Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
Professor, Chicago Theological Seminary

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite

Former president of Chicago Theological Seminary (1998-2008), Thistlethwaite is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

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Always Challenge the BIG LIE

A BIG LIE, like the denial of the extensively documented massacre of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, must always be challenged. The simple reason a
BIG LIE must always be challenged is because a BIG LIE is much harder to refute, in fact, than the smaller lies all people encounter in their lives every day.

The BIG LIE is a propaganda technique. Adolf Hitler defined the BIG LIE in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf. Hitler defined the BIG LIE as a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".

The huge danger of a BIG LIE is that is so distorting and corrupting of the truth that it can never be completely eradicated, a point that did not escape Hitler either, "For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying."

The perversity of human nature is that people actually are more prone to believe a BIG LIE than a little one. This is largely because you and I and all the people we actually know lie. I know I've been lied to by others and I know I have lied to others. I know for a fact that people in my family have told lies. Therefore, I tend, whether consciously or unconsciously, to be on the lookout for little lies. 'Will you really take out the trash after I leave for work or are you just saying you will?'

But a BIG LIE is beyond almost everyone's personal experience. We're not on the lookout for BIG LIES because we've never done that ourselves, never had the audacity to try. And especially if a BIG LIE gets repeated often enough, people are even more likely to believe it. It is so preposterous that surely if it were a lie, it would have already been refuted, right?

Therefore, a Holocaust-denying bishop is an obscenity. A Holocaust-denying head of state is an obscenity. If religion or the state have any claim, any claim at all, to speak the truth, then religious or state leaders who tell the BIG LIE must be refuted so loudly and so often that they can no longer speak and be believed, even if they are only doing a traffic report.

It's not good enough to just not lie yourself. Pope Benedict's response to the outcry against his reinstating a Holocaust-denying Bishop was to not lie himself. On Wednesday the current Pope condemned the Nazi genocide of "millions of Jews" and expressed his "full and indisputable solidarity" with the Jewish people. Not good enough. Not good enough at all.

When Popes or politicians will not directly repudiate the BIG LIE then everybody else has to do it. Over and over and over again.

Only the absolute and utter condemnation of the BIG LIE is a decent response. And tragically, even that is often not enough.

By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite  |  February 9, 2009; 9:11 AM ET
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ok so refute his facts and offer proof of the holocaust claims. if it werent for historians questioning the holocaust claims we would still believe the human soap,lampshades made from skin,shrunken heads lies(that the holocaust memorial spokesman admitted were all hoaxes) even though thousands of survivors repeated witnessing such things.....there isnt one picture of a gas chamber.....what exactly is the evidence? i would hope its more than survivor testimonies which as you can see from the prior false claims of atrocities are NOTORIOUSLY UNRELIABLE

Posted by: yorkville7 | February 15, 2009 5:58 PM
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the so-called holocaust denier has dome damage to a number of people, or so they think. but he uttered only words, & words can't hurt me.


what's worse are the fascist "racists," they who maim, torture & kill mostly innocent people.


take the case of the philippines.

there's a new threat of a "reverse racism" that's endemic in the Philippines--& it's mostly perpetrated by the Chinese pretending to be Filipinos.

top of the list is the manila hizzoner himself, alfredo lim, a former police general notorious for cutting corners in his treatment of crime suspects during his stint at the manila police & other postings, & branded as manila's "dirty harry." this was also the same guy who masterminded the infamous "Mendiola Massacre" during the early years of the Cory Aquino rule in the mid-1980s where a dozen or more farmers where butchered--upon Lim's order--while protesting on Mendiola St. near Malacanang Palace in Manila.

Today, he has made Manila probably the dirtiest & most cramped city in the Philippines, & the most unsafe. Imagine a devotee who has exposed shenanigans & corruption of Manila policemen getting "poisoned" by police hitmen in collusion with the church security guards at the Sta. Cruz (Catholic) church in Manila, as he devoutly says his prayers thrice over or more. Imagine walking along cramped Manila streets once branded by an American actress who once visited the as the "foulest & dirtiest" in the world. There's practically no more space for pedestrians to walk through in Sta. Cruz, Escolta & Ongpin & elsewhere, with street hawkers & parked private cars hogging entire stretches of roads.

Worst, buying foods sold at some Chinese eateries are a veritable invitation to committing suicide, as these stuffs are mostly infected with disease-carrying germs. Two establishments have "proven track record" in this regard. One is the JG Merchandise Jewelry & Gift Shop at the China City Gold Center at 1051 Ongpin St. in Sta. Cruz. Under what permit has this jewelry store got to sell "hopia" (Chinese pastry) and other bread and pastry foodstuffs--more so when the hopia it sells are mostly "infected" with really, really toxic germs, that has infected a number of buyers already.

The other one is Chowking Restaurant ( on Libertad St. corner Roxas Blvd. in Pasay City), owned by the Chinese proprietor of Jolibee chain of fast food stores. Chowking is notorious for intentionally infecting diners who get the eatery crew's goat, serving them, for one, with steaming hot & heavily spiced beef stew where urine in the store's cr has also been added. Ask the Chowking outlet on Libertad St., which has been complained against by a number of customers, or the Jolibee branch in a Laguna town near Manila, where a customer found worms in her burger. Excuse me while I puke.

Do the Chinese in the Philippines want to kill the Filipinos so they can take over control of our country?

Posted by: cecilletorcuato | February 11, 2009 4:36 AM
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Occupying the land of the Palestinians exploiting holocaust is an obscenity. Use of phosphorous bombs on the innocent kids is an obscenity. Turning Gaza into a concentration camp is an obscenity.

Posted by: shahidkamal | February 11, 2009 12:47 AM
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Occupying the land of the Palestinians exploiting holocaust is an obscenity. Use of phosphorous bombs on the innocent kids is an obscenity. Turning Gaza into a concentration camp is an obscenity.

Posted by: shahidkamal | February 11, 2009 12:46 AM
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It's best to ignore dumb people. Same as not kicking a sleeping dog.

Posted by: surfer-joe | February 11, 2009 12:18 AM
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The entire war-time atrocity 'denial' is even more subtle, subversive, and repugnant than most are conscious of.

While debate rages in the West, the Japanese have erased all mention of their incredible genocidal acts from their chldrens history books.

Of the millions slaughtered in Northern China, Mongolia and areas like Nanjing and Shangyang, there is no mention of the hideous experiments done by the Japanese Imperial Army Unit 571 -- where animal limbs and organs were sewn onto living humans and horrific chemical 'cocktails' used on children and elders in an effort to 'significantly reduce population burden'. It appears there were no limits on their imagination when it came to hideous torture and human experimentation.

An entire division of Japanese troops were deployed with the sole purpose of destroying all records of the people they massacred -- from small village to major city. To this day it is still difficult to accurately tally the numbers of Chinese and other ethnic groups that were murdered.

Roaming the modern world with profoundly polite manners, with their sense of superiority more than intact, the masters of Japanese Bushido strike richly lucrative business deals, while in the heart of the Japanese homeland, white vans roam the neighborhoods with the war-time Imperial flag (rising sun with rays) emblazoned on the sides.

Holocaust denial is alive and well -- mainly because we who know better have chosen to look the other way -- to forget. What remains of the historical evidence is being continuously disintegrated, obfuscated, and buried by the willfully ignorant and denialists.

Only through intense effort can we keep the memory of the fallen alive, and to keep the memory fresh of just how terrible we humans can become.

What was once known in my youth as indisputable fact is now being more energetically denied by those with equally evil vested interests.

While the insensitive, inferiority complex-driven leaders of modern Japan still lay flowers and prayers at the graves of the Imperial Army monsters that believed the Japanese race was superior to all, I and educators like me will continue to tell the truth.

While companies like Mitsubishi today rake in huge profits, we cannot let ourselves forget -- it was Mitsubishi aircraft that murdered 3000 unsuspecting Americans at Pearl Harbor and countless numbers of innocents in Asia -- no matter how hard they try to buy our memories and erase the past.

Anyone remember this phrase and where and why it was placed?

"Lest We Forget"

Posted by: saj_pratt | February 10, 2009 11:04 PM
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Gee, what's the big deal. Cardinal Law is now working in the Vatican. Yes, that would be Cardinal " I hid pedophiles for years" Law. So there's a holocaust denier in their midst. Who cares? Look with whom he's keeping company.

Posted by: larmoecurl | February 10, 2009 8:41 PM
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Susan you seem so familiar with the BIG LIE theory, you could well publish a paper on that.

While I am not a holocaust denier, please tell me as an intellectual, wouldn't you feel tempted to consider holocaust through the BIG LIE perspective?

In short all I am saying is that by reversing your arguments, apparently you can make holocaust to look like as yet another BIG LIE case.

Please be more careful my dear, for you seem to follow a rather dangerous approach...

Posted by: skata3 | February 10, 2009 6:45 PM
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"And in six days God created..." it all? including the Promised Land? If we're gonna take on the BIG LIES, we have work ahead of us.

Posted by: vinceporter | February 10, 2009 6:41 PM
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VIGOR

Concerning your post:

"You are wrong, not only is God Real but God is a Trinity and God is a BEING OF PURE LOVE and Jesus is God-Incarnate.

Also, satan is also real."


Mr. Thomas, that is your opinion, your hope, and your belief, and nothing more.

Actually, it is not my belief, back when I believed in God, I had heard that God is Love but I did not know that it was and is a literal statement, Love is God's very Being, Love is not an attribute of God.

Since I have met God, I know that God is a BEING OF PURE LOVE.

Some people interchange the words, know and believe, they are not synonomous.

There are some on here that know God's Name but that seems to be the extent of what they know about God, if God was even remotely like what some say, there is no way that I would want to have anything to do with God, but they are wrong.

I have hopes and I have beliefs and I have opinions but I also know a couple of things.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Posted by: ThomasBaum | February 10, 2009 4:51 PM
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"You are wrong, not only is God Real but God is a Trinity and God is a BEING OF PURE LOVE and Jesus is God-Incarnate.

Also, satan is also real."


Mr. Thomas, that is your opinion, your hope, and your belief, and nothing more.

Posted by: vigor | February 10, 2009 4:08 PM
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Always confront the liars. The longer they get away with repeating it without confrontation the more likely people are to listen and possibly adopt that same line. Then you have a massive subset of the population ready to march of a cliff for the cause.

Take the Republican economic theories put in place by Reagan. They went unchallenged for over 20 years and there's still over 20% who repeat it ad nauseam in the midst of the fallout.

Posted by: theobserver4 | February 10, 2009 3:42 PM
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If a BIG LIE is repeated often enough people begin to believe it, that is so true, George Bush told a BIG LIE in order to invade Iraq, he repeated it often enough and no one refuted it. The Holocaust is a part of history, Hitler was wrong to think that Jews should be put to death to create a perfect race, what does religion have to do with race anyway. We all know Hitler was wrong. Its not the first time in history that a Pope was wrong and it was wrong when the Catholic church would not help the Jews in WWII. If someone is willing to stand up and challenge the BIG LIARS, more power to them.

Posted by: rj2008 | February 10, 2009 3:22 PM
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It's funny that "the BIG LIE" is being talked about on a religious forum, the irony is overwhelming.

Posted by: maevtr | February 10, 2009 6:05 AM
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It is interesting that in the context of posture taken toward the Jews "fundementalist christians" are regularly characterized as being blindly supportive of them.
Yet the instances of catholic hate toward the jews are replete.
Catholics, being "christians" we are told by the same people accusing fundementalist chrisitans of bending over backwards to support the jews.

An interesting dichotomy indeed?

It seems the devil really is in the details

Posted by: hammerhead1 | February 10, 2009 5:58 AM
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The way to beat a Big Lie....

Is small truth.

And patience.

*looking at watch*

Of course, if you want people to wake up, they need something to wake up *to,* yaknow?

Posted by: Paganplace | February 9, 2009 9:19 PM
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A great truth is the evil that killed all those people lies in our heart also.

We must die to our animal-selves and be born again as gods. This used to be sufficient to live a holy life as an indiviual. Now we must do it as a global society or eventually suffer extinction.

Posted by: FRIENDENEMY | February 9, 2009 7:37 PM
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CCNL

You wrote, "No, you did not meet god or the trinity."

I did not meet "god or the trinity" as you said, I met God, Who Is a Trinity.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Posted by: ThomasBaum | February 9, 2009 10:42 AM
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bear, lust, john. i sometimes consider why people keep the body in plant like presence. many of the cases are within the ages of corporal lust.

Posted by: congratulations | February 9, 2009 5:45 AM
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Berlusconi, in Italy, is known with women and euthanasia. Etrusks are in Italy and Etrusks may cease their corporal existance and make love any where.

Posted by: congratulations | February 9, 2009 5:41 AM
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For more than a decade, Jewish, Orthodox Christian, and Roma have been involved in a lawsuit against Vatican Bank, which thieved from Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Roma slaughtered by fifteen hundred Franciscan priests. You will find a significant amount of information at the link below.

The Vatican will not settle. Many people, including Orthodox Christians, Jews, Roma, are putting pressure on the Vatican to settle and account for its horrible crimes in this matter. The suit has been monitored all over the world. These Franciscan priests' crimes include cutting up with scissors living Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Roma.

http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/news.html

Please contact the Vatican and ask them to act justly. More information on the Ustasha Franciscan crimes against humanity, including the names of every one of the fifteen hundred Franciscan murderers is available on the web.

Posted by: Farnaz2 | February 8, 2009 4:02 AM
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Thomas The Moses of the NT Baum,

No, you did not meet god or the trinity. Your "visions" are classified as hallucinations.

Posted by: CCNL | February 8, 2009 2:49 AM
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"Not good enough. Not good enough at all," exults the cheeky Prof. Thistlethwaite on her anti-Catholic hobby-horse in judgement of the Pope. Everyone is rightly unnerved by holocaust deniers, hipster theologians included. Yet this one would be sanguine about the holocaust of our own day, under the regime of sacrosanct abortion-on-demand that Barry Obama forces us to underwrite with our tax dollars. As a theologian she's not "good enough" to carry *Prof. Ratzinger's book bag. (*Benedict XVI)

Posted by: kelpius | February 7, 2009 8:16 PM
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COLINNICHOLAS

You wrote, "Wake up people. The clothes have no emperor. It's all make believe. There is no God."

You are wrong, not only is God Real but God is a Trinity and God is a BEING OF PURE LOVE and Jesus is God-Incarnate.

Also, satan is also real.

I have met God and I have also met satan.

You did give a piece of advise that is timely, "Wake up people".

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.

Posted by: ThomasBaum | February 7, 2009 11:28 AM
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I agree with this excellent essay. Bur surely the biggest lie of all - the really BIG lie is the one that the church is founded on - the God lie.

Wake up people. The clothes have no emperor. It's all make believe. There is no God.

Posted by: colinnicholas | February 5, 2009 11:09 AM
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"Bravo! Denying the Holocaust is an obscenity and you had the courage to say it!"

I hope I am correctly interpreting this comment as sarcasm. It doesn't take a very big person to stand up and say, "All you Holocause deniers are nuts!"

Reminds me of something I read in a David Sedaris book - he explains how it really irks him to hear people on the radio say, "You know, call me old fashioned, but I'm just plain against murder and rape." Not the exact quote but hopefully you get the point.

I fully agree with the sentiments of this piece, but instead of just saying "we need to fight against this lie," how about some thoughts as to how we actually do so?

Posted by: legendarypunk | February 5, 2009 9:24 AM
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halozcel1,

The Black Plague was not caused by any acts of humankind against humankind. It was caused by the
by the contagious bacterium Yersinia (syn. Pasteurella) pestis, transmitted from person to person or by the bite of fleas from an infected rodent, especially a rat, and characterized by chills, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and the formation of buboes.

Posted by: CCNL | February 5, 2009 8:31 AM
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Croation CCNL,

You have forgotten the deadliest toll in human history.Let me add;

Black Death/Pest/Bubonic Plague is estimated to have killed 100 millions(one hundred millions/nobody knows exact number indeed) people in Europe in fourteenth century.

Some fanatic catholics(there was no reformer church yet) blamed and accused the Jewish ones for some plague and famine in the beginning of thirteenth century and many Jewish communities massacred,had been stayed in synagogues and burnt.

But,what happened later.
-First,Mongolian invasion in thirteenth century.
-Second,Black Death.100 million death in fourteenth century.

Was it just a coincidence or had catholics been punished ?

Jewish people had been suffering from ancient Egypt and Nebuchadnezzar to Hitler.Let them live....,let them live.....
Let them smile a little......,let them smile a little.....

Posted by: halozcel1 | February 4, 2009 2:39 PM
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Bravo! Denying the Holocaust is an obscenity and you had the courage to say it!

Posted by: emonty | February 4, 2009 12:55 PM
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All of the horrific atrocities committed by humankind against humankind need to be constantly reviewed.

A good starting point is the body counts from these atrocities as found at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm

-some excerpts that should be "burned in" your memories:

Rank Death Toll Cause Centuries
1 55 million Second World War 20C
2 40 million Mao Zedong (mostly famine) 20C
3 40 million Mongol Conquests 13C
4 36 million An Lushan Revolt 8C
5 25 million Fall of the Ming Dynasty 17C
6 20 million Taiping Rebellion 19C
7 20 million Annihilation of the American Indians 15C-19C
8 20 million Iosif Stalin 20C
9 19 million Mideast Slave Trade 7C-19C
10 18 million Atlantic Slave Trade 15C-19C
11 17 million Timur Lenk 14C-15C
12 17 million British India (mostly famine) 19C
13 15 million First World War 20C
14 9 million Russian Civil War 20C
15 8 million Fall of Rome 3C-5C
16 8 million Congo Free State 19C-20C
17 7 million Thirty Years War 17C
18 5 million Russia's Time of Troubles 16C-17C
19 4 million Napoleonic Wars 19C
20 3 million Chinese Civil War 20C
21 3 million French Wars of Religion

Reference, Rummel:

European War Dead (1939-45): 28,736,000
Sino-Japanese War Dead (1937-45): 7,140,000

TOTAL: 35,876,000

War-related Democides

Hitler: 20,946,000
Stalin: 13,053,000
Japanese: 5,964,000
Chinese Nationalist: 5,907,000
Allied Bombing: 796,000
Croatian: 655,000
Tito: 600,000
Romanian domestic democide: 484,000
Chinese Communist: 250,000
Hungarian democide in Yugoslavia: 78,000

[TOTAL: 48,733,000]

[FINAL TOTAL (1937-45): 84,609,000]

Posted by: CCNL | February 4, 2009 10:24 AM
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