A very good post, Benedict, although I think you are a little too kind to Bishop Williamson (see below for my reasoning). The effort to discredit respect for any knowledge or authority not emanating from the cult leader him/herself is a central feature of the cultic mindset.
"Anti-intellectualism" is perhaps not the mot juste - what attracts people to this sort of mindset is that it gives them a sense of being in on Great Big Secret Stuff and not being one of the mere "sheeple". "Contrarianism" might be a better term - or "vanity".
I stand over my description of Williamson as anti-semite and holocaust denier. Here is a link to a discussion of his views and why they are false:
www.holocaust-history.org/williamson/williamson.shtmlHere are two extracts - the first contains a well-known statement by Williamson which is often quoted on the Web, in which he explicitly claims that the Holocaust is a fabrication concocted by a Jewish conspiracy in order to obtain power over Gentiles. Note also the reference to Irving and Zundel, whom Benedict mentions:
EXTRACT:
Analysis: Bishop Williamson is apparently predisposed to accept only such "historical evidence" as has been produced by Holocaust deniers. His endorsement of the propagators of denial is not new. While Bishop Williamson was the rector of the Society of Saint Pius X's Saint Thomas Aquinas seminary at Winona, Minnesota he gave a talk in 1989 at the Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes church in Sherbrooke, Canada while touring Quebec. Among other things he stated the following:
"Not one Jew was killed in the gas chambers. It's a lie... the Jews invented the Holocaust so that we would kneel before them and accept their state of Israel...the governments don't touch the Jews but they persecute the Zundels who fight for the truth."8 The bishop himself was unapologetic, claiming that "The church is going badly because of the Protestants, the Freemasons, the Communists, the media and the Jews.... I don't believe that 6 million Jews were killed (in the Holocaust), it's a physical impossibility." 9
8 "La GRC ne porte pas d'accusation contre l'eveque Richard Williamson," by Lynda Baril, La Presse 15 avril 1989
9 Ibid. One year later, at the ordination of thirteen new Lefebvrist priests in Econe, Williamson praised what he called Lefebvre's "beautiful racism" which was going to "create a new race of priests." (Agence France-Presse, 30 juin 1990)
When a complaint was lodged against him under the Canadian hate laws, the RCMP found that there was no basis to charge Williamson because he "wasn't inciting violence". The Bishop himself was unapologetic.
Sadly, Bishop Williamson appears to bear a strong resentment against the Jews. He has promoted Holocaust denial for over 20 years. He has befriended Holocaust denier David Irving and defended Ernst Zündel, a convicted hate-monger, proven distorter of the truth, and renowned Holocaust denier. This suggests that the Bishop is pursuing an antisemitic agenda.
END OF EXTRACT
The second extract quotes a writer on historical topics who complains that Bishop Williamson goes too far in minimising the numbers of Jews killed by the Nazis. This writer can hardly be accused of being excessively sympathetic towards Jews, or biased against holocaust deniers, for he is none other than David Irving. After quoting Irving, the author of the piece goes on to note all the sources Bishop Williamson has NOT consulted and asks why:
EXTRACT
Analysis: The Bishop insists that there were no gas chambers. In an ironic twist, Holocaust denier David Irving - who had hosted Bishop Williamson at his home in Windsor ten days before this interview - responded to the Bishop's question concerning the use of gas chambers for killing the Jews:
"I am keeping out of this. My advice, which you might like to pass to His Excellency, is to accept that there were organised mass killings from the spring of 1942 to October 1943 at Himmler's three sites on the Bug River - Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec; there is much dispute over numbers and methods of killing, but he should not dispute that there were such killings".
Mr. Irving does not touch on the killing facilities in Auschwitz-Birkenau for reasons that are not germane to the main thrust of this document.
The Bishop goes on to claim that he has "understood the evidence" wherein Holocaust deniers (whom the Bishop identifies as 'Revisionists') "conclude, that between 2 and 3 hundred thousand Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but not one of them by gassing in gas chambers." This is patently untrue.
Bishop Williamson depends exclusively on statements and publications issued by known Holocaust deniers and antisemites. He does not attempt to consult the evidence published by academic historians such as: Richard Evans, Peter Longerich, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Deborah Dwork, Robert Jan van Pelt, Raul Hilberg, Sir Martin Gilbert, Christopher Browning, Martin Broszat, Eberhard Jäckel, Gerald Fleming, to name but a few of the hundreds of historians who have written about the Holocaust. Note that many of these are not Jewish.
Nor has the Bishop - as he should have - consulted the diaries, records, biographies confessions or cross-examinations of the perpetrators, such as Rudolf Höss, Johann Paul Kramer, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, etc.
In spite of the fact that there are millions of documents, photographs, war crime transcripts in every European language, and statements by survivors and Righteous Gentiles, Bishop Williamson appears to ignore them completely. Righteous Gentiles are people of another faith who risked their lives to save Jews. One would think that their testimony was unassailable. Yet he appears to show an exclusive predisposition for material produced by people who are neither accredited historians, nor, much less, recognized scientists.
EXTRACT ENDS
I might add that Catholic Truth Scotland devotes much effort to defending Pius XII against the slanders which have been levelled against him in relation to the Holocaust. I happen to agree with them on this point, but can't they see that the opinions on this or any subject of people who lack the discernment to see Bishop Williamson for what he is are utterly valueless?
Later note: And I might add that Sir Martin Gilbert, mentioned above as one of the authorities whom Bishop Williamson (whose fan club are currently flocking into Christopher Pryor's comments box to declare that Jews as "Resurrection deniers" are infinitely worse than holocaust deniers] pointedly does NOT consult, has stated his view as a historian of the Holocaust that Pius XII did his best under the circumstances and has been blamed unfairly. This statement is of course subject to the usual laws of historical analysis, but it is worth a million times more than all the huffing and puffing of Catholic Truth Scotland on the same subject[/b]