Comprehending Modern Holocaust Denial
Patrick Little is dubious about the Holocaust. He believes that Adolf Hitler is “one of the greatest leaders in history.” Patrick Little is also running for a seat in the U.S. Senate in California under the slogan, “Liberate the U.S. from the Jewish oligarchy.” Polls indicate that Little is backed by 18 percent of the California electorate, landing him in second place behind incumbent Dianne Feinstein. On the other side of the country, Arthur Jones, the official GOP nominee in an Illinois House race, is a Holocaust denier. His campaign website features a page entitled “Holocaust?” in which he describes the Holocaust as “the biggest, blackest, lie in history,” and asserts that “there is no proof such a so-called ‘Holocaust,’ ever took place anywhere in Europe, against the Jews.” The Nation of Islam (NOI), an organization that, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, advances a “theology of innate black superiority over whites” and holds a “prominent position in the ranks of organized hate,” condones similar rhetoric. Since 2005, it has unabashedly promoted a book called The Synagogue of Hate, which the Anti-Defamation League describes as trading “heavily in Jewish conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.” One of NOI’s top leaders, Louis Farrakhan, believes that the Jews financed the Holocaust.
While anti-Semitism in the 21st century is far from shocking (at times it seems as if it grows in the soil), Holocaust denialism like that exhibited by Little, Jones, and NOI is uniquely disturbing. The fact that both Little and Jones are confident enough in their backwards views to run for public office, and that elected officials like Representative Maxine Waters are comfortable attending NOI conventions, makes their beliefs that much more disquieting. Holocaust denialism is a distinctly pernicious form of anti-Semitism, and the brazenness with which all of these individuals assert their views should be cause for concern, especially amidst rising levels of anti-Semitism in the U.S. in recent years. Unlike general anti-Semitism — which is ignorant in its own right but requires little effort to develop — explicitly denying the Holocaust necessitates a considerable amount of work for any individual who wishes to adopt this specific brand of idiocy. However, recent examples of Holocaust denialism in the West exhibit traits distinct from similar denials in the past.
Whereas previous Holocaust denial has largely been a (poor) attempt to mask a particularly egregious brand of anti-Semitism, in the 21st century, Holocaust denialism in the West has been politically weaponized. But how, amidst such overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the enormous pressure of societal expectations, do certain people in the West persist in their disbelief of the Holocaust? The answer is simple: denying the Holocaust has begun to function as a populist and nativist revival of age-old beliefs in an international Jewish conspiracy.
Shielded in pseudo-historicism, modern Holocaust deniers assert that the Holocaust was fabricated by Jews in order to morally extort the Western powers. For Little, Jones, and NOI, denying the Holocaust removes the “shield of victimhood” from the international Jewry, and is a means of identifying the Jews as the eternal saboteur in order to pin the struggles of their political supporters on a mythical Jewish overlord. What makes this new brand of Holocaust denialism so potent is that, unlike traditional forms of populist xenophobia in the West — which disparage minority populations — Holocaust denialism elevates the Jews above the general population and thus creates a motivated victim class in search of reprisal. In this regard, Holocaust denial has become an essential component of a new brand of nationalist nativism in the U.S. that paints Jews as an oppressor class — much like the Nazis did leading into World War II — that needs to be destroyed.
Although unique in presentation and intent, Holocaust denialism like that exhibited by Little, Jones, and NOI is far from new. In fact, the history of Holocaust denialism in the West is nearly as old as the Holocaust itself. Historically, such denialism can generally be divided into four categories. The first, and most widespread, alleges that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust (approximately 6 million) is fabricated or grossly exaggerated. The second questions the integrity and reliability of evidence from the Holocaust and identifies all recovered footage of Nazi atrocities as propaganda. The third denies the fact that there was ever a concerted effort by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews, and alleges that any and all Jewish casualties were the natural consequence of war. The fourth argues that the Holocaust was fabricated to serve Zionist interests.
The first wave of Holocaust denialism emerged in the wake of the Nuremburg Trials. In 1947, a French fascist by the name of Maurice Bardèche argued that gas chambers were not used to exterminate humans, but to disinfect clothing. He alleged that all photos, documents, and videos evidencing the Holocaust had been falsified. Most perniciously, however, he believed that any direct persecution that the Jews may have suffered at the hands of the Nazis was justified, since they were legitimate enemies of the German state. In 1948, Paul Rassiner — infamously dubbed the ‘father of Holocaust denialism’ — began a long and productive career dedicated to refuting the Holocaust. By 1950 Rassiner had published two books, Crossing the Line and The Holocaust Story and the Lie of Ulysses, both of which absolved the Nazis of any guilt and, astonishingly, identified the inmates of the concentration camps as the perpetrators of wartime atrocities. By the 1960s, Holocaust denial had spread to the United States, permeating even the highest levels of academia. Harvard professor David Hogan and Northwestern University professor Arthur Butz both wrote books that framed the Holocaust as a Zionist hoax.
Though playing on similar themes and building on the four arguments that have been historically utilized by Holocaust deniers, the Holocaust denialism exhibited by Little, Jones, and NOI is unique in the West. In a 2011 article for the Journal of Palestine Studies, author and researcher Gilbert Achcar described Western Holocaust denial as “a modern camouflage for anti-Semitism, a stratagem adopted to get around the fact that overt anti-Semitism has been stigmatized in the West ever since World War II.” Thus, more than anything, Holocaust denial in the West has been a thinly veiled effort by traditional anti-Semites to express their hatred under the umbrage of “historical inquiry.” Though there is little doubt that Little, Jones, and NOI are rabidly anti-Semitic, their brand of Holocaust denial has adopted a political tilt that is more productive than the undoubtedly harmful, but generally latent anti-Semitism of Holocaust deniers past.
Little, Jones, and NOI are distinct from the likes of Bardèche, Rassiner, Hogan, and Butz because they use Holocaust denialism to advance their political platforms. Unlike the veiled anti-Semitism that has defined Holocaust denial in the West to date, this new wave is attempting to harness the power of denial to revive the age-old belief in an omnipotent international Jewish conspiracy. By looking at each of their political agendas, the purpose of their Holocaust denial becomes evident.
On Patrick Little’s campaign website (which is run through WordPress), he lists four separate policies pertaining to Jews specifically. This is more than a third of his entire platform. In order, the second item on his list of proposed policies is to “limit representation of Jews in the government.” The seventh item on his platform is to introduce a bill “proposing the immediate dismissal of the necessary number of Jewish jurists that would reduce their representation in federal courts and the supreme court.” The eighth item on his list is to embargo Israel until they pay “reparations to families of the victims of Jewish terrorist attacks on the U.S.” Lastly, he seeks to outlaw any contributions to organizations that commemorate the Holocaust, and “formally [make the] U.S.’s stance on the Holocaust to be that it is a Jewish war atrocity propaganda hoax that never happened.” And, of course, his unifying campaign slogan is to “liberate the U.S. from the Jewish Oligarchy.”
The overarching theme here, other than anti-Semitism, is the belief in the disproportionate power of Jews over non-Jews in the United States. Little seeks to rid the government and the courts of this influence by implementing policies reminiscent of the Nazi Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 1933, which was designed to rid the government of non-Aryans. Little borrows the rhetoric of past Holocaust deniers by asserting that the Holocaust was a hoax, but he does it not for the sake of masking his anti-Semitism, but to further his belief (and the belief of his supporters) that the Jews control the world. The Holocaust is, to people like Little, the world’s most sophisticated scam, and was created in order to blackmail the West into submission. As a self-proclaimed “white advocate,” Little falls squarely into the category of xenophobic, populist, nativists. However, instead of disparaging Jews as inferior, he elevates them to a near superhuman status.
Arthur Jones, who is running for Congress in Illinois, has been a member of the National Socialist White People’s Party, the American Nazi Party, and the historically anti-Semitic Populist Party. On his campaign website, he describes the Holocaust as “emotional propaganda, whose purpose is designed to bleed, blackmail, extort, and terrorize, the enemies of organized world Jewry, into silence or submissiveness.” He goes on to assert that “Jewish International Communism and Jewish International Zionism are directly responsible for the murder of at least 300 million people,” and believes that the Jews, whom he describes as “blood-thirsty vampires,” might initiate a third world war “if we don’t stop them.” Jones’ belief in the warmongering nature of Jews reflects Hitler’s famous “premonition” on the eve of World War II. In January 1939 he stated, “If the international Jewish financiers in an outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, [the result will be] the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”
Like Hitler, Jones frames the world’s ailments on the Jews, and like Little, he believes that the Holocaust was an organized effort by the world’s Jews to gain supremacy over gentiles. Jones goes on to argue that Jews use kosher labels to swindle money from consumers in order to fund “all those causes Jews support: abortion on demand; Planned Parenthood; Homosexual marriage, gun control laws, amnesty for illegal aliens etc.” Jones utilizes the same populist and nativist tool as Little: elevating the Jews above non-Jews in order to sow resentment amongst his supporters. Denying the Holocaust is an essential part of this narrative, as it prohibits Jews from claiming their rightful victim status and frames them as cunning and deceptive overlords.
Louis Farrakhan, one of the lead spokesmen for the Nation of Islam, has a history of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. In 1995 he claimed that “Jews were at the root of what you call the Holocaust.” Like Little and Jones, the Holocaust denialism of Farrakhan and the NOI are accompanied by a belief in the disproportionate power of world Jewry. In a diatribe against Jews in 2006, Farrakhan said the following:
“These false Jews promote the filth of Hollywood that is seeding the American people and the people of the world and bringing you down in moral strength. … It’s the wicked Jews, the false Jews, that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality. It’s the wicked Jews, false Jews, that make it a crime for you to preach the word of God, then they call you homophobic!”
It is also the official belief of NOI that Jews were responsible for the “black African Holocaust.”
Though it is doubtful that Little and Jones have much in common with NOI or Farrakhan, they all use Holocaust denial to advance a particular political narrative of victimization. Instead of acknowledging the Jews as victims, Little, Jones, and NOI frame themselves and their supporters as victims of Jewish influence, and use the “Holocaust hoax” as evidence of the power of international Jewry. Furthermore, they are all xenophobic nativists in their own right: both Little and Jones are pro-white and anti-immigrant, while the NOI is anti-white and advocates for Black separatism from the U.S. Each uses victimhood as their primary political driver and identifies Jews as the oppressors. In the eyes of Little, Jones, and NOI, Jews cannot be both the oppressors and the oppressed, which makes their Holocaust denial a necessity.
While this politicized form of Holocaust denial is relatively new in the West, it is the defining feature of Holocaust denial in the Arab world. In a book about Arab sentiments towards Israel, Israeli general Yehoshafat Harkabi marks the difference between Arab Holocaust denial and its traditional Western counterpart: “It is functional and political, not social: it presents the Jews mainly as a political, not a social threat…Hence it describes the Jews not as passive, shrinking parasites, but as aggressors.” The Holocaust denial exhibited by Little, Jones, and NOI more closely resembles this latter form, which paints Jews as the aggressors. In the Arab world, Holocaust denial is used to undermine the legitimacy of Israel and is thus primarily political. Though still undoubtedly anti-Semitic, it is not grounded in the same history of anti-Semitism that inspired Western Holocaust deniers like David Hogan and Arthur Butz to shroud their hatred in “academic intrigue.” That is, until now.
The defining feature of the Holocaust denial of Little, Jones, and NOI is that it is primarily political, and, like in Arab contexts, is used to promote a platform that is antagonistic towards Jews and frames Jews as the oppressive class of leaders.
Though any form of anti-Semitism is a stain on society, this shift away from social anti-Semitism to political anti-Semitism is decidedly for the worse. In an article for Forward,author John-Paul Pagano adeptly recognizes why. He states:
“Anti-Semitism differs from most forms of racism in that it purports to “punch up” against a secret society of oppressors, which has the side effect of making it easy to disguise as a politics of emancipation. If Jews have power, then punching up at Jews is a form of speaking truth to power.”
The new politicized brand of Holocaust denial in the United States is tied directly to this phenomenon. Instead of framing the Jews as an inferior minority class like traditional forms of nativist populism, Little, Jones, and NOI frame them as the power holders. Denying the Holocaust feeds directly into this narrative. What is most frightening about the new form of Western Holocaust denial and the accompanying anti-Semitism is that it is reminiscent of the conspiratorial image of Jews that was perpetuated by the Nazis themselves. Like Little, the Nazis wanted to remove the influence of Jews from government. Like Jones and Farrakhan, the Nazis believed that the world’s problems were the result of Jewish puppeteering.
Although one can take comfort in the fact that Little, Jones, and NOI are all on the political fringes of society and are almost universally frowned upon, the rising rates of anti-Semitism in the U.S. and the world suggest that this problem is only going to get worse. Even more concerning is that, according to recent studies, the Holocaust is fading from memory. Thirty-one percent of Americans and 41 percent of millennials — defined in the survey as individuals between the age of 18 and 34 — think that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was 2 million or fewer. Sixty-six percent of millennials didn’t know what Auschwitz was. If any among this 66 percent were to take some initiative to learn about the Holocaust, searching the term “victims of the Holocaust” would lead almost 26 percent of them to a site run by Ernst Zundel, a famous Holocaust denier. When all of these factors are combined, the future looks very bleak indeed.
In the words of the 12th century philosopher Averroes, “Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hatred, and hatred leads to violence. This is the equation.” Considering the increasing ignorance about the Holocaust and the hatred of people like Little, Jones and Farrakhan, the next step is not too difficult to discern.
