Revisionism, He Said?

In “Remembrance and Reconciliation?”, I wrote of the “revisionist” spirit that animates UN General Assembly Resolution A/59/26. Surely, it is at least exaggerated to put the entirety of the UN General Assembly – the resolution passed by acclamation – in the same company as notorious revisionist historians such as David Irving and Robert Faurisson? Well, here is a citation from the concluding chapter of Faurisson’s Ecrits Révisionnistes or “Revisionist Writings”:

Whatever storms and vicissitudes may arise now or in future, the revisionist historian must hold firm. To the cult of tribal remembrance built on fear, vengeance, and greed, he will prefer the stubborn search for exactitude. In this manner he will, albeit perhaps unwittingly, do justice to the true sufferings of all victims of the second world war. And, from this viewpoint, it is he who will refuse to make any distinction between them on the basis of race, religion, or community. Above all else, he will reject the supreme imposture which gave the crowning touch to that conflict: that of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, and of the thousand other proceedings since the war in which, still today, the victor, without in the least having to answer for his own crimes, has assumed the right to prosecute and condemn the vanquished.

Here again is the wording of the General Assembly Resolution:

[The General assembly] Declares 8–9 May as a time of remembrance and reconciliation and, while recognizing that Member States may have individual days of victory, liberation and commemoration, invites all Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, non-governmental organizations and individuals to observe annually either one or both of these days in an appropriate manner to pay tribute to all victims of the Second World War.

The emphasis on “all” victims in the Faurisson passage – as well as on “true” sufferings, whatever that is supposed to mean – is Faurisson’s. The Faurisson volume is, incidentally, kindly put on line by an openly revisionist website whose offerings also include such pearls as “Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Communist Dictator”, “Terror Bombing [the Allied bombing campaign is meant - JR]: The Crime of the Twentieth Century”, “The Myth of German Culpability”, “Jewish Race War Claimed 20 Million German Lives”, and so on.