"I know that many will disagree with that assessment, arguing that anti-semitism among Christians in Europe led to the mass murder of Jews. My counter argument is that, while there was ideological anti-semitism among Christians in Europe, the Nazi “Final Solution” is based in post-Christian racialist ideologies rather than in Christian theology as such."
I totally agree. My long-held view has been that Nazism in Germany intended to introduce a nationalistic and racially based Paganism that would support the state and by law replace all other systems of religious belief (including Judaism and Christianity). This Paganism had a fertile ground prepared for it in Germany through 19th Century German romanticism and philosophy and the injured pride of the Germans.
To anyone who doubts this I present just a couple anecdotal pieces of evidence. First, the story of a German Protestant pastor martyred for his faith in Buchenwald:
Second, a quote from Eric Metaxes' biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran German pastor who was likewise martyred for his Christian faith:
"Since Hitler had no religion other than himself, his opposition to Christianity and the church was less ideological than practical. That was not the case for many leaders of the Third Reich. Alfred Rosenberg, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and others were bitterly anti-Christian and were ideologically opposed to Christianity, and wanted to replace it with a religion of their own devising. Under their leadership, said Shirer [in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich], “the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists.”
So not quite 100 years later, there is a strong movement afoot in the US mimicking the Nazi regime. Only the perpetrators are calling us the Nazis and fascists.
During the 2004 election season my wife and I watched Cabaret. The next day we talked about how scary it was that our society was behaving very much like Germany in those days. And 20 years later it is much worse. I keep hoping our course can be changed without the cataclysm of WW II, but human nature is rising to its worst.
In the last two or three years, I have read some interesting books concerning the holocaust. There have been books going back to at least 1950 right after the war that questioned whether 6 million Jewish people had been killed. From a purely logistical point of view how would that have worked? How did the Germans systematically kill 6000 people a day for three years? Can you imagine the amount of support manpower needed to have done that when they were fighting on the eastern front and needed everyone they could get?
Now I looked up to see if I could find out how many crematoriums the Germans had built during World War II and found that they built approximately 25. Each crematorium would’ve had 10 to 15 of it for the process. Now it takes three hours to cremate a human body so that means only eight bodies per oven and a 24 hour. Period. So how could they possibly have processed 6000 bodies a day? I believe they would’ve needed at least 150 or 200 crematoriums to do that and they’re never worth that many built .
The books I read, indicated that most people in the concentration camps died of disease, and they died of cholera , diphtheria, and typhoid. The sources are estimated that at least 2 1/2 million people died from those diseases and starvation , yes, there were those who were killed and cremated. According to the books I read the information on 6 million people killed came from the Nuremberg trials, but only from verbal testimony there was never any hard paper evidence to back any of it up.
There was a very famous case in Canada many years ago, involving an author who wrote a book denying that the holocaust took place as said. The author was able to defend himself and won his case.
I suspect the real truth is somewhere in between and more likely it was about 3 million Jewish people who probably died and most of them probably died from disease, this does not include the atrocities that happened in Russia with the German mobile killing trucks.
Another interesting fact that is documented also is that the allies after the war took over the concentration camps and you reused them to house German citizens, civilians. It is estimated that 5 million German citizens died between 1945 and 1950 from the same problems of lack of food and disease that the Jewish and other people suffered in the camps.
So there are some valid viewpoints out there concerning what happened and what may not have happened. It’s 70 to 80 years after the war for a lot of interesting truth to come out.
As to Churchill, all our heroes somehow end up with feed of Clay and that was certainly probably the case of Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill was more interested in preserving the Empire that he was anything else. And it is perhaps true that World WarII might’ve been avoided. It did not really make sense for England and France to go to war over Poland and try to guarantee them as a nation state when they had no way to really do that.
So once again, the real truth may be something in between either extreme.
I'm certainly open to re-examination of the historical evidence along the lines you suggest. There's been a lot of research, some not well known, that sheds light on these horrible events. Unfortunately there are people on both extremes who have agendas that may not include "the real truth."
Regarding "avoiding WW2", to me this is a Western European centric construct. I believe that Germany was always going to go to war against Russia. And by far the greatest amount of killing happened in the East.
Interesting comment about Germany going to war with Russia. There is a firm basis for the fascists and commies fighting each other, Spanish Civil war for one. Additionally, there is a work of fiction that shows extreme hatred between Stalin and Hitler at the end. The Berkut by Joseph Haywood. Good read.
I also decided to delve into this with the assistance of AI....not only did I find that Gemini, Aria and ChatGTP all pushed the same narrative bias, and would sometimes error out or tell me "against terms...bla bla" when the data they fed became mathematically impossible with the other data they fed. All I will say is, count the ovens, (ask if any got removed), check the sizes, person capacity etc. Then, look at the total claim of burned.
I chose to take everything as conservatively as possible to actually favour the narrative, e.g. saying 1.5hours per body when that is modern crematoriums. Also, think of the fuel shortages during WW2.
I can share all my working out:
March 1942 to Nov 1943 - 2M / 21 Months = 3,174 bodies a day every day without fail , or in the worst place 900,000 bodies / 21 Months = 1,428 bodies per day in that one location every day. Min 1.5 to 3 hours, so lets say 1.5 hours / 24hours = 16 people per day per oven, or 89 ovens, non stop 24 hours per day for 24 months in that location; and in all locations for 2M people, 198 ovens based on a the fastest burning ovens which would be dificult with wartime fuel rations and total production....insane dedication to evil, if those numbers are correct, since it was based conservatively on 1.5 hours and using them 24 hours. Back breaking work for at least 400people (2 per over, minimum) x 3, 8 hour shifts of back breaking , soul destroying work, nevermind gassing with cyclonB, logistics a for gas and body transport etc...... No wonder they lost the war.
The Germans and the allies must have lied about the number of ovens for some reason , because they say Treblinka only had 8 they say, not 89....Sobibor has 3, Auschwitz 4xLarge Crematoria. The fog of war, I suppose, but counting ovens should be easier than counting millions of people.
As I told Steve, I'm certainly open to this type of evidence based revision of the standard historiography. I have read that as many as 500K Polish Jews survived the war--two of my Polish teachers at DLI were among them. Some survived by fleeing by various routes, others survived within Poland with the help of ethnic Poles. Now, that was out of a pre-war population of about 3M in a country that suffered one of the most brutal occupations for longer than any other country, for a death rate of 84%. Pretty horrific. About 3M ethnic Poles also died. Many of these people--Jews and Poles--died due to the overall conditions--brutal hardships, random killings, targeted reprisals, partisan fighting and then the westward movement of the Soviet front and the fighting retreat of the German forces through Poland. Presumably Jews who had not been rounded up were also killed in these situations, but there were also a fair number who escaped to the USSR earlier in the war (Menachem Begin was one of those). The point being that deaths in the death camps are only part of the equation. I emphasize the Polish situation because Poland had by far the largest Jewish population in Europe. (I'm not sure how the USSR fits in there--my belief, subject to correction, is that the Soviet Jews who were killed, mostly in Belarus and Ukraine, were often killed in situ, without being shipped to death camps, although large parts of the Jewish populations in those areas had been Polish citizens up to 1939.)
However, war time conditions in Poland were among the worst in all of Europe--along with the USSR and Yugoslavia. Other countries--including Germany!--did not have such high death rates--although they didn't have such a high Jewish population to begin with. The deportations of Jews from other countries to the death camps located in Poland are well documented--Hungary is a good example of a very large such operation, but none of these countries had nearly as large an initial Jewish population as Poland and in most of those countries the death rate would not have been as high as in Poland. It's a complicated picture.
The result is that the 6 million figure was probably arrived at rather casually based on assumptions about the pre-war Jewish population and the further assumption that "the Nazis killed them all" in the occupied areas. On the one hand, many were killed outside the death camps, on the other hand the death camps were almost certainly not as efficient as portrayed--again, the notion of German efficiency. But then again the Final Solution wasn't as thorough as assumed--horrific, but not without survivors. Therefore, the 6 million figure is probably too high simply based on seat of the pants considerations.
However, Irving's claims that the correct figure was only 200-300K seems clearly to be one of his reckless assertions. The same seat of the pants considerations that could be used to revise downward from 6M indicate that the correct figure remains far higher than Irving's claims--certainly in the multiple millions. Further, it remains clear that the Nazis did make a major effort toward their Final Solution for at least 2-3 years. This was not a casual matter. It really did involve considerable logistic efforts.
She was referencing the recent terror attack in Lebanon, where Israel had planted explosives in pagers which were then activated, causing explosions across Lebanon. This terror attack was justified as a targeted attack on Hezbollah, with the excuse of narrowing down the range of destruction. At least 2 children were killed as well as many bystanders being critically injured, with most injuries affecting the faces, hands, and genital areas of the victims.
Snark from Lipstadt. It refers to the Israeli terrorist act of blowing up civil servants and some Hezbollah with exploding beepers and walkie-talkies. It was a case of dancing on the grave of the innocents.
Odious is an apt description. Her gleeful commentary demonstrates a callousness and arrogance I find common among those, like her, that hold high office or elevated stature due to their wealth in our society.
I found this article ( 2 links below ) and some of Aronson's other writings very interesting.
I think well worth the read.
Shlomo Aronson
scholar-in-residence at the Library and professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem
Shlomo Aronson was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin, where he received his doctorate.
The Holocaust and the Founding of Israel
Scholar and Journalist Speaks in 'Israel at 50' Series
US Library of Congress
" the Holocaust in terms of a multiple trap". According to Aronson, the Nazis devised this trap such that Jews' attempts to extricate themselves would only further the Nazis' genocidal ambitions. "
" "They were stateless, powerless -- pawns in the struggle between nations," said Mr. Aronson. "Having no country of their own, they were unable to assert their political self-interest or self-defense. Instead, they were forced to rely on others to act on their behalf." "
"Mr. Aronson observed, "there was created an ever-growing trap" -- culminating in the Holocaust -- "into which Jews were maneuvered until there was no escape.""
"He added that his job as a historian is not to cast blame, but to understand why."
"As the war progressed and the plight of the Jews became more drastic, Germany hoped the Allies would accept refugees. The Nazis even offered deals -- Allied concessions in exchange for the lives of Jews."
"Prior to 1941, the Nazi policy was to place Jews in concentrated ghettos, and they even had a plan to send all European Jews to the African island of Madagascar. But Hitler needed British cooperation for that plan."
""Hitler didn't decide to kill the Jews until 1941," Mr. Aronson said. Up until that time, the Nazi leader was content to simply push the Jews out of German territory,"
"So the 'final solution' wasn't a matter of simple racial hatred, but a complex political decision."
"They were stateless, powerless -- pawns in the struggle between nations," said Mr. Aronson.
" Only at the close of the war did the complete story of the Holocaust begin to reach a mass audience. And since that time, Mr. Aronson contends, the world has begun to perceive the Holocaust as something universal -- a crime against the entire world, rather than one people. "
Great write up. Reasonable people can disagree on certain subjects, as you indicated. I am concerned that freedom of speech and information might be curtailed in the future. Permit me to share this link.https://quannguyen128.substack.com/p/battle-of-maling
This is someone who shouldn't even have a job. She's just an Israel lobbyist posing as an academic in a position that has no real function except to campaign for Israel and shut down speech. This is someone who previously called Roger Waters an anti-semite, who has smeared so many people simply because they believe that Palestinians should be treated equally under international law. And here she is celebrating a gristly terror attack with no consequences.
In my opinion the home of the accusation of ‘antisemite’ is the hatred projected to others from a position of ethnosupremacy - it is intended to cover for, and distract from, that hatred, that some (ahem) have for people they regard as inferior. ‘But I’m not an antisemite’ is defensive and deficient - challenging the ethnosupremacy behind the accusation may be more accurate and enlightening.
"I know that many will disagree with that assessment, arguing that anti-semitism among Christians in Europe led to the mass murder of Jews. My counter argument is that, while there was ideological anti-semitism among Christians in Europe, the Nazi “Final Solution” is based in post-Christian racialist ideologies rather than in Christian theology as such."
I totally agree. My long-held view has been that Nazism in Germany intended to introduce a nationalistic and racially based Paganism that would support the state and by law replace all other systems of religious belief (including Judaism and Christianity). This Paganism had a fertile ground prepared for it in Germany through 19th Century German romanticism and philosophy and the injured pride of the Germans.
To anyone who doubts this I present just a couple anecdotal pieces of evidence. First, the story of a German Protestant pastor martyred for his faith in Buchenwald:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/11/giving-thanks-in-hitlers-reich
Second, a quote from Eric Metaxes' biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran German pastor who was likewise martyred for his Christian faith:
"Since Hitler had no religion other than himself, his opposition to Christianity and the church was less ideological than practical. That was not the case for many leaders of the Third Reich. Alfred Rosenberg, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, and others were bitterly anti-Christian and were ideologically opposed to Christianity, and wanted to replace it with a religion of their own devising. Under their leadership, said Shirer [in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich], “the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists.”
So not quite 100 years later, there is a strong movement afoot in the US mimicking the Nazi regime. Only the perpetrators are calling us the Nazis and fascists.
During the 2004 election season my wife and I watched Cabaret. The next day we talked about how scary it was that our society was behaving very much like Germany in those days. And 20 years later it is much worse. I keep hoping our course can be changed without the cataclysm of WW II, but human nature is rising to its worst.
Mark - Thanks for the in depth research and analysis on a difficult subject. It added a lot of good information to complement the Unz article.
Unz made the comment in an older article there were over a thousand people in jail for holocaust denial in Europe.
My head spins that a Ukrainian force, Azov, with Nazi paraphernalia that is illegal in many European countries, is fighting under a Jewish President.
In the last two or three years, I have read some interesting books concerning the holocaust. There have been books going back to at least 1950 right after the war that questioned whether 6 million Jewish people had been killed. From a purely logistical point of view how would that have worked? How did the Germans systematically kill 6000 people a day for three years? Can you imagine the amount of support manpower needed to have done that when they were fighting on the eastern front and needed everyone they could get?
Now I looked up to see if I could find out how many crematoriums the Germans had built during World War II and found that they built approximately 25. Each crematorium would’ve had 10 to 15 of it for the process. Now it takes three hours to cremate a human body so that means only eight bodies per oven and a 24 hour. Period. So how could they possibly have processed 6000 bodies a day? I believe they would’ve needed at least 150 or 200 crematoriums to do that and they’re never worth that many built .
The books I read, indicated that most people in the concentration camps died of disease, and they died of cholera , diphtheria, and typhoid. The sources are estimated that at least 2 1/2 million people died from those diseases and starvation , yes, there were those who were killed and cremated. According to the books I read the information on 6 million people killed came from the Nuremberg trials, but only from verbal testimony there was never any hard paper evidence to back any of it up.
There was a very famous case in Canada many years ago, involving an author who wrote a book denying that the holocaust took place as said. The author was able to defend himself and won his case.
I suspect the real truth is somewhere in between and more likely it was about 3 million Jewish people who probably died and most of them probably died from disease, this does not include the atrocities that happened in Russia with the German mobile killing trucks.
Another interesting fact that is documented also is that the allies after the war took over the concentration camps and you reused them to house German citizens, civilians. It is estimated that 5 million German citizens died between 1945 and 1950 from the same problems of lack of food and disease that the Jewish and other people suffered in the camps.
So there are some valid viewpoints out there concerning what happened and what may not have happened. It’s 70 to 80 years after the war for a lot of interesting truth to come out.
As to Churchill, all our heroes somehow end up with feed of Clay and that was certainly probably the case of Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill was more interested in preserving the Empire that he was anything else. And it is perhaps true that World WarII might’ve been avoided. It did not really make sense for England and France to go to war over Poland and try to guarantee them as a nation state when they had no way to really do that.
So once again, the real truth may be something in between either extreme.
I'm certainly open to re-examination of the historical evidence along the lines you suggest. There's been a lot of research, some not well known, that sheds light on these horrible events. Unfortunately there are people on both extremes who have agendas that may not include "the real truth."
Regarding "avoiding WW2", to me this is a Western European centric construct. I believe that Germany was always going to go to war against Russia. And by far the greatest amount of killing happened in the East.
Interesting comment about Germany going to war with Russia. There is a firm basis for the fascists and commies fighting each other, Spanish Civil war for one. Additionally, there is a work of fiction that shows extreme hatred between Stalin and Hitler at the end. The Berkut by Joseph Haywood. Good read.
I also decided to delve into this with the assistance of AI....not only did I find that Gemini, Aria and ChatGTP all pushed the same narrative bias, and would sometimes error out or tell me "against terms...bla bla" when the data they fed became mathematically impossible with the other data they fed. All I will say is, count the ovens, (ask if any got removed), check the sizes, person capacity etc. Then, look at the total claim of burned.
I chose to take everything as conservatively as possible to actually favour the narrative, e.g. saying 1.5hours per body when that is modern crematoriums. Also, think of the fuel shortages during WW2.
I can share all my working out:
March 1942 to Nov 1943 - 2M / 21 Months = 3,174 bodies a day every day without fail , or in the worst place 900,000 bodies / 21 Months = 1,428 bodies per day in that one location every day. Min 1.5 to 3 hours, so lets say 1.5 hours / 24hours = 16 people per day per oven, or 89 ovens, non stop 24 hours per day for 24 months in that location; and in all locations for 2M people, 198 ovens based on a the fastest burning ovens which would be dificult with wartime fuel rations and total production....insane dedication to evil, if those numbers are correct, since it was based conservatively on 1.5 hours and using them 24 hours. Back breaking work for at least 400people (2 per over, minimum) x 3, 8 hour shifts of back breaking , soul destroying work, nevermind gassing with cyclonB, logistics a for gas and body transport etc...... No wonder they lost the war.
The Germans and the allies must have lied about the number of ovens for some reason , because they say Treblinka only had 8 they say, not 89....Sobibor has 3, Auschwitz 4xLarge Crematoria. The fog of war, I suppose, but counting ovens should be easier than counting millions of people.
As I told Steve, I'm certainly open to this type of evidence based revision of the standard historiography. I have read that as many as 500K Polish Jews survived the war--two of my Polish teachers at DLI were among them. Some survived by fleeing by various routes, others survived within Poland with the help of ethnic Poles. Now, that was out of a pre-war population of about 3M in a country that suffered one of the most brutal occupations for longer than any other country, for a death rate of 84%. Pretty horrific. About 3M ethnic Poles also died. Many of these people--Jews and Poles--died due to the overall conditions--brutal hardships, random killings, targeted reprisals, partisan fighting and then the westward movement of the Soviet front and the fighting retreat of the German forces through Poland. Presumably Jews who had not been rounded up were also killed in these situations, but there were also a fair number who escaped to the USSR earlier in the war (Menachem Begin was one of those). The point being that deaths in the death camps are only part of the equation. I emphasize the Polish situation because Poland had by far the largest Jewish population in Europe. (I'm not sure how the USSR fits in there--my belief, subject to correction, is that the Soviet Jews who were killed, mostly in Belarus and Ukraine, were often killed in situ, without being shipped to death camps, although large parts of the Jewish populations in those areas had been Polish citizens up to 1939.)
However, war time conditions in Poland were among the worst in all of Europe--along with the USSR and Yugoslavia. Other countries--including Germany!--did not have such high death rates--although they didn't have such a high Jewish population to begin with. The deportations of Jews from other countries to the death camps located in Poland are well documented--Hungary is a good example of a very large such operation, but none of these countries had nearly as large an initial Jewish population as Poland and in most of those countries the death rate would not have been as high as in Poland. It's a complicated picture.
The result is that the 6 million figure was probably arrived at rather casually based on assumptions about the pre-war Jewish population and the further assumption that "the Nazis killed them all" in the occupied areas. On the one hand, many were killed outside the death camps, on the other hand the death camps were almost certainly not as efficient as portrayed--again, the notion of German efficiency. But then again the Final Solution wasn't as thorough as assumed--horrific, but not without survivors. Therefore, the 6 million figure is probably too high simply based on seat of the pants considerations.
However, Irving's claims that the correct figure was only 200-300K seems clearly to be one of his reckless assertions. The same seat of the pants considerations that could be used to revise downward from 6M indicate that the correct figure remains far higher than Irving's claims--certainly in the multiple millions. Further, it remains clear that the Nazis did make a major effort toward their Final Solution for at least 2-3 years. This was not a casual matter. It really did involve considerable logistic efforts.
I don't get it: what does "...wanna beeper" mean?
She was referencing the recent terror attack in Lebanon, where Israel had planted explosives in pagers which were then activated, causing explosions across Lebanon. This terror attack was justified as a targeted attack on Hezbollah, with the excuse of narrowing down the range of destruction. At least 2 children were killed as well as many bystanders being critically injured, with most injuries affecting the faces, hands, and genital areas of the victims.
Snark from Lipstadt. It refers to the Israeli terrorist act of blowing up civil servants and some Hezbollah with exploding beepers and walkie-talkies. It was a case of dancing on the grave of the innocents.
“She is not a terribly sympathetic figure.” No, more like odious, and seems to be failing grandly in her mission to combat anti-semitism.
Odious is an apt description. Her gleeful commentary demonstrates a callousness and arrogance I find common among those, like her, that hold high office or elevated stature due to their wealth in our society.
I found this article ( 2 links below ) and some of Aronson's other writings very interesting.
I think well worth the read.
Shlomo Aronson
scholar-in-residence at the Library and professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem
Shlomo Aronson was educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Munich and the Free University of Berlin, where he received his doctorate.
The Holocaust and the Founding of Israel
Scholar and Journalist Speaks in 'Israel at 50' Series
US Library of Congress
" the Holocaust in terms of a multiple trap". According to Aronson, the Nazis devised this trap such that Jews' attempts to extricate themselves would only further the Nazis' genocidal ambitions. "
" "They were stateless, powerless -- pawns in the struggle between nations," said Mr. Aronson. "Having no country of their own, they were unable to assert their political self-interest or self-defense. Instead, they were forced to rely on others to act on their behalf." "
"Mr. Aronson observed, "there was created an ever-growing trap" -- culminating in the Holocaust -- "into which Jews were maneuvered until there was no escape.""
"He added that his job as a historian is not to cast blame, but to understand why."
"As the war progressed and the plight of the Jews became more drastic, Germany hoped the Allies would accept refugees. The Nazis even offered deals -- Allied concessions in exchange for the lives of Jews."
"Prior to 1941, the Nazi policy was to place Jews in concentrated ghettos, and they even had a plan to send all European Jews to the African island of Madagascar. But Hitler needed British cooperation for that plan."
""Hitler didn't decide to kill the Jews until 1941," Mr. Aronson said. Up until that time, the Nazi leader was content to simply push the Jews out of German territory,"
"So the 'final solution' wasn't a matter of simple racial hatred, but a complex political decision."
"They were stateless, powerless -- pawns in the struggle between nations," said Mr. Aronson.
https://archive.is/SmXvx
https://loc.gov/loc/lcib/9807/aronson.html
" Only at the close of the war did the complete story of the Holocaust begin to reach a mass audience. And since that time, Mr. Aronson contends, the world has begun to perceive the Holocaust as something universal -- a crime against the entire world, rather than one people. "
Great write up. Reasonable people can disagree on certain subjects, as you indicated. I am concerned that freedom of speech and information might be curtailed in the future. Permit me to share this link.https://quannguyen128.substack.com/p/battle-of-maling
Max Blumenthal re Deborah Lipstadt. You'll see why I referred to here as a pro:
https://youtu.be/PlY9C-KUneo?t=1007
This is someone who shouldn't even have a job. She's just an Israel lobbyist posing as an academic in a position that has no real function except to campaign for Israel and shut down speech. This is someone who previously called Roger Waters an anti-semite, who has smeared so many people simply because they believe that Palestinians should be treated equally under international law. And here she is celebrating a gristly terror attack with no consequences.
In my opinion the home of the accusation of ‘antisemite’ is the hatred projected to others from a position of ethnosupremacy - it is intended to cover for, and distract from, that hatred, that some (ahem) have for people they regard as inferior. ‘But I’m not an antisemite’ is defensive and deficient - challenging the ethnosupremacy behind the accusation may be more accurate and enlightening.