Alsaco, I hear what you are saying, negationism and revisionism are two seperate schools of thought, but simply because someone may miss a point or two does not mean they are rejecting historical fact. No one person can obtain all the knowlege concerning World War II.alsaco wrote:Germanica, you are right, revisionnism is the tool of historians.
But revisionnism adds new facts from discoveries, new ways of considering a situation, new documents stating things. It brings progress toward truth, but works only step by step.
What some people call revisionism is however negationnism. In this case the objective is to prove a concept to support an ideology. The negationnist does not wish to establish the truth, he discusses a fact at the light of prefabricated objectives.
The method is to deny one factor, and conclude that the main fact has to be negated because the factor can be false.
To refute a massacre, you do not deny the killing, but accumulate presomptions allowing to say that the killers did not kill. The graves are there, but the corpses are not killed people, but sick deaths.
Or the absence of graveyards shows that the victims have ressuscited, and the einsatzgruppen were just looters, arrived in an empty village.
Negationnists have to prove, historians have to find.
Negationnists demonstrate and affirm, historians revise, correct, complete to approach a possible truth
And in fact, historians cannot span the entire historical spectrum. They must accept to many details. Only negationnist can affirm an ideological system to explain history, past and future in the same time.
For example, in the thread concerning the "Definition of a Holocaust Denier", I was attempting to place possible, alternative reasons for the conditions found at KL Bergen-Belsen as the British forces arrived. These included the logistical and communicational breakdowns within Germany, the neutralisation of German rail/road networks, and the destruction of German industry - all of which was outside of the control of Kommandant Josef Kramer.
This does not mean that I rejected the fact that many, many inmates died whilst interned at Belsen. However, if you read my post, you'll see that I only just missed the criteria for a denier.
Even quoting from the IHR seems to automatically constitute denial.
Regards,
Germanica