How Holocaust Denial "Slips" into the Mainstream

In an article "Testing the Limits of Freedom of Speech" the author interviews Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, who was recently released from a German prison. The lead line of the article "An exclusive interview with one of Europe's most well-known political prisoners" sets the tone for the interview. Holocaust deniers are not vicious ideological narcissists who substitute ideology for history; instead, according to the author they are the victims and the exemplars of the "emptiness of such [free speech] claims within Europe."

Although the online Foreign Policy Journal, gives voice to a broad range of "leftist" values -- emphasizing colonialization, exploitation and other western crimes -- they are not primarily occupied with Jews or the "Jewish Question" (or even with Israel for the most part). Yet this interview, written and conducted by an Iranian journalist, not only provides a platform for the perverted world view of Ernst Zundel, but also gives voice to the author's own prejudice and disdain. At one point he asks Zundel how he reconciles the fact that the Holocaust did not happen with the claims of those who "personally witnessed the heart-rending demise of their parents in concentration camps and bone-crushing machines." Why does the author focus on 'bone-crushing machines'? I have read many about the tortures of the camps, the gas chambers, the cremation process, etc. They are the mainstays of public awareness of the Holocaust. The reference to 'bone-crushing machines' can only be meant satirically per my reading, as if to represent survivor claims as ludicrous. Each one of his questions not only frames the denier's answers as reasonable positions but even leads the answers by suggesting the false claims directly.

The interview is also a great example of the interwoven nature of much denial and anti-Israel sentiment, particularly in the Muslim world. Without any prior mention of Israel, the interviewer asserts that "Many Zionist websites have introduced you as a white supremacist." Even without defining "Zionist" it is clear from his usage that it is a slur. Furthermore, calling Zundel a racist, an antisemite and/or a white supremacist has nothing to do with one's opinion on the state of Israel, but is a straightforward description of his writings and statements.

Finally, I invite you all to take a look at the comments that follow the article. Although comments are often give voice to the most radical views on any given subject, these are not outside the realms suggested by the interview: they are its only logical outcome. Deniers are courageous: the US and Europe are controlled by unseen Jewish hands: the Holocaust could not have happened because "There was no budget. There was no plan. There was no extermination order from Hitler."

The Limit of Free Speech on College Campuses

Once again the presenters of odious and hate-filled speech on college campuses claim the mantle of freedom fighters implying that the first amendment's guarantee that congress will make no law "abridging the freedom of speech" covers all form of speech in every context (for the last major emergence of this strain of thinking see). This time, controversy has returned to the Pacifica Forum that periodically hosts speakers in the student center on the University of Oregon campus.

Although the Pacifica Forum presents itself as an informational organization that seeks to clarify issues surrounding "war and peace, militarism and pacifism, violence and non-violence," a look at their website and list of past speakers belies this facade. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies the forum as a white nationalist hate group.

From the forum's homepage, one finds links such as the article "A Jew Speaks" in which a writer identified only as "Barry" defends the organization's right to host an American National Socialist leader on Oregon's campus to discuss the symbolism of the Swastika. On a previous occasion the same speaker repeatedly gave a Nazi salute and shouted "Seig heil!" at protesters. On this occasion a crowd of 300 protesters entered the hall and disrupted the proceedings with signs and apparently some foot stomping. Discussing this protest "Barry" compares the protesters themselves to Nazis and event to Kristallnacht:

"Free speech was supposed to be on display that night but I felt as if it was 1938 Germany. The students and protesters, when they were in the midst of their foot-stomping, profanity-laced tirade became, for me a precursor to Kristallnacht, that infamous episode where Jewish businesses, and their owners faced the wrath of Nazi prejudice and hatred. This meeting/debate was nothing more than a Nuremburg rally held on UofO campus."

During the previous week's forum titled "“Everything You Wanted to Know About Pacifica Forum But Were Afraid to Ask,” a speaker who described himself as a “white separatist and racialist,” insisted that Andrea Dworkin a feminist "known for her views that pornography can lead to violence against women, was 'too ugly to rape.'"

So, we return to the question at hand: what are the appropriate limits of free speech on college campuses? First, it is important to clarify that colleges and the learning spaces they contain and the newspapers they publish, even if they are "public institutions" are not obliged by any law, including of course the constitution to provide a platform for all speech. Just as college newspapers can and must select what content is appropriate for them to publish, universities can and I argue must select what types of speech they allow within their buildings. Not giving someone a forum is not the same thing as stopping them from speaking.

As one commentator phrased it in a blog comment "People on the left and right have a tendency to think that the free speech is some sort of right to convenience, which it isn’t."

Is it reasonable that the right to spread hate on college campuses should usurp the right of students to feel safe?

** UPDATE: At a meeting last night (Jan. 20th) University of Oregon administrators announced that the "Pacifica Forum is no longer allowed to hold meetings within the EMU for the rest of the year....The new resolution stated that the Pacifica Forum should remove themselves from the UO’s campus."

HDOT Interview with Harry Mazal of the Holocaust History Project

HDOT.org posts an interview with Harry Mazal to iTunesU: The podcast chronicles his ongoing combat against online Holocaust denial and hate.

Mazal is one of the founders of the Holocaust History Project, a consortium of scholars and technicians from around the world that responds to Holocaust deniers and reader queries with accurate and vetted information. Using its diverse board as a peer review panel, the Holocaust History Project produces technical analysis of Holocaust documents, drawings, artifacts and images. These pieces are posted to its website www.holocaust-history.org which receives thousands of visitors each month from around the world.

The Holocaust History Project is also unique among most Holocaust educational sites in that they respond to almost all user inquiries, many of which are posted to the site's q&a section.

In this podcast, Mazal describes his more than 15 years of experience combating online Holocaust denial and hate speech. He began responding to denial claims in the "bulletin board" world of Genie and Prodigy that predated the modern internet and has continued to this day. While he celebrates the possibilities the internet offers for democracy, he laments the dangers it poses for history.

A full transcript of the podcast is available in the Podcast section of the HDOT site.

"Deniers are not a point of view"

Dr. Deborah Lipstadt spoke two weeks ago at the Harvard Hillel addressing the recent controversy surrounding the University's Crimson newspaper. In early September, the Harvard Crimson ran an ad bought by longtime Holocaust denier Bradley Smith. The advertisement challenged readers to "provide, with proof, the name of one person killed in a gas chamber at Auschwitz."

In her talk, Lipstadt emphasized that “Deniers are not a point of view ...They are liars and falsifiers of history. Deniers take the data and twist it and turn and distort it.”

She also focused on the various insidious ways that deniers spread their message, pointing to "soft-core denial" as a particularly poignant example. According to the Crimson write up of her talk:

Lipstadt also discussed what she called “soft-core Holocaust denial,” a new form of denial in which the Holocaust “gets mixed up with other things” and is “used as a misrepresentation.” As an example, she cited the comparison of George W. Bush to Hitler, which she said suggested an implicit denial of the Holocaust.

“To compare [Bush] to Hitler is to turn history on its head,” said Lipstadt.

Just a week earlier and 20 miles outside Harvard, in the Boston suburb of Framingham, an infamous immigrant-basher named Jim Rizoli demonstrated Lipstadt's point in spectacular fashion. Long a racist and bigoted critic of Brazilian immigrants in Framingham, Jim showed that xenophobia, antisemitism and Holocaust denial are two sides of the same coin when, he took 10 minutes out of his hour-long public access show to praise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and to minimize the numbers of Holocaust dead.

According to an ADL report, Rizoli defended Ahmadinejad, claiming that "he has never read anything where the Iranian leader denied that the Holocaust happened, that he only 'has some issues with the way the whole thing went down.' Rizoli then commented, 'Just like I do.'" What "thing" went down in a way that Rizoli takes issue with? This type of oblique reference to an unidentified manipulation of history is typical of "soft-core denial," in that it attempts to minimize the Holocaust through slander rather then historical argumentation.

Yet Rizoli did not stop there. After announcing his intention to launch into a "controversial topic," Rizoli told his viewers that they'd "been brainwashed for the last 50 years on the [Holocaust] propaganda." A summary of Rizoli's diatribe on Boston.com, has him parroting one of the most persistent deniers claims, he insisted that "more Christians lost their lives than Jews, only around 300,000 people died, not six million, and that the majority were not killed but 'died of sickness and disease.'"

This association of xenophobia, antisemitism and Holocaust denial relates perhaps to the same hatred of the other. In today's world, this is often expressed as an insistence that one's own group, in Rizoli's case white Christians, has suffered more than any other group and therefore deserves to be appeased, left alone, left unchallenged. Yet, the oft-repeated Holocaust mantras "never forget" and "never again" mean nothing if not that we must remain vigilant in the face of intolerance and hatred. Rizoli reminds Jews (as if any reminder was necessary) that in almost every case, hatred of the other is accompanied by or birthed from the hatred of Jews.

*******Update*********
A local Framingham paper reported today that Rizoli claims to have lost 70% of his carpet-cleaning clientele, and an important membership in a client referral service since this story broke. He insists that his business is being ruined by "the Zionists in the Jewish community. They spread their little rumors. The Zionists are radical crazy, hysterical people." He added that "This is how they deal with you."

Excellent resource for exploring online hate

In preparation for HDOT's (www.hdot.org) spring launch of interactive online lesson plans, we begin a series of reviews of available resources. Please help us design the most useful lessons by submitting your comments.

The Canadian nonprofit Media Awareness Network (MAN) has a very helpful website for understanding the conjunction of hate and violence in contemporary media. The site features a special focus on online hate including step-by-step lessons that walk visitors through the complex issues surrounding online speech. As the site notes, "The line between hate speech and free speech is a thin one."

In the "Online Hate" module the site defines hate and explores its implications on the internet and in law. It then details the ways in which hate sites manage their design, content, and their arguments to maximize their appeal, particularly to impressionable audiences. Finally, the module offer various strategies for responding to online hate.

MAN's website also has a great deal of other information including complete lesson plans with in-class overheads, activities and handouts ready to be printed from the site. Each article is supplemented with links to additional reading that can be used in more advanced settings. While most of their site is geared towards children, teens and their parents and teachers, the content speaks to a wide swath of adults who were never trained for the digital world in which we find ourselves.

UNESCO Director General Election

UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Culture Organization, is electing a new director general. According to the mission statement listed on UNESCO's website, its purpose is "to build peace in the minds of men" through creating "the conditions for genuine dialogue based upon respect for shared values and the dignity of each civilization and culture."

Since the vacancy was announced, the front-runner has been Egypt's Culture Minister of 22 years, Farouk Hosny. Over the years, Hosny has become known in the United States primarily through a series of outrageous claims about Israel and "the" Jews. Each of his outbursts has taken on a new weight given that he is the favored candidate for such a powerful position in an organization whose stated purpose is to ensure respect for the values and dignity of each culture.

A Jerusalem Post editorial critical of Hosny's candidacy reviews several of his most offensive statements. For instance, in May 2008 Hosny declared his readiness to burn every Israeli book in Egyptian libraries. He has since claimed that this statement was taken out of context and that he meant only those Israeli books that were critical of Egypt and Islam; however, the statement speaks for itself.

The Post editorial lists several other incidents:

Most recently Hosny accused America's UNESCO Ambassador, David Killion, of antagonism because "Killion is Jewish." (To the best of our knowledge, incidentally, he isn't.) Hosny has previously painted Israel as "inhuman," and "an aggressive, racist, and arrogant culture, based on robbing other people's rights and the denial of such rights." He has declared that Israel is "aided" in its dark machinations by "the infiltration of Jews into the international media" and by "their ability to spread lies."

Should not this evidence of anti-Israel and antisemitic bias disqualify him from controlling a UN body whose purpose includes the preservation and respect of each civilization?

UPDATE: Irina Bokova, a Bulgarian career diplomat won the election Tuesday in the fifth round of voting beating Hosny 31 votes to 27. She becomes the first woman to lead UNESCO. AP has the story.

Excellent Short History of the Holocaust and Denial

In "The Holocaust is humanity's greatest failure," (Guardian UK. 9/9/09), Dr. Deborah Lipstadt gives an excellent overview of the history of the Holocaust.

Writing in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II, Dr. Lipstadt covers the history beginning with the Nazi rise to power and ending with the perverted worldview of the Holocaust deniers.