Most of you have likely heard of the latest contretemps in Texas regarding “opposing views” to the Holocaust. Here is one response to consider. What opposing views are there? That it never happened, that it’s fake. Except? Let’s pretend that all the pictures, the survivor narratives, the Nazi records, well all of it wasn’t there. Consider this: there were 199 tried at Nuremberg. None offered as a defense “it was fake, it didn’t happen”. Adolf Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem. He never offered as a defense that “it never happened”. Some, including Eichmann, were executed for their crimes. They would have tried “it never happened” as a defense were there any chance they’d have been believed.
Seems pretty that’s a bit of pretty compelling evidence that it really did happen.
There is no opposing view. None.
Yet we should also consider “opposing views” in a larger context. It’s part of why our country is in the mess we are in today. Many of the major news outlets, especially NPR prior to Trump, under the guise of “balanced reporting” took the approach that they needed to have both “sides” of a story included in a report. It meant that a broadcast about the latest climate warming research would also include a climate denier as part of the report. They never refuted the, well frankly, lies of the climate denial crowd. They included them as facts, distorting the message of the science. To say this resulted in confusion is a bit of an understatement. To this day people still deny global warming, due in part to the disservice to facts perpetuated by our major news sources. Fortunately, they no longer do this. Yet they shouldn’t have done it at all.
I’ve witnessed first hand the new approach, especially on NPR. I’ve heard deniers (and liars) being challenged with fact based reporting. It’s better, but the damage was done.
And in this context? I wonder what NPR, ABC, CBS, and NBC would have done during this time had they been reporting on new research about the Holocaust. Who from the theoretical “other” side would they have have found to be there and to lie?
So let’s close this be going all “Joe Friday”: “The facts, just the facts, ma’am”.