I am noticing a rise in Holocaust denial with the rising anti-Zionism coming out of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Many of these YouTubers, tiktokers, and podcasters point to the writings of David Irving as proof. I know he is a holocaust denier and an idiot, but I would like to read it so I could point out the exact flaws in Irving’s “evidence” and stop getting the comment “You haven’t even read it!”. I also don’t want to send a penny to this author, but also don’t want to break the law in getting access to it.
How would you go about this situation?
Ask a certain person called Anna, she might have it in her**'s archive**.
Totally thought this was code for Heran’s Archivena
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Just live your life
Anyone with enough money to influence society already has enough money to influence society. Given them another $3 doesn’t make you complicit
If they have problematic views but aren’t pushing them on society… Well, no one is perfect.
Ultimately, voting with your wallet is a lie. Best sellers aren’t the best books, they’re the ones boosted by publishers and public figures. Just like the record industry - there’s people who are literally choosing the winners and losers
What’s the ultimate ethical implication of using ketchup at McDonald’s vs buying a dipping sauce? There certainly is one, tiny as it might be. Use that energy to do good things, you’ll make a far greater difference calling a senator than buying a lifetime of books
Or just sidestep it all and pirate it or check it out at a library
I bought a book about communism yesterday off of Amazon.
Cool? That sounded like it was meant as a rebuttal, but that’s my whole argument.
You can’t live a truly moral life under capitalism, but you can fight to change the system while living in the system. There’s no hypocracy in that, suggesting otherwise is just a mid-wit talking point
Now, if we got together and organized a boycott against Amazon and you broke it, that would be a different story
“Everything sucks so do nothing” is exactly how evil stays in power.
That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying live your life and save your energy for where it would actually make a difference
Collective action works, voting with your wallet is a way to make people think they don’t need to organize
Well my attitude is
You can do that…I mean consuming less is great
But only one of these things meaningfully helps fix systematic problems, but they both make you feel like you’re doing something meaningful
The ethics of social media dictate that stealing from people you’ve decided are evil is somewhere between totally ethical and a moral imperative.
Do you have to agree with everyone you give your money to? What sort of economy would that be?
Buy the book on the premise that you want access to the content he spent energy and time to produce. Just like you’d pay to get access to any kind of content that you want to consume because it is the fair thing to do.
Or get it at the library like everyone else said.
Pirating it is not ethical of course, but furthermore it becomes hypocritical and intellectually dishonest if you would criticize some else for pirating content produced by any other author.
I don’t think people expect that you have to agree with everyone you give money to, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to try to avoid sending money to a Holocaust denier specifically for his Holocaust denial
But the OP wants access to that content. It doesn’t matter what the content is, what matters is someone wrote it and they are entitled to payment from those who want to consume it.
Alternatively they could just not read it or ask the people they are debating to send them a copy if they possess one.
I have some big news for you about libraries and second hand book stores.
I think the question includes a discussion of whether or not that access is worth sending money to the author, right? Like, even if OP completely agrees with your position about the author deserving money for access and also wants access, they may want to both avoid sending money to the author and to avoid stealing it more. Of course you mentioned the possibility of finding it in a library and someone else in the thread suggested finding it second hand, which are probably both preferable solutions here if they are practical
I just don’t think there’s any room for debate. You can get it on loan, rent it, buy it secondhand or buy it new. Anything else would be unethical.
That’s fine, that just means the ethical question is now “is accessing it in one of those ways worth the consequences of doing so?” You might well say yes or, as others in these comments have, argue that the consequences are negligible. You might say no. It’s still a relevant debate in the topic OP is asking about even if we completely accept your position about which ways of getting access are ethical
Do you have to agree with everyone you give your money to? What sort of economy would that be?
Probably a pretty nice one, actually.
Yeah isolating yourself from everyone you disagree with is awesome, truly nothing bad ever comes out of it.
Ergo we should feel obligated to give money to people who we believe are actively harming the world?
You are not obligated to read the book.
You should feel obligated to nothing except to remunerate people fairly for their work if you want it.
Sure, I am obviously not obligated to read the book, but what I was specifically responding to was the following remark:
Yeah isolating yourself from everyone you disagree with is awesome, truly nothing bad ever comes out of it.
which in turn was a response to the following:
Do you have to agree with everyone you give your money to? What sort of economy would that be?
Probably a pretty nice one, actually.
I am fine with isolating myself from evil.
I do try. I actively boycott shitty companies (for 30 years and counting) and my list is long and swollen.
If more people took action on their principles our systems would be a lot less shitty.
Just because you can’t boycott everything doesn’t mean you should do nothing.
If you’re just worried about the law, steal it from somewhere in Austria. That dumbass did prison time in Vienna for his holocost denial, so maybe they seized all proceeds and profits and all that shit.
Personally, I’d start with his wikipedia page, and the pages for his books. The people you’re talking to are likely caught in the fascism algorithmic funnel and have only watched videos rather than reading themselves. So they probably don’t have a deeper understanding than what wikipedia provides. That’s part of the appeal of conspiracy theories, that they’re bite-sized talking points that fit neatly together inside even the smallest minds.
I’m willing to bet there are people who have already done the work for you and picked apart the books, and there’s probably conspiracy theorists who have come up with stories for each of those points. And now we’re approaching the point of Branolini’s Law, “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it”
Beyond the scope of your Q, but if I could offer some advice: Instead of arguing, ask interrogating questions, as though you trust them and you’re genuinely trying to understand all the contours. You’ll quickly find many holes in their weak foundation. Success is bringing some awareness to how weak their info is. It’s like asking someone to show you around their messy apartment and now they’re a little embarrassed, so hopefully they’ll clean up or stop talking about it.
Honestly, though, I’d have those convos in person (and worryingly, i have). Algorithmic social media is not built for deep thought or meaningful discussions. IMO It’ll just suck up time and energy that can be better spent elsewhere.
Download a book? Illegally? Online? Through a popular torrent website?
I would never do such an illegal and terrible thing!!
That method is horrible because the author wouldn’t make any money off of it.
I heard there’s this Anna, keeping an archive of those horrible books.
Yeah that would be bad. I think we can agree that if there’s one thing that’s even more important than the ideology of an author, it’s definitely capitalism, which is conveniently not an ideology at all, just one of the fundamental laws of the universe. That’s why it’s important to not pirate things for ideological reasons.
You could just buy the book second-hand. Authors don’t get any of that money, and you’ll be able to get it for much cheaper than new.
You could probably pirate it from somewhere
Library.
deleted by creator
True heroes are anonymous 🤫
go to a library and borrow it?
Furthermore, since it’s very likely that this author is not going to make really complex points, you could just go to the library, skim through it for an hour or two, and take notes on the two or three points worth quoting. (Or go all old-school and make photocopies of a few pages…). This way there is no record of your use of this book anywhere
I utilize Libby and local libraries but it’s not available.
At least in some countries authors get a compensation every time their book is borrowed from a library. So you might still be indirectly supporting the author when borrowing from a library. Also if there’s enough demand, the library may acquire additional copies and the prices for libraries are higher than for consumers.
https://equityatlas.org/how-do-authors-make-money-from-libraries/
Conversely, when you are borrowing a book from an author you like, you probably are supporting them and do not need obliged to purchase it for yourself.
Dunno how it works where you are, but I (author) get money from library books. Much less than when a reader buys it (duh), but it pays for nice Christmas presents.
Not at local library
Do most public libraries have holocaust denial works?
Some do, and inter-library loans are a thing.
highly doubt it, but i’ve seen some similar cases…
i would just pirate tbh
Academic libraries do
In the UK, certainly. It’s not the library’s job to censor what the borrowers want to read, even if it’s David Icke.
In Australia too. I was in Gatton, Queensland, at their Library, and they had signs up warning people to basically go pound sand, the library is not a censorship authority, and that they will not remove books based on “religious morals”, in the LGBT pride section, and a similar sign, lacking the morals bit in some of their conspiracy theory books. And Gold Coast Libraries stocks some of the weirdest conspiracy theory mags in the planet.
People who deny genocides (either the current ongoing one in Palestine as committed by Israel, or the one carried out by the Germans in WWII) are the lowest of the low. Absolute scum. To see people make excuses for atrocities as the Nakba, Sabra and Shatila, and the Holocaust in real time, as one is happening has been the most disturbing development of our age.
I don’t think downloading things illegally is OK, and I also don’t think spending money on genocide deniers like Irving is ethical. I also don’t think reading Irving will help you in any way, because genocide deniers are pretty much all the same, and there’s not a shred of credence or validity to what they have to say. If you still wish to see genocide denial and defense of people who say stuff like “Erase them, their families, mothers and children. These animals can no longer live”, and the denial of that which is obvious, you’ll find plenty of it available for free in modern day conservative shitrags talking about the ethnic cleansing Israel has been carrying out for 77 years.
1000% agree. Those who deny genocides such as the Holodomor, Nakba, Holocaust disgust me. It is so infuriating to read about the horrors, people being shot in their homes, trying to eat grass for food due to malnutrition, and dying of horrible preventable diseases, and then see that Alan Jones thinks “It was a false flag operation to advance the secret societies controlling the world”, etc.
https://annas-archive.org/search?q=david+irving
edit: on the ebooks topic, i’ve had a pretty good experience with the kobo libra color ereader along with calibre, but it’s a miserable experience trying to read graphic novels on it-- any recommendations (that are not amazon/apple/android/google) for an ereader that can do graphics well?
My recommendation for a basic piracy-friendly (to a degree) ereader is one of the old Sony’s, second gen usually.
I think Good E-reader on YouTube has the most in depth reviews to find the one you’re looking for
If you’re looking for a color e-reader the unfortunate truth is that they are just not there yet. The best on available is not really that much better than the Libra color since most are using the same technology as it.
There are a few RLCD devices that are available but from my understanding they aren’t very well reviewed and basically habe to be outside to be used without a backlight.
You can wheels within wheels this shit for eternity. Answer this question and you’ll have the answer. What do you want to do? Do that.
You can steal it, buy it, borrow it, whatever. Ultimately there is no objective right answer. If you think you’ll be better equipped to counter argue the message by reading it, I say that’s more honorable than arguing against it without knowing what it is.
