‘Mermaids: The Body Found’, the Holocaust and Holocaust Revisionism
Karl Radl
A couple of months ago I watched the two popular and rather famous (in skeptic circles anyway) docufiction creations of the Discovery channel in relation to Mermaids: ‘Mermaids: The Body Found’ and ‘Mermaids: The New Evidence’. Now when I was reflecting on what I had seen and my own reactions to it. It occurred me to look online to see what others had thought upon viewing this very clever and; if it wasn't for the actors and CGI, quite superficially convincing presentation about the ‘existence’ of Mermaids.
It wasn't too much of a surprise when I read YouTube debates about the ‘reality’ of Mermaids and just how many people actually believed the docufictions precisely because they came from:
A) A Reputable Source.
B) Had ‘Eye Witnesses’
C) Had ‘Expert Witnesses’
D) Used lots of technical terms.
E) Entertained the audience.
Indeed there were people with intelligence on YouTube and forums more broadly defending these documentaries as factual pieces of work that ‘exposed the reality’ of Mermaids. This is despite the fact that these documentaries are easily found (from the Discovery Channel’s own website and elsewhere) to be fictional and deliberately made so as to see what the reaction would be.
This experience brought to my mind the various documentaries that are constantly made about the so-called ‘holocaust’ and the way that people react to them. The best representative from the ‘holocaust’ camp is without doubt the six part ‘Auschwitz: The Nazis and ‘The Final Solution’’ that was produced by the BBC.
Now if we compare the two documentary series: it is no difficult to see the commonalities between them. In so far as both ‘Mermaids’ and ‘Auschwitz’ both come from what are generally regarded as highly reputable sources and both are exceptionally well-produced with a high degree of technical skill and sensible editing used to convey their message in such a way that is both entertains and convinces their audience.
‘Mermaids’; like ‘Auschwitz’, made a considerable amount of use of the power of images in convincing its audience of the validity of its claims. This was affected by the use of CGI and dramatic re-construction to convey to the audience the sequence of events and how things actually happened according to the producers of the two documentaries.
As the old maxim goes: a picture can convey a thousand words, but if this is true then a dramatic re-construction and visual demonstration can convey ten to a hundred thousand words. This is why presentation and professionalism are so important as a good presentation conveys the impression of authority and the use of neutrality in wording, claims and names of organizations is similarly important because it conveys an air of independent authority and if known to the viewer as an intellectually solid source: it confers an air of intellectual authority to the documentary that it may; or may not, actually have in strictly intellectual terms.
This air of authority and the use of dramatic re-construction/CGI however also performs another vital task: it keeps the audience entertained by immersing them in the alleged events and making them feel; like you do when you are a film, as if they were there watching it happen themselves. This gives the viewer a vital point of personal relation to the material presented and it is through this personal interaction and a sense of having ‘seen it’ that uncritical (i.e. quasi-religious) belief in a position is propagated through personalizing that experience for each individual without having to make individual experiences.
This dramatic immersion in the alleged events also breaks up the infamous monotony of documentaries in general and makes the documentary almost a fly-on-the-wall type program based on alleged events. This can be used to popularize and provoke an emotional investment in the subject on the part of the viewer and that this can be applied to claims that are difficult; at best, to prove we can turn to subjects like Bigfoot and Ghosts. Both of which have used; and continue to use, reconstructive dramatics and CGI to make their claims seem more plausible, while ignoring evidence to the contrary as well as introducing tacit ‘skeptical’ voices into the program so that they seem to be making a ‘balanced’ presentation.
‘Mermaids’ makes good use of these tacit ‘skeptical’ voices by allowing the actors playing the marine scientists who allegedly discovered the Mermaids to ‘debate’ their opponents and show their opponents in such a light that they refuse to answer the claims point-on-point and instead resort to name-calling and fallacies of authority. This is particularly pointed in the alternating use of ‘expert’ and ‘eye-witness testimony’ to build up the idea in the viewer that there is a solid body of evidence that is being denied, but which is clearly substantial and worth taking very seriously.
It plays on the viewer’s emotions superbly to make its case by encouraging empathy for the viewer with the ‘scientists’ struggling against ‘the system’ to make the world aware of the reality of mermaids. Thus ‘Mermaids’ uses all the tools of the propagandist in making its fictional case and perhaps unintentionally exposes to a wider audience the fact that people can be made to believe almost anything given an able enough propagandist with suitable resources made available to them.
‘Auschwitz’ on the other hand doesn't make good use of tacit ‘skeptical’ voices: in large part I think because the subject that is being dealt with is (almost religiously) held to be sacrosanct and beyond question (something that is not held to be true by mainstream historians on any other subject apart from the Third Reich and the ‘righteousness’ of the Second World War more generally).
This lack of tacit ‘skeptical’ voices gives the presentation a certain lack of impact to the viewer (it does tacitly suggest it cannot be questioned but it also opens up the concern that the documentary is biased in some viewers) and the driver of empathy in the viewer is primarily sorrow with (carefully selected and edited) ‘holocaust survivors’ telling various tales of woe that are never questioned and are intelligently slotted into the broader narrative claims of the documentary.
This is also evidenced by the lack of ‘experts’ in ‘Auschwitz’ since the addition of ‘experts’ would detract from the single-minded attempt to engage the empathy of the viewer in relation to being apologetic for the alleged events. This has a purpose however and can be seen in the last part of ‘Auschwitz’ where the demands of ‘Never Again’ are made by ‘holocaust survivors’ and an ‘ex-guard’ from Auschwitz is badly translated and edited into claiming it ‘happened’.
Thus we can see that ‘Auschwitz’ in comparison to ‘Mermaids’ makes far less use of the tools of the propagandist trade and only really seeks to single-mindedly make the viewer feel guilty. ‘Auschwitz’ does make excellent use of dramatic re-construction and CGI to keep the viewer interested, but the entertainment value and viewer engagement in ‘Auschwitz’ is limited by a lack of variety in the presentation and the fact that it is far too blatant in its orientation to seem in any way balanced or play overly much on the emotions of the viewer.
In seeking to combat the ‘holocaust’ narrative: revisionism has produced many videos and even one or two attempts at documentaries. These tend to be; without meaning to offend anyone (most unlike me I know), rather shabby affairs that rely on adopting an ‘expose’ format or try to debate the ‘holocaust’ in video (much like the revisionist historians have smashed the ‘holocaust’ narrative to intellectual bits, but have done so in a generally dry as dust way).
In order to take the fight to the ‘holocaust industry’ it is necessary for revisionists to radically re-think their presentation so as to appeal to a wider audience. A new and highly aggressive form of revisionism that builds on the unimpeachable and (often frighteningly) meticulous scholarship behind it, while equally focusing on quality (as well as innovating new forms) of presentation to a wider audience is required.
Despite myths to the contrary this is possible as was proven by very successful low-budget documentaries such as ‘Loose Change’. ‘Loose Change’; if memory serves, was produced for under $3,000 and was a smash-hit in its day provoking exactly the sort of attention and debate that will provide oxygen to the revisionist case. As well as the opportunity to once again publicly expose the ‘holocaust experts’ as knowing remarkably little about their subject (since most research on the subject is simply incestuous and contentious new theses are deliberately avoided): a revisionist version of ‘Loose Change’ would also drive sales of revisionist materials and the outrage and exposure thus generated could be easily turned into a significant rate of intellectual conversion.
This would; in turn, provide the necessary interest and potentially the financial support to push revisionist material further by producing further low-budget, high-production value documentaries and thus provide some impetus to the propagation of revisionist views. The internet has given revisionists the medium to distribute their material to a mass audience with little to no charge: this opportunity needs to be exploited not avoided.
It is simply not enough to win the intellectual argument: we also have to win the popular argument as without taking the battle to the ‘holocaust industry’ on its own ground then revisionism will never be allowed to gain the vital entry point into the academic acceptability that it needs to bring the ‘holocaust’ house of cards crashing down around the ears of the jews and the Israel Lobby.