Deceitful Documentary Denies Holocaust
“The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie rather than a small one.” These words, uttered by the infamous German leader Adolf Hitler, are now being put to the test more than sixty years on in modern day Iran. There the Iranian government is funding the creation of racist and inflammatory documentaries, such as Merchants of the Myth, which attack the validity of the Holocaust.
Last weekend, I had the distinct displeasure of viewing this pejorative program, which aired on Iranian TV, illustrating the lengths that a deceitful director will go to position his audience towards accepting his warped view of reality. The documentary’s argument is black and white – believe the Holocaust to be a Jewish conspiracy to occupy Palestine or be an ignoramus, corrupted by the morally bankrupt West, under the control of powerful Jews. “Today 70% of the press is in the hands...” is the narrator’s dire warning.
“How silly of me!” I gently chide myself. “Obviously it’s the Jews who are the racists.” Bah! Personally I will play no part in this idiotic Islamic indoctrination. For a documentary sanctioned by the Iranian government it seems strange to me that no production credits were forthcoming. Evidently no-one wanted to lend their name to a work which so grotesquely misrepresented the truth.
Of course I know that even at the best of times, documentaries are merely a representation of the truth – a construction of the director’s views and opinions. Yet the last time I saw such a blatant manipulation of the truth was when we last had a Labor PM. At least we could vote him out of office!
I mean after all, the Holocaust is one of the most well-documented events in history – even its survivors are still alive today. Survivors like Ben Stem, who can still recall his first moments in the death camp “The people sent to the left went to the gas chambers, and we went to the right.” Yet all this is silenced or constantly negated throughout the documentary by so-called experts such as Professor Robert Faurisson or by the narrator himself, with his trademark remark “Any discerning viewer with a historical curiosity can easily identify the exaggerations in the film.”
In fact, you have to hand it to the narrator for his ability to put a spin on the truth as well as Shane Warne can put a spin on a cricket ball. His dry, slightly condescending tone, so often attributed to academics and scholars, works to position his audience towards accepting his version of reality as fact. Yet all the while he is launching a blatant attack against Zionism and the authenticity of the state of Israel.
Unfortunately, this form of racism isn’t limited to just Iran. The other day I was surfing the net, (as part of my daily ritual of pre-work procrastination) and to my astonishment found hundreds of videos glorifying National Socialism, using footage from the Third Reich. There were also thousands of websites disputing the validity of the Holocaust, such as those established by David Irving, the renown Holocaust denier who has written numerous books on the topic.
With such information on the net, you would have thought the producers of Merchants of the Myth would have easily found some dubious source to corroborate their findings. Yet strangely enough, none of the information referred to in the documentary is acknowledged or attributed to any sources. The narrator simply says “According to documents obtained.” I find it difficult to believe that anyone could be ignorant enough to accept the insidious insinuations of this documentary without a shred of evidence.
The process of deliberate misinformation continued into the documentary’s interviews, where the interviewees were constructed as venerable and wise men. Their names were displayed along with vague credentials, such as Professor Robert Faurisson who was classified as a “French Revisionist Historian.” All the while throughout his interview the camera remained focused in a close up shot of his upper-body as if to show he had nothing to hide.
Even the grainy file footage shot by the British themselves of the concentration camps is manipulated for use as evidence. “It is obvious that these were not cremators, but merely resting rooms,” is a typical explanation. The background music also seems to have been specifically chosen because of its grave and somber nature, as though the director is struggling to right some great wrong.
Merchants of the Myth is nothing more than a cleverly presented piece of racist fiction. They speak of the Holocaust as a lie, yet they try to prove this by lying and manipulating the truth themselves. To the uneducated masses, this documentary might successfully position them towards accepting the director’s constructed version of history. However, it is inconceivable that it would convince an educated and intelligent individual, and in that regard, in the eyes of the wider global community, it has failed as a documentary. For, no matter how painful the past is, it must always be accurately recorded, for as the writer George Santayana inscribed “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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