Yep. The grassy knoll guys especially. Their laughable theory was “The Jews running the world had to get rid of Kennedy” for a variety of reasons. The moon hoaxers were even more direct: “The moon landing was faked, you can tell it was all done in a film studio, and you know the Jews run Hollywood.” From there, the conversation usually went further downhill.
My guess is that’s just another manifestation of the belief in contradictory things required for CTers. I recently read a good article on this phenomenon. I’ll try to dig it up and post a link to the article.
Did I say know? No, I did not. I said guess. Maybe I can make it clearer here: Your friend, as you say, is a CT nut. In my experience, as I said, every CT I’ve encountered is, at its root, anti-Semitic.
I did not say that your friend is an anti-Semite. I said that my guess is that your friend (a) believes in certain CTs and (b) your friend does not believe said CTs to be anti-Semitic.
Does that clear it up?
And, as promised, here is the Scientific American article (Special Issue, September 2012, p. 91).
So, you’re saying that if Bob says, “Kennedy wasn’t killed by Oswald, he was killed by the Jews!” and Andy says, “Kennedy wasn’t killed by Oswald, he was killed by the Mafia!” both of them believe in an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, because one theory (out of, literally, hundreds) about what “really” happened to Kennedy involves the Jews? Even though nothing about what Andy says is in anyway related to Jews?
Actually, I’ve never heard it in person that the Mafia killed Kennedy; at least, I don’t recall hearing that. For those persons I’ve encountered who’ve advanced a fair number of the other CTs, when I’ve queried them, as I mentioned above, it’s always gotten back to one of the anti-Semitic CTs. I find it sad and, obviously, it tarnishes my view of any CT.
But what I’m saying is that I’d like to meet your friend. Really, it would be great to break the string of bad eggs I’ve encountered who are CTers. I really would like to meet one in person who is not an anti-Semite. Unfortunately, all of my in-person accounts have been with the opposite kind of person. I’d look forward to a meeting with a good egg CTer. I guess I should emphasize that I’m not being sarcastic; I really would like to meet the dude.
By the way, did you read the Scientific American article and, if so, what do you think of it?
While I have no doubt that CTers are disproportionately anti-Semitic, I don’t remember in the movie JFK, Jim Garrison ranting about “the Jews”.
For that matter, I don’t remember any of the characters in the movie, except Ruby, being Jewish and I don’t think Ruby’s ethnicity was even mentioned in the movie.
Uh, after reading the book “Case Closed” by Posner and other debunkings it is clear that any narrative coming from Jim Garrison and movies derived from his exploits are better to be described as just fiction.
Yeah, most of the Kennedy CTers I know favor the CIA as their bogeyman here. None of them have ever invoked the Jews as the source of the conspiracy. A lot of my friends are on the liberal political fringe, and have some pretty goofy ideas. None of them are racists, though. Well, one of them moved out to the middle of nowhere, Arizona, married into a redneck family, and has started blaming Mexicans for a lot of things. I don’t see him too much anymore.
I’m not really in a position to introduce you, but I suppose could, if you’re interested, forward you the extensive email conversations I’ve had with this guy about 9/11. They cover about six months or so, and what I figure has to be at least a couple hundred exchanges. He never mentions anything about Jews, and I followed him down a lot of rabbit holes in the course of that conversation.
I skimmed it, but I’m not really arguing against the concept of cognitive dissonance (which my friend has in spades). I’m just saying, there’s a lot of different kinds of crazy in the CT world. Not all of it is crazy racism. A lot of it is crazy anti-authoritarianism, with no racist tinge at all.
To address your point about why it matters how many or in what fashion they were executed. I believe it does matter. In fact the method is the most horrific aspect of the Holocaust. Human history is littered with mass exterminations but what sets the Holocaust apart is the calculated integration of human savagery with 20th Century technology. It raised (or lowered I suppose) the bar. Here is a technologically advanced society using the advancements that are supposed to raise us up above our animal instincts to systematically slaughter other humans in a cold, calculated method.
Icy, systematic, calculated murder on a mass scale. Sends shivers down the spine.
You’re missing the Holocaust Deniers’ narrative. It goes something like this.
“World War II happened, and we can all agree it was just terrible, and all sorts of bad stuff happened. Now the thing to understand is, the Jews were enemies of the Nazis from the beginning. They weren’t really loyal to Germany. So when the war started, the Germans took them into custody because they couldn’t trust them. That’s not unusual. Americans did that in World War II too with the Japanese; the British in the Boer War, and so on. It was a strictly defensive measure.”
"Now, some Jews died in the camps of disease or malnutrition. That’s because there was a war on. Allied bombing had so disrupted German supply and done such horrible stuff to German civilians that there were shortages of food and medicine. (So really, if anybody’s responsible for the Jews who died, it was the Allies, with their barbaric bombing of innocent German civilians). And those deaths were, at most, a few hundred thousand.
As for the rest of it, the gas chambers, and mass graves, and all that, that stuff didn’t happen. It’s a deliberate fraud that was put out by both the Soviets and the Jews, the Soviets because they wanted to discredit fascism and racial pride, and the Jews because they wanted, first, to discredit and embarrass the German people, and second, to play on international sympathy to get a Jewish state of their own. "
And that’s basically the argument. That it didn’t happen, and to the extent that it did, it was accidental, and you know, shit happens.
That crazy old guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum a few years ago maintained a blog where he denied the Holocaust, though with a twist. In his own words, he said: “I don’t believe the Holocaust ever happened…but it SHOULD have happened!”
I know a nice chap, American, of German family origin, who denies the holocaust, because of a naive belief that Germans wouldn’t have done such a thing. The Germans are nice, friendly, happy, musical people. He’s vacationed there often; he speaks German fluently. He loves the German people, and simply cannot believe that they could get involved in something that evil. History has to be mistaken.
I suppose it’s a slightly nicer reason than we usually see, but it is remarkably simplistic.
I would rephrase this as every CT has a certain number of anti-Semitic adherents, and the more CTs a person espouses, the more likely it is that he/she is an anti-Semitic bigot.
When you get someone who believes conspiracy theories about 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, water fluoridation, the use of vaccines to depopulate the world etc., it is highly probable that person has connected the dots in his excuse for a brain to blame da Jews.
For most “deniers” it’s antisemitism and refuting the Jewish controlled media et cetera. But beyond that I value truth and historical accuracy for their own sake, so if the Nazis only exterminated a mere 3 million, I hope that info would eventually supplant the current figures. Likewise, if the number was really 12 million.
Holocost deniers remind me of "Cell Block Tango ‘(He had it comin’) from the musical ‘Chicago’. In it all the inmates complain that they didn’t murder their husbands, boyfriends, etc. but they deserved to be killed in any case.
Only with out the humor, irony, basic tenets of humanity…
Umm, this is not some kind of isolated or even very interesting phenomenon… this kind of “denialist” talk is standard practice in all conflicts, probably going back to ancient history. The Japanese refuse to believe half of the stuff they did to the Chinese/Koreans and in the Balkans it’s common as dirt to hear that atrocities were faked to get outside sympathy.
The number was really 12 million - or possibly even 17 million depending on how you define it. 6 million jews, 6 million non jews (slavs, pows, communists, freemasons, gays, jehovahs witnesses, gypsies, cripples… )
It wouldn’t surprise me actually if for every anti semite conspiracy theorist who thinks there was no holocaust, there’s at least five who think the conspiracy was to after the war “big up” the jewish aspect of it while ignoring the rest.
I am rather skeptical that many of the “labelled” anti-semitic conspiaracy theorists are actually anti-semitic though, at least in a bigotted way. You can believe in a shadowy group of jewish people controlling things without believing most jews are in on it (likewise freemasons etc).
Oh and David Icke… I am morally certain when he says lizards, he means lizards.