Mel Gibson: The Holocaust is a Numbers Game
Reader's Digest cites the 2004 interview with Mel Gibson:
MEL GIBSON: My dad taught me my faith, and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life. He was born in 1918. He lost his mother at two years of age. He lost his father at 15. He went through the Depression. He signed up for World War II, went off to Guadalcanal, got malaria and shot at, and didn’t like it too much. [He] served his country fighting the forces of fascism, came back, worked very hard physically, raised a family, put a roof over my head, clothed me, fed me, taught me my faith, loved me, I love him back.
And he did all that so some guy has the right to misrepresent him and say nasty things and paint him in a very bad light. And then other people said, ‘Well, he’s just an old kook.’ He’s not an old kook. He’s very intelligent. He’s in complete possession of all his mental faculties. And if he says something he has a reason why he says it and he can back it up. Mensa wanted this guy, okay? He’s very intelligent. So I’ll slug it out with anyone until my heart is black and blue if they say anything against him or ever try and hurt him in that way. Now, that said, you know, I pray for the guy who maligned him in that way and hope that he will one day apologize. [emphasis added]
Now, there’s nothing wrong with a son saying that his father is intelligent, but remember the context: Mel Gibson is defending his father’s intelligence and reasoning skills in the context of his denial that the Holocaust occurred. Mel Gibson is saying that if his father says something, he has a reason why he says it and he can back it up — in other words, if his father says that the Holocaust didn’t happen, then he has a reason why he says it and he can back up his claim that the Holocaust didn’t happen. According to Mel Gibson, denying the historical reality of the Holocaust does not make someone a “kook.” Does this sound like someone who is simply expressing respect and love for his father but distancing himself from some off-the-wall view his father has?
Apparently someone was critical of Hutton Gibson’s antisemitic views and Holocaust Denials. In the above, Mel Gibson accuses this person of having “maligned” his father and of having said things he should apologize for. Perhaps the person he had in mind really did go too far in what he said about Hutton Gibson; then again, maybe he just stated the bald truth about Hutton Gibson’s views and Mel Gibson doesn’t like this truth.
But wait, it gets better: Mel Gibson apparently understands how the most sophisticated Holocaust Deniers operate because he is able to make skillful use of all their tactics and rhetoric. Coincidence?
NOONAN: You're going to have to go on the record. The Holocaust happened, right?
MEL GIBSON: I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. And my dad also knows that there were internment camps where many people died. Now, his whole thing was about the numbers. I mean atrocities happened. The thing with him [my father] was that he was talking about numbers. I mean when the war was over they said it was 12 million. Then it was six. Now it's four. I mean it's that kind of numbers game. I mean war is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million people starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union. Okay? It's horrible. [emphasis added]
As David Bernstein explained at the time that the above comments were made, this "denial" isn't much of a denial:
Holocaust deniers, at least the sophisticated ones, don’t deny that Jews were sent to concentration camps, and don’t deny that Jews suffered during the war, and perhaps suffered a bit disproportionately because they were Jews. What they do deny was that the Germans singled out the Jews for genocide, that millions of Jews were murdered, and that Jews were sent to death camps, not simply to labor or concentration camps.
Nothing that Gibson said was inconsistent with the views of a Holocaust denier, and, indeed, as I pointed out, his statement sounds a lot like the stated views of the editor of the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review. This all may be innocent on Gibson’s part, and, if someone would ask him directly, “do you believe that the Germans murdered approximately six million Jews during World War II” and he said “yes” I would leave it at that. But given that he grew up in an anti-Semitic family, with a Holocaust-denying father, and has now asserted views that are very much consistent with the views of a Holocaust-denier, I can’t say that my presumptions are with him at this point.
By insisting that the Holocaust is simply a “numbers game,” he is in effect trying to cast doubt upon the numbers of Jews killed — and that’s precisely what Holocaust Deniers do. Sophisticated Holocaust Deniers don’t deny that there were camps, that conditions were bad, or that lots of Jews died. Instead, they deny that 5 to 6 million Jews died, that there was an organized and systematic effort to kill as many Jews as possible — preferably all of them, in the end — and that this effort was driven by a long-standing hatred of Jews as an “enemy within” European culture.
Notice also how Mel Gibson attempts to equate the slaughter of the Jews with the general suffering that occurred during World War II. The war was terrible. Millions died all over. Many people suffered. What’s unsaid, but implied, is the question of why people focus on the suffering of Jews, as if they suffered in any special or unique way. Not so many Jews really died, but lots of others really died. Many more died in other awful events before and after World War II, so why even focus just on that? There’s suffering all around. Jews are just exploiting their suffering unjustly to make it easier for them to take over.
Always in the background, whispered but rarely said outright, of every Holocaust Denier’s tirade about how “Hitler didn’t try kill millions of Jews” is “...but he should have.” Holocaust Denial is ideological; it is motivated by hatred, fear, and spite. It’s the ideology of Antisemites who simultaneously want to deny that their hateful ideology is responsible for anything bad happening as well as create a new reason to hate Jews even more — with the hope that if there is enough hate, society will be led to doing just what it is they deny ever occurred before.
The question, I suppose, is: just how deeply has Mel Gibson fallen into his father Hutton’s world of hate? Perhaps farther than most people realize. Back in 1987, Mel Gibson personally campaigned on behalf of Rob Taylor, a friend of his who was running for office in a regional election in Australia. There’s nothing improper about that, except for the fact that Taylor was a member of the League of Rights, a group notorious for its Antisemitism, for saying that the world is run by a “secret society of Jews,” and for Holocaust Denial.
The Sunday Herald Sun explains:
Charles Pinwill, a former Queensland state director of the League of Rights, said he knew Gibson’s father, Hutton, and said Gibson was interested in the league’s ideas.
“They were never members of the league, no. But we never really recruited members, just support. (Mel and Hutton) were interested in some of our ideas,” Mr Pinwill said.
“His dad had politically similar ideas to me. His dad had a well-considered philosophy, he thought things through.
Now, Mel Gibson was never a member of this hate group and no one is saying that he specifically endorsed all of their antisemitic ideology. He was, however, interested — and interested enough to attract the attention of the League of Rights. He certainly supported their ideology enough to think it a good idea for one of them to hold political office in Australia. It’s not as bad as campaigning on behalf of someone who’s a member of the National Socialist party, but just how much better is it really?
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