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Continuing with last week’s theme—the decennial of my “outing”—let’s talk about the Holocaust.

Because I’m never going to be allowed to not talk about it.

Lord knows I’ve tried. I stopped speaking about it publicly after 1995. Returning from a monthlong gig at Waseda University in February ’95, where I’d lectured Jap kids who had no idea about Holocaust history and who—therefore—were literal blank slates, I had an epiphany of sorts, which boiled down to: “I don’t wanna be doing this anymore.” Because it seemed my choices were to speak about the Holocaust in countries where an orthodoxy is enforced by law (Europe, Canada) or by a rigid and unforgiving set of norms (the U.S.), or speak in nations where nobody cares because the Holocaust holds no import (I could’ve told those Jap kids anything. I could’ve said “…and then Hitler unleashed his worst weapon of all on the Jews: Nekopuss, half tabby half octopus,” and, awestruck, they would’ve gasped “Ohhhhhhhhh!”), or lecture in nations where the opposite of Western orthodoxy is enforced (during my Japan gig I was invited by a PLO rep to speak in Gaza, as long as the topic of my speech was “The Holocaust: Why It Never Happened and Why It Should’ve”).

In 1995 I removed myself from the field because I became convinced I could do no good. More than that, I became convinced there was no market for doing good.

The late 1980s/early ’90s had been an exciting time to be in Holocaust history. A natural process of revision was unfolding thanks to the newly freed Eastern Bloc. I was barely old enough to drink, and yet there I was in Moscow, Krakow, Berlin, and Paris…exchanging ideas with the likes of Christopher Hitchens, James Randi, John Sack, Carlos Huerta, and J.C. Pressac. Yeah, I did a few TV shows, which was a ghastly mistake, but even after I stopped doing TV altogether, they’d still put me on air without my consent (in January 1994 Mike Wallace said he wanted to interview me. I refused, so 60 Minutes profiled me anyway using archival footage).

From the beginning, I always said I was only researching the Holocaust to get my own questions answered…

Aw shit, I just said “questions”…now Ron Unz is scratching at my door. Hold on a second…

Unz: “QWESTCHINS QWESTCHINS QWESTCHINS BRAK BRAK BRAAAAK!”

Me [firing my shotgun in the air]: “Get outta here, you misshapen freak! Next time I won’t aim over your head.”

Sorry about that…you say “questions,” it summons him like a cat hearing a tuna can being opened. See, unlike Unz, I didn’t use “I’m only asking QWEST-CHINS” as a ruse to spread untruths. I genuinely was asking questions, and when, by 1995, I’d found answers, I moved on. I was done. But nobody would let me be done. In 1997 the Jewish Defense League put a $25,000 bounty on my head, even though I hadn’t spoken a word about the Holocaust in two years, and after that—after I’d changed my name and moved into the much safer world of GOP politics, documentary filmmaking, and bimbo ranching—my Holocaust past was “outed” in April 2013 and I was condemned to forever have to answer for the damn topic whether I wanted to or not.

And here I sit, pretty much imprisoned by my youthful choices. Banned from Amazon and YouTube as a “denier,” unable to find a publisher for a second edition of my best-selling autobiography because the only guy on earth willing to publish me died, tarred by Wikipedia as a denier (thus rendering me unemployable beyond my job at Takimag, which I pray never ends because my only plan B involves walking West Hollywood at 2 a.m. in short-shorts), and either lionized by moronic deniers who’ve never actually read my work or cursed by them as a “sellout” once they do.

Every now and then, I can be lured back to the topic. If I feel the person doing the luring is sincere. Last week, some pseudonymous “anti-denier” kid on Twitter (in my day, we used our actual names…on principle I don’t respect anyone who won’t) came at me like, “Ha, I just slammed Cole for something he wrote in 1992! Lookit me, I’m a BIG MAN! He failed to take Topf document 13/4/43 into account regarding Krema II; I dunked on him! Dunked! Dunked!”

Well, that kind of nonsense I don’t respond to, because it’s in bad faith (dude actually could’ve just DM’d me for my views on that doc, and I’d have happily shared them). 1992 was a time of discovery and trial and error. We were figuring things out. Pressac hadn’t written his second book yet, and Van Pelt hadn’t written anything (sorry, that’s very “inside baseball”), and we didn’t have the internet so we actually had to fly to archives, like, physically, man—which took forever—and as I’ve said again and again and as only dogs can hear because apparently I speak in a register humans can’t, historiography is a process. New evidence is uncovered, old evidence is reinterpreted, ideas are exchanged, we grow in our understanding.

If you’re in any way in opposition to that dynamic, whether it be from the perspective of “Ban Holocaust revisionism! Anyone who says 5,999,999 instead of 6,000,000 must be imprisoned” or that lunacy’s mirror image, “If you don’t say ‘Holohoax 300,000 dead by typhus’ you ain’t based cuck cuck cuck,” you’re a menace. You’re the bad guy. If you’re against the process, if you come at people with your fists raised because you’re enforcing an orthodoxy, any orthodoxy, you’re the villain.

So last November, a feller in Counter-Currents, Beau “Rainbow” Albrecht, came at me in peace. No fists, palms open. It was a respectful column that speculated that perhaps I’m not being entirely honest in saying that the Holocaust happened. Maybe it was the beatings I took in the ’90s, or my desire to not die (that’s the biggest myth of all—I have many fears, but death ain’t one of ’em), but if only I looked at the “new research” in the field, I’d be forced to admit that the Holocaust was a hoax.

It’s possible Cole might change his mind if he had a look at some of the research his fellow revisionists have done since he left the scene. On the other hand, as objective as he’s been in the past, I could still hardly blame Mr. Cole if he does not look into it or wish to comment further. He’s already come close to getting the ultimate penalty for heresy.

Quite a claim! Was there indeed “research” that could disabuse me of my belief that from 1941 through 1943 the Nazis ran an extermination program targeting Jews?

By gum, if such research exists, I surely want to learn of it!

And thus began an email exchange that lasted from Jan. 6 through Feb. 7. And I’m thinkin’ maybe you’ll find it amusing. Nothing about Trump or MAGAs, nothing about trannies, nothing about Dy’Quarsha murdering a McDonald’s employee over cold fries, nothing about Soros investing $10 million into Dy’Quarsha’s defense and then even more into her successful mayoral campaign once acquitted.

Just history. The kinda stuff that used to excite me, intrigue me, as a kid, until some of you assholes turned it into a waking nightmare.

The complete exchange, all 7,587 words, can be found on my Substack. And I encourage you to read it in its entirety. I’ll include the opening salvos here, as a break from politics, from the terribly depressing stuff about our current state of affairs.

By God, how far have we fallen, how bad are our prospects, how bleak is our reality and how hopeless our future, that I can write a piece about the Holocaust and say, “Here, this’ll take your mind off things”?

Cole to Beau, January 6th

Hi Beau,

David Cole here. I’m planning to do a couple of Holocaust-related columns this year, and I’d like to have a back-and-forth with you regarding the one you penned about me. Lemme know if that’s okay. It’s not something I’m going to do immediately, but maybe in the next month or so.

Best to you in 2023,

David

Beau to Cole, January 7th

Hey, it’s good to hear from you. I hope you’re doing well and enjoying life with a girlfriend who treats you right. The psychos certainly can be a royal pain in the neck, and then some. Borderline personality disorder is no joke!

Anyway, hopefully my article came across as fair, since those were my intentions. If you’d like to further clarify my thoughts, ask away. Please note that as far as my interest in history goes, I’m more of a generalist than perhaps some of the folks you’ve met, and I prefer not to gaze too far into the darkest depths more than necessary.

Best wishes and kind regards,

Beau

Cole to Beau, January 9th

Hi Beau,

Thanks for getting back to me. I actually enjoyed your piece. It wasn’t a fair piece, but it was respectful, and that’s all I ever ask. I don’t expect opinion guys to be fair; I’m not fair. But I appreciate that you were respectful. Whatever I write about you, please know that I’ll return that favor.

So consider this a friendly exchange, not a hostile one.

If you’ll allow me to drone for a moment, last year’s Kanye thing, which coincided with Musk ending the Twitter ban on Holocaust denial, led to a flood of tweets from randos invoking me and my work in a way that damn near made me want to get liquored up and do a Dennis Wilson off a pier. It’s very unpleasant to realize that the thing you devoted your life to, the thing you got beaten up and threatened with death for, has been warped and mutilated by a generation of tards.

That I inadvertently inspired and empowered stupidity kills me inside. It’s the exact opposite of what I wanted to do with my life.

As it’s clear that you are most definitely not stupid, I’d like to probe you about something you wrote:

It’s possible he might change his mind if he had a look at some of the research his fellow revisionists have done since he left the scene. On the other hand, as objective as he’s been in the past, I could still hardly blame Mr. Cole if he does not look into it or wish to comment further. He’s already come close to getting the ultimate penalty for heresy.

That’s not fair at all. It implies that I haven’t examined such “research,” and—worse—it implies that I’m scared to do so, or scared to admit that those “researchers” are right.

And you can pick up the rest of the correspondence here at Substack. Feel free to comment away! I may even reply.