From Watts up
I have not read through these, and it took me a long time to understand and read through the first batch.
The biggest and most important fact about the first batch is not that some of the documents were anti scientific, but that none of them reflected a scientific inquiry. All of them, every single one, were the internal documents of a political and religious campaign. None of them, not a single one were the internal documents of a scientific inquiry. It was not that some of those documents stank badly, but that every single one smelled at least a little bit funny.
It’s interesting how the 3 different democratic tyrannies produce propaganda:
1. The Nazi’s would directly manufacturer incidents for reporting. Everything was very professionally done but clearly organized by the government.
2. The Bolsheviks would simply lie because they controlled all information. As long as they were the only source of news people generally believed them.
3. Our regime neither controls information or manufacturers it. We simply distort the truth to a manageable degree and then select the correct truth in a sea of noise through expert opinion.
Unlike the USSR our state can never be found to have lied because it never had an opinion in the first place. It was just repeating what the experts said. Unlike the 3ed Reich we never report something that didn’t happen instead we distort how it’s reported till it bears no resemblance to reality. In all cases you can’t convince people the government was intentionally lying to them.
We now know that one of those arrested for the Reichstaag fire was head of all Comintern operations in Western Europe, though the Nazis never discovered who it was that they had arrested. Therefore, not picking on random scapegoats. They put their hands on genuine spies, and then eventually let them go. We also know that Van der Lubbe was a genuine communist, and that he did not act alone – he was the expendable who torched the place after other people had set up the incendiaries and left.
This indicates that the communists did burn the Reichstaag – and at Stalin’s direction, no less!
Which turned out so remarkably convenient for Hitler that everyone believed that Hitler had done it. Stalin had the deluded belief that Germany was ripe for communist revolution, because Marx said that it must be. Analogously, the anti terrorist apparatus in the US theoretically believes that the chief terrorist threat comes from white Christian Americans, and runs enthusiastically with anything that supports this theory. In Hitler’s case, the official truth (evil communist plot) did in fact have some basis in reality, or at least some basis in the fantasies of real and important communists.
It is entirely plausible that they manufactured incidents as well, but the most famous incident of them all, was, though highly convenient for Hitler, quite genuine. Do you have some examples other than the Reichstaag fire?
I’ve always felt the Reichstaag fire was more about left wing propaganda protecting the concept of democracy than Nazi propaganda. I’m not sure how the Germans actually viewed it.
I was alluding to incidents like: The Gleiwitz incident, made up incidents about the Jews doing this crime or whatnot, some of the none existent crimes the Soviets did on the eastern front. However, given the amount of allied propaganda I’ve absorbed about the Nazi’s I’m not real confident about my understanding of their propaganda arm or what was actually true with a lot of things that happened during their time.
It’s funny, I took history of Western Civ less than 7 years ago and they still repeated the standard allied propaganda line on the Reichstaag fire.
Of the 3 great sides of WW2 it’s clear that Hitler and the Japanese were the most honest about their goals to the public at large. Just goes to show that it’s pays to be secretive and conspiratorial.
The Gleiwitz incident is a good example of the Nazi’s directly manufacturing incidents for reporting, and on looking it up, I learn it was one of a bunch of similar incidents fabricated to justify the invasion of Poland.
I am unaware of evil Jewish deeds being manufactured: In “Mein Kampf” Hitler accused the Jews of being indecently successful, and of causing the home front to collapse in World War I by reporting that the home front was collapsing. Quite likely those that reported the collapse of the home front were disproportionately Jewish, though these reports might have had more to do with the fact that it was in fact collapsing, that Germany was losing the capability to maintain an army in the field, than any evil Jewish intentions.
not a single [document] were the internal documents of a scientific inquiry
Some of the comments in the computer code displayed an admirable orientation towards the truth. Of course, those were written by a powerless graduate student.
Harry wanted to discover the truth, which is to say, wanted to do science, but did what he was ordered to do: Manufactured a predetermined result from data too noisy, incomplete, and error prone to justify that result.
Also significant is how major was the majority who could not tell the difference between science and what climate Ph.Ds produce.