Against Mike Cosper's Holocaustianity

Introduction

Mike Cosper, a podcaster and Senior Contributor at Christianity Today, just posted a screed against Joel Webbon on his recent content against "Holocaustianity"; the posture of treating WW2/Holocaust history as a matter of religious orthodoxy and not something to be freely debated. I thought Cosper's post to be the perfect foil for a response that shows the terrible presuppositions of this modern religion. I will respond line-by-line (though not to every line):

The Critique

The correct question for a Christian is not "How many died in the Holocaust," but "How do I not bear false witness and break the ninth commandment?"

This is true in the abstract. Unfortunately, Mike does not evidence the distinction himself, as I will show.

You foolishly pretend that the Holocaust is not one of the most thoroughly researched, documented, affirmed, and accounted for calamities in human history.

This needs a big asterisk: it is the most thoroughly researched, documented [etc.] calamities in human history *according to him and other commentators. The problem is that all claims are subject to the conscience for assent. That is, an individual is morally free to withhold assent to a historical proposition until such a time as his conscience is satisfied. Here, it would be direct study of the primary sources themselves, and not merely because Mike Cosper, the Holocaust museum, or even any particular historian claimed as much. In this regard, the objective nature of the evidence - even if overwhelmingly confirmatory of the proposition - is irrelevant; its subjective apprehension by the intellect is necessary to bind the conscience.

Maybe lean into that instead of the garbage spewed by people like Daryll Cooper and Candace Owens.

I can understand Owens, but what has Darryl said or done that justifies Mike's public vitriol against him, other than give a dissenting account of how to frame the War (and not even denying the Holocaust or questioning the numbers)?

I'm not saying you're not a Christian; so don't pretend I'm making some religious claim around this.

Let's take stock of what Mike has said, here and elsewhere: in his mind, merely withholding assent from the claims of WW2 pending fuller research is in and of itself a violation of the 9th commandment. So, the individual does not need direct empirical verification to satisfy his conscience; school textbooks, Yad Vashem, and Schindler's List are sufficient to that end. What does this sound like to the Christian? Quite simply, Scripture itself. The Christian does not *per se* need empirical verification of, say, the Resurrection; faith in divine testimony is sufficient to satisfy the conscience. It thus follows that Mike is *functionally* treating approved secondary or tertiary sources (perhaps even including his own say-so) as divine Scripture, able to bind men's consciences to historical propositions without their own direct investigation of the matter. In fact, he seems to go even further; to dare to openly withhold assent to the Received Narrative and engage in primary source research before coming to a conclusion (or just choosing never to do so and remain an agnostic) is itself a 9th Commandment violation. Thus, he most certainly does make a religious claim around the Holocaust.

it will be contributing to the overall permission structure of violence worldwide against Jews.

This is a classic tactic of unconverted Jews and their apologists; if you do not give us what we want or believe what we want you to believe, you are contributing to violence. Starting at the logical level, no, withholding of assent to or even flat denial of the Received Narrative does not in any way, shape, or form justify wanton violence against Jews. One is a strictly historical question, the other is ethical.

However, Cosper more likely has in mind the tangible effects of tolerating/promoting Holocaust scepticism; that, since it calls into question the sincerity of the Jews - an already widely disdained people - it will serve as a psychological trigger for certain people to commit acts of violence against them. To this I respond; how is this any different to any questions of significant public discourse? How does anti-Islamic rhetoric not carry the risk of provoking violence against Muslims (e.g. Brenton Tarrant)? How does anti-tyranny rhetoric not risk rebellious violence (e.g. attacks on ICE agents; assassination attempts on Trump)? How does anti-Christian rhetoric not risk atrocities against Christians (e.g. Syria under the new regime; Boko Haram against Nigerian Christians; Jewish settlers against the Palestinian Christians in Taybeh; and too many others to list here)?

In fact, this raises a curious question; why does Mike seemingly invest orders of magnitude more time and energy protesting violence against the Jews than he does of his Christian brethren, the true children of Abraham? From a search of his Twitter, I have not found a peep about the Nigerian situation. Now maybe he did post something and Twitter is just bugging out (it does have the most unreliable search engine in my experience), but all my searching turns up silence. And if this is reflective of reality, I will simply ask; where are his protestations for total social rejection of Bible-denial, or resurrection denial, and Christ-denial? Surely these things in some distant way contribute to violence against Christians, right? Ipso facto, Cosper has greater affinity for and loyalty to the Jews (converted or heathen) than he does the Church.

Since Mike seemingly do not care for these other matters, it follows that he likely does not believe anti-Islamic, anti-tyranny, and anti-Christian rhetoric necessarily contributes to violence against the objects of their critique, meaning that there is a genuine social right for people to entertain such opinions. Yet he arbitrarily denies this for anti-Received Narrative rhetoric. But to answer his claim more directly, merely expressing/defending such opinions does not contribute to injustices committed against Jews, not in any meaningfully direct way for which one can be held morally responsible. An earnest Holocaust sceptic does not control what a crazed terrorist from the Order of Nine Angles will do with his arguments. Without direct knowledge that making a certain otherwise innocuous claim will cause a particular person to start murdering people (or that it *could* cause reasonable persons to do the same; it is impossible to account for how the uncounted insane of the world will use various ideas), the person making the claim bares no responsibility for what may happen later. In this case, those entertaining Holocaust-sceptical questions in public do not as such share responsibility for a vague "permission structure of violence worldwide against Jews."

Moving on:

You embody the definition of a know-nothing, from you and your hosts misconstrued understanding of the term "Shoah" to your utterly idiotic comments about lack of evidence of gas chambers and crematoria.

Mike is correct that Wesley made an error with Shoah; he rather defined 'Holocaust.' Still, I ask him; does a linguistic error warrant insults like "fecal festival," "idiotic comments," and "know-nothing"? Do you reserve the same attacks for undegrad Bible college students who wrongly translated a word due to relying on Strong's Concordance? And likewise for dissident historical claims on gas chambers; these do not arise from thin air, but from rational considerations of certain evidences (or lack thereof) perceived by some people. Perhaps that is still incorrect; indeed, I have had a cursory look at primary source evidence that seems to show the construction and use of such crematoria. But I have also seen long-winded forums of autistically granular arguments back and forth on the nature of this evidence. Given this, where is Mike's basic Christian charity towards those entertaining such claims even if they are false? Why does he immediately assume idiocy and malice a-priori?

Furthermore, antisemitism persists not because Jews are unique authors of a particular evil

Fact-check: False. We can cite many examples in the realm of politics and culture, but there is one easy example that suffices; the rejection and killing of their own Messiah, for which the NT lays collective blame upon the Jewish people (e.g. Acts 2:22–23), and providential history further proclaims (the destruction of the Temple; the dispersion from Judea; over a millennium of statelessness and hostility with Christendom). It is this fundamental reality that created the hostility which persisted between Jews and Christendom, which tragically spilled over into violence on multiple occasions.

it is because — as the Apostle Paul said, "Salvation comes from the Jews." Jesus was and is will always be a Jew from Judea who took away the sins of the world. Even as the church has formed, extended, expanded that salvation, that root remains, and Satan hates it. Don't do his work.

Cosper's judaizing here is most manifest. What did Jesus mean by "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22)? Simple; he was speaking to one from the Samaritans, a sect with incomplete revelation, worshipping what they do not know (per our Lord's words). The Jews had the complete revelation, even though they systematically abused it. That's it.

As to Jesus' ethnic Jewishness, who disputes this here? No one. But Mike's use of "root" here calls to mind the oft-abused chapter from Romans 11, that "you [ingrafted Gentiles] do not support the root, but the root supports you." Oft-abused, in that Judeophiles will claim that the "root" here is the natural Jewish people, when that is manifestly not the case; they are the branches that Paul mentions just earlier. Paul's comment here is explained by noting how the Gentiles do not have an innate quality that allows them to boast over the apostate Jews; rather, they are supported solely by the unmerited grace of God. *That* is the root; not the Jews, nor mere fact of Jesus' Jewish ethnicity. See my recent clipped discussion on this very matter here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps7B8PT9FEQ

One need not assign specific theological significance to the shock of the Holocaust, or the crematoria, the idea of sacrifice as you insisted. That's a straw man.

In fact many Jews rejected "Holocaust" for "Shoah" because the former was a greek term that invoked burnt sacrifice and the latter means "catastrophe" or "calamity" — in direct contrast to the nonsense your colleague spewed after his cursory misreading of a wikipedia page.

There is a fair critique to be made of insinuating this to be a common or mainstream view, when (at least from my cursory search) it is a minority view. Nonetheless, it does exist in Jewish thought:

• https://www.theway.org.uk/back/37solomon.pdf

• https://www.dbu.edu/mitchell/modern-resources/holocaust-views.html

Further, even if it didn't, once again; why is Mike's vitriol justified?

Likewise, one need not attribute the beauty of Jewish resilience in the aftermath of the second world war — the surprises of 1948... 1967... 1973... in order to say "The Jewish people have a right to return to their ancestral homeland, and they certainly have a right not to be swallowed up by Islamists on all sides who salivate for Jewish blood and a restoration of Islamic glory."

That's nice. Do White Americans and ethnic Europeans also have a right to an ancestral homeland?

I mean this sincerely — I do not get what you're up to dabbling in a truly demonic evil. I suspect nothing I say will break through. But what you are doing is indulging a profound, ancient, demonic evil. The evil of the Amalekites. The evil of Haman. Have you not noticed that at the hands of providence, the fate of those who conspire in these ways turns badly for them... eventually.

Go read Esther, and see what happens when people indulge conspiracy theories about the Jewish people. Haman and Xerxes and the entire Persian empire disappear from history.

This is a fascinating statement; where to even begin?

First, given what the discussion is about, Mike is calling mere Holocaust-scepticism "a truly demonic evil"; a "profound, ancient, demonic evil. The evil of the Amalekites. The evil of Haman." And yet he asserts that this is not a religious claim on his part. Truly hilarious.

Then there are the claims on providence and what happened to the Persians. Let's be clear, Cosper; are you giving an implicit threat of genocidal violence against people who question Holocaust history or entertain collective flaws in the Jewish people? Or perhaps are you glibly expressing your excitement for such a prospect? Are you awaiting Joel's killing at the hands of Jewish vigilantes (per the Esther story)? I would love clarification on this above all. Perhaps someone should ask Christianity Today whether they entertain such views from their staff.

By some mysterious fact of providence, as Walker Percy once put it, you can walk down the streets of every major city in the world, and you're not gonna meet an Assyrian or a Babylonian. Those civilizations collapsed and were assimilated into others. But you might meet a Jew, whose origins go back to Judea, and who is linked by both blood and providence to the word made flesh, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

First, do ethnic Palestinians who trace their heritage back to ancient Judea count? Or are they just sub-human Amalekites?

Second, Mike shows his lack of real world experience here. Assyrians still exist to this day. There's a whole Assyrian diaspora a short drive from me in Fairfield (Sydney). The globally famous 'Christ the Good Shepherd Church' under Mar Mari Emmanuel (a recent victim of Muslim violence) is Assyrian and based in that area (https://cgsc.org.au). I even have one of these mythical Assyrians for a friend:

Suffice to say, Cosper needs to touch pavement, and not just that of the local Synagogue.

Conclusion

Cosper is the quintessential Holocaustian, feigning absolute allegiance to Christ while treating all perceived slights against the Jews with a greater fury. Despite claiming otherwise, his words and actions clearly evidence that even questioning mainstream WW2 history is of the highest religious significance to him, possibly even rising to the level of divine, genocidal punishment against those who engage in such.

This is the fruit of the Post-War Consensus, of Philosemitism, of Zionism; it is the fruit of replacing the Christ-Satan paradigm of Christianity with the Jew-Hitler paradigm of Holocaustianity.

This issue is central to my forthcoming book On the Right to Dissent, published by Sacra Press. Keep an eye out for when it drops.