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#1524320
A creep from the fringe, then, and a pestilential one at that. But the clearest trend in intellectual life is the fringe developing trends in the mainstream and magnifying them into grotesque shapes.

Indeed, although he perpetuates Nazi doctrine, Kollerstrom presents himself as a man of the left rather than the far right. He says that he is not a member of a neo-Nazi organisation, but an active supporter of the Green party, Respect and CND. Given the political gyrations of our times, he may well be telling the truth.

When academics lose their power of reason

Nick Cohen

The Observer, Sunday May 4 2008


Dr Nicholas Kollerstrom is convinced that academics have punished him for a 'thought crime'. The distinguished astronomer exercised his right as an intellectual in a free society to speak his mind. His university responded by stripping him of his research fellowship and declared that it wishes to have 'absolutely no association' with him.

To make matters worse, Kollerstrom was denounced by University College, London, one of Europe's greatest bastions of academic integrity, whose founder, Jeremy Bentham, defended intellectual freedom with the stirring words: 'As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.'

Admittedly, if the philosopher had lived long enough to hear the conspiracy theories of the 21st century, even his defence of free speech might have weakened. Once he was away from his scientific studies, Kollerstrom embraced them all. 'Let us hope the schoolchildren visitors are properly taught about the elegant swimming pool at Auschwitz, built by the inmates, who would sunbathe there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons while watching the water polo matches,' he said of the Nazi genocide. 'Let's hope they are shown postcards written from Auschwitz, where the postman would collect the mail twice weekly.'

Denying the crimes of the clerical fascists of today comes easily to a man who can deny the crimes of the secular fascists of the 1940s. Kollerstrom has opined at length on how the 9/11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon and the 7/7 London bombings were not the work of the actual bombers, but of Western security forces acting on the orders of - you'll never guess - their 'Zionist masters'.

As it happens, Hasib Hussain, the 7/7 suicide bomber on the number 30 bus, detonated his explosives in Tavistock Square, just round the corner from University College's main campus in central London. The Islamist didn't kill research fellows, but cut short the blameless life of Gladys Wundowa, a Ghanaian who worked as a cleaner at the college.

I can understand how the attempts of one of its fellows to exonerate her murderer repelled the college's managers. Equally obviously, they must have thought they could safely dismiss him as a member of a loathsome group of extremists. Rachel North, a victim of the bombings, would not contradict them on that point. She described how respect for the dead and injured didn't figure in his tormented mind. He harried survivors, she said, tracking them down and harangued them with 'his barking "theories" that the bombers were innocent "patsies" executed by the state'.

A creep from the fringe, then, and a pestilential one at that. But the clearest trend in intellectual life is the fringe developing trends in the mainstream and magnifying them into grotesque shapes. To put it another way, Kollerstrom is not as far away from respectable academics as University College assumes. His faults are theirs too.

If a bomb were to explode outside University College today, mainstream voices would fill the airwaves and say that responsibility for the carnage lay with the British, American or Israeli governments. Their arguments would be passionate and convincing, but I don't need to tell you every one of them would avoid mentioning the Islamist ideology that motivated Hasib Hussain and men like him. To divert attention from a criminal is not the same as pretending that the criminal is innocent. But it isn't so far away from it either.

Media London is currently muttering about commissioning editors being intellectually crippled by a thoughtless version of multiculturalism that can't take account of the differences between liberals and reactionaries, secularists and fanatics, within communities. The BBC caused the resentment by shelving a drama documentary on the 7/7 bombings after its researchers, several of them British Muslims, supplied a detailed picture of young men caught up by the theocratic justifications for slaughter.

The researchers are bitter, not least because the bombers' families read the script and vouched for its authenticity. BBC people tell me that the grounds for postponing the documentary were artistic and it may yet be made for the fifth anniversary of the atrocities. I'm sure they're telling the truth, but am equally sure that if they do come to film it, they will face internal opposition from colleagues who, in a vague and ill-thought- out manner, think it not quite proper to discuss such matters in public.

As for conspiracy theory, though Holocaust denial is not acceptable in the West, in academia, the scheming Jew is back as a cosmic force able to pull the strings of his dupes and order the world to his desires. American academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued to widespread acclaim that a conspiracy of powerful Jews decided to serve the interests of Israel by persuading America to invade Iraq in 2003.

Why the Elders of Zion didn't direct the US administration to invade Iran, which wants to wipe Israel off the map, rather than Saddam's Iraq, which was crippled by sanctions, they don't say and, more interestingly, are rarely asked. Liberals would once have dismissed their thesis as far-right ramblings. Now the London Review of Books, house journal of liberal academia, repeats it.

Indeed, although he perpetuates Nazi doctrine, Kollerstrom presents himself as a man of the left rather than the far right. He says that he is not a member of a neo-Nazi organisation, but an active supporter of the Green party, Respect and CND. Given the political gyrations of our times, he may well be telling the truth.

Before Bentham died, he asked that his body be preserved so that it could be exhibited at the college he founded. The authorities agreed and Bentham sits in a wooden box in South Cloisters as if to remind academics and students to uphold his commitment to reason.

Rather than seeking to restrict Kollerstrom's academic freedom, their successors would have done better to have agreed to preserve his body and place it next to Bentham's as a reminder to liberal intellectuals of the state they may come to if they abandon liberal principles.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2 ... reducation

Last edited by Tonic on 05 May 2008 18:21, edited 1 time in total.
By stalker
#1524329
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0804/08042202

UCL has been made aware of views expressed by Dr Nicholas Kollerstrom, an Honorary Research Fellow in UCL Science & Technology Studies.

The position of Honorary Research Fellow is a privilege bestowed by departments within UCL on researchers with whom it wishes to have an association. It is not an employed position.

The views expressed by Dr Kollerstrom are diametrically opposed to the aims, objectives and ethos of UCL, such that we wish to have absolutely no association with them or with their originator.

We therefore have no choice but to terminate Dr Kollerstrom’s Honorary Research Fellowship with immediate effect.


Unfair maybe, but checkmate is checkmate.
User avatar
By Oxymoron
#1524377
Damn it why did my grandpa escape the concentration camp and hide for years under German occupation barely eating... If he only knew about the 5 star treatment at Aushwitz, I mean pools, and sunbathing fuckin A he missed out :hmm: .
By PBVBROOK
#1524455
I think UCL got this about right.
By Surrey
#1560283
Interestingly Kollerstrom was employed by the BBC on their upcomming series 'The Conspiracy files'. His association with the BBC goes back even further to at least 2001 and the BBC still promotes his admittedly harmless gardening books. Nt sure that tax payers money should be used to subsidise some one how openly promotes racist beliefs.
User avatar
By QatzelOk
#1560289
Let us hope the schoolchildren visitors are properly taught about the elegant swimming pool at Auschwitz, built by the inmates, who would sunbathe there on Saturday and Sunday afternoons while watching the water polo matches,' he said

How could the inmates play water polo if they were starving? That sport requires a lot of stamina.

Damn it why did my grandpa escape the concentration camp and hide for years under German occupation barely eating...

Lots of people 'barely ate' during World War Two. And a lot of people were killed. Your grandfather was no different than mine in this regard. Except for one thing: my grandfather actually fought for yours, and not just for himself.
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By Oxymoron
#1560298
Lots of people 'barely ate' during World War Two. And a lot of people were killed. Your grandfather was no different than mine in this regard. Except for one thing: my grandfather actually fought for yours, and not just for himself.


Qatz did his mother and sister get shot? Did his father go to a concentration camp? Did their neighbors take all their posessions? Did your Grandma fall alive into a ditch after her family and nieghbors were shot with a machine gun and had to stay there until the germans left only to climb out covered in lime and blood? I dont want to be banned so Ill hold my tongue but I hope you know what I think of you.
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By Potemkin
#1560299
Lots of people 'barely ate' during World War Two. And a lot of people were killed. Your grandfather was no different than mine in this regard. Except for one thing: my grandfather actually fought for yours, and not just for himself.

You're crossing the line here, Qatz. This is outrageously smug and self-righteous, even for you. :eh:
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By NoRapture
#1560304
Lots of people 'barely ate' during World War Two. And a lot of people were killed. Your grandfather was no different than mine in this regard. Except for one thing: my grandfather actually fought for yours, and not just for himself.
Qatz, you write, illustrate, and score a lot of very original, eloquent, and entertaining posts. But this remark looks to me like nothing more than some kind of deep-seated hatred for Jews. It is inaccurate and uncalled for. I'm surprised frankly.
By Tonic
#1560338
Lots of people 'barely ate' during World War Two. And a lot of people were killed. Your grandfather was no different than mine in this regard. Except for one thing: my grandfather actually fought for yours, and not just for himself.


Qatz, I didn't know your grandfather fought in that war. I thought he was a pro German Quebecker like Pierre Trudeau, or was he your Anglo grandfather?
User avatar
By Nets
#1560355
Lots of people 'barely ate' during World War Two. And a lot of people were killed. Your grandfather was no different than mine in this regard. Except for one thing: my grandfather actually fought for yours, and not just for himself.


Yep Qatz, all of my grandfather's sibilings in their teens back in Czechoslovakia "got what they deserved" because they were greedy, right?

This is a new low, even for you.
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By sazerac
#1560363
Can you imagine how much it must suck to be THAT full of hate for other fellow human beings? :(
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By QatzelOk
#1560563
I'll admit it was a nasty comment.
But a timely one as well.

While Jewish terror groups and moneyed Zionists like the Rothschilds basically caused WW2 and the Holocaust, we always point our fingers at the German people and their leadership. As if any other state would do any differently when being attacked from within by a minority group looking for more stuff than they already owned. These terror groups wanted to live out a text dream, to belong to a mythological group that would get to reconquer the Middle East in a new euro crusade.

And to trumpet the suffering of your own relatives - as if no one else suffered in this war where 80 million people perished - is a sign of bigotry, and not compassion.

I could go on and on about how much my family suffered this and that war or from economic tyranny, but I won't because I - unlike many here - realize that there are many people who are much worse off than my family.

While many people are accused of scapegoating Jews for problems within their own societies, the public has often been lured (by commercial media and post-war propaganda) into scapegoating non-Jews for the violence, bigotry and radicalism of people within the Jewish community itself.

And there is a kind of double standard applied to this one particular ethnic group (caste) which doesn't allow anyone to say this in polite company, while the same "polite" company are expected to hold all kinds of racist and hateful opinions about other peoples - especially Israel's unhappy neighbors.
By Tonic
#1560586
Qatz, which one of your grandfathers fought in that war the Anglo or the "French"? And what is your opinion on Pierre Trudeau's draft dodging?
User avatar
By QatzelOk
#1560600
what is your opinion on Pierre Trudeau's draft dodging?

It made his ostensible Canadian nationalism a bit hypocritical. If you love Canada, you have to love their wars, as far as I'm concerned.

The other question is too off-topic and has racist overtones.
By Tonic
#1560603
Your grandfather was no different than mine in this regard. Except for one thing: my grandfather actually fought for yours, and not just for himself.


The other question is too off-topic and has racist overtones.



You started
User avatar
By Nets
#1560610
QatzelOK wrote:While Jewish terror groups and moneyed Zionists like the Rothschilds basically caused WW2 and the Holocaust


Ok I'll bite.

Which Jewish terror groups exactly?
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By NoRapture
#1560614
While Jewish terror groups and moneyed Zionists like the Rothschilds basically caused WW2 and the Holocaust
This is some preposterous stuff. A slight knowledge of WWI and its aftermath is enough to recognize this kind of rhetoric for what it is. It's lifted verbatim from a John Birch Society pamphlet from 1953. Moneyed Zionists? Rothschilds? Jewish bankers? Jews causing their own holocaust? Glory be. Were you raised on an Aryan Nation cellblock with Susan Atkins for a mommy?
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By Nets
#1560619
The real question is whether Qatz hates Henry Ford for his automobiles or loves him for his Jew-hating.

Quite the conundrum.
User avatar
By Holt
#1560707
While Jewish terror groups and moneyed Zionists like the Rothschilds basically caused WW2 and the Holocaust, we always point our fingers at the German people and their leadership. As if any other state would do any differently when being attacked from within by a minority group looking for more stuff than they already owned. These terror groups wanted to live out a text dream, to belong to a mythological group that would get to reconquer the Middle East in a new euro crusade.

Nonsense. Jews were not an important component of the German ruling class, nor in some magical position to dictate their will on the German ruling class. The proportion of Jewish entrepreneurs was at its highest and most "disproportionate" among the middle and petty bourgeoisie, not the ruling class. The German Jews as a whole were about as much class stratified as the rest of the population, with a distinct stratum of extremely poor as well.

What are you suggesting, Qatz? That the German bourgeoisie was "Jewish" and that the nazi-fascists really were about to eliminate capitalism to create a "third way" middle-class utopia? :eh:

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