History Forum / General / General Topics / May 2008

Let this point not be misunderstood. The deniers have the absolute right to
stand on any street corner and spread their calumnies. They have the right
to publish their articles and books and hold their gatherings. But free
speech does not guarantee them the right to be treated as the "other" side
of a legitimate debate. Nor does it guarantee them space on op-ed pages or
time on television and radio shows. Most important, it does not call for
people such as Chomsky to stand by them and thereby commend their views to
the public. [Chomsky's behavior can be contrasted with that of 34 of
France's leading historians who, in response to Faurisson's efforts, issued
a declaration protesting his attempt to deny the Holocaust. The declaration
read in part: "Everyone is free to interpret a phenomenon like the
Hitlerite genocide according to his own philosophy. Everyone is free to
compare it with other enterprises of murder committed earlier, at the same
time, later. Everyone is free to offer such or such kind of explanations;
everyone is free, to the limit, to imagine or to dream that these monstrous
deeds did not take place. Unfortunately, they did take place and no one can
deny their existence without committing an outrage on the truth. It is not
necessary to ask how technically such mass murder was possible. It was
technically possible, seeing that it took place. That is the required point
of departure of every historical inquiry on this subject. This truth it
behooves us to remember in simple terms: there is not and there cannot be a
debate about the existence of the gas chambers." The full text of the
declaration appeared in Le Monde, February 21, 1979.]

We have only witnessed the beginning of this movement's efforts to permeate
cultural, historical, and educational orbits. They must be taken seriously:
Far more than the history of the Holocaust is at stake.

While Holocaust denial is not a new phenomenon, it has increased in scope
and intensity since the mid-1970s. It is important to understand that the
deniers do not work in a vacuum. Part of their success can be traced to an
intellectual climate that has made its mark in the scholarly world during
the past two decades. The deniers are plying their trade at a time when
much of history seems to be up for grabs and attacks on the Western
rationalist tradition have become commonplace.

This tendency can be traced, at least in part, to intellectual currents
that began to emerge in the late 1960s. Various scholars began to argue
that texts had no fixed meaning. The reader's interpretation, not the
author's intention, determined meaning. Duke University professor Stanley
Fish is most closely associated with this approach in the literary field.
(67) It became more difficult to talk about the objective truth of a text,
legal concept, or even an event. In academic circles some scholars spoke of
relative truths, rejecting the notion that there was one version of the
world that was necessarily right while another was wrong. (68) Proponents
of this methodology, such as the prominent and widely read philosopher
Richard Rorty, denied the allegation that they believed that two
incompatible views on a significant issue were of equal worth. (69) But
others disagreed. Hilary Putnam, one of the most influential contemporary
academic philosophers, thought it particularly dangerous because it seemed
to suggest that every conceptual system was "just as good as the other."
(70) Still others rightfully worried that it opened the doors of the
academy, and of society at large, to an array of farfetched notions that
could no longer be dismissed out of hand simply because they were absurd.

Nonetheless, as a methodology this approach to texts had something to
recommend it. It placed an important, though possibly overstated, emphasis
on the role played by the reader's perspective in assigning meaning to a
text. It was also a reminder that the interpretations of the less powerful
groups in society have generally been ignored. But it also fostered an
atmosphere in which it became harder to say that an idea was beyond the
pale of rational thought. At its most radical it contended that there was
no bedrock thing such as experience. Experience was mediated through one's
language. The scholars who supported this deconstructionist approach were
neither deniers themselves nor sympathetic to the deniers' attitudes; most
had no trouble identifying Holocaust denial as disingenuous. But because
deconstructionism argued that experience was relative and nothing was
fixed, it created an atmosphere of permissiveness toward questioning the
meaning of historical events and made it hard for its proponents to assert
that there was anything "off limits" for this skeptical approach. The
legacy of this kind of thinking was evident when students had to confront
the issue. Far too many of them found it impossible to recognize Holocaust
denial as a movement with no scholarly, intellectual, or rational validity.
A sentiment had been generated in society - not just on campus - that made
it difficult to say: "This has nothing to do with ideas. This is bigotry."

This relativistic approach to the truth has permeated the arena of popular
culture, where there is an increasing fascination with, and acceptance of,
the irrational. One area in which this has been evident is in the recurring
debate regarding the assassination of President Kennedy. While there is
reason to question some of the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the
theories regarding the killing that have increasingly gained acceptance
border on the irrational. Notions of a conspiracy within the highest
echelons of American government are readily accepted as plausible.
According to Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK, a coup d'Etat was underway in
the United States, with the collusion of the vice president, Joint Chiefs
of Staff, chief justice of the United States, FBI, CIA, members of
Congress, and the Mafia. Stone's film imposed a neat coherence on a mass of
confusing information, providing a self-contained explanation for what
still seemed to be an unbelievable event. Many reviewers and moviegoers
alike pondered these charges with great seriousness. In another debasing of
history, serious credence has been given to reverse racist charges about
white scholarship. Some extremist Afrocentrists, who rightfully assert that
Africa's role in shaping Western civilization is too often ignored, would
have us believe that the basis of all intellectual and scientific thought
as we know it originated on that continent. Leonard Jeffries, professor of
Afro-American studies at New York's City College, has declared blacks to be
"sun people" and whites "ice people." All that is warm, communal, and full
of hope comes from the former; all that is oppressive, cold, and rigid from
the latter. (71) In these instances, history is rewritten for political
ends and scientific historiography is replaced, in the words of Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., professor of Afro-American studies at Harvard, with
"ideological conformity." (72) Scholars who might once have dismissed these
outlandish views feel compelled to treat them as having some validity.

These attacks on history and knowledge have the potential to alter
dramatically the way established truth is transmitted from generation to
generation. Ultimately the climate they create is of no less importance
than the specific truth they attack - be it the Holocaust or the
assassination of President Kennedy. It is a climate that fosters
deconstructionist history at its worst. No fact, no event, and no aspect of
history has any fixed meaning or content. Any truth can be retold. Any fact
can be recast. There is no ultimate historical reality.

Holocaust denial is part of this phenomenon. It is not an assault on the
history of one particular group. Though denial of the Holocaust may be an
attack on the history of the annihilation of the Jews, at its core it poses
a threat to all who believe that knowledge and memory are among the
keystones of our civilization. Just as the Holocaust was not a tragedy of
the Jews but a tragedy of civilization in which the victims were Jews, so
too denial of the Holocaust is not a threat just to Jewish history but a
threat to all who believe in the ultimate power of reason. It repudiates
reasoned discussion the way the Holocaust repudiated civilized values. It
is undeniably a form of anti-semitism, and as such it constitutes an attack
on the most basic values of a reasoned society. Like any form of prejudice,
it is an irrational animus that cannot be countered with the normal forces
of investigation, argument, and debate. The deniers' arguments are at their
roots not only anti-semitic and anti-intellectual but, in the words of
historian Charles Maier, "blatantly racist anthropology." (73) Holocaust
denial is the apotheosis of irrationalism.

Because the movement to disseminate these myths is neither scholarship nor
historiography, I have chosen to eschew the term revisionism whenever
possible and instead to use the term denial to describe it. The deniers'
selection of the name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of
their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to
portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional
practice of illuminating the past. For historians, in fact, the name
revisionism has a resonance that is perfectly legitimate - it recalls the
controversial historical school known as World War I "revisionists," who
argued that the Germans were unjustly held responsible for the war and that
consequently the Versailles treaty was a politically misguided document
based on a false premise. Thus the deniers link themselves to a specific
historiographic tradition of re-evaluating the past. Claiming the mantle of
the World War I revisionists and denying they have any objective other than
the dissemination of the truth constitute a tactical attempt to acquire an
intellectual credibility that would otherwise elude them.

Revisionism is also the name given to a more contemporary approach to
historical research. Associated with the noted historian William Appleman
Williams, a past president of the Organization of American Historians, it
addresses itself to questions of American foreign policy particularly as
they relate to the origins of the Cold War and the conflict between the
West and the Communist world. Because this form of revisionism is critical
of American foreign policy, which it sees as motivated by a desire for
hegemony via open-door imperialism, it is a useful model for the deniers.
(74) While many historians strongly disagree with its particular bias, all
agree that for the "Wisconsin school," as Williams's followers came to be
known, and its descendants, the canons of evidence are as incontrovertible
as they are for all other historians. In contrast, evidence plays no role
for deniers.

Finally I abjure the term revisionist because on some level revisionism is
what all legitimate historians engage in. Historians are not just
chroniclers - they do not simply retell the tale. Each one tries to glean
some new insight or understanding from a story already known, seeking some
new way of interpreting the past to help us better understand the present.
That interpretation always involves some constant "revisioning" of the
past. By its very nature the business of interpretation cannot be purely
objective. But it is built on a certain body of irrefutable evidence:
Slavery happened; so did the Black Plague and the Holocaust.

In order to maintain their facade as a group whose only objective is the
pursuit of truth, the deniers have filled their publications with articles
that ostensibly have nothing to do with World War II but are designed to
demonstrate that theirs is a global effort to attack and revise historical
falsehoods. Articles on the Civil War, World War I, and Pearl Harbor are
included in their journals as a means of illustrating how establishment
historians, with ulterior political motives, have repeatedly put forward
distorted views of history. The deniers aim to undermine readers' faith in
"orthodox" historians' commitment to transmitting the truth. They argue
that this tactic of distortion by "court historians" for political means
reached its zenith in the Holocaust "myth."

What claims do the deniers make? The Holocaust - the attempt to annihilate
the Jewish people - never happened. Typical of the deniers' attempt to
obfuscate is their claim that they do not deny that there was a Holocaust,
only that there was a plan or an attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.
(75) They have distorted and deconstructed the definition of the term
Holocaust. But this and all the ancillary claims that accompany it are
embedded in a series of other arguments. They begin with a relatively
innocuous supposition: War is evil. Assigning blame to one side is
ultimately a meaningless enterprise. Since the central crime of which the
Nazis are accused never happened, there really is no difference in this
war, as in any other, between victor and vanquished. (76) Still, they
assert, if guilt is to be assigned, it is not the Germans who were guilty
of aggression and atrocities during the war. The real crimes against
civilization were committed by the Americans, Russians, Britons, and French
against the Germans. The atrocities inflicted on the Germans by the Allies
were - in the words of Harry Elmer Barnes, a once-prominent historian and
one of the seminal figures in the history of North American Holocaust
denial - "more brutal and painful than the alleged exterminations in the
gas chambers." (77) Once we recognize that the Allies were the aggressors,
we must turn to the Germans and, in the words of Austin App, a professor of
English literature who became one of the major "theoreticians" of Holocaust
denial, implore them "to forgive us the awful atrocities our policy caused
to be inflicted upon them." (78)

For some deniers Hitler was a man of peace, pushed into war by the
aggressive Allies. (79) According to them, the Germans suffered the bombing
of Dresden, wartime starvation, invasions, postwar population transfers
from areas of Germany incorporated into post-war Poland, victor's vengeance
at Nuremberg, and brutal mistreatment by Soviet and Allied occupiers.
Portrayed as a criminal nation that had committed outrageous atrocities,
Germany became and remains a victim of the world's emotional and scholarly
aggression.

But it is showing the Holocaust to have been a myth that is the deniers'
real agenda. They contend that the ultimate injustice is the false
accusation that Germans committed the most heinous crime in human history.
The postwar venom toward Germany has been so extreme that Germans have
found it impossible to defend themselves. Consequently, rather than fight
this ignominious accusation, they decided to acknowledge their complicity.
This seeming contradiction - namely that the perpetrators admit they
committed a crime while those who were not present exonerate them -
presents a potential problem for the deniers. How can a group that did not
witness what happened claim that the perpetrators are innocent while the
perpetrators acknowledge their guilt? The deniers explain this problem away
by arguing that in the aftermath of World War II the Germans faced a
strategic conflict. In order to be readmitted to the "family of nations,"
they had to confess their wrongdoing, even though they knew that these
charges were false. They were in the same situation as a defendant who has
been falsely convicted of committing horrendous crimes. He knows he will be
more likely to receive a lenient sentence if he admits his guilt, shows
contrition, and makes amends. So too the innocent Germans admitted their
guilt and made (and continue to make) financial amends.

The defendants at the war crimes trials adopted a similar strategy. They
admitted that the Holocaust happened but tried to vindicate themselves by
claiming they were not personally guilty. Arthur Butz, a professor of
electrical engineering at Northwestern University, is the denier who has
most fully developed this theory of what I call incrimination to avoid
self-incrimination. (For a fuller treatment of this see chapter 7.) Deniers
acknowledge that some Jews were incarcerated in places such as Auschwitz,
but, they maintain, as they did at the trial of a Holocaust denier in
Canada, it was equipped with "all the luxuries of a country club,"
including a swimming pool, dance hall, and recreational facilities. (80)
Some Jews may have died, they said, but this was the natural consequence of
wartime deprivations. [In an apparent emulation of the deniers, a small
group of Americans, led by a woman in California, Lillian Baker, has made
the same claims about the World War II Japanese concentration camps in the
United States. Manzanar, the infamous concentration camp for Japanese
Americans, contained only "voluntary visitors." They were treated royally,
given every amenity, and had "all they could eat at our government's
expense." Like the Jews, Baker and her group claim, the contemporary
Japanese Americans who foster this hoax have a rationale for doing so - to
divert attention from their community's complicity with Japan during the
war (Los Angeles Times, August 28 and December 6, 1991).]

The central assertion for the deniers is that Jews are not victims but
victimizers. They "stole" billions in reparations, destroyed Germany's good
name by spreading the "myth" of the Holocaust, and won international
sympathy because of what they claimed had been done to them. In the
paramount miscarriage of injustice, they used the world's sympathy to
"displace" another people so that the state of Israel could be established.
(81) This contention relating to the establishment of Israel is a linchpin
of their argument. It constitutes a motive for the creation of the
Holocaust "legend" by the Jews. Once the deniers add this to the equation,
the essential elements of their argument are in place.

Some have a distinct political objective: If there was no Holocaust, what
is so wrong with national socialism? It is the Holocaust that gives fascism
a bad name. Extremist groups know that every time they extol the virtues of
national socialism they must contend with the question: If it was so
benign, how was the Holocaust possible? Before fascism can be resurrected,
this blot must be removed. At first they attempted to justify it; now they
deny it. This is the means by which those who still advocate the principles
of fascism attempt to reintroduce it as a viable political system (see
chapter 6). For many falsifiers this, not anti-semitism, is their primary
agenda. It is certainly a central theme for the European deniers on the
emerging far right.

When one first encounters them it is easy to wonder who could or would take
them seriously. Given the preponderance of evidence from victims,
bystanders, and perpetrators, and given the fact that the deniers are so
illogical, it appears to be ludicrous to devote much, if any, mental energy
to them. They are a group motivated by a strange conglomeration of
conspiracy theories, delusions, and neo-Nazi tendencies. The natural
inclination of many rational people, including historians and social
scientists, is to dismiss them as an irrelevant fringe group. Some have
equated them with the flat-earth theorists, worthy at best of bemused
attention but not of serious analysis or concern. They regard Holocaust
denial as quirky and malicious but do not believe it poses a clear and
present danger.

There are a number of compelling reasons not to dismiss the deniers and
their beliefs so lightly. First, their methodology has changed in the past
decade. Initially Holocaust denial was an enterprise engaged in by a small
group of political extremists. Their arguments tended to appear in poorly
printed pamphlets and in right-wing newspapers such as the Spotlight,
Thunderbolt, or the Ku Klux Klan's Crusader. In recent years, however,
their productivity has increased, their style has changed, and,
consequently, their impact has been enhanced. They disguise their political
and ideological agendas. (82) Their subterfuge enhances the danger they
pose. Their publications, including the Journal of Historical Review - the
leading denial journal - mimic legitimate scholarly works, generating
confusion among those who (like the Yale history student) do not
immediately recognize the Journal's intention. Their books and journals
have been given an academic format, and they have worked hard to find ways
to insinuate themselves into the arena of historical deliberation. One of
the primary loci of their activities is the college campus, where they have
tried to stimulate a debate on the existence of the Holocaust. It is here
that they may find their most fertile field, as is evident from the success
they have had in placing advertisements that deny the Holocaust in college
newspapers (see chapter 10). They have also begun to make active use of
computer bulletin boards, where they post their familiar arguments. Certain
computer networks have been flooded with their materials. Their objective
is to plant seeds of doubt that will bear fruit in coming years, when there
are no more survivors or eyewitnesses alive to attest to the truth. There
is an obvious danger in assuming that because Holocaust denial is so
outlandish it can be ignored. The deniers' worldview is no more bizarre
than that enshrined in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a report
purporting to be the text of a secret plan to establish Jewish world
supremacy. (83) The deniers draw inspiration from the Protocols, which has
enjoyed a sustained and vibrant life despite the fact it has long been
proved a forgery.

Many years ago the prominent German historian Theodor Mommsen warned that
it would be a mistake to believe that reason alone was enough to keep
people from believing such falsehoods. If this were the case, he said, then
racism, anti-semitism, and other forms of prejudice would find no home. To
expect rational dialogue to constitute the sole barriers against the
attempts to deny the Nazi annihilation of European Jewry would be to ignore
one of the ultimate lessons of the event itself: Reasoned dialogue has a
limited ability to withstand an assault by the mythic power of falsehood,
especially when that falsehood is rooted in an age-old social and cultural
phenomenon. There was no rational basis to the Nazi atrocities. There was,
however, the mythic appeal of anti-semitism. Hitler and the Nazis
understood this. Mythical thinking and the force of the irrational have a
strange and compelling allure for the educated and uneducated alike.
Intellectuals in Nazi Germany were not immune from irrational, mystical
thinking. So, too, among the deniers.