A FRENCH HUMAN RIGHTS" ACTIVIST SAYS AS MUCH
One of the dangers of writing History in these post modern times is that the traditional tools of historiography, critical evaluation of the documents, evaluation of the biases inherent in historical narratives, assessment of the degree of vermisilitude in historical sources, have all been forgotten. Indeed there are even some historiographers who say a la Hayden White that since historiography presupposes narrative, there is essentially no difference between fiction and history. Of course this is an extreme
position and practicing historians are unlikely to endorse it. However, when political activists for reasons of their own start writing history in order to fuel a particular ideology or advocate the new brand od revisionist identity politics and its associated transformation of the past into collective meomories,it is time to draw a line, and put the record straight.
It is well known that the Holocaust is a 20 th century event uniquely associated with the systematic killing of Jewes from 1941 to 1944 when the German death camps were liberated by the Soviet troops. Auschwitz,birkenau, Treblinka and Dachau have become icons standing for German inhumanity against their fellow citizens. Any attempt to weaken or reduce the level of evil inherent in the Holocaust is distasteful and smacks of revisionism for its own sake.
A French Human Rights' activist, Claude Ribbe in his new book, Crimes of Napoleon, has argued that Napoleon ordered the whosesale killing of the Slave population of Haiti, then known as San Domingo, following the slave rebellion there in the early part of the nineteenth century. He has stated that the rebels were rounded up and all males above the age of 12 were gassed in the holds of ships using sulphur di oxide. To quote Ribbe: In simple terms, Napoleon ordered the killing of as many blacks as possible in Haiti and Guadeloupe to be replaced by new, docile slaves from Africa.".
It seems that Claude Ribbe is not aware of the history of France. It was Napoleon who ordered Slavery aboloshed in the French colonies and there is absolutely no material anywhere to evne hint that Napoleon was the intellectual progenitor of the Halocaust. Such attempts at falsifying History in order to score political points needs to be checked by all people interested in preserving the sanctity of Historical Truth. Thre is no harm if Claude Ribbe makes such arguments on the basis of contemporary documents. Thre is no evidence at all to sustain the picture that he has drawn.
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