Going Down the Rabbit Hole

Gore Vidal loses it.

Gore Vidal

Novelist, Playwright and prolific essay writer the late Gore Vidal, (1925 - 2012)1 could always be counted on for a provocative opinion or two or three. He was also sure to slay the sacred cows of received opinion with his incisive wit. Even if you disagree with him his opinions on literary matters, politics, history, social issues etc., were usually well grounded and if not that at least interesting.

It is however sad to say that late in life Gore Vidal developed a severe case of conspiracy theory thinking. This served to bring his whole oeuvre into disrepute by enabling his critics to label him a crack pot.

Another One Bites the Dust

Thoughts on the fall of Gaddafi

Gaddafi in better days

One of the common historical tropes of the last two centuries or so has been the rise and fall of the dictator. We recently have been given a veritable feast of falling and fallen dictators with the ongoing Arab Spring. Bloody and chaotic though it has been it has removed many of the world’s longest lasting dictators.1

The Wicked Revolution

Storming the Bastille

The French Revolution is one of the most important events in the last 1000 years and even now it stirs controversy because even though it was over two centuries ago people use it to argue present day concerns.1 A chief characteristics to these discussions about the Russian Revolution –opps I mean the French Revolution is that they are not really about the French Revolution but about modern concerns. In the back and often in the front of the writers mind is the Russian Revolution, which is the prism through which the French Revolution is seen. Since in this case the Russian Revolution is seen as a terrible evil tragedy then of course the French Revolution is seen as similar and of course equally futile, useless and wicked.2

This goes with a condemnation of revolution in general as wicked and catastrophic and simply not worth it. Revolutions are conceived as the result of wicked bad ideas that like viruses have infected the population with the disease of wanting change now. Of course they are like Edmund Burke, who hysterically condemned the French Revolution and engaged in the most contemptible twisting of history to ignore and down play the violence and revolutionary nature of the “Glorious” Revolution of 1688 that over threw James II and brought radical change to England and was accompanied by much violence. Burke further ignored that the “Glorious” Revolution was the end result of the effects of the English Civil War and Republican period, which had been characterized by much violence and social upheaval. Instead Burke created the illusion that the British constitution of his day was timeless and the result of slow incremental change and reflected the true nature of man and society. This vision is of course a self serving lie.3

Today a similar self-serving ideological attitude persists among many so-called American Conservatives. In this view virtually all Revolutions are bad except the American Revolution which was good and right. Of course like Burke’s view of the Glorious Revolution this requires the most studied and cultivated ignorance of the actual happenings of the Revolution and a disciplined ignorance of the radical nature of what happened. The violence and terror of what actually happened must be elided out. The fact that so many of the Revolutionary leaders were hypocrites and demagogues is omitted and/or denied, further such things as the mass expulsion through terror of a sizable portion of the American population, the Loyalists is ignored. Episodes of Ethnic cleansing are simply not discussed. Also not discussed is the fact that the rebels were never more than a minority in the American colonies.4

Thus after excluding from consideration in any even handed way the Revolutions which they benefited from these authors come to view the French Revolution. The result is a portrayal of the Revolution as unnecessary and inexplicable. The violence is viewed as “caused” by ideology and intellectual fanaticism and the roots of this ideological fanaticism said to be rooted in the hair-brained schemes of the intelligentsia.5

To quote:

In Citizens, indeed the French Revolution of 1789-94 becomes almost meaningless in the larger sense, and is reduced to a kind of theatre of the absurd; the social and economic misery of the masses, an essential driving force behind their involvement in the revolutionary events, is barely mentioned; and the lasting significance of the Revolution’s many political theories and doctrines for modern European and world history more or less disappears.6

That the Revolution had deep roots and was not the result of intellectual posturing and air-headed schemes is ignored or denied directly or by implication.

Of course in this what is really going on is that these authorties in this fashion are the intellectual heirs of Edmund Burke. Like him they tend to view the revolution as an inexplicable calamity that fell from on high.

Edmund Burke

Burke tended to view the revolution as the result of a vast intellectual conspiracy against the proper ordering of the human society. The idea that the revolution could have deep social causes or that the old regime in France was in serious crisis is something that Burke does not seem to entertain even for a moment.

Much is made about Burke’s predictions that the Revolution would degenerate into violence and later military despotism, what is generally ignored is Burke’s studied, deliberate obtuseness concerning the causes of the Revolution. In effect Burke takes refuge in explaining the Revolution as caused by a conspiracy of wicked, evil intellectuals out to destroy human society out sheer love of absurd air-headed notions of human betterment.7

In Burke’s view the Revolutionaries were aiming to annihilate civilized human society and replace it with barbarism and savagery. Burke had a Manichean view of the Revolution and could not explain it except as the result of conspiracy and wickedness. It takes only a little bit of research to indicate that Burke’s views about the origins of the French Revolution are quite simply stupefyingly simple minded. To quote:

Of course Burke could never bring himself to believe that the Revolution’s democratizing impulse was rooted in genuine popular discontent with the Old Regime in France. Rather he consistently interpreted the French Revolution as a dark, insidious plot foisted on the masses by a small cabal of philosophes and their political allies.

…

Regardless of which of these arguments one finds more compelling, it is abundantly clear from all Burke’s writings on the topic that he regarded the French Revolution as a kind of democratic revolution from above. As for the people themselves, he consistently deprived them of any intellectual or political agency in the revolutionary drama. They were mere dupes of the philosophes, whose absurd theories were backed by the sublimity of power terror and fear.8

The idea that the mass of the population might have any interests of their own worth considering in the revolutionary turmoil is not something that Burke seems even capable of considering.

But then Burke was an inveterate snob of the highest order for he said in Reflections on the Revolution in France:

The Chancellor of France, at the opening of the states, said, in a tone of oratorical flourish, that all occupations were honorable. If he meant only that no honest employment was disgraceful, he would not have gone beyond the truth. But in asserting that anything is honorable, we imply some distinction in its favor. The occupation of a hairdresser or of a working tallow-chandler cannot be a matter of honor to any person — to say nothing of a number of other more servile employments. Such descriptions of men ought not to suffer oppression from the state; but the state suffers oppression if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule. In this you think you are combating prejudice, but you are at war with nature.9

Thus in Burke’s mind the simple fact that these people having any sort of say in the running of the state is frankly evil and would cause a descent into barbarism.

In other words Burke turned against the Revolution not because of its excesses but because it was “democratic”. In Burke’s view democratization would inevitably lead to savagery and barbarism and the end of civilization.

What is fascinating is reading Burke’s further writings concerning the French Revolutions that he wrote after his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Read for example his A Letter From Mr. Burke to a Member of the National Assembly, and see a great mind go unhinged.10 For example:

They [the philosphes and their allies] call on the rising generation in France to take a sympathy in the adventures and fortunes, and they endeavour to engage their sensibility on the side of pedagogues who betray the most awful family trusts, and vitiate their female pupils. They teach the people that the debauchers of virgins, almost in the arms of their parents, may be safe inmates in their houses, and even fit guardians of the honour of those husbands who succeed legally to the office which the young literators had pre-occupied, without asking leave of law or conscience.

…

Through him [Rousseau] they teach men to love after the fashion of philosophers; that is, they teach to men, to Frenchmen, a love without gallantry; a love without anything of that fine flower of youthfulness and gentility, which places it, if not among the virtues, among the ornaments of life. Instead of this passion, naturally allied to grace and manners, they infuse into their youth an unfashioned, indelicate, sour, gloomy, ferocious medley of pedantry and lewdness; of metaphysical speculations blended with the coarsest sensuality. Such is the general morality of the passions to be found in their famous philosopher, in his famous work of philosophic gallantry the 'Nouvelle Éloise'.

When the fence from the gallantry of preceptors is broken down, and your families are no longer protected by decent pride, and salutary domestic prejudice, there is but one step to a frightful corruption. The rulers in the National Assembly are in good hopes that the females of the first families in France may become an easy prey to dancing-masters, fiddlers, pattern-drawers, friseurs, and valets de chambre, and other active citizens of that description, who having the entry into your houses, and being half domesticated by their situation, may be blended with you by regular and irregular relations. By a law they have made these people their equals. By adopting the sentiments of Rousseau they have made them your rivals. In this manner these great legislators complete their plan of levelling, and establish their rights of men on a sure foundation.11

Thus does Burke writhe in disgust over the philosphes and their allies “penetrating” the nobility and debasing them through their wives and daughters. The sexual fantasies of Burke are amusing but as per usual it the same nonsense about “enemies” planning to destroy all virtue and wanting to sleep with “our” women. But then the Revolutionaries are out to destroy family:

However, I less consider the author than the system of the assembly in perverting morality through this means. This I confess makes me nearly despair of any attempt upon the minds of their followers, through reason, honour, or conscience. The great object of your tyrants is to destroy the gentlemen of France; and for that purpose they destroy, to the best of their power, all the effect of those relations which may render considerable men powerful or even safe. To destroy that order, they vitiate the whole community. That no means may exist of confederating against their tyranny, by the false sympathies of the 'Nouvelle Éloise' they endeavour to subvert those principles of domestic trust and fidelity, which form the discipline of social life. They propagate principles by which every servant may think it, if not his duty, at least his privilege to betray his master. By these principles every considerable father of a family loses the sanctuary of his house. 'Debet sua cuique domus esse perfugium tutissimum', says the law, which your legislators have taken so much pains first to decry, then to repeal. They destroy all the tranquillity and security of domestic life; turning the asylum of the house into a gloomy prison, where the father of the family must drag out a miserable existence, endangered in proportion to the apparent means of his safety; where he is worse than solitary in a crowd of domestics, and more apprehensive from his servants and inmates, than from the hired, bloodthirsty mob without doors, who are ready to pull him to the lanterne.12

Thus in Burke’s mind democratization is an attack on the family and as such must be resisted. Although no doubt it gave Burke much pleasure to contemplate the wives and daughters of the Nobility having all their needs "filled in" by lower class trash.

In fact the entire revolution, from shoes, hats to gestures, and language was thought by Burke to be a monstrous perversion.13

Burke further accuses the Revolutionaries of destroying marriage, by for example allowing Civil marriage outside of a Religious service. Further Burke regarded as wicked that the Revolutionaries got rid of the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. Burke condemns this as well denouncing unwed mothers as prostitutes, who along with their immoral offspring must be treated as pariahs. Of course the upper class gentlemen, Nobility who coerce, trick etc., lower class women into affairs must continue to be able to conduct and walk away from such recreations with no consequences and no social disapproval worth mentioning only the women and their offspring need be treated as scum. Further with great wickedness, the revolutionaries, according to Burke, not only allowed divorce, which was horrible enough, but gave women equal access to it! The result according to Burke was that marriage had decayed in France to a debased form of concubinage and the family had been horribly undermined; and the plans of the Philosophes and their allies to destroy marriage and the family were thus proceeding according to plan.14

Burke’s hysteria, which is merely what it is, tells us much more about his sexual hang-ups and obsessions than it does about the French revolutionaries. It is also part of Burke’s Manichean and stultified view of the revolution. It is of interest that he simply did not condemn its excesses he condemned the whole thing tout-court, without qualification and without reason. His subsequent accuracy about where the Revolution would lead seems to result more from a comparison, largely unacknowledged, with the course of the English Revolution than from any real understanding.

Finally Burke’s defence of tradition had a very irrational element. To quote:

In The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Terry Eagleton assesses one of Burke’s important legacies, placing him beside another eighteenth-century thinker so loved by the right—Adam Smith. Ideology of the Aesthetic is premised on the view that “Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body”; that the aesthetic gives form to the “primitive materialism” of human passions and organises “the whole of our sensate life together… a society’s somatic, sensational life” (13). Reading Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Eagleton discerns that society appears as “an immense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects”, like “any production of human art”. In Smith’s work, the “whole of social life is aestheticized” and people inhabit “a social order so spontaneously cohesive that its members no longer need to think about it.” In Burke, Eagleton discovers that the aesthetics of “manners” can be understood in terms of Gramscian hegemony: “in the aesthetics of social conduct, or ‘culture’ as it would later be called, the law is always with us, as the very unconscious structure of our life”, and as a result conformity to a dominant ideological order is deeply felt as pleasurable and beautiful (37, 42). When this conservative aesthetic enters the realm of politics, Eagleton contends, the “right turn, from Burke” onwards follows a dark trajectory: “forget about theoretical analysis… view society as a self-grounding organism, all of whose parts miraculously interpenetrate without conflict and require no rational justification. Think with the blood and the body. Remember that tradition is always wiser and richer than one’s own poor, pitiable ego. It is this line of descent, in one of its tributaries, which will lead to the Third Reich” (368–9).15

So in many respects modern day condemners of the French Revolution are simply modern day Burkeians who are often not discussing the French Revolution as discussing the Russian Revolution, further they often by omission / commission do not discuss the origins of the Revolution but talk about ideas being the source of Revolutionary excess and apparently of the Revolution itself.

Of course the literature concerning the causes of the Revolution is vast and indicates contrary to Burke both it’s deep roots and the fact that it had widespread support in France which was at times overwhelming.16 Burke because of his Manichean conception of the Revolution and his utter refusal to see in it anything positive was predisposed to cultivate a no-nothing attitude about the causes of the Revolution and to believe conspiratorial nonsense about its purposes and aims.

Also of course modern condemnation of the French Revolution requires that like Burke they elide, downplay and / or distort the previous revolutions which the condemners benefited from. In the case of Burke it is the English Revolution and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The first was ignored as much as possible the second was viewed with rose coloured glasses by Burke.

Modern condemnation of the French Revolution by so-called Conservatives requires a celebration of the American Revolution, among American Conservatives at least although this celebration also exists among non American Conservatives, which of course was a good thing because they benefited or think they benefited from it. It also leads to a disturbingly, facile view of the causes and course of the French Revolution as the result of “bad” ideas and intellectuals run amuck.

In this implied Manichaeism the wicked French Revolution resulted from people behaving badly and thinking “wrong” thoughts; that the Revolution had deep causes is of course unthinkable. Thus like Burke they must turn their way from the deep causes and talk about ideas and of course pontificate that the violence of the Revolution was inevitable because that is the way of all Revolutions, except those we benefited from personally, and the wicked principles of the Revolutionaries who imposed them from on high.17

This is of course so air-headed that a single puff of wind should blow it away. Unfortunately the heirs to Burke seem to think it is profound when it is simply false.

In future postings I will discuss some of the deep causes of the French Revolution that are often ignored and yes some of the repellent atrocities that accompanied it.

As for Burke I will have more to say about him in the future, especially concerning his views of democracy.

French Revolutionary Poster
1. See Furet, Francais, Interpreting the French Revolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981, Schema, Simon, Citizens, Vintage Books, Toronto, 1989.

2. IBID. There are many other examples of this genre of writing.

3. Burke, Edmund, Reflections of the Revolution in France, published in Reflections on the Revolution in France & The Rights of Man, Paine, Thomas, Dolphin Books, Garden City NY, 1961, pp. 15-266. The literature about both the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution and its effects is huge although it tends to downplay the violence of the Glorious Revolution especially. See Wedgewood, C.V., The King’s Peace, Fontana Books, London, 1955, & The King’s War, Fontana Books, London, 1958, Brewer, John, The Sinews of Power, Unwin Hyman, London, 1989, pp. 134-161, Lockyer, Roger, Tudor and Stuart England, 2nd Edition, Longman, 1985, pp. 350-397, Stoye, John, Europe Unfolding, Fontana Books, 1969, pp. 383-396, Royle, Trevor, Civil War, Abacus, London, 2004. It is commonly forgotten that the Glorious Revolution had its Vendee in Ireland where the war was fought with truly grotesque barbarism.

4. For a clearheaded but jaundice view of the American Revolution see Bicheno, Hugh Rebels and Redcoats, HarperCollins Pub., London, 2003. One of the Ethnic cleansings carried out was the destruction of the towns of members of the Iroquois Confederacy in 1779. The author argues that what helped to lose the war for the British was the restraint in war fighting by the British when faced by the unscrupulousness of the rebels.

5. Footnote 1.

6. Evans, Richard J., In Defence of History, 2nd Edition, Granta Books, London, 2000, p. 245.

7. See O’Neill, Daniel, The Burke – Wollstonecraft Debate, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park PENN, 2007, pp. 152-156.

8. IBID, p. 154, 156.

9. Burke, Reflections…, p. 61-62.

10. See Burke, Edmund, A Letter From Mr. Burke to a Member of the National Assembly, From Atkinson, Philip, Library of Mainly Eighteen Century Authors, Here.

11. IBID.

12. IBID.

13. O’Neill, p. 211.

14. IBID. 211-212.

15. Musgrove, Brian Michael, Recovering Public Memory: Politics, Aesthetics and Contempt, M/C Journal, Vol. 121, No. 6, 2008, Here.

16. For discussions of the roots and course of the Revolution see Hobsbawn, E. J., The Age of Revolution, 189-1848, New York, Mentor Books, 1962, Durant, Will & Ariel, The Age of Napoleon, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1975, Rude, George, Revolutionary Europe, Fontana Books, London, 1974, Bernier, Olivier, Words of Fire, Deeds of Blood, Anchor Books, New York, 1989, Cobban, Alfred, Aspects of the French Revolution, Paladin, London, 1968, Blanning, T. C. W., The French Revolutionary Wars 1787-1802, Arnold, London, 1996.

17. The two items in Footnote 1 have this point of view especially Furet.

Pierre Cloutier

Dianaohroea

Flowers for Diana, Kensington Palace 1997
On August 31, 1997 died in a car crash in a tunnel in Paris Diana Spencer, former Princess of Wales and the resulting wave of mass mourning was one of the most remarkable mass phenomena’s of the Twentieth century. It was also one of the most stomach turning displays of cheap sentimentality ever. It became a wonderful excuse for people to indulge in a display of emotional excess. It served as an excuse to narcissistically put on a display of “sincerity” that cost little and in the end meant little.

The desire to wallow in a show of mourning was evident; complete with tears and theatre performances of “heart felt loss”. It was like the widow who carefully plans what to wear for the funeral and carefully calculates every tear, every sigh and every wail and melodramatically has fits etc., all designed to impress everyone with the depth of her feeling about her loss.

The object of this display of cheap, self indulgent, narcissistic sentimentality was of course not around to enjoy or be appalled by so much emotional kitsch. However let us briefly review the life of Diana Spencer former Princess of Wales.

Diana aside from being born into a very blue blooded English aristocratic family had done little of any note, or in fact worth mentioning until she was selected by the royals (mainly Prince Phillip) to be wife of Charles Prince of Wales. Charles apparently was very reluctant to marry her given her age (He was 33 and she 19) and the fact they were very different people.

The marriage proved to be a disaster. Diana however because she was very pretty, had great fashion sense and was very good at media manipulation was almost at once a media superstar. The media and much of the public could not get enough of her. Certainly Diana seemed to be a breath of fresh air compared to the rest of the rather staid royal family.

Soon it became rather clear that there were serious problems with the marriage. Within a few years began the tired soap opera of the “fairy Princess” versus her “wicked” in-laws. The media with embarrassingly few exceptions, aside from wasting its time with microscopically absurd coverage of Diana’s every move, portrayed Diana as a poor victim of the wicked royals.

Diana fed the process by strategic leaks and manipulation to an all too willing media that pandered to her self image as a poor victim. It was pure soap opera and like a soap opera about as close to reality.

Diana never got that the royals, whose benchmark was set by the Queen, had responsibilities as well as rights. Diana believed in her right to personal fulfilment and happiness in a situation in which no such rights existed. The Queen expected everyone in the “family firm” to accept that their duties as members of the royal family trumped everything else. Personal happiness / fulfilment were just not as important as fulfilling one’s duties and responsibilities. I do not think Diana ever got that. The fact that the Queen who very clearly in the public performance of her duties fulfilled this ideal of public service and was therefore even less willing to indulge Diana’s whining, hysterics and crass self indulgence should not be a surprise.

In all fairness it should be mentioned that Diana was married to a much older man who was rather staid and very conservative in many of his ways. The fact that he was apparently still in love with someone else did not help matters.

Diana soon proved to an absolute natural at charming the press and getting people to ohhh and ahhh over her. The press started it’s rather absurd infatuation with her which continued until Diana died.

It is pointless to go over the relentlessly reported details of the collapse of Charles and Diana’s marriage except to note the very expert way Diana manipulated the press into seeing things as Diana versus the heartless royals. Diana was especially good at making he husband look like the villain in the piece. I can remember an episode of the Donahue T.V. show where he was interviewing some royal watchers that when ever they said anything even slightly negative about Diana the audience would loudly murmur its distress.

When the marriage finally fell apart and Diana’s antics finally provoked the Queen into ordering Charles and Diana to get a divorce the media continued it’s infatuation with “St.” Diana of Spencer. Diana also continued her relentless campaign to both embarrass the royals and to cater to her seemingly endless need for personal self indulgence and attention.

A then friend of mine claimed with all seriousness that the Queen was “clicking her heels with joy” that Diana was dead and that Royals had been out to “destroy” Diana. Of course there was and still is no evidence to back up this rather silly notion. However the story of the “Fairy Princess” requires a “Wicked Step Mother” or mother in law in this case, to keep the fantasy going.

This nauseating spectacle of turning the Royals into villains reached its height with Diana’s brother's self serving and nauseating eulogy at the funeral, which seemed to consist of spitting in derision at them. That Lord Spencer was in no position to throw stones was largely ignored.

So eventually we get to the crash in the Paris tunnel. With the driver apparently, if not drunk, nearly so. The hordes of bloodsucking paparazzi chasing the car. The mangled corpses and the Paparazzi disgracing themselves by interfering with the Paramedics.

Then came the mourning, a wave of what amounted to public hysteria, in Britain and much of the rest of the world. It was amazing how so many who the day before would have dismissed Diana as an air head now went through paroxysms of grief; it was also cheap and easy entertainment for people bored with their lives.

So many had brought the idea that Diana was a victim and therefore her death was just the culmination of her victimhood. It is distressing to note that because of Diana’s death and the over the top campy mourning that took place afterwards the death of Mother Theresa, which took place at about the same time, was entirely eclipsed.

At her death Diana changed from:

… the ‘simpering Bambi narcissist’ became not only the loveliest woman of the century but also the Queen of Hearts, the Nabob of Sob.1

Members of Parliament seriously suggested that Heathrow be renamed Diana Airport among other over the top responses. We of course got endless displays of histrionic playing for the audience grief.

Of course those people who thought that the whole thing was too much where hooted down by the hordes of Diana gawkers. The B.B.C., for example got an enormous number of phone calls from people complaining that coverage was excessive. Those who said they thought the whole thing was over the top where treated like lepers or someone who had just loudly farted at a wedding.

The Queen was roundly attacked for not being emotionally extravagant enough; for not putting on a show of hysteria and fake “sincere” emotionalism. The nonsense about the Royal ensign not being flown at half mast was stomach turning. The fact is the Royal ensign is NEVER flown at half mast even when the monarch as died seemed to pass people by.

Such stomach turning examples of dishonest or frankly mawkish statements about Diana’s death as a man who said that he cried far more a Diana’s funeral than at his own father’s; tell us far more about the cult of celebrity and emotional immaturity than they do about anything else.

Basically Diana’s funeral was an episode of mass hysteria, a good excuse for people to come together for a good cry and to feel sorry for themselves. In other words an example of self-indulgence, that I hope 12 and ½ years later people are embarrassed about it. What people where mourning was the passing of their fantasy and the waking up to real life.

The whole absurd mythology about was Diana murdered, which led to an expensive and useless investigation of her death was a further example of the desire of so many even after Diana’s death to engage in fantasy. Of course the investigation found no evidence of a murder, which was apparent right from the beginning.2

Indulging in sentimental tosh can be quite pleasant and that was what the Diana funeral hysteria was mainly about. Of course saying so at the time was considered both heresy and bad taste. Periodically people want an excuse to have a good self-indulgent cry.

Far from being signs of “greatness” or emotional maturity, the periodic swellings of emotion in England over the past couple of centuries were the anguished pleas of a lonely and atomized populace, desperate for company.3

In other words it was not about Diana it was about us.

As for my own opinion about Diana. I personally at the time thought she was an upper class twit, who although she did some good work, was self centred and shallow. Further I saw her as a manipulative bitch. The celibrityitis around her appalled me, and I was sick to death about hearing of her.

However although I still see in her a far too shallow twit and manipulative bitch I do see that she was less the airhead I thought she was. After her death I found out that she used to take Prince William and Harry to hospitals to see and meet with chronically ill patients with diseases like Aids, Cancer and so forth all without the media being around; in order for her very privileged sons to get a dose of reality. So it appears that her concern for these people was not just for the photo ops she would get.

I did watch the funeral, (what can I say the hype got to me), and I must admit that I was genuinely moved when I saw the close up of the card on the coffin which said simply MUMMY. But then someone would have to have a heart of iron not to have been moved by that. It was a very forceful reminder that two young men had lost their mother. Beneath all the sentimental, self indulgent hogwash was that painful truth; two boys who had just lost their mother.

1. Wheen, Francis, How Mumbo-Jumbo conquered the World, Public Affairs, New York, 2004, p. 193.

2. See Coroner’s Inquests into the Deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Mr. Dodi Al Fayed, Here.

3. Wheen, p. 199.

Aside from my own, not entirely reliable memory, I used pp. 192-204 of Wheen’s book.

Pierre Cloutier

Fomenko’s Fiction

Anatoly Fomenko
Anatoly Fomenko is a Russian Mathematician who over the last 20 years or so has been putting forward a rather far out theory regarding History it is his belief that ‘History” began c. 800 C.E., and that the Middle ages never happened.

Among many things Fomenko and his disciples believe that English history before the Normans is nothing more than a fiction and that some of Byzantine history is the same. That various dynasties and lists of rulers are nothing more than fictionalizations based on a few models.

That much history of the Ancient world is a creation of fabricators and falsifiers between 1400-1700 C.E. That various methods of dating like dendrochronology (tree rings) and radiocarbon dating are erroneous and useless.

It is of interest that in his new chronology Russia is the center of world history up too seventeen hundred; real Russian history having been falsified by Germans. The obvious hyper nationalism of Fomenko’s ideas is readily apparent.

This approach must of course toss out the astronomical data supplied from ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets and the record of eclipses by the Chinese.

Further all those Greek and Roman statutes are frauds created during the Renaissance.

Ivan the terrible was actually four rulers is another Fomenko “discovery” along with Jesus being a 60 year old Pope, (Gregory VII) and or a Byzantine Emperor (Andronikos I Komnenos).

The Peloponnesian War described by Thucydides occurred in 1384-1387, between the Kingdom of Navarre and the Catalans. And Columbus was a Cossack.1

History is divided into 4 periods. The pre-Christian period is 11th century and earlier; “bacchic” Christianity 11th-12th century, Christianity 12th-16th century and 16th century onwards the modern age.2

Fomenko’s English History, which is supposedly a duplication of Byzantine history, is described as follows:

His [Fomenko] other parallels, even after a double reordering of Byzantine monarchs (they were themselves duplicated twice, you see), are still not very accurate. Beorhtric (ruled 16 years) is equated to Justin I (ruled 9 years), an error of almost 78%. Fomenko links Aethelbert (6 years) to Justin II (13 years), an error of over 113%. He has to combine Zeno's two reigns (over a period of, but not totaling, 17 years) to match the English Cuthread (17 years).

Fomenko does manage, however, a couple of good "hits." He links Egbert, the uniter of England (ruled 38 years), to Justinian the Great, restorer of the Roman Empire (ruled 38 years). But then he combines King Edgar (16 years) with King Edward the Martyr (3 years) and claims they both represent Leo III the Isaurian (24 years). He concludes that the names Edgar and Edward are "similar and consequently their union is natural." (5) Of course, the eleven Emperors Constantine (and the additional Emperors named Constans and Constantius) were apparently readily distinguished by the barbarians.3

To quote another examination of Fomenko’s nonsense:

Fomenko assumes that the researcher can and should distinguish between history and fiction. On the other hand, his methods would not meet with approval from conservative theorists of history such as Keith Windschuttle who maintains that the professional training of historians and peer review of their work pushes history closer to the goal of establishing the truth of the past and of distinguishing what most probably happenned from what could not have happenned. Fomenko is not a historian in this sense. He provides no fair-minded view of the historical literature about a topic with which he deals, quotes only those sources that serve his purpose, uses evidence in ways that seem strange to professionally-trained historians and asserts the wildest speculation as if it has the same status as the information common to conventional historical literature.4

That is enough for now, since simply listing the conjectures of Fomenko is enough to refute him, there is much more than the above all of it fantastic and quite outrageous. Fomenko has earned some quite well deserved ridicule for his absurd ideas, but has managed to turn the issue into one of proving him wrong. Which is of course a typical pseudoscience method.

Even some people who should know better are publishing books taking this nonsense seriously.5

Sorry but when you are proposing an outlandish idea the onus is on you to prove your idea not on the doubters to prove their doubts and you wrong.

It is impossible to go into detail about what is wrong with Fomenko’s absurd ideas, however a few points are worth looking at.

1, Fomenko deliberately selects data in proving his “statistical” correlation that ‘proves” his theory and ignores data that does not.

2. Fomenko spectacularily massages his data to get his correlations, shifting dates and reign lengths and even the number of monarchs all to fit his theory. To quote Wikipedia:

Another point raised by critics is that Fomenko does not explain his altering the data (changing the order of rulers, dropping rulers, combining rulers, treating interregna as rulers, switching between theologians and emperors, etc.) preventing a duplication of the effort and therefore hinting that his results may have a pathological Science aspect to them akin to N-rays over a century ago and effectively making this whole theory an Ad hoc hypothesis.6

3. Fomenko’s rejection of radio-carbon dating, numsiatics, (coin study), dendrochronology, (tree rings), etc., is tenditious and frequently ignorant. For example with dendrochronology he argues from alleged gaps that it can’t be trusted. In fact secure dendrochronological dates go back more than 10,000 years. Fomenko must exercise a disciplined ignorance for his opinions.7

4. Further Fomenko’s dismissal of retrocalculation of astrnomical dating based on the Babylonioan tablets and Chinese recording of eclipses does not contrary to Fomenko’s assertions get dates all over the place in fact multiple analysis to these multiple recorded observations agrees with the conventional dates. For example the whole sequence of Babylonian observations, of which there are literally dozens, found on Babylonian cuniform tablets agrees with the “conventional” dating, to say nothing of other dating methods like denrochronology and radio-carbon etc.8

5. Further this is frankly an over the top conspiracy theory for which Fomenko just wildly speculates about why anyone would do it and assumes the fabrication of masses of documents, accounts etc., along with masses of inscriptions coins etc. It is frankly incredible. All those allegedly mythical Medieval kings with coins are treated with cries of forgery and fraud including the coins that are to this day being dug up.9 To quote:

For that matter, how can we expect to believe Fomenko's arguments since Imperial coinage that documents the succession of the emperors can be gathered from virtually every year from 27 BCE to 1453 CE? How do we discount written Roman history and the great reigns of the past? Further, if Fomenko is correct, we must ignore the Magna Carta of 1215, since England's King John would have been nothing more than a Byzantine fantasy.10

That Fomenko is motivated by a crude form of nationalism is obvious from his writings as one reviewer of his work has said:

The enemy for Fomenko is always the West and their corrupt Russian minions, most notably the Romanovs and the Yeltsin-era reformers. For Fomenko, World War two lives on in the war against the Germans. Not that other western Europeans are much better. Italians composed false chronicles from antiquity in order to make the Romans appear older and wiser than the rest of Europe, the French sent their mercenaries along with other European powers to protect the first Romanovs, the English and Americans always acted against Russia out odf envy that it was in reality Russia who once ruled the greatest empire the world has ever seen. For Fomenko, the Russians need Asia if they are to maintain their existence in the face of the challenge posed by the West.

...

Fomenkoism is an amalgam of disillusionment with and rediscovery of Soviet ideals, mixed with feelings of lost grandeur, hope, vengence and envy. For Fomenko, the story of Russian greatness has to be told a different way to the version favoured by Romanovs and Communists. The latter ignored the greatness of the Russian horde. All those who lived in the steppe and forests of Eurasia are automatically incorperated into Russia, according to Fomenko’s fantasy. The Russian Horde was, and remains, entitled to demand their loyalty.11

I will now briefly go into a examination of just one small part of Fomenko’s nonsense. Fomenko has the the eruption of Vesuvius occur 1631 C.E. Which faces the problem of having Pliny the Younger's account, which was printed before 1631 in Western Europe. Copies of said editions still exist with the dates. So this eruption was described before it happened!? No doubt this little problem is handeled by saying "forgery" and "fraud" over and over again.12


Vesuvius Erupting
Vesuvius has erupted on numerous occasions frequently with great destructiveness. Fromeko's idea is that the destructive eruption that destroyed Pompeii and Heracleum occurred 1631. Which of course means that Pliny's account must have been written after that eruption. Second if you read Pliny's account you would realize that the eruption described was extrodinarily destructive. It appears to have been a, (what is now called) a "Plinean" eruption. In which large sections of the mountain were destroyed and repeated "Nuee Ardente's" (burning clouds) devastated the surounding area and covered the area under many feet (more than 20 feet in places) of ash and volcanic rubble. There was of course the "Nuee Ardente" that swept across the bay of naples to Miseum and nearly killed Pliny the younger's entire family. This eruption has left massive and abundant traces including in places more than 20+ feet of ash etc. The 1631 eruption has also left traces and in comparison it was minor. One is easily distinguished from the other.13

Pompei was long buried by 1631. In fact it was so well buried that people had only a very poor idea of were it was.

In fact appears that although Vesuvius has in fact erupted on numerous occasions eruptions of the 79 C.E., variety seem to be mercifully rare occurring every few thousand years.

The other common sense problem with Fomenko is the huge difference in culture between the remains of those two cities and what we have from the 17th century. Oh and what about the virtually compete abscence of Christianity from both sites.

Oh and by the way the Laocoon after being lost for over a millenium created quite a stir when it was re-discoverd in 1506 and the result was a series of write ups by the media of the day. Now why is the Laocoon important in the context of Fomenko’s absurdities? It is because Pliny the Elder describes the statute in his massive Natural History. Now since Pliny the younger describes his uncle’s death in the eruption of Vesuvius this must mean that the Natural History was composed before the eruption.

The Laocoon
To quote Wikpedia:

Various dates have been suggested for the statue, ranging from about 160 to about 20 BC. Inscriptions found at Lindos in Rhodes date Agesander and Athenedoros to a period after 42 BC, making the years 42 to 20 the most likely date for the Laocoön statue's creation. The statue, which was probably originally commissioned for the home of a wealthy Roman, was unearthed in 1506 near the site of the Golden House of the Emperor Nero (who reigned from 54 to 68 AD), and it is possible that the statue belonged to Nero himself. It was acquired by Pope Julius II, an enthusiastic classicist, soon after its discovery and was placed in the Belvedere Garden at the Vatican, now part of the Vatican Museums.14

Now if Pompeii and Herculaneum had been destroyed in 1631 C.E. that definetly creates a problem. The other one is Pliny the Elder mentions the Laocoön in the palace of the Emperor Titus,Emperor 79 - 81 C.E.

To quote:

Beyond these, there are not many sculptors of high repute; for, in the case of several works of very great excellence, the number of artists that have been engaged upon them has proved a considerable obstacle to the fame of each, no individual being able to engross the whole of the credit, and it being impossible to award it in due proportion to the names of the several artists combined. Such is the case with the Laocoön, for example, in the palace of the Emperor Titus, a work that may be looked upon as preferable to any other production of the art of painting or of statuary. It is sculptured from a single block, both the main figure as well as the children, and the serpents with their marvellous folds. This group was made in concert by three most eminent artists, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, natives of Rhodes. 15

So in other words someone before the alleged eruption (1631 C.E.) mentions the laocoon being lost, then Pliny mentions it being in the palace of the Emperor Titus at the time of the eruption, which creates a problem if the eruption was in 1631 C.E. And we have copies of Pliny's Natural History which contain the above passage. Oh and we have complete manuscripts of the Natural History, from the 11th century to say nothing of collections of excerpts that are earlier. Opps!16

As mentioned above Pliny the Younger letters which describe the eruption of Vesuvius and were published before 1631 C.E.

From Wikipedia:

In France Giovanni Giocondo discovered a manuscript of Pliny the Younger's letters containing his correspondence with Trajan. He published it in Paris dedicating the work to Louis XII. Two Italian editions of Pliny's Epistles were published by Giocondo, one printed in Bologna in 1498 and one from the press of Aldus Manutius in 1508.17

Isn't amazing that they were able to write a description of the eruption of 1631 C.E. before it happenned!! Yeah, right!

Fomenko is a total joke. His desperate efforts to escape the inescapable accuracy of the “conventional” history against the serpent of fact and truth are in the end as unavailing as Laocoon and his son’s unavailing struggle against their serpent.

1. New Chronology of the World History, Here. See also the multi volumed, History: Fiction or Science?, Delamere Resources LLC, 2007, Konstantin, Sheiko, Lomonosov's Bastards: Anatolii Fomenko, pseudo-history and Russia's search for a post-communist identity, Phd Dissertation, University of Wollongong, Australia, 2004, pp. 66, 208-226. Copy of Thesis at Here

2. See Wikepedia, New Chronology, Here, See also Fomenko, A. T., Nosovskij, G. V., New Chronology and new concept of the English History, Here.

3. Colavito, Jason, Who Lost the Middle Ages?, Here.

4. Konstantin, p. 21..

5. Diacu, Florin,The Lost Millennium, Knopf Canada, Toronto, 2005.

6. New Chronology.

7. Colavito, New Chronolgy, Dutch, Steven, Is a Chunk of History Missing?, Here.

8. New Chronology, Rawlins, Dennis, Recovering Hipparchos' Last Lost Lustrous Star, in Dio, V. 4. No. 3, December 1994, p. 119, Here. Espenak, Fred, Eclipse Predictions and the Earths Rotation, NASA, Here.

9. Colavito, New Chronolgy, Dutch.

10. Colavito.

11. Konstantin, p. 231 & 232.

12. Pliny, The Letters of the Younger Pliny, Penguin Books, London, 1963. The description can be found in Book Six, letters 16 and 20, pp. 166-168, 170-173.

13. IBID, and Winchester, Simon, Krakatoa, HarperCollins Pub., New York, 2003, p. 11-12, Wikipedia, Mount Vesuvius, Here.

14. Wikipedia, Laocoon and His Sons, Here.

15. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, at Perseus, Here. See Also Pliny the Elder, Natural History A Selection, Penguin Books, London, 1991, Book 36, Ch. 4, s. 37, at p. 347.

16. Wikipedia, Natural History, Here.

17. Wikipedia, Pliny the Younger, Here.

Pierre Cloutier

Kennedy’s Head Case

John and Jacqueline Kennedy arrive in Dallas
The J.F.K., conspiracy psychosis is one of the most outstanding examples of sheer unadulterated wilful delusion alive today. In a past posting I examined the Kennedy mythos, which created the Kennedy “Holy Family” and turned John Kennedy into St. John of Kennedy; who also was turned into the incarnate son of God.1 Here I will examine just one element of the Kennedy assassination mythos, where conspiracy idiocy combines with scientific idiocy and mythology.

In this case it is what was revealed by the infamous Zapruder film, which seems to show that John Kennedy’s head as the bullet hits it, the head, moves back and to the left. This of course was used by Oliver Stone in the Film JFK to indicate that John Kennedy was killed by a bullet hitting him in the front. Jim Garrison as played in the movie and in real life played the tape over and over again to the jury in the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans.2

It is a common belief that when a bullet hits some one it pushes or knocks the person back. This is the purest nonsense. As it is why do people believe it?

The answer is quite simple people have seen an endless array of Hollywood flicks in which people are knocked backwards by bullets hitting them, often a single one. Thus we see some one running towards someone and they are hit by a bullet that knocks them back. This is very dramatic and quite entertaining to see in a film, it is also total nonsense.3

Why is this total nonsense? It is quite simple, bullets weigh less than a 50 grams, (c. one ounce) the average human body weights well over 50 kilograms, (c. one hundred lbs). The energy of momentum of the bullet given its size will be tiny compared to either the inertia of the body it hits if it is not moving or any motion that the body is undergoing. Thus the momentum imparted by a bullet even if moving very fast will be minimal. To look at it from a different perspective remember according to Newton’s third law there must be an equal and opposite reaction. Thus any bullet that knocks some one off their feet will be enough to knock the shooter back also. Since that does not happen we can dismiss this as Hollywood fantasy.4

The TV show Mythbusters showed that this was nonsense when it fired bullets including by a machine gun into hanging pig carcases and got near zero movement. The firing of more than 50 rounds into a pig carcase with no visible movement resulting is especially effective as a debunking of this myth.5

To quote:

“So the killings that people see on television and in the movies, which is the only type of killings most people ever see, where the person being struck by the bullet very frequently is visibly and dramatically propelled backward by the force of the bullet [sometime to the point of toppling over] is not what happens in life when a bullet hits a human being?”

“No, of course not.”6

Regarding Kennedy’s head since the bullet that hit him weighed about 15 grams, (one third of a ounce), and the weight of a full grown adult human head would weight at least 4 kilograms, (c. 10 lbs), and in Kennedy’s case probably close to if not more than 7 kilograms, (c. 14 lbs).; one would expect that bullet would not move the head very much, if at all. Although interestingly a shot from the back could cause the head to move back due to the eruption of debris from the exit wound.7

Zapruder frame 313 showing moment bullet hits John Kennedy in the head

To quote again:

“So the head snap to the rear could not possibly have been caused by the force of a bullet from the front?” I asked.

He replied, “That’s correct. Kennedy’s head simply would not be pushed anywhere near that far back by one-third of an ounce, even traveling in excess of two thousand feet per second.”8

So the head movement in the Zapruder film proves absolutely nothing about where the bullet comes from and those who think it does have taken Hollywood fantasy as reality.

As for the source of the movement of Kennedy’s head to the back, it could be the debris exploding from the exit wound and / or an involuntary muscle movement it is most definitely not the result of a bullet hitting him in the front.9

Therefore it appears that if you are going to argue that John Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy; the head movements of John Kennedy after he was hit in the head are not evidence of it. They are quite consistent with a shot hitting him in the back of the head.

Diagram showing passage of bullet and damage to John Kennedy's skull
1. For some examinations of the Kennedy mythos and why it is a lie, see Vidal, Gore, The Holy Family, United States: Essays 1952-1992, Broadway Books, New York, 1993, pp. 809-826, (Originally Published in Esquire, 1967), and Hersh’s JFK, The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000, Vintage Books, 2001, pp. 220-237, (Originally Published in The New Yorker, 1997), Hersh, Seymour M., The Dark Side of Camelot, Little Brown, New York, 1997, Wills, Gary, The Kennedy Imprisonment, Mariner Books, New York, 2002, (Originally published in 1982).

2. Rodgers, Tom, Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics, Source Books Inc, Naperville ILL., 2007, p. 195, Lambert, Patricia, False Witness, M. Evans and Co. Inc., New York, 1998, p. 129. For an analysis that reveals the worthlessness of JFK as a portrayal of the facts see, Lambert, pp. 209-242, and Bulgliosi, Vincent, Reclaiming History, W.W. Norton and Co., New York, 2007, 1347-1436. For how shoddy and abusive Garrison’s investigation and prosecution of Clay Shaw was see Bulgliosi above and, Posner, Gerald, Case Closed, Anchor Books, New York, 1993, pp. 421-450, Lambert, especially pp. 95-180, 199-208, 273-282.

3. Rogers, pp. 179-194, Bulgliosi, pp. 488-490.

4. Rogers, pp. 181-182, 202-203.

5. Mythbusters Results, Here.

6. Bulgliosi, p. 489. Bulgliosi is questioning a physics expert here.

7. Bulgliosi, p. 489. Rogers, pp. 196-200.

8. Bulgliosi, p. 488. Bulgliosi is questioning another physics expert.

9. Rogers, p. 202, Poser, pp. 314-315.

Pierre Cloutier

X-Lies

The show the The X-Files, (1993-2002)1 gives more than the usual feelings of ambivalence about something that is excellent in execution but at its core is fundamentally rotten.

I was never a great fan of the show although I watched many episodes of the show I never got hooked and was frankly non-plussed by the show.

For reasons that I will go into later I wanted to dismiss the show as garbage and leave it at that but I am unable to do so simply because of the overall excellence of the program. Before I go into my critique I would like to go through the excellent features of the program.

The acting on the show was almost uniformly very good. Both of the leads David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson play their roles with accomplished skill and the acting of the supporting players and guest stars is quite good also. Although the acting did slip when David Duchovny left a regular character, (only to return intermittently until the final episode), it remained at a ,( certainly for a T.V. show) high level through out its run.

The writing varied through out the show. Not surprisingly it is very hard to maintain a high level of skill and craftsmanship for scripts through out at 9 season run of a T.V. show but the writers did over all a very superior job in maintaining a very creative and standard high level. If only all T.V. shows were written this well. Of course there were the occasional clunkers but they remained occasional right to the end.

Finally the aspect of the show that certainly for its time and even today elevates the show to a high standard is its almost uniformly excellent filming and cinematography. The show looked and still looks quite good. The editing, occasional multiple camera shots and some multi screen images are high quality T.V. filming. The various directors and producers did a sterling job in making the show look very good indeed.

It was also a very nice even brilliant decision to make the sceptical, rational investigator Scully a women and go against the stereotype of women being emotional, intuitive and irrational. Mulder the intuitive, irrational investigator was a man and that too was a nice change of pace.

The show had the occasional episode which poked fun at its own premises and sometimes did not take itself seriously, (or at least appeared to not take itself seriously). That does however lead itself into the problems with the show.

The main reason I never became a fan was because the show although it sometimes made fun of the “New Age” paranoia it portrayed in the end pandered to it quite outrageously. Like the character Mulder it validated over and over again his mindless whine “I want to believe!” It validated again and again Mulder’s paranoia and “New Age” stupidities. It stated over and over again that rationality, reason and logic where bad that feelings and imagination and fantasy were valid ways of knowing that reality was a construction to large extent in our heads. The show the great majority of the time said ‘Mulder was right!’. So that doubting Mulder’s fantasies was akin to doubting the revealed truth. Mulder was cast as a later day Galileo persecuted for his courageous advancement of truth.

Scully meanwhile being a woman is of course wrong. Virtually all the time she was wrong. She was the doubting Thomas to Mulder’s Christ, who dared doubt the revealed truth. She dared to use such things as reason, logic and gasp! demand evidence. What is all that against the real truth as revealed by feelings! Scully dared to doubt and doubt is well bad; it hides the truth. A truth revealed as said above by feelings and of course intuition and fantasy. So again and again it is rubbed in that Scully was wrong, way wrong, totally wrong!

So in this way the show pandered to irrational fantasies of all kinds. Alien abductions, cattle mutilations, perfect governmental conspiracies, crop circles and so on and so forth ad infinitum.2 Why was this so? Quite simply the viewers were pandered to because one would not want upset the fans by calling their delusions and fantasies just that delusions and fantasies. After all if you do that the fans might get upset and watch other shows instead of this one. Those people cannot accept that the world is not populated by fairies and goblins and want, no demand, that the fantasy world of T.V. validate their 5 year old perceptions of the world.

Thus grown-up Scully is the party pooper who demands the unacceptable, that children grow up and face reality. Mulder is the wide-eyed 5 year old his mind full of engaging fantasies who knows that Santa Claus exists and who clings to his fantasy by hook or by crook. The world is a much more exciting place if it is full of childish fantasies of UFO’s, alien abductions, crop circles, alien / human hybrids, vast perfect conspiracies etc., etc. Much of the audience like Mulder has the same plaintive cry ‘I want to believe!’

The result was quite absurd. The web became full of websites taking The X-Files seriously. Many people took it with complete seriousness. It was referred to in student essays as a source!3

The numbers of people who took The X-Files seriously was disheartening in the extreme what was further disheartening was that the creator, Chris Carter, of The X-Files, didn’t care. As to why the show was so relentlessly pandering to paranormal, paranoid, conspiracy clap trap he quite candidly said:

My intention, when I first set out to do the show, was to do a more balanced kind of storytelling. I wanted to expose hoaxes. I wanted Agent Scully to be right as much as Agent Mulder. Lo and behold, those stories were really boring. The suggestion that there was a rather plausible and rational and ultimately mundane answer for those things turned out to be a disappointing kind of story telling, to be honest. And I think that’s maybe where people have the most problems with my show…But it’s just the kind of storytelling we do, and because we have to entertain… That’s really the job they pay me for, and that’s the thing I’m supposed to do.4

Those stories are of course boring to those who live in the fantasy world of a 5 year old and don’t want their fantasy disturbed by, oh so “mundane” reality. It is especially boring to those who do not want to see anything even on a fictional T.V. show that says ‘you believe fantasies and delusions!’ What they want is validation of their fantasies and delusions even on a fictional T.V. show. What Mr. Carter does not say is that stories that provided “mundane” explanations upset many of the fans of the show who wanted validation of their delusional nonsense. So rather than alienate this fan base Mr. Carter and his associates decided to quite deliberately pander to it in the interests of prolonging the T.V. life of the show and their pocket books.

As Richard Dawkin’s said:

Each week The X-Files poses a mystery and offers two rival kinds of explanation, the rational theory and the paranormal theory. And, week after week, the rational explanation loses. But it is only fiction, a bit of fun, why get so hot under the collar?

Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black one turns out to have done it. Unpardonable, of course. And my point is that you could not defend it by saying: “But it’s only fiction, only entertainment.”5

In the end as the title of this post indicates The X-Files lies.

1. See Wikipedia, The X-Files Here

2. For a review of those and other bits of pseudoscience see The Skeptic Encyclopaedia of Pseudoscience, (two volumes), ABC-CLIO Inc., Santa Barbara Ca., 2002.

3. Wheen, Francis, How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World, Public Affairs, New York, 2004, p. 133-134.

4. IBID. p. 135.

5. IBID. p. 135.

Pierre Cloutier

The Myth of the Jewish Grandfather

Alois Hitler
One of the most tiresome, but off repeated, myths concerning Adolf Hitler is the story that his father Alois Hitler was half Jewish making Hitler one quarter Jewish. The fact is this story is frankly very unlikely.

The story does have a certain neatness and a rather grotesque irony, but that is not enough to make it true. This legend as two versions let us deal with the more outrageous version first.

The chief modern source of this hypothesis is Walter C. Langer’s Psychological profile of Adolf Hitler done in 1943 for the American OSS. It was subsequently published in 1972.

There are some people who seriously doubt that Johann Georg Hiedler was the father of Alois. Thyssen and Koehler, for example, claim that Chancellor Dollfuss had ordered the Austrian police to conduct a thorough investigation into the Hitler family. As a result of this investigation a secret document was prepared which proved that Maria Anna Schicklgruber was living in Vienna at the time she conceived. At that time she was employed as a servant in the home of Baron Rothschild. As soon as the family discovered her pregnancy she was sent back to her home in Spital where Alois was born. If it is true that one of the Rothschild’s is the real father of Alois Hitler, it would make Adolph a quarter Jew. According to these sources, Adolph Hitler knew of the existence of this document and the incriminating evidence it contained. In order to obtain it he precipitated events in Austria and initiated the assassination of Dollfuss. According to this story, he failed to obtain the document at that time, since Dollfuss had secreted it and, had told Schuschnigg of its whereabouts so that in the event of his death the independence of Austria would remain assured. Several stories of this general character are in circulation.

Those who lend credence to this story point out several factors which seem to favor its plausibility:

(a) That it is unlikely that the miller's assistant in a small village in this district would have very much to leave in the form of a legacy.

(b) That it is strange that Johann Hiedler should not claim the boy until thirty-five years after he had married the mother and the mother had died.

(c) That if the legacy were left by Hiedler on the condition that Alois take his name, it would not have been possible for him to change it to Hitler.

(d) That the intelligence and behavior of Alois, as well as that of his two sons, is completely out of keeping with that usually found in Austrian peasant families. They point out that their ambitiousness and extraordinary political intuition is much more in harmony with the Rothschild tradition.

(e) That Alois Schicklgruber left his home village at an early age to seek his fortune in Vienna where his mother had worked.

(f) That it would be peculiar for Alois Hitler, while working as a customs official in Braunau, should choose a Jew named Prinz, of Vienna, to act as Adolph's godfather unless he felt some kinship with the Jews himself.1

Certainly the idea that Adolf Hitler had some Rothschild ancestry is a rather ironic one considering the role the Rothschild’s have played and continue to play in anti-semitic mythology. However as the list of alleged “evidence” indicates the whole story is dubious in the extreme.

Since the war not one scrap of evidence has been found to validate the story or to make it even in the slightest bit more plausible. It seems to be nothing more than a piece of gossip, of no value. It can be dismissed as nonsense. For example there seems to be no evidence that Maria Schicklgruber ever lived and or worked in Vienna much less worked for the Rothschilds.2

As for the origins of the story Ian Kershaw says:

Finally there is a third hypothesis. According to this A.H. had a Jewish grandfather. Such rumors were rife in Munich's cafés already during the early 1920s, and they were later fueled by foreign tabloids during the 1930s. The newspapers claimed that the name Hüttler was Jewish, they 'revealed' that it went back to a Jewish family named Hitler in Bucharest, and they even wrote that Hitler's father was the child of Baron Rothschild, in whose house Hitler's grandmother allegedly spent some time as a maid.3

As I said the story is dubious in the extreme and can be dismissed out of hand. Even Langer who was attracted to the story for its value in “explaining” Hitler says:

This is certainly a very intriguing hypothesis and much of Adolph's later behavior could be explained in rather easy terms on this basis. However, it is not absolutely necessary to assume that he had Jewish blood in his veins in order to make a comprehensive picture of his character with its manifold traits and sentiments. From a purely scientific point of view, therefore, it is sounder not to base our reconstruction on such slim evidence but to seek firmer foundations. Nevertheless, we can leave it as a possibility which requires further verification.4

We can dismiss this story has so much gossip and nonsense.

The second version of the story is more substantial and has a more substantial basis. Hans Frank, who was executed after his trial at Nuremburg, in his memoirs gives the following story.5

According to Frank William Patrick Hitler a son of Hitler’s half brother Alois Jr. threatened in 1930 via a blackmail letter to reveal that Hitler had Jewish ancestors:

…a son of Hitler’s half-brother Alois who was gently hinting that in view of certain allegations in the press it might be better if certain family matters weren’t shouted from the roof tops. The press reports in question suggested that Hitler had Jewish blood in his veins and hence was hardly qualified to be an anti-semite. But they were phrased in such general terms that nothing could be done about it. In the heat of the political struggle the whole thing died down. All the same, this threat of blackmail by a relative was a somewhat tricky business. At Hitler’s request I made some confidential inquiries.6

Frank then goes on to say that he found out the following:

…intensive investigation elicited the following information: Hitler’s father was the illegitimate son of a women by the name of Schicklgruber from leonding near Linz who worked as a cook in a Graz household….But the most extraordinary part of the story is this: when the cook Schicklgruber (Adolf Hitler’s grandmother) gave birth to her child, she was in the service with a Jewish family called Frankenberger. And in behalf of his son, then about nineteen years old, Frankenberger paid a maintenance allowance to Schicklgruber from the time of the child’s birth until his fourteenth year. For a number of years, too. The Frankenbergers and Hitler’s grandmother wrote to each other, the general tenor of the correspondence betraying on both sides the tacit acknowledgement that Schicklgruber’s illegitimate child had been engendered under circumstances which made the Frankenbergers responsible for its maintenance …. Hence the possibility cannot b e dismissed that Hitler’s father was half Jewish as a result of the extramarital relationship between the Schicklgruber woman and the Jew from Graz. This would mean that Hitler was one-quarter Jewish.7

Nice neat story. However it is almost certainly false. For example at Nuremburg Frank said Maria Schicklgruber came from Strones near Dollersheim. There is no evidence that Maria ever lived in Graz much less worked for a Jewish family there. Further it appears that until 1856, well after Alois Hitler’s birth (1837), Jews had not lived in Graz since the late 15th century having been expelled and forbidden to return until then. Certainly researchers have found no traces of any Jewish family living in Graz at the time.8

Also although no Frankenberger family has been found; a family by a similar name, Frankenreiter as in fact been found. Leopold Frankenreiter was a butcher and his son was 10 years old at the time of Alois' birth.

William Patrick Hitler in an article published in the Paris Soir in 1939 gives the name of Hitler’s punitive Jewish grandfather; the name of Frankenreiter. William, however, only hints that maybe the family was Jewish. This is interesting but it doesn’t indicate much. By then William was thoroughly disgusted with his uncle and would eventually tour giving lectures about him in the United States, where he eventually served in the Military in World War II.9 It appears either William either invented the whole thing or had heard a story about his grandfather’s ancestry and repeats it.

Before I close about the Frakenreiters I should mention the family was thoroughly Catholic.10

Another problem with the story is, although William smeared his uncle in an article in 1939 after he had left Germany, that the idea of him trying to blackmail his uncle in 1930 and then surviving intact and in fact prospering throughout most of the 1930’s in Nazi Germany beggars belief. It is so hard to believe that Adolf Hitler well known for carrying a grudge would not have, when he attained power seriously punished such an attempt.11

Other problems like the alleged letters, which apparently Frank never saw, have not turned up. Further Frank is not the most reliable of sources. Despite his repentance at Nuremberg Frank retained certain Nazi attitudes and certain aspects of his testimony like where Maria Schickelgruber came from are demonstatably wrong. Niklas Frank one of Hans Frank’s sons has written a caustic and vicious memoir about his father in which he characterizes his father has an egomaniac right to the end filled with self importance and anxious to be a legend and “great” at something even if it is wallowing in self pitying repentance. In his book Niklas tears apart Hans Frank’s memoirs revealing them to be in the end self serving and mendacious.12

So it appears that Alois Hitler’s parents were Maria Anna Schicklgruber and Johann Georg Hiedler, who married Maria 5 years after Alois’ birth, or possibly Georg’s brother Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. Which one of the two is in fact Alois’ father is a tangle I might try at a different time.13

Just to wrap things up Klara, (nee Pölzl) Hitler, Hitler’s mother, her parents were Johann Pölzl and Johanna Hiedler, both Catholics.14.

Klara Hitler

In the end the Jewish grandfather story falls apart and leaves nothing but a few insubstantial wisps of nothing. Why so many people want to believe it is another story.

1. See copy of the report written by Langer, Walter C., at Nizkor Here. It is also published in Langer, Walter C., The Mind of Adolf Hitler, Basic Books, New York, 1972.

2. See Wikipedia Discussion at Alois Hitler, Here, Kershaw, Ian, Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris, W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 2000, p. 35, Hamann, Brigette, Thornton, Thomas, Hitler's Vienna, Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 77. See also Rosenbaum, Ron, Explaining Hitler, HarperPerennial, New York, 1998, pp. 16-36.

3. Kershaw, p. 35.

4. See Footnote 1, Langer.

5. Frank’s Memoirs, Im Angesicht des Galgens. Deutung Hitlers und seiner Zeit aufgrund eigener Erlebnisse und Erkenntnisse, have never been translated into English.

6. Quoted in Rosenbaum, p.20.

7. IBID. pp.21-22.

8. Footnote 2. Kershaw, pp. 35-40, Waite, Robert G., The Psychopathic God, Signet Books, 1977, pp. 150-157.

9. Waite, pp. 151-152.

10. IBID.

11. Kershaw, pp. 35-40.

12. Frank, Niklas, In the Shadow of the Reich, Knopf, New York, 1991.

13. See Wikipedia, Alois Hitler, Here

14. See Wikipedia, Klara Hitler, Here

Pierre Cloutier