That’s what you get when you take a sabbatical without explaining it to everyone in detail: wild rumors circulating about my disappearance.
Everybody can relax now. I am alive and well, and in no particular danger of anything. I even gave up riding my bicycle during poorly lit times of the day and switched to full-daylight hours. In addition, I limit my tours to low-traffic areas, so collision risks with cars and reindeer are minute.
My confrontation with U.S. authorities turned out to be much less of a deal than feared, so we’re good there, too. Therefore, things are settling back to normality. Hence, everyone back to work now, and stop worrying!
As to ways of contacting me, please do not hesitate sending mail to my new address:
– G. Rudolf, PO Box 1230, Hemphill, TX 75948, USA.
You can also mail in donations in any form. I just have the bad habit of going to the PO Box only once in a few weeks, and checks sometimes sit on my desk before I deposit them, so please have patience with me.
My old email address Germar.Rudolf@comcast.net is still active. However, I have had that address for 11 years now, and it has gotten to the point where I receive way more spam than any emails truly meant for me personally. If you send an email to this address, you will receive an automatic reply saying this email address is no longer monitored, and that you should go to my website to find out how best to contact me. That’s spam prevention. In fact, I do monitor the address, but only rarely. If I find an email from someone I choose to get or stay in contact with, I will respond eventually from my new email address. I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause.
Disenchantment
For years my wife has been telling me that the revisionist community – whatever that is – is misusing me as a slave laborer, as their shield against persecution, and as the authorities’ whipping boy. If there is any project that needed attention, it was thrown at me, and I sure picked it up and did as expected – mostly. When Bradley Smith started plans to transition CODOH to a new man at the helm, I was his man, and I felt honored – initially. When Richard Widmann bailed out of Inconvenient History, I ended up holding that baby, too – and badly so. When the decade-long Master of the CODOH Forum was looking for a successor, he zoomed in on me, but I refused, since I hate discussion fora with a passion. Apart, there was just no way to shoulder that burden as well.
With three school-age children, a household to run, a grumpy wife to assuage, I was stretching my resources to make things work somehow. No time was left anymore for any of the things I wanted to do. And I wasn’t getting much of anything out of it financially either.
Then shit hit the fan in early 2022, when Ingram threw Castle Hill Publishers out of their print, warehouse and distribution system. Who was going to organize printing, warehousing and shipping/distribution in the US and in Europe? Clearly, Germar will. Because Germar does it all, so that the remaining 8.5 billion people on this planet don’t have to lift a finger!
No. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Well, actually, I tried. But then it bent, it buckled, it squeaked, and finally, it broke.
With little to no experience in publishing, printing, warehousing and distribution, Michael Santomauro has taken over the helm at both Castle Hill and CODOH. I have become a mere spectator of what has been unfolding since late 2022. Anyone complaining that things don’t run as smoothly anymore as they once did; that the option of free eBook downloads is disappearing; that all hardcover books have been discontinued; that no German print books are available anymore at all – all this is a result of the 8.5 billion lazy onlookers on this planet no longer having at their disposal a slave laborer called Germar.
As a German citizen, I was one of the most vulnerable members of the “revisionist community.” U.S. citizens can hide behind the First Amendment as their protective shield. If push comes to shove, I cannot. And still, no one had qualms or thought much of it that I did the heavy lifting for so many years almost all by myself, thus exposing me to the wrath of the powers that be, German, Jewish, U.S. American, you name them. After all, I never complained. So how could anyone even know?
Really? You’re all afraid of sticking your heads out, because you know what consequences touching the third rail has. Why do you think it’s any different for me? You had the comfort of being complacent, timid, lazy and cowardly, because I took the burden of “we have got to do something!” off your shoulders and hauled it all by myself.
But no more. I will no longer serve as your convenient excuse allowing you to be complacent, timid, lazy and cowardly.
I quit.
Please understand that correctly: I did not change my views on the Holocaust. I did not recant. I simply refuse to keep being abused by the world’s governments as their favorite target of censorship and persecution. I’ve had it. If anyone else likes to help Michael pick up the slack, please get in touch with him.
In the meantime, I finally have time to do what I want to do. After so many decades of serving what others expected me to serve, now is the time for me to dish out what I like, on my terms.
My Way
I am trying to be a rational person, and back up my opinions with data and well-researched arguments. Not that I am always right. Sometimes my research misleads me into a confirmation-biased dead end. But more often than not, I at least have a strong position – and my wife hates it when I do this, leaving others little room to argue.
I have my ethical and philosophical principles. I lead a spartan, ascetic life. I try to minimize my ecological footprint while maximizing my mental and physical health with wholesome food and a demanding athletic routine. I try to make my decisions based on Kant’s categorical imperative: act following rules that can be elevated to universal principles.
Finally, when it comes to free speech, I have implemented in CODOH what I believe is a crucial prime directive: Freedom of speech finds its limits where it is abused to advocate, promote, justify or condone denying others their civil rights. Because those who deny others their civil rights cannot claim those rights for themselves.
Oppositional Defiance Disorder
That said, I have learned over the past decades that many, maybe even a majority, of people who are friendly or open to revisionist ideas on the Holocaust suffer from what I would call oppositional defiance disorder. These people are against anything that is considered true by the mainstream: the Earth is flat, we didn’t go to the moon, global warming isn’t caused by humans, viruses don’t cause AIDS, and vaccinations are bad for you.
So here I go: The earth is a rotational ellipsoid; Wernher von Braun’s German rocket team made Americans go to the moon; global warming is caused by humans, and if left unchecked, will lead to the extinction of life on Earth as we know it; viruses cause AIDS; and some vaccinations are crucial, other detrimental, and others again are not very helpful for most people. It all depends.
I’ve put up with these reflexive nay-sayers in the “community” for decades. They are charming and harmless eccentrics, for the most part. But in February of 2022, a painful red line was transgressed where I couldn’t look the other way anymore:
“Putin is on the right side of history.”
“Iran is right with supporting Russia in her war against Ukraine.”
That did it for me. Freedom of speech can challenge any claims and try to refute them. But when freedom of speech is used to justify war, conquest, mass murder and atrocities – all massive violations of a lot of people’s civil rights – it’s the end of my tolerance.
Putin is on the wrong side of history, and so is Iran in its support for Putin.
That’s not negotiable.
No society, no nation, no political system, no government is perfect. They all have flaws. Many European nations throw peaceful historical and political dissidents into prisons. They should not point at Russia or Iran with fingers for doing it also, albeit probably on a larger scale. Those who sit in glass houses shouldn’t throw with stones.
But it wasn’t Ukraine who invaded Russia. It was the other way around. What part of WRONG do you not understand?
Maybe Ukraine should have rolled over and played possum when Russia attacked. That would have prevented this bloodbath. The only other ethically defensible alternative would have been for NATO to give Ukraine all the support they needed fast. It is outright cruel and irresponsible to trickle weapons and ammunition into Ukraine in large-enough quantities for a war of attrition, but not large enough for a quick and humane Ukrainian Blitzkrieg victory.
Europe’s biggest problem is the demographic collapse of its indigenous populations. Having hundreds of thousands of European young men kill one another on the battlefields of Ukraine isn’t exactly helping avert this problem. It’s exacerbating it. Hence, both war-mongering Putin and his European and American pussyfoot counterparts are gravediggers of Europe’s indigenous tribes. If you decide to go to war, make it painful but swift, like pulling teeth. Anything else is a crime against humanity.
As a European, I am deeply moved to see that this continent finally gets forged into a unit that stands strong together – unfortunately by the cauldron of war, but that is often where nations are born. The trauma of World War II is finally overcome. Our sight is directed forward at last.
United we stand!
Ukraine will emerge as a proud nation from this conflict, and so will Europe.
Слава Україні!
Glory to the Heroes!
