Redditors Rise Up Against Holocaust Deniers

As Holocaust Memorial Day approached, the denizens of r/badhistory began to realize a shocking truth. Deniers of the Holocaust had patiently and stealthily taken over r/holocaust.

The same people had r/Shoah too.

Reddit frequently bills itself as 'the front page of the internet'. It's one of the biggest forums and repositories of information on the world wide web today. Topics are organized into subreddits, where people meet to share links, personal stories and opinions. Thousands participate in discussions surrounding the hottest subjects of the day.

On January 27th 2014, the 69th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was commemorated in international events. Articles, lectures, interviews with survivors, documentaries on the television, special mentions in schools and gatherings at the sites of the concentration camps were designed to raise awareness.

For the millions of Redditors, a piquing of interest would engender the natural response of checking out a subreddit about it. The obvious search term is 'Holocaust' or 'Shoah'. Their burgeoning awareness would deliver them smack bang into the midst of Holocaust deniers.

Horrified members of r/badhistory began to spread the word, prompting a flurry of messages to the Reddit administration protesting the takeover. But to no avail. The silence from Reddit's owners was deafening. r/Holocaust remained in neo-Nazi hands.

Faced with no official assistance, ordinary Redditors began to get organized in r/badhistory. They wanted to confront the Holocaust deniers head on, banding together to leave no bad history unanswered at the source. All misinformation would be met with clear evidence to the contrary.

But that too was doomed to failure.

It was no good simply going into the relevant subreddits and arguing each point. Moderators have the ability to simply delete such counter-points, and ban users from their forum. That's precisely what those in charge of r/Holocaust did.

With no way now of challenging the views of Nazi apologists, in Reddit's primary repository of Holocaust education, it would have been easy to admit defeat. Outraged Redditors could have ineffectively ranted in other subreddits, with like-minded people tutting that it was indeed terrible, but all agreeing that they'd done all that they could.

But they didn't. They provided alternative sources of information with probably Reddit's biggest ever explosion of new forums opening on a single topic. Overnight, dozens of Holocaust related subreddits were created, utilizing every keyword that the activists could conceive.

Moreover, they put in claims for extant subreddits, wherein the moderators had been inactive for some time. Many of those were known Holocaust deniers, who discovered the initiative only when they were asked to defend their tenancy during a takeover bid. The loss risked not because of their views, but their long-term absence.

Reddit runs on activity, regardless of its nature, and this was the chink in the armor which Holocaust truth activists exploited to the utmost. In this way coups were staged, and real historical information about the Holocaust began to be disseminated again.

Stormfront is a white supremacist group, based mainly in the USA, but with branches stretching out across the world.

It began life as an internet bulletin board, set up in 1990 as the hub of operations for a former KKK leader turned political hopeful. David Duke didn't make it as US Senator on that occasion, nor did he succeed in his bid to become Governor of Louisiana during the following year. Though he was elected to the House of Representatives for the same state, serving from 1990-1992.

Over time, Stormfront grew beyond merely being Duke's grass roots cyber support group. Using the motto White Pride World Wide, it boasts ever increasing numbers pushing far right ideologies on and off line.

Until mid-2013, it also had a thriving subreddit named, appropriately enough, r/stormfront. But the moderators were careless enough to be inactive on their own forum. The community was blithely posting away, but that counted for nothing when an ownership claim was quietly submitted.

r/stormfront still exists and it is still busy.  But not quite with the subject matter for which it was founded.

On February 3rd 2014, William Allington - a Redditor from Sydney, Australia - launched a petition directed at the Reddit administration team.

It ran under the heading, 'Remove the mods of /r/holocaust and related communities on grounds of promoting fringe Holocaust Denial, racism and squatting on domains to stifle activity and discussion,' and included a lengthy letter further articulating the objections.

The Reddit Holocaust petition, which was cyber-signed by a cohort of people from r/badhistory and announced in r/badsubhub, ended with the words,

'To be clear, we are not asking that these users be banned, or that hate-speech subreddits such as /r/whiterights or /r/White_Pride be closed down. We merely wish to see subreddits in major interest categories, such as /r/holocaust, /r/IDF and /r/shoah, not be allowed to fester in the hands of those who act in bad faith and game the system. Instead, the subreddits should serve everyone with a healthy and constructive interest in these topics. Please let Reddit work like it is meant to work, and facilitate free speech and open discussion.'

It was a plea which acknowledged the difficult line that Reddit's owners have to tread, and the dilemma inherent in safe-guarding such sensitive subjects, while also allowing all viewpoints to be heard.

But moreover it signaled a sea-change in the activism of the Redditors involved. Petitions like this would garner publicity about the issue in the wider world. All in-house avenues for protest on Reddit had been exhausted. This was designed to bring external pressure to bear.