with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting to hear Ahmadinejad in his own words on the US, soccer, nukes, and more. Unfortunately, Spiegel didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do a great job in the debating portion of the interview, specifically about the Holocaust and Israel. I was cheering for them, though.<\/span><\/p>\nSome things I noted:<\/p>\n
Ahmadinejad was very cagy about his position on whether the Holocaust ever happened. This is an important issue to a German magazine, but the interviewer only sort of pinned him to offhandedly saying that Iran neither confirms nor denies it.<\/p>\n
Every time they got close, Ahmadinejad was very good at shifting the conversation to one of two things:<\/p>\n
1. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153IF\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Holocaust happened, why does this mean that Israel should hurt Palestinians?<\/p>\n
2. Why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anyone research the Holocaust and talk about it any way they want in Germany?<\/p>\n
Of course, he wins both points. Palestinians shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t suffer just because Germany murdered Jews. And Freedom of Speech is curtailed in Germany in a way that many democracies wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t tolerate (it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s illegal to deny the Holocaust in Germany).<\/p>\n
For the first point, Spiegel wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t able to consistently separate the Palestinian issue from the Holocaust issue. They weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t able to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s finish one thing at a time. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stop saying IF and hear whether you say it did or didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen. Then we can move on to Israel if you want.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pretty pathetic that Ahmadinejad can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t talk about WW II Europe without talking about Israel; Spiegel could have drawn that out a bit more.<\/p>\n
For the second, Spiegel didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stress the thousands of eyewitnesses, photographs, written records, etc., that proves the case. An answer to, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all kinds of research be done\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is \u00c2\u00a0that all kinds has been done. According to any reasonable standard of historical research, the Holocaust has been proven in such overwhelming mountains of evidence that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ridiculous to continue to humor the crackpots. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on par with saying that more research should be done on whether the earth is flat.<\/p>\n
[Side note: The flat earth question always reminds me of the fatwa issued in 1993 by Saudi Arabia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz, saying that the earth is flat, and anyone who disagrees is an atheist who should be punished.]<\/p>\n
Instead, Spiegel just kept sort of lamely saying, but it really DID happen. Really really. Which makes them sound exactly how he wants them to sound: as though they uncritically accept what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fed to them. They occasionally tried out some other unsound arguments (status quo is best), and he blasted them. The problem isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that there are no arguments against his rhetoric. The problem is that the interviewer was out of his (or her) league.<\/p>\n
Which brings me to one last main point: This wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t supposed to be a debate, \u00c2\u00a0was it? It was an interview. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why they were arguing with him in the first place, instead of just asking him questions and giving him rope.<\/p>\n
They can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t win against the guy, because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an ideologue, and probably much better trained than they are. He thought out his evasions and misleading chatter long ago (probably has a team of spin-doctors helping him out), and they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a chance to change his mind or get him to back down.<\/p>\n
Stick to interviewing, or get better at argument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For those who don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, Spiegel is a highly respected German magazine, which also has an English online site. In this wide-ranging interview with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting to hear Ahmadinejad in his own words on the US, soccer, nukes, and more. Unfortunately, Spiegel didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do a great job in the debating portion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-famous-people","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}