Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Fake News Hits the Holocaust

Fake News, as I argued in an article here last year, is not a new phenomenon, as many in the media (and Trump) seem to imply. And yet the acceleration of “counternarratives” (aka lies) accelerate and proliferate across our fiber optic and airwaves, the truth has become more tenuous than at any time since science came along to challenge the hegemony of religion, mythology and old world traditions. The latest parry in this ongoing war on knowledge, beyond the daily barrage by the Trump administration, comes thanks to one its former members, Anthony Scaramucci.

In an online poll on his twitter account, the Scar (my nickname), asked the following question:

How many Jews were killed in the Holocaust?
o Less than 1 million
o Between 1-2 million
o Between 2-3 million
o More than 5 million

Holocaust deniers are not new, either, of course, but is this really a question we have to continue to debate in the mainstream of American politics – or at least the new “mainstream?” Beyond the absurd response that they were simply “testing people’s knowledge” of the tragedy is the fact that it was 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust, which is substantially more than “more than 5 million.”

If you’re wondering, the results as of the time of the Washington Post story was 69 percent for the theoretically “correct” answer, 7 percent who thought it was 2-3 million, 4 percent who believed 1 to 2 million and an astounding 20 percent who claimed “less than a million.”


With global warming, past presidential phone calls, Iranian nuclear weapon activities, the real beneficiaries of tax cuts and Russian interference in our election all up for debate just the past week, is it any wonder we return to perpetuating one of the ugliest lies repeated over the past 60 years? Not with our current Commander and Thief in charge of the public dialogue …