If there’s one recent piece of first rate investigative blogging that deserves a much higher profile at the moment then it has to be Blairwatch’s ‘outing’ of Nicholas Kollerstrom, a prominent ‘9/11 truther’ (i.e. conspiraloon) as a confirmed Holocaust denier.

To give a quick bit of background on the ”truthers’ for those who’ve not come across them before, they subscribe wholehearted to a number of bizarre conspiracy theories relating to the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the July 7th London bombings most of which contend that these terrorist attacks were not the work of Islamic extremists but were in [their version of] ‘reality’ false flag attacks carried out by the US/UK/Israel to justify the ‘war on terror’ as a means of establishing some form of ‘Pax Americana/New World Order’.

To visit ‘Trutherville’ is to immerse yourself in a rich vein of paranoid delusions ranging from the mundane – from blaming the CIA and/or Mossad for 9/11 to the claim that Al Qaeda was ‘made up’ by the FBI – to the usual major league nutball stuff about Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group and that favourite old chestnut, the International Zionist Conspiracy™, the latter of which appears, from his comments and writings, to be the particular brand of conspiracism that floats Kollerstrom’s delusional boat.

Ordinarily I might just write Kollerstrom as just another run of the mill conspiraloon and move on were it not for the fact that he holds down a ‘day job’ is as a research fellow at University College London and actively trades on his academic credentials when writing articles for CODOH’s ‘New Revisionist Voices‘ website where he has, to date, published three articles; Britain – Pioneer of City Bombing, School Trips to Auschwitz and The Auschwitz ‘Gas Chamber’ Illusion. CODOH, which styles itself as the ‘Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust’ – ‘open debate’ meaning open revisionism – also promotes the ‘work’ of the discredited revisionist ‘historian’, David Irving, and Ernst Zundel, both of whom Kollerstrom cites in his own articles.

Kollerstrom’s main line of academic work appears to be the history of astronomy, albeit that he has a notable sideline in publishing articles on astrology and crop circles, and an interest in pseudoscience is not at all an uncommon feature amongst ardent conspiracy theorists. Zundel started out publishing pamphlets on ‘Ufology’ before graduating to titles such as ‘The Hitler We Loved And Why‘, for which he provided the photographs, under the pseudonym Christof Freidrich, to accompany text written by Eric Thomson:

We loved him [Hitler], not because he was a “great dictator”, but because he was a great teacher, a living example of the order he preached. Without order, nothing can exist. How well we who had suffered knew this lesson! But when there is no basis for instruction, no racial pattern, no heredity, the lesson of order cannot be learned, no matter how brilliant the instructor. He taught us this all-important truth of Race. Hitler’s inspiration kindled our racial potential for construction and creativity. His order was not imposed upon us. It came from within.

We loved Hitler because he was a White Man. He practiced our White virtues of forthright honesty and his actions matched his words. If something was filth, he disposed of it as filth with sanitary thoroughness. He did not enshrine the excrescence of sick minds. He was not ashamed to burn shameful enemy propaganda which was aimed at the destruction of our souls…

…We loved him because he defended us against the racial enemy’s campaign to spread perversion among us. He knew that sexual perversion was poison and that enough of it could kill any race.

We thanked him for removing from circulation the many Jew smut publications which championed all manner of sexual deviation, including abortion, in the name of “freedom of the press.”

We loved him because he removed our alien dominators and place them back among their own kind.

Some might take the view that an involvement in the publication of books lionising Hitler, white supremacism and blatant anti-semitism to be good reason to question the credibility of Zundel’s writing on the Holocaust, but such an obvious observation seems to have escaped Kollerstrom.

Digging a little further into Kollerstrom’s interest in pseudoscience turns up some interesting sign that here we have a man who takes interest in secret societies pretty seriously. One publisher, Foulsham, notes that Kollerstrom has ‘lectured on hermetic subjects since 1975’ and an article by Kollerstrom on the subject of astrology and alchemy appeared in the Hermetic Journal in 1990 that includes the following hilarious observation:

There were various historic dates when the alchemists of old were supposed to have made gold. A collection of these, ranging from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, has here been assembled. An astrological analysis was conducted, to see whether any special celestial aspects were present at such moments. Thereby we discern whether these events shared in common any particular quality of time.

…By this approach we may hope to avoid the futile question of whether the alchemists ‘really’ made gold. The times when such events were recorded could well have in common some special qualities: for example, if lead was traditionally the prima materia from which the gold was made, would one expect strong aspects to Saturn? Or, would Mercury play a key role on days when the ‘Hermetic Art’ was being consummated?

Well we can certainly avoid the ‘futile question’ of whether alchemist actually transmuted lead, or another base metal, into gold – unless Kollerstrom can turn up evidence of a medieval fission reactor then the answer is a categorical ‘no’ and no amount of astrological woo is change that or provide an ‘alternative’ explanation of such claims.

Kollerstrom’s outing as a Holocaust denier naturally raises questions about his political views and the extent to which they may or not indicate any personal connections to the far right, which he denies by citing his ‘political’ background as including membership of the Green Party, CND and RESPECT and, in truth, digging around in several of the usual far right online cesspits has turned up no trace of Kollerstrom or his online alias, ‘astro3’ as an active poster. That said, whatever he may believe about his own political views, his views of the Holocaust are extensively predicated on the writings of authors who are known apologists for the Nazi regime, like Irving and Zundel, and if he personally avoids the charge of fascism for lack of evidence, then the same cannot be said in regards to a charge of anti-Semitism as his response to his outing on the main ‘Truthers’ forum indicates:

Israeli nuclear subs sold by Germany now stand ready to launch their nuclear missiles against Iran. How could Germany have done such a thing? Because it’s controlled by Zion, that’s why.

In a sense it really doesn’t matter whether Kollerstrom is a neo-Nazi sympathiser or not because whether he understands what he’s publishing or is merely naive to the point of the most abject stupidity, the view of the Holocaust he promulgates clearly and obviously has its origins in the writings of Nazi apologists and he even adopts the language of such apologia, referring to the Holocaust as a ‘Sacred Myth’. Being charitable in the extreme the best that can be said of him is that he may, just possibily, be an unwitting (and rather witless) ‘fellow traveller‘ who is less than mindful of the credibility and background of his ‘sources’. For example, his ‘essay’ on school trips to Auschwitz includes these remarks:

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; and shown the paintings from its art class, which still exist; and told about the camp library which had some forty-five thousand volumes for inmates to choose from, plus a range of periodicals; and the six camp orchestras at Auschwitz/Birkenau, its the theatrical performances, including a children’s opera, the weekly camp cinema, and even the special brothel established there. Let’s hope they are shown postcards written from Auschwitz, some of which still exist, where the postman would collect the mail twice-weekly.

…the source of which he indicates to be the website of Simon Sheppard, one of the founders of Redwatch and just about as nasty a facist scumbag as the British far-right have ever managed to produce – although, according to Sheppard, the original source of the swimming pool story is another noted Holocaust denier, Frederick Toben. Sheppard, as I documented here, was expelled from the BNP by Nick Griffin as a result of his producing and distributing an unauthorised election leaflet which contained the following statement:

Jews are in England unlawfully, since the Edict of Expulsion of 1290 has never been repealed. Now these illegal immigrants completely control our news and TV and never miss an opportunity to portray the MULTI-CULTURAL MESS [his caps, not mine] as a normal state of affairs.It was Jews who wrote the Race Relations Act, now called the Public Order Act, a law used exclusively against British Men who defy THE NEW TYRANNY in which people are afraid to say what they think…

Another of Kollerstrom’s ‘sources’, a site called ‘Judicial Inc.’ takes ‘anti-Zionist’ conspiraloonacy to new heights (or maybe depths) by publishing claims like this one…

Who Is Hezbollah?

This is a False Front Enterprise established to draw the Mideast into WW3. There are questions such as, where did they get their 14,000 Katyushas? There are only a few roads from Syria, and Israel, and its spy network would be well aware. Who is dumb enough to fire some useless rockets, that only killed a few Arab Israelis, at an armed to the teeth psycho, knowing he will decimate Lebanon. All Hezbollah did was provide an excuse for Israel to draw America closer to attacking Syria and Iran.

Now Hezbollah hands out millions to injured Lebanese. Where did they get the millions? Look to who the beneficiary is, and that’s Israel. Iran is the last standing powerhouse, it’s move would be to unite Jordan, Syria, Egypt, as a political and military block against Israel.

Whoever is handing out this money has deep pockets, could easily be traced, so if was Iran it would be on every US news program. This Hezbollah is a Israeli operation, and the money is coming through CIA.

Yes, Kollerstrom’s source, who goes by the pseudonym ‘the skunk’ but is, in some quarters, suspected of being Daryl Bradford Smith, another raving anti-Semite and owner of ‘The French Connection’, thinks that Hezbollah is a CIA/Mossad funded ‘false flag’ operation…

…and he also seems to think that Iranian president, Mohammed Ahmedinajad, is the third Antichrist predicted by Nostradamus.

And yet another of Kollerstrom’s sources for his writings on Auschwitz is the website of the Historical Review Press, which is owned by Anthony Hancock, who has a history of links to the far right stretching back through his father, Alan Hancock, to Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.

And, just to finish the job off, the last two of his sources that I’ve taken the time to track down are the Belgian-based ‘Vrij Historisch Onderzoek’, which was set up in the 1980’s by Siegfried Verbeke, a former member of the Vlaamse Militanten Orde (Flemish Order of Militants), yet another organisation with an ‘interesting’ history, which includes organising an annual neo-Nazi rally in conjunction with the League of St. George, and the International Historical Review, founded by David McCalden (British, ex National Front) and Willis Carto (American, founder of the Liberty Lobby). Carto’s Noontide Press is the American published of the infamous anti-Semitic hoax, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

In all, Kollerstrom is putting up a rather novel defence here:

‘I’m not a Nazi-sympathising anti-Semite…

…but everyone I read and take as an ‘authority’ on Auschwitz is.

Whether that’s any more or less novel than the idea that Adolf Hitler was the German Billy Butlin, which would presumably make all poor emaciated sods photographed by Allied troops, on the occasion of their liberating some of these camps, entrants in Uncle Adolf’s Knobbly Ribs Contest™, I’ve no idea but I can’t say I recall the bit in Schindler’s List where the camp ‘guests’ were woken by a few xylophone chimes and a hearty ‘Sieg Heil-De-Heil’ over the tannoy.

Kollerstrom, in ‘responding’ to Blairwatch’s expose has made noise about possible legal action against them and Rachel North…

I’ve never in my life had such filthy insults as I have of late from Rachel and to a lesser extent from ‘Blairwatch’. (I’ve asked my solicitor if its actionable)

Well, if that’s the way you want to play it, Nick, then stick me on the list as well – I’m as game for a bit of ‘Spartacus’ action as anyone else on this one and more than happy to finish off the job of researching the background of your sources in full anticipation of having a day’s entertainment in court.