Lying With Dogs
Conservative commentator Denyse O’Leary has posted an interview with Adnan Oktar at the Uncommon Descent weblog. Oktar is probably better known by his pen name, “Harun Yahya”. He writes prolifically, and has several antievolution books. O’Leary appreciates Oktar’s antievolution. One wonders, though, whether she is as appreciative of some of Oktar’s other contrarian stances, like, say, his Holocaust denial activism. The phenomenon is called “second denial”: those who engage in evolution denial often also take up some other obviously wrong idea.
This isn’t exactly low-profile. The TalkOrigins Archive has had an article up documenting the Holocaust denialism of Harun Yahya as far back as 2003. At the time, it was tough to find the content of Oktar’s “The Holocaust Hoax”, but thanks to “sparc” at AtBC, I now have a link to the full book online. Oktar’s thesis is that Zionists collaborated with Hitler to set up a system to encourage emigration to Palestine; that once hostilities in World War II began, Hitler continued with the policies of segregation previously agreed to by collecting Jews in labor camps; and the whole mass mortality thing was due to “tiffus plague” and the general end-of-war famine. Oktar specifically is in denial that any of the concentration camps utilized gas chambers for mass killings.
How about it, Denyse? What do you think of Oktar’s “second denial”?
And most of his antievolution arguments are little more than warmed over, bottom of the barrel, young earth creationist BS.
I am shocked! Shocked I tell you, that an ID advocate such as Denyse would be impressed by YEC arguments…
Ha! I surfed over to Pandas Thumb after leaving my comment here only to be greeted to this headline by Richard Hoppe:
“(Updated) Denyse O’Leary and the bottom of the barrel”.
Great minds I guess.
Denyse O’Leary I believe just has an admiration for Oktar’s anti-evolution stance only nothing more. This sounds a bit like Obama before the election with his past associations for his political career, and of course his former pastor of 20 years who he praised for awhile than had to quite his membership. This of course wasn’t considered “lying with dogs” by many liberals.
People expect that when bad associations come to light, that those we esteem will repudiate them and distance themselves from what is bad or evil. This was expected of Obama, and O’Leary should escape it only to the extent that she does not share in your esteem.
It is something we might expect of someone without any habit for research that that person would endorse someone’s views on a topic without regard for any other well-known stances they might have. At least part of the endorsement is premised on the supposed authority of the person endorsed, and that aspect is directly affected by their credibility as demonstrated in the full body of their works.