defend than Lipstadt's own categorization of criticisms of Irving made by different historians.
Great comment, Patrick. Thank you very much for leaving it. I go into a lot more detail about the Irving trial in the obit I wrote for him (morbid, I know, to write an obit when someone's not dead yet, but all the news orgs do it, and Irving's in poor shape, so I wanted to be ready with something well-thought-out and not written in haste). True to form, Irving could never bring himself to admit that suing Lipstadt was an error.
Yeah, Irving's lawsuit was a gift to all those who long wanted to see him taken down.
The point I make in the obit is that ironically Irving didn't learn from history. He'd BEEN there at the Zundel trials, so he knew how badly Hilberg and Browning came off under oath on the stand. And what did Irving do? Volunteered to go under oath on the stand at the Lipstadt trial, and he suffered the same fate. Pure hubris to think that he wouldn't be confronted with flaws in his work, just as Hilberg had been in '85.
Yeah, to put it crudely, being put on the stand is like having one's undershorts examined for stains: "While there may be no fecal matter visible to the naked eye, the odor present is indisputable. I rest my case." Who can look good after being grilled by professional nitpickers?
One of the best lawyer perf's I've ever seen was Robert Culp in an episode of Columbo-- every freaking particle, every cell of the guy's body and mind, was devoted to humiliating his interlocutor, in this case Our Beloved Lt. Frank C. (RIP):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGmpDhxCAyU&t=4m42s
Culp was always a great villain on that show. Culp, Cassidy, McGoohan - the trifecta of recurring bad guys.
Could anyone wear an ascot as stylishly, and villainously, as Robert Vaughn?
Culp was amazing playing an s.o.b., and I bet more than one of his five wives would say he wasn't playing!
I bet you ratidor eating the gout off of your toe that Jones is gonna not only stay on the air but profit. Watch him sell Infowars for millions of dollars and the asshole who buys it makes him CEO and he keeps his show. Watch Musk pay 2 billion for it because "free speech" and then they IPO Infowars and Jones become a billionaire.
I FULLY agree he'll not just survive but profit.
Yes, it's gonna happen. Jones is a gift to the left and its sympathizers, so they move mountains to keep him around.
There's a lot of currency in being the most oppressed right now. Really there has been at least since "intersectionality" started. When I was in college I took a women's studies class (I know...). The second wave feminists included the nuts who wanted to have separatist societies with no men. I went and read some of their full manifestos, because I had to know what happened to them. And reading it, you can see they were mostly people who were molested as girls and couldn't get help. They'd tell their mom or the doctor and get ignored, and all of this pain festered within them until they grew up and feared and hated all men.
In a way it's sad, you can tell that they have these truncated little lives. At the end, if the writer's a minority, they always close with "and when I'm free, I'll know everyone's free, because [ethnicity] women are the most oppressed people in the world!" At first you read it and it's moving, you're like damn these poor ladies! After the second or third one you're like, okay, this wording is just a power play. That whole framework - the oppression Olympics - has gone mainstream now.
The Holocaust was this nightmare event that people wanted to document and publicize and be on the lookout for anything close to that building up ever again. The public found it very compelling, especially in the US. Later immigrant groups saw it and understood its power in the culture. The Armenians understood that the Jews get attention for their genocide, so they demanded recognition for theirs. They used factual documentation, appealed to emotions, they used the same playbook as the Jews because they saw that it worked and they felt they had a legitimate axe to grind, too. The subcontinental immigrants to the US & UK are, I think, trying to reframe Churchill as a famine enthusiast for a similar if maybe less honest reason - they grasp the power of a Holocaust level event and want one of their own, and you need a baddie with ill-intent for that. So even if he was getting bombed on his little island and doing his best, they have to make it seem like he wanted them to starve and cackled about it.
Latinos are desperate to be oppressed by whitey, Jews, whoever - but usually are more oppressed by their lack of ability to think in the abstract. ("The Partido Revolucionario Institucional will never sell us out!"). Black Americans may resent Jews in some ways, but they also sort of respect them. (Black actors will openly ask if you're a Jew before they consider signing with you as an agent or manager; many Black people will also openly talk about wanting a Jewish doctor or accountant.) They also know Jews were a big part of the Civil Rights movement in the US.
I went to a mostly white school on the East Coast. Boys were usually annoyed by the constant Holocaust references in every class. Sometimes they'd grumble about "whining" but they weren't deniers; they were just sick of hearing about it. Girls were largely just sympathetic. It was a LOT - it really did seem like we had a Holocaust lesson in every non-math subject - people got annoyed by the volume of it at times, but we all accepted it happened.
The Jews and whites I knew in LA - a lot of them were pretty self-hating. One sent her son to public school in a part of the county with failing schools because she felt the solution was more involved parents. Her vision was that as a super mom she would save the school and the district, basically. People were telling her, "Go private all the whites and Asians go private" but she felt that would somehow be "racist." There is a lot of pressure right now on people with means and/or light skin to go against their own interests and even their children's. A lot of gullible people are buying in, and I don't get why people have lost all their common sense on these issues.
So it will be interesting to see how THEY cope with denialism/Holocaust criticism as it goes mainstream (thanks Elon!) Will they react like "this is missing white girl syndrome all over again, and we must now amplify the other holocausts" or will they stick to their guns and insist it was a massive tragedy we can't forget.
With the weird Palestine movement - people are chanting for an Intifada and intimidating Jews on the subway; they're leaving QR codes on lampposts at crosswalks asking you to donate to "Palestinian college students" (which...this seems like a propagandist backdoor to fund Hamas possibly, or am I just paranoid?) I'm honestly wondering if that movement is coming with Holocaust denialism next. I wonder if that's the next well-funded arrow in the quiver of the Arab world trying to remake the West, after the soft launch of a new golf league and trying to eradicate Israel didn't work.
I don't know what the answer is to the growing denialism, but I think it basically comes from a place of resentment. The Holocaust has currency. It's a massive human tragedy, but it's also becoming more distant as the survivors die off. I think the deniers feel this is their moment to drive a wedge into the culture and claim their own victim moment. They're not interested in facts - they don't care if your parents are survivors or even whether you're Jewish - they just want to say anything to burn down the status quo. It's interesting to me that the profile of the stereotypical denier has changed - it used to be racist "the South will raise agin!" whites and now it seems more like it's angry young Latinos.
Interestingly, these deniers haven't considered what they're doing as far as setting a precedent. If they're able to unseat the Holocaust, how long until someone unseats their pet tragedy (Malinche selling natives out; banana company massacres etc) and they lose their seat at the victim table, too. Because these guys aren't as smart as the Indians or Armenians or even the second wave feminists; they're going to cut themselves on their edge if they're not careful.
Well-put and incisive. Thank you for that!
I came here for Ratibor updates, and all I got was an Alex Jones-Tuck-Deniertard-bromance . (I even wrote an amazing script starring Ratibor and his gang gloating about faking his death...in the home of a guy who faked his death.)
UNTHUBTHCRIED MITHTER COLE!!!!11!!!
LOL!!!!
Once my gout clears up I'm going to wall Ratibor in. I promise to post photos!
Build the wall Dave, then go get a python, Ratibor becomes a bulge in aforesaid python !!!
In WW2 we laid down with the Commies to defeat the Nazis. When you lay down with dogs….look at us now getting lectures from the former Soviet Union on the dangers of going down their old road.
Now the right is laying down with the loonies on the right to defeat the Commies in this country and no surprise, they are waking up with fleas - in the form of ant-semitism, assorted conspiracies, holocaust denial, etc.
Not saying either decision to lay with dogs was wrong just that there is no free lunch.
Great point, Dave. Thank you.
Dave, you may be aware that the TV show "Forensic Files" (excellent show, in my opinion) did a story on Kevin Green many years ago. If the show is accurate in what happened, and if I recall correctly, it was Greens wife who accused him of the assault. It also just so happened that she had received extremely severe head injuries in the attack but the jury bought her story nonetheless. A two-by-four can do some real damage on a skull. And apparently even when Green was eventually exonerated with DNA evidence, his wife continued to accuse him of having been the attacker. But do you think Kevin would have brought home some cold-assed fries from Burger King? Heck, no.
LOL!
Yes, investigators told her he did the beating, and, as she remembered nothing after the argument, she believed them. She lived with that "certainty" for 17 years, and it was hard to let go of it, as it had become a "fact" to her.
I watched some true crime shows about the Aisenbergs. I became convinced their guilt, but mostly because of the ominous music
LOL!!!!
Great column.
Thank you!