Ah, paraphrasing the X Files. Happy 25th of the month, one and all.
Oh, and I think the thesis is over. I’ve been given a Wii and I can’t imagine its seductive pleasures will release me anytime soon.
Category: General
1999?
If I were more musically inclined I’d make the title a Prince reference, but that isn’t happening.
(The image comes courtesy of the Fundy Post, who alerted me to the orginating publications presence and location within the University of Auckland’s library.)
So, 1999. As the image above should show to the discerning viewer, something was happening back then. A glut of Celtic New Zealand thesis tomes were produced.
Now, I’m fairly sure 1999 was the period in New Zealand where cheap offset printing became a reality and a whole host of small press publishers appeared, needing things to print. That is what I’m assuming; it may, of course, be utter tripe. Still, these books did appear and people like Doutré do treat publication, in any form, as some kind of public vindication of their theories. That so much paper should be wasted on such projects is scary.
Back to work for me; I have a test to write.
Celts
Well, after thinking ‘That was that’ the editor of the Franklin E Local, Myklejon Winckel has surfaced to attack all and sundry for distorting his words and accusing him, a military man whose mother was a POW, of supporting a Neo-Nazi worldview.
The fun and frolics resumes here.
What is real and what is not?
The discussion of Martin Doutré’s Celtic New Zealand thesis saw the not infrequent mentioning of one Kerry Bolton. Now, I’m not writing a thesis on Mr. Bolton, but someone did, that someone being Roel van Leeuwen. As many of you will know, van Leeuwen’s Master thesis has been pulled from the shelves at the University of Waikato whilst it undergoes an enquiry, an enquiry that began when Bolton complained that the thesis made him out to be a bit of a Nazi whackjob.
Now, whether or not the thesis does make him out to be a bit of a Nazi whackjob or whether he actually a bit of a Nazi whackjob is neither here nor there. I think I’ve made my position clear enough in previous correspondence. However, what is interesting is this. It’s a blog devoted to, according to its author, exploring the existence of Satanism and Black Magick in Aotearoa. What is especially interesting about it is that it appears to be a blog trying to do a hatchet job on van Leeuwen.
I’m not one for vapid Conspiracy Theorising and I’m not going to add a `but’ to the end of this sentence. I can’t say for sure that the `Satanism in New Zealand’ blog is seeking to discredit van Leeuwen (and if it is, who really reads blogs anyway? I know we do but we’re hardly important, are we?) but it is interesting (for the third time) to note that there are no posts not devoted to the van Leeuwen thesis on Kerry Bolton.
Which might just be because there isn’t much Satanism and very little Black Magick going on here. If I were the Fundy Post I’d like to, say, Cliff Richard’s `Devil Woman’ right now, but I won’t. Instead, I leave you with the best of `Jazz Club.’
One more thing
I’m also fascinated by one line of reasoning Doutré uses, which is that if a culture can achieve greatness in areas A, B and C, then you should expect them to expect them to achieve greatness in D. He uses this to claim that as the South American civilisations were great builders, et al, we should also expect them to be great navigators.
Once again, three things.
1. Doutré seems to treat the South American groups in antiquity as one; we now know that they did not present a civilisation like Rome or Ancient Egypt with a single culture and a single capital. These groups existed independently of one another, co-operating where need be. Given what we know about them it is very plausible indeed to suspect that they weren’t the great navigators they claim to be.
2. Doutré seems to suggest that by denying his thesis you denigrate these peoples. He doesn’t seem to think that by denying the conventional wisdom he is denigrating the Polynesians, however.
3. If Doutré’s reasoning was correct you’d be able to argue, via analogy, for all sorts of things. Leonardo da Vinci was a great artist and inventor; surely he must have been a great novelist? This then leads you to all sorts of weird inferences; Edward de Vere was an acclaimed playwright in his day but his plays have not survived… Or have they? That road leads you to the Shakespeare Conspiracy Theories, where you infer that de Vere is the Bard because of inferences about de Vere’s life that fit the things Shakespeare wrote.
Doutré’s Last Words
Martin Doutré has had his last words, and they seem to be `Holocaust Denier ((I’ll also accept `Possible Anti-semite.’)).’
As for David Irving, it was generally accepted worldwide that he was the most astute, prolific, all-round scholar and historian on the subject of WWII, at least up until May, 1988, when he made a very bad career choice. At that time he was called upon to give expert testimony, under oath, in a court case and stated that he could find no documented evidence of “Hitler’s Final Solution”. For this unforgivable admission, he fell foul of the Zionists who, thereafter, focused their hatred on him and have been unrelenting in trying to destroy his credibility ever since.
What is interesting about this (aside from the fact that he seems to be morally repugnant for reasons other than mere racism) is that he is rooting for the underdog, researchers like himself who are `unfairly’ maligned by the general populace and the academic `left.’ People like David Irving and Joel Haywood dare to say the correct thing and get slammed for it. It’s not as if they end up asserting falsehoods or supporting unwarranted conclusions.
Of course, the difference between Doutré and someone like Irving is that Irving should (and probably) does know better. Doutré is unqualified and shows a lack of critical thinking skills. Irving was a highly-respected academic whose early works were greatly acclaimed. Irving was an historian whose early works earnt him some respect. However, he then used, and I stressed `used’ here, his data to advance a series of controversial and contentious claims that did not fit the evidence. When he was called on this he did not do the intellectual and rational thing, which was to admit that he was wrong in his inferences (and note here that I’m giving Irving the benefit of the doubt when it comes to whatever personal motivations he might have had); no, he stuck to them and accused others of conspiring to hide the truth of the Holocaust.
Two things ((Well, three if you add in how, quite remarkably, he seems to ignore my rebuttal of his twenty-nine questions. Obviously answering them makes me well beneath his contempt.)):
1. Doutré commits the lesser of two evils. He is a self-educated man writing on issues he would appear to be genuinely passionate about. Some of his mistakes in reasoning are understandable; Thor Heyerdahl was, for a while, thought to be in the ballpark when it came to discussions of how Polynesia was settled. There is something to the Diffusionist thesis (but it is nowhere near as strong as Doutré makes it out to be). A lot of the material he half-arsedly considers is complex and hard to explain in soundbites. You can, I think, understand why people like Doutré exist; he is genuinely and fundamentally confused about some really deep and complex issues to do with History. I’m sure we all have similar foibles.
Most of us, however, don’t try to write books and make publicity out of it, though.
Doutré does not advance his thesis because he is a cunning and malevolent mastermind trying to undermine the indigenous people of the Pacific. He does it because he knows no better.
Tragic, really.
2. Doutré does what a lot of Conspiracy Theorists do; he aggregates Conspiracy Theories and he does it with the sorting mechanism of choosing underdogs. I wonder what his view on Intelligent Design is, given his reference to `Christendom’ in his reply to Edward on the Scoop Review of Books. This became especially apparent when started defending Holocaust Denial; he’s putting all the alternative historians into the same boat and thus ending up with strange bedfellows (boat, beds; I’m mixing metaphors like its 1812 again). It’s also interesting how he doesn’t like these bedfellows to be called out for being a bit weird; Irving is merely the man who said there was no explicit document stating the aims and desires of the Final Solution. He’s not the man who has publicly denied the history of the Holocaust. Kerry Bolton is a librarian. He’s not a neo-Nazi.
There is more to say. I’ve still got the `Uncensored’ article to comment on (it’s long and seems to rest upon a statue of the Egyptian god looking a lot like a statue found outside marae) and after that, well, in monthly installments, more articles. So let’s stay in touch.
Update: Scott takes me to task for characterising Doutré as a bit of a fool here. I think he’s largely right, as you can see from my comments there.