Scholarly French Journal Strives for ‘Exactitude’
Akribeia, the Greek word for “exactitude,” is also the name of an impressive scholarly French-language revisionist journal. Skilfully edited by Jean Plantin, the twice-yearly periodical of some 235-240 pages explores “history, rumors and legends.” Each book-length issue proclaims (quoting French scholar and publisher Pierre Guillaume) that history writing must be revisionist, or it is not real historiography.
The premiere issue of October 1997 includes a lengthy essay by French writer Albert Dauzat on false rumors and legends of the First World War, and a detailed essay by Italian scholar Carlo Mattogno on Germany’s “Final Solution” as seen by neutral and Allied countries in 1941-1942.
The second, March 1998 issue features two lengthy essays by Spanish scholar Enrique Aynat, “Considerations on the deportations of Jews from France and Belgium to eastern Europe in 1942,” and “The reports of the Polish resistance on the Auschwitz gas chambers, 1941-1944.” This issue also contains Theodore O’Keefe’s essay on former Auschwitz inmate Mel Mermelstein, translated from the July-August 1997 Journal of Historical Review, and a detailed article by Mark Weber on the Stutthof concentration camp, translated from the Sept.-Oct. 1997 Journal. Also here is a 14-page “Revisionist Chronology” that summarizes noteworthy events for revisionism in the year 1997.
Almost the entirety of the third issue of October 1998 is devoted to an analysis by Enrique Aynat of the often-cited 1944 “Auschwitz Protocols.”
A valuable and routine feature of the journal is a “Notes de lecture” section, 37 to 41 pages in length, in which dozens of recent books and periodicals, both revisionist and anti-revisionist, are carefully noted, reviewed and summarized.
Carrying on a tradition of solid revisionist scholarship in France, Akribeia fills a major gap left by the demise of Annales d’histoire revisionniste (1987-1990), Revue d’histoire revisionniste (1990-1992), and Revue d’histoire non conformiste (1993-1994).
“Éditions Akribeia” also publishes books, including a French translation of Falsehood in Wartime, Arthur Ponsonby’s important study of First World War propaganda lies (with an introduction by Plantin), and a new edition of the 1950 preface by Albert Paraz to Paul Rassinier’s Le Mensonge d’Ulysse (with a foreword by Robert Faurisson).
From The Journal of Historical Review, November/December 1998 (Vol. 17, No. 6), page 31.