In a recent radio show the comedian Jeremy Hardy made the simple point that no matter how bona fide somebody's credentials it is always worth looking at their motives. As Hardy pointed out, scientists look like pretty objective, disinterested sort of people whose views are determined by the natural laws of science.
Yet so many scientists disagree with each other about so many basic questions. This is even more the case if their research is sponsored by a vested interest. As Jeremy observed, a scientist employed by the tobacco industry could undoubtedly point out that smoking greatly reduced your chance of developing Alzheimer's.
I wander down this side road only because it reminds me of those 'historians' who seem to have dedicated their life's work to prove that the Holocaust never happened, or that it has been greatly exaggerated.
It is possible for any set of historians to become completely obsessed with some minute piece of historical detail that obsesses them. Indeed such is the pressure of seeking new pathbreaking facts that it can lead to the most patent absurdities. For instance, one recent history of the American War of Independence suggested that the key to the whole revolution was the weather!
Nor is it unheard of for historians to jump through hoops in order to reach the political conclusion they want to. Whole revisions of the history of the English and French Revolutions have been dedicated to arguing that there were no revolutions at all. A complete school of Irish historians have dedicated great bodies of work designed to belittle and reject the national struggle for independence, in the process writing off all history of colonial repression and all resistance to it.
It is easy to understand the motives of such people. Apologists for capitalism are keen to reject any notion that the system they support won power by violent revolution. In Ireland the rejection of the Nationalist past is closely tied in with a rejection of the struggle in the North of Ireland, and an underpinning of a new modern Southern Irish Nationalism which can ignore both the country's revolutionary past and the embarrassing Northern present.
If this is true then where do the Holocaust revisionists stand? They have devoted volumes attempting to prove that 6 million Jews didn't die and that the death camps weren't really death camps but are a fake.
Why would anyone wish to go down such a road? That the death camps existed is beyond dispute. That the gas ovens existed is beyond dispute. The bodies discovered, the emaciated survivors, the relatives who could not find a surviving member of their families, these things are all beyond dispute.
Indeed to dispute them you have to explain why what would be a colossal hoax had been perpetrated, by whom, and for what reason. There is only one answer that the Holocaust revisionists give that this hoax has been perpetrated by Jews and is part of a 'Jewish conspiracy'. Now a 'Jewish conspiracy' is a theory that was perpetrated by Hitler and was the reason given for his 'final solution'.
Strange also that many who seek to deny the Holocaust should also be responsible for issuing death threats to Jews, desecrating Jewish cemeteries, and producing virulent anti-Semitic propaganda. Of course 'respectable' Holocaust revisionist historians like David Irvine don't do this sort of thing. But what of the phalanx of brain dead thugs who guard his meetings and provide him with platforms?
This rewriting of history is therefore little more than an apology for a shameful past, and a green light to those who would wish to see humanity once again descend into the very deepest pits of a living hell.
Little wonder that there are now those who wish to pass laws making this historical filth illegal. Quite right too, but a number of cautionary points are worth making. State protection can be a double edged sword. Think of the Public Order Act originally passed in 1936 supposedly to prevent Oswald Mosley's fascist marches, but instead used again and again against the left and trade unionists.
Secondly, such laws will not in and of themselves prevent the growth of fascism. Fascism grows out of crisis and despair. It is the illogical and ghastly cry of pain of those who feel powerless and dispossessed. That is why, although laws banning Holocaust denial exist in Germany, it has not prevented the re-emergence of fascist groups or the racist murder of immigrants, for example at Solingen.
Instead the most effective means of combating the growth of these groups has been the emergence of militant anti-fascist groups which seek to mobilise large numbers to stop the fascists in their tracks.
The long overdue development of such groups is at last beginning to counter the threat of Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. The Anti Nazi League has now twice combated emerging fascist groups in Britain, and will, if necessary, do so again.
By all means pass laws against lies, and against the shameful 'history' which gives succour to Nazi scum, but remember that no law or constitution can defeat fascism. For that mass action and ultimately an alternative vision to the misery of the present has to be created.