Why Would Anyone Deny the Holocaust?

Encountering someone who denies that the Holocaust took place can be a bewildering experience.

The knee-jerk reaction is disbelief, whether it's John Thames trolling through comments on Wizzley; the likes of Michael Santomauro (pictured left) taking a megaphone to East 85th Street in Manhattan; or high profile court cases, like David Irving losing a libel action against Deborah Lipstradt.

All week, I've had people reading the diatribes of John Thames and turning to me with that same puzzled reaction. It's been a weird, almost surreal encounter, watching pseudo-histories tumble out, not a shred of which stands up to the slightest scrutiny. You didn't need to be a qualified historian to work out that, nor to discern where opinion masqueraded as truth. A quick internet search destroyed most declarations.

As far as I can ascertain, not a single person was convinced by the blatant dot joining of wildly irrelevant or selective facts. In fact, the majority of people were largely doing the cyber equivalent of munching on popcorn, while rubber-necking the bizarre exchanges.

Many were taking informal bets on when or if I'd finally take him down. And/or speculating on whether this was merely a troll, who didn't believe his own rubbish, but knew it would get a reaction; or if there was real insanity/mania/delusion at work. Delusion was definitely a top choice.

But I remain concerned about darker motives. After all, I am probably the current resident Holocaust expert on Wizzley (I achieved my BA (Hons) in History studying this period, culminating in a dissertation on the Porajmos). I know how these things can escalate.

As this past week on Wizzley has aptly demonstrated, the main reaction to a Holocaust denier isn't 'did the Holocaust happen?', but 'is this person trolling or actually deluded?' 

After all, the target readership might have well have just been asked to believe that the color blue no longer exists in the world, or that said world is now flat again.

Denying the Holocaust really is that ludicrous. It rears up in the face of insurmountable evidence, throwing flawed arguments and speculative lapses of logic as its only ammunition. It's hardly worth shouting it down.

In much the same way as you'd counter 'the Earth is flat' with 'no, it's not,' there is only really one response to 'the Holocaust didn't happen' - 'Yes, it did.'

Nevertheless, there's plenty of information on the internet, should anyone have actually been convinced by any of the anti-Holocaust arguments.  You could browse Wikipedia, for the layman's level of rebuttal; or you could delve into the archives of the Nikzor Project for more in-depth responses.

The latter grew out of a Usenet forum, founded by Canadian activist Ken McVay, who realized there was a real and present need for someone to tackle the pseudo-histories of Holocaust deniers head on. All of the main arguments used by such people are there, each carefully bombarded with evidence as to why they are ridiculous.

The Nikzor Project being even vaguely necessary is a good indication of whether your Holocaust denier is a troll or more serious about their proclamations.

The average troll isn't even trying to sound academic about it. There's no reference to 'essays' or other scholarly media. They merely say that the Holocaust never occurred, then sit back to enjoy the drama.

It's immaturity at work, nothing more and nothing less. They'll grow out of it faster, if you don't feed them attention.

Imagine that you felt quite alone. You'd never been part of the 'in' crowd. You'd flunked school and you were now stuck in a dead end, menial job, or were terminally unemployed. People tended to think of you as a bit of a joke, if they thought of you at all.

Now imagine that someone came along and invited you to be part of an international movement, perhaps with local meetings. You could hook up with fun, like-minded people on a weekly or monthly basis. Part of something. Belonging.

Imagine if that came complete with a huge revelation. Something which you could grasp, but had eluded the majority of people. 'Sheep' believe anything, but you've seen scholarly papers (helpfully omitting confusing academia, and not requiring any prior understanding nor context at all) and you know the truth.

How clever do you feel now?  How superior to all who ever wrote you off as a loser? How wonderful is that sense of knowing something huge?

Some people deny the Holocaust because they fit the above profile and were targeted by recruiters. They constitute the rank and file. People who can hold placards and swell the numbers in conference halls. They'll get the word out by spamming forums, citing precisely those 'essays' that convinced them in the first place. They're not required to think.

Linked to this are those who were targeted because they were young and inexperienced in sifting through facts and lies. Bradley R Smith, a prominent Holocaust Denier, launched his recruiting campaigns on University campuses, stating,  “I don’t want to spend time with adults anymore, I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled.”

Students imply future academics. Their papers can be used to fill the archives with more essays that look the part, even if they won't stand up to much scrutiny of the evidence.

These people deserve our pity, compassion and help. They're being exploited. They don't care a jot for the central issue, other than the fact that it makes them feel so included in the world. They couldn't debate their way out of a paper bag, but they are usually the public face of the whole movement.

Denying the Holocaust to gain a sense of self-worth opens up a whole new can of worms. If they wake up to what they're doing, then they can add the crashing defeat of realizing their gullibility to the rest of their issues. It's a lose-lose situation.

This was precisely the reason that General Eisenhower predicted that the Holocaust would one day be subject to denial.

We can all be wise after the fact, but our governments had to make decisions based on what they felt was right at the time. Thus is it with the Holocaust.

I can remember being incensed for a long time about Britain's role in all of this. Why on Earth hadn't Britain just bombed the blooming railway tracks leading into Auschwitz?! Churchill's government was well aware of the atrocities, and our planes were certainly in the vicinity.

It took a recent trip to Auschwitz to finally put that specter to bed. Apparently British planes wouldn't have had the fuel capacity to make it that far into Poland until quite late in the war. It wasn't like they could stop and refuel in Germany. Plus the lack of precision bombing meant that British bombs could just have easily drifted off course to blow up the barracks.

Now that REALLY would have looked great in the history books, wouldn't it?

But at least the British have the perceived moral high ground of being able to say that we were fighting from the beginning, and did all that was possible to end the Holocaust simply by winning the war. There's plenty to debate in those statements, yet the fact remains that today's British can feel a bit smug when asked what their parents/grandparents did to stop the Holocaust.

What about those countries which stayed out of the Second World War until close to the end? Or those who colluded with the Nazis?  Just yesterday (at the time of writing), Romanian President Traian Basescu admitted that his country has seriously struggled with Holocaust denial, because of that very reason.

Nor is it any accident that a disproportionate number of Holocaust Deniers are German or of German descent. They have much more national guilt to play down than any other state.

Denying the Holocaust - because it reduces the perceived greatness of your country - is found more in Eastern Europe than the West, but it does exist in the latter too. Particularly in the USA. It's much, much easier to pretend that the Holocaust never happened, than to admit that your nation's policies may have been flawed, your grandparents complicit and/or your military unable to protect its civilians.

And Britons, you wouldn't look nearly so smug if you'd studied this quite as much as I had. We still weren't all that great. Nor does it get us off the hook over the British Empire.

The Holocaust - or a genocide very like it - can and will happen again. The best that any of us can say is 'not on my watch'. 

Perhaps the only silver lining of the Holocaust is that it now stands as a recent, vivid and perfect example of how racist policies can go too far. It's a very inconvenient entry in the historical record, for those who would do it all again.

Much better to make it all go away.

Post-Holocaust antisemitism has had to wrap itself in knots, in order to be taken seriously by anybody. "You want to include Jews in our society?  Then YOU are antisemitic, not me!" They cry, continuing in the face of incredulous frowns, "Because if you don't separate them, then societal diversity will make them lose their culture! Dilute their bloodline! YOU WILL HAVE WIPED THE JEWS FROM THE EARTH, JUST BY INCLUDING THEM!!"

And for 'Jews', please feel free to insert any other race different to the speaker. Or indeed, those of a different creed, political leaning or whatever else comes to mind. 

For a moment there, such twisted logic sounds superficially reasonable, until you realize that the natural outcome would be ghettos, camps or sealed off states. Anything which a) emphasizes race like it's not a meaningless distinction and b) promotes segregation. It makes it sound like concentration camps are a good idea.

Many Holocaust Deniers hail from neo-Nazi, far-right or KKK-type backgrounds. For those members with keen intelligence, then the Holocaust can be used as a means to ensure that it happens again.  All they have to do is persuade enough people that it didn't happen in the first place, or it was exaggerated, in order to allow its perceived victims to capitalize upon survivor pity.

If a consensus could be reached to agree upon this, then mainstream society would naturally feel angry about the inherent duplicity. We would all turn against the Jews (and other 'undesirable' groups) and turn the other cheek, as the machinery of exclusion through to extermination kicked in again.

It's a sad indictment of human nature that such a reading is probably correct. Society can all too easily turn against a sector of itself. History has provided countless examples of that over and over again. Currently the Holocaust - its place in living memory, its wealth of evidence, and majority acceptance that it did indeed happen - stands between us and the next time.

No wonder the more insidious of antisemitic, and other racist, movements would have us deny it.  Carefully inserted doubt shoots holes in the 'never again', but only if we let it.