Say.

[sab]

Say.

I don't want to light a match under anything, or anything, and I only know what I know from glossing over the Internet and I'm so totally a year late and a few tacos short --

But what do we make of Hutton Gibson's -- Mel Gibson's dad's -- comments about the Holocaust in the week that his son's "groundbreaking" "anti-Semitic" (I have zero evidence for either of those things and am merely quoting what I've read) Jesus film hits the box office?

Hutton Gibson says he didn't know his comments were on the record, which is probably true enough, if not, you know, precisely relevant to the issue here.

Whether Mel has denounced these views or not seems to be open to interpretation, and I don't want to put words in his or anyone's mouth. He seems to say he stands by his father, which is dandy, and also seems to acknowledge that the Holocaust, um, happened, which is also, you know, dandy, but doesn't seem to be saying anything particularly enlightening about the sentiment behind his father's statements, nor trying to distance himself from them.

The radio transcript's here if you're in the mood to download a .pdf, also there's audio clips. Personally, I don't need audio clips and the synopsis was really enough for me, but in the interest of sharing. I am moderately creeped out. Not in a wanting-to-start-a-Crusade way, just in a personally-creeped-out way.

Anyway, this is what I know, because the Internet told me. And because one should never address anything without first consulting the Great Oracle of Truth, www.snopes.com, here's Snopes' take on the situation, which has been brewing in public consciousness since last year.

Comments

[hesychasm]

I think you can make a lot of it or a little of it. You have valid reasons for being creeped out. I think Gibson has valid reasons for not publically saying his father is a crackpot. (see brief exchange with Kita on the matter here)

I actually wanted to ask a tangential thing -- were you at Swat the semester Holocaust revisionist stuff was put in people's mailboxes? I believe it was slightly before my time, though I knew the guy who did it.

[iamsab.livejournal.com]

I was. I got more hot and bothered about it then than I am now, largely because it was on my turf, but also because I was less good at picking my battles.

Holocaust denial is a really really hot-button subject, but, at the same time, for me, sort of an easy one, at least in this generation where common wisdom is wise enough and survivors are still around to tell the tale. Two generations from now, when people start doubting the children of survivors and history gets blurrier it'll be a bigger issue, I think. But now I have a (perhaps ill-advised) kind of faith that the historians and the scholars will keep writing, and that enough people are intelligent enough that the truth will remain the truth.

It was a sticky couple days at Swarthmore, but, as so many things there do, it just descended into left-thinking Liberals trying to out-Liberal each other, and then it blew over. So that's where my blind optimism comes from, at least where that's concerned.

[hesychasm]

You're making me want to do a post on this, because there are a lot of memories for me re: this incident I wasn't even around for, tied up with the guy and the politics and my family's deal with genocide and just the whole first year at college, especially that college, thing. Hrm. Gotta think on this some. Except I'm leaving work, so I'll think it over on the train.

[furies.livejournal.com]

well, if people like me have any say in the matter, the record will speak for itself. i don't think revisionist historians will be able to take this away. the nazis were too proud of themselves. they wrote every little detail down. that's hard to contradict, though i know there are people that do. but unlike the comfort women in korea, where the japanese soldiers kept no records of the women they coerced into being sex slaves (and later americans expected the same sort of situation) it's a more he said she said situation, and when the generation dies, you're going to be losing a huge part of the argument. written oral history, as any historian can tell you, needs to be taken into context, and one can read any sort of context into pretty much anything.

but the holocaust is safe, i think. ironically enough, i think it's going to be the germans and what they did after the war that make sure the world doesn't forget.