The Weekly Signals Brief gathers the most interesting articles that I have read over the past week. Each link below is a piece that piqued my interest (click the titles to go to the full articles).
As I was reading this piece by The History Stache, which tackles confronting the rising popularity of holocaust denial with evidence by the very people that carried it out, I was taken aback by how simple the observation is that so much of what we know about the holocaust comes from the Nazis themselves, being scrupulous, almost obsessive record keepers. As William Shirer remarked in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, the vast amounts of documents available to journalists and historians after the war constituted the largest cache of wartime documents available to the victors in history, even after the Nazis hasty attempts to destroy as much of it as possible before the end of the war. What the documents reveal cuts through so much of the current online discourse that has polluted certain, growing online circles, taking the air from the sails of the holocaust denial crowd. This vast amount of evidence constitutes “the elephant in the room” that this essay examines.
The essay makes you sit and think about how fragile our understanding on the past becomes once people start treating the history of well-documented events as a negotiation. I understand the need for nuance, to examine primary source material for inherent bias, to weight the circumstances in which event occurred (war, famine, revolution, etc). However, sometimes evidence is so plain, the facts stare so deeply into your face that it’s okay to just call it the way you see it and leave the finer points for further examination. The essay also makes you consider the danger of nihilism that follows when large numbers of people decide that evidence no longer matters when the evidence stands in stark opposition to their preferred narrative. As I was reading, I had no choice but to conclude protecting the integrity of history is equivalent to preserving the possibility of a shared reality for those that follow in our footsteps.
I sincerely hope you all will take the time to read this one, as it clarifies how we know what we know surrounding the holocaust. You’ll come away with a sharper sense of why certain claims dissolve the moment you look at the primary sources and records rather than the commentary surrounding an event. Well worth the read, and I think you will enjoy it.
This next piece, by my good friend Georgi, examines the French Revolution through the clever metaphor of a house under construction, yet the carpenters cannot agree on a floor plan. He paints the reader a portrait of 1793 France as a country so fractured that no single vision of the Revolution could be claimed by a true majority faction. He describes how the internal chaos of the various factions evaporates absolutist claims, such as the common “Well, the Revolution was between patriots and monarchists.” I found that interesting. It demonstrates that the French Revolution was tearing itself apart from the inside out.
As I was reading, I started thinking about the deeper problem of unity in moments of revolutionary upheaval. Georgi’s account raised some internal questions for me about what happens when every group insists it is the standard-bearer for the true cause, and reflecting on how quickly shared purpose can dissolve once the old power structures are gone (similar to the Federalists and Anti-Federalist during the Constitutional debates of 1787. Both believed they represented the spirit of 1776. Hamilton, Jay, and Madison made their arguments under ‘Publius,’ or of the people, while the Anti-Federalists use names like Brutus, and Cato, the enemies of Caeser, implying the Federalists were actually tyrants).
If you enjoy reading about how power shapes authority, the relationship between authority, power, and the subjects under it. Well, Georgi will never leave you disappointed, and this work is no different. If you’re unfamiliar with the inner drivers of the French Revolution, as I am, you will gain a deeper understanding of the human and political costs of the disunity during the struggle, and for why the Committee of Public Safety emerged. Definitely worth a read.
We now turn to Dennis Bodzash’s latest Way Back Wednesday publication focusing on Neil Armstrong. He traces Armstrong’s fascination with flight which arose as a young child, wartime service in the US Navy and aviator during the Korean War, and the early years with NACA (not a typo!) before it was reorganized into NASA, where he would become famous. Yet, what stood out to me was Armstrong’s deliberate choice to step away from fame after becoming the first man on the moon, and the way Bodzash traces that decision through the later years makes it feel fuller and more human. It caught my attention because so few public figures demonstrate such magnitude of humility.
As I pondered that, I kept thinking about how rare that attribute truly is. Bodzash’s short piece on Neil Armstrong morphed into a question about what we lose when celebrity, itself, becomes the ultimate measure of life’s value, and the difference between true achievement and renown, compared to superficial recognition. Essentially, his piece, for me anyway, was not so much about Neil Armstrong, but about what the true measure of a man is.
The story of Apollo 11 is wholly incomplete without the man behind that giant leap for mankind, and Dennis pulls back that curtain. You gain an understanding of the kind of character that made the achievement possible. Give it a read, and see if Armstrong’s choice leaves you reflecting on the same thing I did.
Corporal Dan’s essay draws a sharp distinction between a policy fight over foreign wars and the dual loyalty charge that turns every American decision into a shadowy foreign lobby, specifically, (you guessed it) the Jews. He names that structure as the oldest blood libel against the Jewish people, and his arguments refuse to let legitimate America First instincts become hijacked by a tired and boring trope.
Reading it tied directly back to The History Stache’s holocaust denial essay. Both writers confront the same template that explains events by inventing hidden Jewish power instead of facing the facts or confronting the actual adversary. That connection makes you think about how easily that trope erodes moral and historical clarity once it is allowed into the discussion. Guarding the distinction between honest debate and libel is not some side issue on the fringes, but is part of the same defense of truth.
Read this one alongside The History Stache’s essay. Don’t let pestilence spread.
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