As usual, David Cole’s latest includes something to annoy everyone:
Eric Hunt was the youthful looney bird who attacked Elie Wiesel in an elevator back in ’07. After serving his time, Hunt returned to a hero’s welcome from Holocaust deniers (a community in which roughing up Elie Wiesel earns you a boatload of street cred). For the past eight years, Hunt has been denial’s biggest star and most prolific “documentarian.” And last month, he had the kind of epiphany that usually only happens after four ghosts fuck up your Christmas Eve. He realized that he was completely, totally, 100% wrong. He said goodbye to the deniers, and penned several lengthy screeds about how they’re full of shit.
Not to blow my own horn, but the deniers are blaming me for Hunt’s about-face, with neo-Nazi Hadding Scott claiming, “With Cole, he [Hunt] had an argument…. And apparently he felt badly about his performance in the argument with Cole. And he felt he had been defeated, I guess.” This is only partially true. I’d never directly argue with Hunt; he’s beneath me. But I have mercilessly mocked his views over the years. And now we have the internet’s No. 1 purveyor of denial admitting he was dead wrong, and has even one mainstream Jewish journalist or leader written about it in the press? Of course not, even though that’s exactly the kind of thing that actually could make a difference in turning young people away from Holocaust denial. Given the opportunity to draw attention to an extremist’s sincere conversion, thus invalidating denial books, Jews instead chose the path of banning the books, giving them a kind of legitimacy while making Jews look exactly like the nefarious cabal of secretive, information-controlling bullies that anti-Semites paint us as.
