Danielle, who's to say what records are genuine and what are false? As you rightly point out, a lot of previously buried records are now coming out of the FSU. I believe that, as time goes by, more and more records refuting the holohoax will appear. These may or may not be genuine also so it'll still be up to each and everyone to form their own opinions. We will never know for sure. Still, no-one who has had a go at me over the denial has ever tried to explain why such denial is illegal in some countries. If holohoax denial is so innacurate, why make it a crime? If we're so wrong, shouldn't deniers be laughed at instead of prosecuted?

CJ, I can guarantee that I have had as much contact with 'original or archival material' as anyone posting against me. However you take that is up to you.

Danielle,

Fascinating posts. I had a similar experience when I wanted to access archival material on Gandhi in South Africa many years ago.

My hope is that one day all this material will be scanned and made available on the internet. Now that would advance the teaching of history.

Bugsy,

Yes Lenin and Stalin did liquidate many of the intellectuals who had supported the revolution. Others were sent to the Gulag.

And guess what? University educated leftie "intellectuals" in the West continued to revere Stalin while he was killing and exiling their counterparts in the Soviet Union.

The catastrophe of the cultural revolution did little to diminish Mao in the eyes of university educated lefties.

And how did the university educated lefties justify their support for such monsters. Mostly they dismissed negative reporting about the Soviet Union or Communist China as "imperialist" or "anti-Soviet" propaganda.

How little has changed. Today the same university educated lefties call negative reporting on Islam "Islamophobia." They accuse those of us who point to the horrors of Islam of "demonising" Muslims and call us "prejudiced."

Much as I would love to think that a university degree was a guarantee of the ability to think clearly, all the evidence points the other way. Some university educated people are able to think clearly and reason objectively and rationally. Many are not.

I tend to think that we should consider a high school curriculum which involves critical reasoning as a core subject, with an emphasis on some of the more common fallacies and how they are employed.

It's mind-boggling how often the same fallacies are repeated over and over on these boards.

If the curriculum included some of the more commonly employed fallacies here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

I think we'd have a more informed and ultimately less easily manipulated populace.

TLTR I like the wiki link. Have browsed it briefly and will return to review it further.

I agree with the thrust of yours and stevenlmeyers posts.

The role of “educators” at all levels, from primary to tertiary, is not to indoctrinate their students with facts or values (leave that to the Jesuits and Leninists) but to train the student in the skills needed to arrive at conclusions, independently, for themselves.

There is another article / thread in the other section of OLO “Politics in the lecture theatre” which is making the same challenge.

TRTL

I've never understood why Critical Thinking hasn't been a part of the curriculum at secondary level. Apart from preparing those inclined for Uni, it would provide an excellent basis for anyone entering the adult world. Also the inclusion of Philosophy would be an ideal companion subject.

As for the nefarious level of fallacious arguments, I think the 'red herring' has to be the most insidious here at OLO.

School curriculum overhaul is urgently needed.

The Holocaust is as well documented as it is possible for any historical event to be. Apart from tens of thousands of eye witness accounts we have mountains of archival material in the hands of the US, British and former Soviet governments. These detail almost every aspect of the Holocaust. The different sources of evidence are mutually corroborating.

The recently released Soviet material fills in some of the gaps but does not contradict the archival material in Western hands.

Anyone who thinks this is some kind of a hoax and that archival material on that scale could be forged has, to put it gently, a tenuous grip on reality. They have no understanding of how quickly a skilled archivist would be able to spot a forgery.

There is no more rational reason to doubt the Holocaust than there is to doubt the second law of thermodynamics, the historicity of Napoleon or the existence of the Pacific Ocean.

The reason why some people deny the Holocaust in the face of all the evidence may be of interest to psychologists, brain researchers and sociologists. However the rants of such a person are of no interest to a serious researcher.

One may pity a Holocaust denier but there is no more point in trying to engage him or her in debate than there is in trying to reason with someone who has advanced Alzheimer's.

The only thing that interests me about Jack the sad is why he denies the Holocaust. But I do not expect to get a rational answer from him.