Arendt explains it, but her work is not the basis of my denial.
GULAG is plainly NOT exterminationist. They were work camps.
Are you aware of any facilities in GULAG designed for industrialized extermination? Any evidence that there was such intent?
I'd like to see evidence of some kind of Soviet Wannsee Conference, though I doubt any such thing exists. GULAG did not undertake to merely kill, as rapidly as possible, through the skillful application of modern efficiency. It was a hybrid of political imprisonment and slave labor.
How do you know that work was the primary reason for the arrests? There is overwhelming evidence that the desire to exterminate certain groups of people was not to build a canal or something, but to kill them while preserving a facade of functioning jurisprudence. Work was just an added benefit, just like the gold tooth fillings that the Nazis got from the corpses.
Williamson is not denying the mass murder. He questions the method of the murder, which has become a symbol for some people. But questioning the historicity of the symbol is not questioning the underlying truths.