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There is more incentive to exaggerate the extent and significance of the holocaust than any other event in history. At the same time, it is one of the most ideologically influential events of the 21st century. These two reasons are why it should be morally acceptable, and in fact encouraged, to poke holes and relitigate the events of the holocaust. Holocaust denialism is not evidence of any bias whatsoever, because autistic men online will spend thousands of hours examining innumerable less important matters like the best tanks and rifles, who killed JFK, UFO sightings, the battle of agincourt and the policies of FDR.
In theory, it might be that some people just become obsessed with the nitty-gritty details of the Holocaust and exactly how many people actually died and what methods were used and the literal accuracy of all historical claims, etc.
In practice, I've never encountered a Holocaust denier who didn't, purely coincidentally, have a great deal of animosity towards Jews.
Some will use more evasions than others ("I don't hate every single Jewish person!" "I only feel animosity towards the organized Jewish media that pushes false narratives and ideologies on me, not Jews as a people," etc.) Even if I were to believe these disclaimers (I don't), Holocaust denial is clearly not like trainspotting, an odd hobby that certain people become obsessed with for no ideological motivation. It's something that attracts people who don't like Jews, not niche historians.
How would your opinion change if Revisionists are right? Let's say there was no order or plan to exterminate the Jews, and there were no gas chambers at all, and the 6 million number was pure symbology that Jews forced into the historical record and refuse to let go because of its symbolic importance. Would that even affect your opinion of Revisionists or would you still dismiss them as just people who don't like Jews?
Just forced labour camps? Just movement to be resettled in the East? Just smash up their property and declare them non-citizens? Just requiring everyone to prove they weren't descendants of filthy Jews?
Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien:
Just all the above? The Revisionists still aren't coming out of this looking too good.
Yes, all of those things. Although the assignment of class of citizenship along with financial and legal privileges based on racial laws regarding Jewish descent has made a comeback with the state of Israel.
Agree to disagree. Revisionists acknowledge all those bad things happened. If they acknowledge the bad things that happened actually happened, and the things that did not happen did not happen, that "they still aren't coming out of this looking too good" is only going to be the case for a certain type of fanatic.
I'll give you another example. There are some rabble-rousers publishing articles openly declaring skepticism of the alleged Kamloops mass graves and demanding an excavation. Someone like you might say: "The history of Residential schools and the Canadian treatment of the indigenous people was completely horrible. Even if it turns out that not a single person was buried among the hundreds of alleged graves, you still come out looking bad." A lot of people will take that position, like you, but I don't. I think it would be brave for people to trust their interpretation of the evidence rather than expert consensus and popular narratives. And if they turned out to be right I would have respect for that, but clearly you would not.
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Oh it's bad stuff, I agree, but there is a historical context to it.
Besides, this kind of stuff is going on right now in Ukraine against the Russophone minorities, and I don't see much reaction besides enthusiasm coming from the people that want us to care about the Holocaust.
If anyone is doing it to any minority, it's wrong. Be it Germans and Jews, the British and Boer civilians, or Ukrainians and Russian-speakers.
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I suppose that's kind of like asking me "What if you found out the creationists are right and the Earth is 6000 years old?" I'd be surprised that they got that one right and wonder what else they were right about, but it wouldn't convince me that everything else they believe is true.
Well you are kind of making it sound like you would just be surprised that somebody got a particularly hard trivia question right. It wouldn't change your perception of the world in any way? When I realized that Revisionists are in fact correct, it did not make me wonder what else they were right about, it changed the way I interpret popular culture and a lot of the cultural signals which were previously influential in my perception of history, morality, and politics.
It's interesting that you compare it to young-earth Creationism being truthful, so that leads me to think you would agree that it would have a significant impact of your perception on the world. Obviously, if young-earth Creationism were true it would significantly overhaul my perception of the world.
Well, obviously. Learning that the Earth is 6000 years old would change everything we know about science. Considering what would have to be true for the Holocaust to be a hoax, yes, I'd consider it nearly as dramatic.
I guess what you're getting at is, would I be convinced to join the resistance against the ZOG? And just like learning creationism is true wouldn't prove to me that Christianity is true, learning that the Holocaust didn't happen would not convince me that ZOG exists.
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The infamous David Stein isn't an antisemite. He's walking Jewish stereotype, but although he gets called a denier, his position essentially boils down to mainstream history is mostly correct, but "Auschwitz wasn't an extermination camp*" and total Holocaust death toll was somewhere above 3.5 million but not much more.
He is iirc mostly anti holocaust industry, thinks it unseemly that so many people keep using the historical event for political purposes today.
He's also the only 'holocaust denier' (according to ADL) who has been declared by a panel of US judges to not be a denier. (came up in some disciplinary process against a judge who ranted on Facebook too much, against a lot of people, one of whom was Cole. They looked at what Cole writes and said he's not a denier).
I follow him because he writes very good essays on the absolute state of California.
He's also about the only Holocaust 'denier' on record who also made a living making (non-controversial) documentaries about the Holocaust. Under another name. Apparently he has very solid historical knowledge of the events.
*I've never particularly cared to find out the specifics, as Holocaust revisionism is a fairly boring topic, but it's pretty fucking weird as e.g. the Budapest transports involved lots of people of no economic value, and Germans at that stage of the war weren't in the least squeamish, so .. what would they have done at Auschwitz with all the little kids and old people ? I really hope it's not some semantic dodge; e.g. Auschwitz wasn't an extermination camp because they only straight-up murdered those they couldn't put to work.
The usual dodge with "Auschwitz wasn't an extermination camp" is that there were multiple camps at Auschwitz, and only one of them (Auschwitz-Birkenau) was an extermination camp.
I've followed it some more and it looks like Stein is being stereotypically Jewish and engaging in some weird form of hairsplitting.
He says it's most likely the Hungarian Jews who weren't in work-shape were murdered, though the evidence for that isn't the best.
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How about David Cole, who is Jewish?
I've heard of him before. White supremacists can always find that one Jew or that one black guy who agrees with them.
I'm not going to do a deep-dive into every Holocaust denier and where they are on the scale from "No Jews died" to "Actually it was only 2 million", but I'm sure there are a few deniers who have idiosyncratic non-Jew-hating reasons. I doubt very much anyone just stumbles upon the subject and doing non-motivated research has a sudden epiphany that the Holocaust is a hoax.
Do you dispute that the vast majority come from a starting position of disliking Jews, and that Holocaust denial is generally part of a larger framework of Jew conspiracy theories?
I'm not sure if it's simply because of the political climate in the place i live, but the Holocaust is definitely treated with a far sterner hand than other forms of genocide denial in the western world, and by a large margin. In all likelihood it probably transpired very similarly to how historians think it did and the numbers will probably never be completely accurate given the chaos of the time period, but I'm more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt with such a large scale event. But I've found myself having to defend Holocaust deniers in Canada because of how draconian the laws have become up here. It has to be said, what is so special about holocaust denial as opposed to other forms of denialism regarding events of the 20th century?
Before you accuse me of hyperbole, in Canada there is currently active laws that were recently passed that specifically outlaw holocaust denial in particular, in public.Thats right, you will be put in jail for up to 2 years for any type of spoken "Antisemitism," including holocaust denial. This is absurd when you take into account the complete ambiguity that these laws were put in place with.
Now this would be all well and good, except this type of hate speech law is exclusively targeting this specific genocide. There are not real consequences for denying any other genocide. In fact, three years ago an assistant professor at the university I attended publicly denied the Holodomor as "Nazi propaganda."
I'm ethnically Ukrainian. Not only did he not get arrested, not only did he not get fired, he is still employed at the university. Call me whatever you wish, but that is extremely unjust. These laws are not developed with some sort of altruistic end in mind, and they are not enacted with the same amount of utility that laws against holocaust denial are. You should never be put in jail for simply thinking something. It is extremely frustrating, and it does not mean i hate Jews when i point out these clear inconsistencies and injustices with how these hate laws are currently installed. I find myself having to defend Holocaust deniers even though i do not have any real sympathy towards their arguments, simply because the laws against them are increasingly unfair, and have essentially made it illegal to think the wrong thoughts. It's not, and should not ever be illegal to think dumb shit. Holocaust denial is on the same level of believing in a flat earth or 5G cell tower conspiracies. But one should not be thrown in jail for believing in them. Much like your comment is suggesting, any criticism of this is now tantamount to holocaust denial, which therefore inherently means that I am anti-semetic. What now should we do in this situation?
You are simply in the classic conundrum of "my rules applied evenly > their rules applied evenly > their rules applied unevenly." I don't think poking at the intellectual scab that is the Holocaust is worth it, though, because you will never take down anyone by exposing them as hypocrites and you'll probably only tarnish your reputation for no gain.
I guess the one silver lining for you is that, while the Holodomor was historically only recognized by some nations, that needle will probably have moved thanks to the Russian invasion.
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Well, in the U.S. we don't have laws against Holocaust denial, and I would strongly oppose any such laws.
Every time this issue comes up, I see the same series of talking points. Yes, I think Holocaust denial is bad (and factually wrong). Yes, I think Holocaust deniers are anti-Semitic. No, I do not think they should go to jail. Yes, I think a lot of other atrocities get overshadowed by the Holocaust and shouldn't be. Yes, I think there probably is some legitimate historical research that gets quashed by the stigma of delving too deeply into the details of the Holocaust. Yes, there's probably a catch-22 here where you can't find legitimate historians who will touch it so the only ones who will are anti-Semites, so the research is regarded as illegitimate.
All of those talking points miss the point I'm making to begin with. You say you would strongly oppose these laws, and yet opposing these laws are now implied to be inherently Anti-Semitic. That is the real catch-22. I am not making talking points, i am saying that it is now illegal to point out certain legal injustices. There is not a proper way to handle that.
Yes, well, that's why I'm liberal, not woke.
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I’m going to let your uncalled-for use of the slur/exonym “white supremacist” roll off my back, but I do want to take extreme issue with your accusation that I went out of my way to “find that one Jew that agrees” with me. First off, I became familiar with David Cole’s work as a social/political commentator - specifically, his writing for Taki’s - long before I knew anything about his work as a revisionist. He’s far more well-known, by most on the online Right, for his more recent work. He hasn’t done any important new work on the topic of revisionism in nearly thirty years, and in the intervening years he made a name for himself first as a respected Hollywood screenwriter/producer and then as one of the most important figures behind Friends Of Abe, a secret society of sorts for Hollywood conservatives. He’s not some fringe figure or “token Jew” that I nut-picked as a fig leaf.
I think that Cole’s writing is actually extremely clarifying about the topic. Although he hasn’t done any new revisionist work in decades, he does still comment on the state of revisionism/denial as a phenomenon from time to time. Two examples would be this article from 2018, which is itself a re-evaluation of one of his earlier articles. His thesis, which I find very persuasive, is that there is a symbiotic relationship between so-called “denialists” (a field which has degenerated significantly due to the more intelligent and level-headed figures either aging out, dying, or realizing that their battle for public sympathy had been irrecoverably lost and bailing out) and the “anti-denial” lobby who build public careers as snarky “owned by facts and logic” debunkers.
When the average rational person with no strong opinions about the Holocaust over and above the standard narrative we’ve all grown up with wades into this dispute, they find it occupied on both sides by screaming lunatics and they wisely decide, as I have, that it’s probably not worth even trying to sift through the ocean of arguments. The only non-Jews who stick around to fight in that war at this point are people who love the fight. (Jews’ participation in the fight is a matter of direct ethnic self-defense and self-interest, which is healthy and normal and which I do not begrudge them, provided that they don’t stoop to transparently cynical concern-trolling like a couple of the comments below hand-wringing about this sub becoming too friendly to dissenting views on this, and only this, specific issue.)
I didn't say you personally went out of your way to find him. My point is that there are black people who like the Confederacy, Jews who sympathize with the Nazis, probably there are some Chinese historians who side with Japanese nationalists in disputing the Rape of Nanking. Yes, I do think those figures are little more than convenient fig leafs that the pro-denial side likes to trot out as a defense against accusations of ideological bias.
Also, what's your beef with "white supremacist"? Do you just find it less palatable than "white nationalist"? This sounds like the TERFs who claim TERF is a slur even when it's literally accurate (as opposed to being used haphazardly to describe anyone on the other side of a debate).
…Because I don’t think white people are “supreme”, nor do I have any desire for white people to be “supreme” over other people, to rule them, to dominate them, etc.? Like, the term you’re using has a specific meaning, which does apply to certain living people as well as to a great number of historical people. The logic of something like colonial empire is, explicitly, “white supremacist”. However, I’m not an advocate for empire - racial nor otherwise - but rather for peaceful, non-coercive racial separation. It’s the opposite of “white supremacy”, or at worst totally orthogonal to “white supremacy”.
This is less like a TERF objecting to being called “trans-exclusionary” and more like a TERF objecting to being called “misogynist”. (Because, see, trans women are women, and you hate trans women, therefore you hate women.”) It’s a blatant abuse of terms. Weaponized linguistic legerdemain.
Rudyard Kipling was a white supremacist. My beliefs are not like his beliefs, when it comes to the very centrally important questions of whether or not different racial groups should live together under the same political/geographic unit, and, conditional on one’s answer to that first question, the related question of how to best distribute relative power among those different groups. Since my answer to the first question is “no”, I don’t have to commit to any answer to the second question, let alone the “supremacist” answer that whites should hold the undisputed whip hand.
I am not convinced your distinction is meaningful. White supremacists believe white people are superior to non-white people, at least in most meaningful ways (i.e., anything to do with intellect and behavior; some will waffle about Asian IQ scores). I know not all of them literally want a white empire ruling the untermenschen. If you don't like the label, fair enough, but I wasn't directing it at you personally as a slur.
How is this responsive to anything in this post? Mentioning white supremacists (not even anti-Semites) in that response was uncalled for, suggested Hoffmeister specifically being one, and was irrelevant to your points in favor of ignoring Cole and other revisionists/denialists; you could just concede that instead of getting under his skin.
In principle, a white nationalist could well be – at least with regards to some groups – a white inferiorist, so to speak, i.e. employ the generic logic of protectionism against stronger competition*, only appealing to racial solidarity instead of something class-based. And this isn't mere logical possibility – despite your disdainful «waffle about» that implies some duplicity or triviality, this was a major justification for laws against Chinese immigration in e.g. Australia and the US. 1886 act was a unique and consequential precedent, an expression of popular consensus of majority-white working class in a society we can safely label white nationalist today, not some trivia about obscure HBD dudes with 50 followers who say that acktchually Asians have higher IQs so we should be allowed to say Blacks have lower ones (which is how I suspect you view those arguments). A white supremacist, meanwhile, can have any opinion on the worth of coexisting with non-white people, from a disgust-based call for segregation to a preference for casteist hierarchy.
Those are all clear distinctions, and it does seem uncontroversial that modern white nationalists are – almost by definition – against coexistence with non-whites within the same polity, regardless of their views on relative merits of races, particularly on market-relevant parameters and not some fundamentally moral, aesthetic or philosophical ones.
*that said, I must admit that these protectionists tended to be, in their own words, supremacists. I dislike this sort of hypocrisy: if you have to shelter your people from competition, have the integrity to admit that your people are weaker, at least in some relevant sense. But actions speak loud enough.
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I don't think it should be any surprise that the vast majority of Holocaust deniers are people who have disreputable beliefs about Jews. Given how it's considered rank antisemitism and just about the worst thing one can be caught believing, wouldn't we expect that the vast majority of people who have gone that rabbit hole (much less admit to it) are antisemites?
I just don't see how that has any bearing on the truth value of the claim.
It's always going to be the case that the most taboo ideas in a society are only ever seriously contemplated by people who have some strong ideological or moral conviction related to those taboo ideas. I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of people espousing atheism in Europe hundreds of years ago were rapacious sinners, edgelords, and reprobates of various other sorts. So what?
In theory, it doesn't, but when the evidence strongly suggests a completely made-up set of facts constructed to support a pre-existing narrative (that everything is a Jew conspiracy to benefit Jews), it's not like a historical debate over exactly how soon Washington really got wind of the imminent Pearl Harbor attack. It's a bunch of people who really hate Jews who have this really handy theory that would make Jews the villains and their victimizers the victims, which you are suggesting we should examine impartially as if it emerged organically from independent historical research. It's like demanding I take seriously each and every new very slightly different claim made by a fundamentalist Christian that the Earth is flat and 6000 years old, and ignore the fact that all this "research" is coming from the Young Earth School of Scientists Are Dirty Satanic Liars.
I do think we should examine it impartially, but have a strong prior that their claims are highly likely to false on account of their near-universal antisemitic motivations. I think the reason it's different from creationism is that it's at least conceivable that the mainstream opinion on the Holocaust is what it is only because of institutional and social pressures against dissenters, much like I believe it is in the case of Covid policy, medical interventions for trans-identifying youth, racial differences in intelligence (observed - not even HBD), innate gender differences, etc.
With creationism, by contrast, I don't think anyone who believes in evolution is particularly ideologically and morally committed to evolution being true. It's just sort of like gravity and heliocentrism - it's just what we happen find reality to be, so we go with it. Now, I actually do understand why creationists suspect that scientists are ideologically biased and cunning purgers of threatening dissenters. They believe that secularists want a godless world to freely sin in, and that promoting evolution is one piece of a grander scheme to try and write God out of society. I just think that's 100% mistaken, so I don't doubt the mainstream view of evolution.
If institutions can purge dissent and manufacture orthodoxy and the appearance of unanimity and certainty with regard to all the hot CW topics this forum is very familiar with, why couldn't they do so with the Holocaust? I honestly don't know, but without extremely persuasive evidence I'm going to default to the mainstream opinion. Given how virtually the only people on the dissenting side are antisemites and I lack the expertise to evaluate their claims, I'm doubtful I'll ever be convinced. But why is it seemingly so inconceivable to you?
It's not inconceivable to me. I just see no reason to adjust my priors on it.
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Well, try this guy, lifelong socialist and antiwar activist, and also one of the first holocaust revisionists (yes, I know re is not representative of the movement at all)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rassinier
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