FALSEHOOD IN WARTIME

This little book is a REAL GEM of Discordiana.  The author is Arthur Ponsonby, MP, and the ISBN is 0-939484-39-0.  Ponsonby simply compiled as much as he could find of the spiteful WHOPPERS the Allies spread about the Germans, and the ones the Germans spread about the Allies, during the Great War.  He explained that stories like this help us justify shooting at each other.

WE ALL HAVE TO LIVE WITH OURSELVES SOMEHOW.

Having collected the lies, the author then helpfully debunks them for us.  For example: the very first thing I learned in this book is that a "fact" I learned in history class is untrue.  Ponsonby explained that NO Holocaust victims were ever boiled down into soap.  The rumor started, he says, during the PREVIOUS WAR, when someone said the Germans were melting down their own dead to make glycerine for military use.  It made the papers and everything.  You can see the ancestry here:  glycerine is usually a by-product of soapmaking, and it's used to make TNT.  Somehow that rumor waited until the Holocaust became common knowledge in a later war, and here we are today, still breathing fire at the Nazis for what they did.  It makes everything we did to them, and the Axis powers, seem way beyond justified.

THANK YOU, MR. PONSONBY.  THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE.  I remember wondering, decades ago, how much soap you could really make out of Holocaust victims because they were essentially walking skeletons.  Soap is made of rendered fat.  If you're starting from Holocaust victims, you're going to end up with NO SOAP.  But at the time, I didn't really think it through.  MAYBE NOBODY DID.

What I find striking is that apparently the real Holocaust WASN'T BAD ENOUGH for the rumor-mongers.  Or anyone else.  We have an ENDLESS APPETITE for rage and indignation, but we also need to feel like NICE PEOPLE who wouldn't do anything nasty without a good reason.  The lies that spring from this desire to be NICE AND ANGRY are almost immortal, like a magic glob of used chewing gum passed from mouth to mouth, getting MORE FLAVORFUL the farther it travels.  It may finally be stuck under the edge of the kitchen table, but you can always put it back in your mouth and start chewing again.  What flavor is that gum?  APPLES OF DISCORD, I'll wager.  

The book's author quoted one of his colleagues as saying that wartime disinformation will change when human nature does.  

Fat chance.

Can I offer you an apple?