Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYlater, and the Austrian Dr. Josef Bailer. Although the latter tried to argueon grounds of chemistry, he refused to even acknowledge in an ostrich-likemanner the counter-arguments that I personally had sent himin 1993.The allegation of federal German courts and prosecutors that establishedhistorians do not take revisionism seriously precisely proves theunscientific attitude of these established historians, because scienceprimarily means:1. welcoming attempts at refutation;2. discussing them rationally.This is precisely what revisionism does: It welcomes every attemptby established researchers to refute revisionist theses and it discussesand debates them rationally, that is to say, without making personal orpolitical insinuations against the authors and by criticizing their critiquein return – which is then used against us for new criminal charges.But even if criticism is erroneous or wanting, it can still be fruitful,as Karl Popper pointed out: 87“Moreover, criticism may be important, enlightening, and evenfruitful, without being valid: the arguments used in order to rejectsome invalid criticism may throw a lot of new light upon a theory,and can be used as a (tentative) argument in its favor.”If mere erroneousness or inadequacy were prosecutable as such, thenwe all would be sitting in prison according to the principle of generallaws, because we all make mistakes. This can therefore not be an argumentfor criminal prosecution.After all, the principle of trial and error is a main method of science.To punish error would amount to punishing being human and to renderscience impossible. Hence, even if the revisionists got it wrong: sowhat?Prejudices and their ImmunizationThis is what Karl Popper had to say about the omnipresence of humanprejudice: 88“The fact that a sentence appears to some or all of us to be ‘selfevident’,that is to say, the fact that some or even all of us believefirmly in its truth and cannot conceive of its falsity, is no reason why8788Karl Popper, The Open…, op. cit. (note 70), vol. 2, p. 380.Ibid., p. 291.69