Argentina Expels Holocaust Denying Catholic Bishop
Argentina announced late Thursday that it will expel Richard Nelson Williamson, a controversial, ultra conservative Catholic Bishop from the country. Williamson became infamous recently for claiming in a TV interview that there is “huge” historical evidence indicating that not a single Jew was gassed to death by the Nazis during WWII.
“I believe there were no gas chambers,” Williamson said in the interview.
The comments by the bishop, who reportedly has been working in a church in Argentina since 2003, set off a firestorm after a video of his holocaust denials entered the public domain.
According to an Interior Ministry statement published Thursday, Williamson “repeatedly forged information about the reason why he was in Argentina. Officially, the ministry said, Williamson described himself as “an administrative employee” at a Catholica place called La Tradición. But in reality, he was a priest and director of a seminary run by the San Pio X Brotherhood in Moreno, Buenos Aires Province.
In other words, the government used an apparent violation of immigration law to kick the bishop out. Williamson has 10 days to leave Argentina.
The ministry said Williamson questioned whether Jews were victims of the holocaust. In his interview, as despicable as it is, Williamson didn’t actually deny the holocaust, per se. Instead, he attempted to greatly reduce its significance. Williamson said he thinks that between 200,000 and 300,000 Jews “perished in Nazi concentration camps but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber.”
But his reductionism smacks of utter contempt for the lives of those killed, making it for all practical purposes a full holocaust denial. He presents his account of the holocaust as a rational one that is based merely on the evidence. But his language is couched in slick terms. Jews “perished” in concentration camps.
Williamson’s use of the term “perish” seems like a subtle attempt to assign a much less nefarious connotation to concentration camps. People weren’t brutally murdered in the camps, they simply perished, like a wilting flower peacefully fades away. In Williamson’s view, there is no moral culpability, no malfeasance. Williamson claims to be loyal only to the truth. But given the genuinely “huge” evidence of the gas chambers (some of which I have visited), Williamson makes it manifestly clear that his only real loyalty is to his own perverted perception of reality. He won’t be missed, not at least by anyone who truly does respect the truth.
Williamson’s remarks got Pope Benedict XVI into trouble. The Pope had lifted a previous excommunication order on Williamson shortly after the bishop’s holocaust statements became public. Vatican officials say the Pope was unaware of Williamson’s statements. But a delay the Pope’s delay in condemning them raised concern among detractors that the Pope himself was in some way sympathetic to them.
The Pope, who has visited the Auschwitz concentration camp, later condemned any and all denials of the holocaust. He also called on the disgraced bishop to fully retract his comments, which Williamson declined to do.
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Williamson is a crackpot, and I’ll be more than happy to have him polluting someone else’s air with his braindead mutterings, but doesn’t this make you a little bit nervous? We kick somebody out of the country 1) because of erroneous historical views (obv the real reason) and 2) because he lied about his job. On the second charge, the supposedly separationist Kirchner administration is using the Catholic Church’s establishment as the only recognised “church” in Argentina to squeeze out someone who can’t legally list his job as ‘bishop’. Let all other churches beware lest their foreign-born clergy are likewise deported. On the first and most blatant claim, I had previously thought that the defeat of the Nazis was a victory for freedom of speech for all: flat earthers, republicans and holocaust deniers included. Now I worry that in expelling one lunatic we are giving free rein to a Peronist thought police to come after the sane as well.
Matteo,
Very nicely stated. You make an excellent point.
Taos
The priest has his point of view. Like it or not.
The point here, like Mattteo says is to mantain the freedom of speech.
We have a lot of people talking a lot of bologni.
I think that it was good enough to separate the prIest from his job.
Unles He is another father Silvestre or did anything wrong to SMALL CHILDREN
If is just talking, I think He has the right to say nasty things that we do not want to listen
He still has that right, in a democratic society…
If you do not agree with my point, tell me if D’Elias was ever arrested, jailed for good or for one day…or expulsed out of the country.He continues farting around the presidenta
No señor, in the contrary He was later seated in a comfortable chair in a meeting with a lot of banderas of the current administration….
I question if he is a Bishop anymore. It is very good news to see Argentina rise up and toss this guy out of the country. I do not know who would want him anymore. Some where there must be a place for totally goofy folks with no moral compass or integrity. But on second thought, a place like that would be full of politicians.
I do believe it was the right measure to throw Williamson out of the country, albeit, all the constitutional freedom one can enjoy even in Argentina. In Germany or France, as Williamson has mentioned at the end of the video, he could have been sentenced and put to prison.
What makes me wonder is, with Williamson as a luminary, the tip of the iceberg so to speak, how many in this country alone are supporting his views?
Bishop Williamson has every right to speak the truth and did not deserve to be deported. I wish he had been allowed a trial so that he could bring his finding to the public. There is PLENTY of evidence to support his view. There is a reward of $1 million dollars to anyone who can prove that there was even 1 human gassing during the war. Why hasn’t anyone stepped up to claim it???! To the scoffers of his point of view I ask- “Have YOU taken the time to investigate the subject of the holocaust??!” Bishop Williamson has, and so have I and we have found the stories and statistics to be a complete fabrication. The jewish world almanac PROVES that there weren’t even 6 million jews in all of Europe during the war. In fact, there were more jews AFTER the war than before. Do not dismiss me as some kind of crack pot, as the jews have been caught lying numerous times over their fantasy stories of the holocaust. Many “holocaust survivors” have been proven to be bald face LIARS. Several have been exposed on USA television as liars. You will hear about 3 year old girls living with wolves and walking barefoot for thousands of miles in the winter, or of little boys being thrown apples & bread thru the barbwire fence at Auschwitz or of a girl eating her own feces to conceal family heirloom diamonds. These people think you are stupid and will believe anything. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel (which I have read) he makes no mention of gas chambers, only burning pits with different colored smoke depending on which kind of jew was being burned that day. Plus the mass gassings of jews would be very inefficient and dangerous to the german soldiers running the internment camps. What sense does it make for Germany to have rounded up the jews, shipped them for hundreds of miles via railcar, shave their heads & tattoo them justr so they could then be gassed???! It is a crock of BS people!!! If there was a real extermination plan, jews would have been killed where ever they were found. Just like the Boilshevic (jewish) Russians did when they murdered over 60 million christians last century. Stop believing the fantasy stories and do your own investigation. Turn off the television and pick up some books instead. Start with the memoirs of Churchill, Eisenhower & DeGaulle, none of these men mention gassings or death camps. Then read the free online book titled “The myth of the 6 million”. And finally pickup a copy of the international red cross report and see with your own eyes, that there were less than 300,000 jews who died due to typhus & starvation. Think for yourself & don’t fall for the manipulation of emotional jews, they play with our emotions in order to manipulate us and make us feel bad about the opression they brought upon themselves for their insatiable greed and lust for power. Sadly, these jews are doing the same thing to my own beloved country of the US. Just like they do to ANY country they get their hands on.