THE RUDOLF REPORT

GERMAR RUDOLF · THE RUDOLF REPORTtist not by the result, but by correct form. [...] But it can be seen that theintention to agitate can be recognized not only by errors of form thatseparate beer hall talk from scientific undertaking. On the contrary agitationthat is perfect in form is the most perfidious. [...] But for those whosurvived Auschwitz it can hardly be a slighting insult when an expert usingphony reasoning tells him there never was a mortal danger.Also the state is mocked here. If Deckert’s [a German revisionist]‘Views about the Holocaust’ were correct, the Federal Republic wasfounded on a lie. Every Presidential address, every minute of silence,every history book would be a lie. When he denies the murder of Jews, herepudiates the legitimacy of the Federal Republic.”However, Bahners proceeds from false premises.First, Bahners does not make clear how an intention to agitate canbe recognized, if not by errors of form. It is stated in the German constitutionthat science is free without restriction. Decisions of the GermanFederal Constitutional Court have stated that science is defined byformal rules alone and not by content. These decisions are in agreementwith fundamental theoretical works on the nature of scientificknowledge. If Bahners thinks differently, he is anti-constitutional, antiscientific,and anti-human rights.Secondly, there are no experts who assert that the survivors ofAuschwitz were “never in mortal danger”. Bahners warms up the calculatedlie that revisionists would present Auschwitz as a vacation resortwithout danger to life or limb and generally characterize the NationalSocialist persecution of the Jews as harmless to the Jews. EitherBahners doesn’t know what he’s talking about—in which case heshould stay away from the keyboard—or he himself is agitating againstothers with different opinions, in which case the Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung should not allow Bahners to soil its reputation.Thirdly, Bahners’ conception that the legitimacy of the FederalRepublic of Germany is based on the unconditional recognition of theestablished version of the National Socialist persecution and exterminationof the Jews is absurd and utterly false. If the Federal Republic ofGermany were actually founded on this historical detail, it would be adire weakness, because every state that bases its existence on a versionof history enforced under pains and penalties must sooner or latercome to grief.Certainly, the formal foundations of the legitimacy of the GermanRepublic are very different—human rights, civil right, acceptance by326