113-499: Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews , known as the Holocaust , is a fabrication or exaggeration. Holocaust denial includes making one or more of the following false claims: The methodologies of Holocaust deniers are based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary . Scholars use
226-608: A 16th-century Reformation 's pioneer, was noted for his vicious antisemitism. Luther wrote a 65,000-word thesis demonizing the Jews in which he not only described Jews as a base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth [...] and the synagogue [...] incorrigible whore and an evil slut, but also called for extreme violence towards Jews within Europe . Martin Luther
339-513: A La Salle University medieval English literature professor, is considered the first major mainstream American holocaust denier. App defended the Germans and Nazi Germany during World War II. He published numerous articles, letters, and books on Holocaust denial, quickly building a loyal following. App's work inspired the Institute for Historical Review , a California center founded in 1978 whose sole task
452-587: A tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude , saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children. – Matthew 27:24–25 Jewish deicide was legitimized in Christian theology by Saint John Chrysostom (c. 4th century), a prominent Church Father . In the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965, Pope Paul VI issued
565-422: A "false news" law and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an Ontario court for "disseminating and publishing material denying the Holocaust". The Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg was a witness for the prosecution at the 1985 trial. Zündel's conviction was overturned in an appeal on a legal technicality, leading to a second trial in 1988, in which he was again convicted. The 1988 trial included, as witnesses for
678-527: A French professor of literature at the University of Lyon , wrote two letters to Le Monde claiming that the gas chambers used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews did not exist. A colleague of Faurisson, Jean-Claude Pressac , who initially shared Faurisson's views, later became convinced of the Holocaust's evidence while investigating documents at Auschwitz in 1979. He published his conclusions along with much of
791-590: A Hitlerite-style regime may be impossible, but a replica might be produced in the future; the rehabilitation of Nazism, they concluded, required the discrediting of the Holocaust. Neo-fascism has likewise relied upon Holocaust denial as a means of rehabilitation. As a movement, modern Holocaust denial is associated with historical revisionism based on pseudoscientific evidence and fringe academic networks including intradiegetic pseudoscientific journals, conferences, and professional organizations (e.g. Journal of Historical Review , International Conference to Review
904-565: A Jewish man lynched in 1915 over false allegations of killing a girl. In medieval Europe , Jews were often accused of stealing hosts and desecrating them to reenact the crucifixion of Jesus by stabbing or burning. The first allegation of Jewish host desecration was made recorded in 1243 in Beelitz , near Berlin , and all Jews in Beelitz were burned alive, subsequently called the Judenberg . In
1017-486: A contingency plan that if defeat was imminent they would carry out the total destruction of German records. Historians have documented evidence that as Germany 's defeat became imminent and Nazi leaders realized they would most likely be captured and brought to trial, great effort was made to destroy all evidence of mass extermination. Heinrich Himmler instructed his camp commandants to destroy records, crematoria, and other signs of mass extermination. As one of many examples,
1130-689: A giant octopus reaching across the globe. A 2001 Egyptian reprint of Henry Ford 's antisemitic text The International Jew , with the same octopus imagery on the front cover. Among the earliest refutations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a forgery were a series of articles printed in The Times in 1921, which revealed the forgery's content to have been plagiarized from the unrelated satire The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu . The Russian imperial state popularized
1243-558: A high priority of Jewish concerns" despite holding prominent positions in the American media industry. Variants on this theme focus on Hollywood, the press and the music industry. Since 2015 when the European migrant crisis happened, the White genocide conspiracy theory has gained traction among white nationalists. Jews are often accused of facilitating unrestricted non-white immigration to alter
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#17328524385821356-512: A paid ad from Bradley R Smith. It was quickly criticized, and the editor issued an apology, saying publishing the ad was a mistake. The German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte , starting in the 1980s, advanced a set of theories, which though not denying the Holocaust appeared to flirt with an Italian Holocaust denier, Carlo Mattogno , as a serious historian. In a letter to the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka of December 8, 1986, Nolte criticized
1469-527: A paranoid belief in Jewish conspiracies to undermine the church and Western civilization [...] preach that contemporary Jews are responsible for deicide, endorsed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , and claimed that there was a factual basis for the medieval blood libel . One of its bishops, Richard Williamson , is a well known Holocaust denier. Nevertheless, the Vatican and many Catholics worldwide are still denying
1582-453: A pioneering 16th-century Christian reformer , also consists of such a libel that is still being promoted. For instance, radio host James Edwards alleged that Jews "hate Christianity" and were "using pornography as a subversive tool against us". The ADL noted, This is not to say that Jews have historically borne no animus towards Jesus and the Apostles, or towards Christianity as a whole. In
1695-528: A precaution against nausea. Griffith's antisemitism is still present in the party. For instance, lower house parliamentarian Réada Cronin alleged in 2020 that Jews were "responsible for European wars" and "Adolf Hitler was a pawn of the [Jewish] Rothschilds [...may] not have been too far wrong". In the United States , J.J. Goldberg , The Forward 's editorial director, published a study of such trope in 1997. He concluded that Jewish Americans "do not make
1808-467: A protégé of Barnes, David Hoggan , published Der erzwungene Krieg ( The Forced War ) in West Germany, which claimed that Germany had been the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy in 1939. Though Der erzwungene Krieg was primarily concerned with the origins of World War II, it also down-played or justified the effects of Nazi antisemitic measures in the pre-1939 period. For example, Hoggan justified
1921-1139: A religion. Since the 2nd century , malicious allegations of Jewish guilt have become a recurring motif in antisemitic tropes, which take the form of libels, stereotypes or conspiracy theories. They typically present Jews as cruel, powerful or controlling, some of which also feature the denial or trivialization of historical atrocities against Jews. These tropes have lead to pogroms , genocides, persecutions and systemic racism for Jews throughout history . Antisemitic tropes mainly evolved in monotheistic societies, whose religions were derived from Judaism, many of which were traceable to Christianity's early days . These tropes were mirrored by 7th-century Quranic claims that Jews were "visited with wrath from Allah " due to their supposed practice of usury and disbelief in His revelations. In medieval Europe , antisemitic tropes were expanded in scope to justify mass persecutions and expulsions of Jews . Particularly, Jews were repeatedly massacred over accusations of causing epidemics and "ritually consuming" Christian babies' blood . In
2034-574: A resolution adopted by the Duke University History Department, November 8, 1991, and reprinted in Duke Chronicle , November 13, 1991, in response to an advertisement produced by Bradley R Smith's Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust : That historians are constantly engaged in historical revision is certainly correct; however, what historians do is very different from this advertisement. Historical revision of major events ...
2147-558: A voluminous dictionary of German language and discourse regarding National Socialism and the Holocaust. It includes chapters on Holocaust trivialization and contrived comparisons, such as the infamous "atomic Holocaust", "Babycaust", "Holocaust of abortion", "red Holocaust" or "biological Holocaust". Lawrence Douglas argues that denial was invented by the perpetrators and employed as a means of genocide. For example, trucks of Zyklon B were labeled with Red Cross symbols and victims were told that they would be " resettled ". Douglas also cites
2260-457: A way that could not really be debated." Holocaust deniers have placed "Full page advertisements in college and university newspapers, including those of Brandeis University , Boston College , Pennsylvania State University , and Queens College . Some of these ads arguing that the Holocaust never happened ran without comment; others generated op-ed pieces by professors and students". On September 8, 2009, student newspaper The Harvard Crimson ran
2373-677: Is a constitutionally protected freedom of expression as per s 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms . Keegstra appealed to the Alberta Court of Appeal . That court agreed with Keegstra, and he was acquitted. The Crown then appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Canada , which ruled by a 4–3 majority that promoting hatred could be justifiably restricted under s 1 of the Charter . The Supreme Court restored Keegstra's conviction. He
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#17328524385822486-476: Is deemed influential in regenerating post-war European far-right ideas at a time of identity crisis in the 1950–1960s. His arguments formed the basis of numerous works of Holocaust denial that followed: "testimonies are not reliable, essentially coming from the mouth of Jews and communists", "atrocities committed in camps were the work of deportees [essentially the kapos ]", "disorganization occurred in Nazi camps following
2599-557: Is inherently white supremacist. It depends on stoking fears that a non-white population, which the theory's proponents characterize as "inferior," will displace a white majority. It is also antisemitic. Some proponents of the "great replacement" do not explicitly attribute the plot to Jews. Instead, they blame powerful Jewish individuals such as financier and philanthropist George Soros or use coded antisemitic language to identify shadowy "elites" or "globalists." The ADL documented several tropes that had associated Jews with banking, including
2712-447: Is mainly spread by white supremacists. Refuters contended that food producers would not engage in the certification process if it was not profitable to obtain the "kosher certification", which is actually a voluntary business decision, while the "resultant" increased sales would lower the average cost. Jews have been blamed for the crucifixion of Jesus throughout history: When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather
2825-560: Is not concerned with the actuality of these events; rather, it concerns their historical interpretation – their causes and consequences generally. Lipstadt writes that modern Holocaust denial draws its inspiration from various sources, including a school of thought which used an established method to question government policies. In 1992, Donald L. Niewyk gave some examples of how legitimate historical revisionism—the re-examination of accepted history and its updating with newly discovered, more accurate, or less-biased information—may be applied to
2938-494: Is the denial of the Holocaust. The publication of Arthur Butz 's The Hoax of the Twentieth Century : The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry in 1976; and David Irving 's Hitler's War in 1977 brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold. Butz was a tenured associate professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University . In December 1978 and January 1979, Robert Faurisson ,
3051-501: The Nostra aetate to refute the libel, What happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive , nor against the Jews of today. Against radical traditionalists' objection, it was distantly followed up by an apology in 2000 for the two millennia of Catholic persecution of Jews, amid claims of the Second Temple menorah still being hidden in
3164-487: The 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel , with the victims overwhelmingly Jewish, including several Holocaust survivors . The publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1903 is usually considered the beginning of contemporary conspiracy theory literature. The trope embodied by the book is manifested in both writings and imagery, where Jews are accused of plotting world domination nefariously. Typical examples include Nazi-originated cartoons depicting Jews as
3277-547: The CDJC , and much of the huge trove of archives were then transferred to the CDJC after the trials and became the core of future Holocaust historiography. The Nuremberg trials were important historically, but the events were still very recent, television was in its infancy and not present, and there was little public impact. There were isolated moments of limited public awareness from Hollywood films such as The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) or
3390-732: The Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War , a German government-funded think tank whose sole purpose was to disseminate the official government position that Germany was the victim of Allied aggression in 1914 and that the Versailles Treaty was morally invalid. Headed by Major Alfred von Wegerer, a völkisch activist, the organization portrayed itself as a scholarly society, but historians later described it as "a clearinghouse for officially desirable views on
3503-574: The Nation of Islam (NOI) for circulation among their Black American audience. In 2003, the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed drew a standing ovation at an OIC conference after alleging: Today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them [...] They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong [...] they have gained control of
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3616-508: The Posen speeches as an example of denial while genocide was ongoing, with Himmler referring to the Holocaust as "an unnamed and never to be named page of glory". According to Douglas, the denial of mass murder using gas chambers recalls the Nazi efforts to persuade the victims that they were actually harmless showers. While the Second World War was still underway, the Nazis had already formed
3729-559: The Third Council of the Lateran threatened excommunication for any Christians lending money at interest, causing those who desired loans to approach Jews. Natural tension between gentile debtors and Jewish creditors reinforced pre-existing anti-Jewish biases. In England, the departing Crusaders were joined by debtors in the massacres of Jews at London and York in 1189–1190 . In 1275, Edward I of England punished Jewish creditors by passing
3842-519: The article wizard to submit a draft for review, or request a new article . Search for " Clemens Heni " in existing articles. Look for pages within Misplaced Pages that link to this title . Other reasons this message may be displayed: If a page was recently created here, it may not be visible yet because of a delay in updating the database; wait a few minutes or try the purge function . Titles on Misplaced Pages are case sensitive except for
3955-580: The blood libel included the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX , while Pope Clement VI said that the Black Death could not be blamed on Jews. Contemporarily, the blood libel still appears frequently in Muslim countries' state media, publications and online platforms as per their official anti-Zionism. A few Arab writers, who happened not to be antisemitic, condemned
4068-483: The blood libel run contrary to Judaism. The Ten Commandments forbid murder . The use of blood in cooking is banned by Kashrut as blood is deemed ritually unclean . The Hebrew Bible , or Old Testament , and Halakha portray human sacrifice as one of the evils separating the pagans of Canaan from the Hebrews. Jews were prohibited from performing these rituals. Ritual cleanliness for priests prohibited even being in
4181-497: The blood libel . The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram published articles by Osama Al-Baz, a senior advisor to the late Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak , explaining the origins of the blood libel . Whereas, the blood libel is still peddled by Christian fundamentalists, including the Radical Traditionalist Catholics ( rad trads ) and American ultraconservative pundit Candace Owens , who alleged that Leo Frank ,
4294-453: The development of banking . In the 20th century, newer allegations of Jews masterminding the propagation of Communism emerged, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903). Judeo-Bolshevism was popularized by Hitler's to conflate Jews with communists and present them as an existential threat to justify the Holocaust. A Polish equivalent of this trope is Żydokomuna , which accused "most Jews" of having "collaborated with
4407-506: The "About the IHR" statement on their website, the IHR states, "The IHR does not 'deny' the Holocaust. Indeed, the IHR as such has no 'position' on any specific event...." British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that the Institute's acknowledgment "that a relatively small number of Jews were killed" was a means to draw attention away from its primary beliefs, i.e. that the number of victims was not in
4520-426: The "Jewish power" myth is often veiled as the "criticism" of "Jewish plutocrats" allegedly behind political changes. For instance, QAnon conspiracy theorists believe in the existence of a " satanic cabal" of global elites ( globalists ) "drinking children's blood" to achieve "world domination". Two-time heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury also believes in a " Zionist plot " to "lower" public moral standard via
4633-640: The 1930s, the Nazi government used this propaganda against the British, claiming allegations of concentration camps were malicious lies put forward by the British government, and historians Joachim Neander and Randal Marlin note that this story "encouraged later disbelief when early reports circulated about the Holocaust under Hitler". Victor Cavendish-Bentinck , chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, noted that these reports were similar to "stories of employment of human corpses during
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4746-803: The 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg which had some newsreel footage of actual scenes from liberated Nazi concentration camps including scenes of piles of naked corpses laid out in rows and bulldozed into large pits, which was considered exceptionally graphic for the time. Public awareness changed when the Eichmann trial riveted the world's attention fifteen years after Nuremberg. In 1961, the Israeli government captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. Chief prosecutor Gideon Hausner 's intentions were not only to demonstrate Eichmann's guilt personally but to present material about
4859-595: The 19th century, lies about Jews plotting "world domination" by "controlling" mass media and global banking spread, which mutated into modern tropes, especially the libel that Jews " invented and promoted communism ". These tropes fatefully formed Adolf Hitler 's worldview , caused WWII and the Holocaust , which killed at least 6 million Jews (67% pre-war European Jews ). Since the 20th century, antisemitic libels' usage has been documented among groups that self-identify as "anti-Zionists". Most contemporary tropes feature
4972-422: The 4th century, Church Father Saint John Chrysostom described a synagogue as worse than a brothel and a drinking shop [...] a den of scoundrels, the repair of wild beasts, a temple of demons, the refuge of brigands and debauchees, and the cavern of devils, a criminal assembly of the assassins of Christ. His anti-Jewish homily was legitimized in Christian theology as the basis of Christian antisemitism for
5085-536: The American INS arrested him in Tennessee , US, on an immigration violations matter, and few days later, Zündel was sent back to Canada, where he tried to gain refugee status. Zündel remained in prison until March 1, 2005, when he was deported to Germany and prosecuted for disseminating hate propaganda. On February 15, 2007, Zündel was convicted on 14 counts of incitement under Germany's Volksverhetzung law, which bans
5198-467: The American far-right activist Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust. The IHR's founding was inspired by Austin App , a La Salle professor of medieval English literature and considered the first major American holocaust denier. The IHR sought from the beginning to establish itself within
5311-1353: The Atlantic slave trade , implying that they are "White oppressors". Several BHI sects have been classified as hate groups by at least three American civil rights groups, the ADL , SPLC and SWC , with the ADL claiming that not all BHI sects were anti-Semitic. Clemens Heni Look for Clemens Heni on one of Misplaced Pages's sister projects : [REDACTED] Wiktionary (dictionary) [REDACTED] Wikibooks (textbooks) [REDACTED] Wikiquote (quotations) [REDACTED] Wikisource (library) [REDACTED] Wikiversity (learning resources) [REDACTED] Commons (media) [REDACTED] Wikivoyage (travel guide) [REDACTED] Wikinews (news source) [REDACTED] Wikidata (linked database) [REDACTED] Wikispecies (species directory) Misplaced Pages does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Clemens Heni in Misplaced Pages to check for alternative titles or spellings. You need to log in or create an account and be autoconfirmed to create new articles. Alternatively, you can use
5424-516: The BHI are not associated with either Jews or Christians . Just as the "Messianic Judaism" founded by Conservative Baptist Association 's Evangelical priest Moishe Rosen , the BHI do not meet any criteria for being Jewish . The BHI have seen themselves as the only "real Jews". They deny contemporary Jews' Jewish ancestry and historical connection to Israel . BHI have accused contemporary Jews of being " European converts to Judaism " and running
5537-468: The CODOH campus project. He said, "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." "What I wanted to do was I wanted to set forth three or four ideas that students might be interested in, that might cause them to think about things or to have questions about things. And I wanted to make it as simple as possible, and to set it up in
5650-623: The German government. This Allied intention to administer justice post-war was first announced in 1943 in the Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe and reiterated at the Yalta Conference and at Berlin in 1945. While the intention was not specifically to preserve the historical record of the Holocaust, some of the core documents required to prosecute the cases were provided to them by
5763-630: The Global Vision of the Holocaust , Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust ). The first person to openly write after the end of World War II that he doubted the reality of the Holocaust was French journalist Maurice Bardèche in his 1948 book Nuremberg ou la Terre promise ("Nuremberg or the Promised Land"). Viewed as "the father-figure of Holocaust denial", Bardèche introduced in his works many aspects of neo-fascist and Holocaust denial propaganda techniques and ideological structures; his work
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#17328524385825876-463: The Holocaust denial movement bases its approach on the predetermined idea that the Holocaust, as understood by mainstream historiography, did not occur. Sometimes referred to as " negationism ", from the French term négationnisme introduced by Henry Rousso , Holocaust deniers attempt to rewrite history by minimizing, denying, or simply ignoring essential facts. Koenraad Elst writes: Negationism means
5989-741: The Holocaust in 1969 in a book entitled The Myth of the Six Million , which was published by the Noontide Press , a small Los Angeles publisher specializing in antisemitic literature. In 1964, Paul Rassinier published The Drama of the European Jews . Rassinier was himself a concentration camp survivor (he was held in Buchenwald for having helped French Jews escape the Nazis), and modern-day deniers continue to cite his works as scholarly research that questions
6102-653: The Mermelstein case filed motions for summary judgment in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County took " judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944," judicial notice meaning that the court treated the gas chambers as common knowledge, and therefore did not require evidence that
6215-574: The NBPP-backed candidate Cynthia McKinney lost to her rival Hank Johnson , NBPP's members alleged "Jewish electoral domination". In April 2017, the Politico magazine published an article alleging "links" between the then-U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Jewish religious group Chabad . Jonathan Greenblatt ( CEO ) of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned
6328-682: The Second World War", the Allies made the Nazis the "scapegoat" for their own misdeeds. Barnes cited the French Holocaust denier Paul Rassinier , whom Barnes called a "distinguished French historian" who had exposed the "exaggerations of the atrocity stories". In a 1964 article, "Zionist Fraud", published in the American Mercury , Barnes wrote: "The courageous author [Rassinier] lays the chief blame for misrepresentation on those whom we must call
6441-484: The Soviet Union" in "importing communism" to Poland. Candace Owens , an American ultraconservative pundit, endorses such libel. She alleged that "Stalin was a Jew" and his followers were "part of a Jewish cabal". The "Kosher tax" trope claims that food producers are "forced" to pay an exorbitant premium to indicate that their products are kosher , which is allegedly passed on to consumers by price increase. It
6554-626: The Supreme Court of Canada declared the "false news" law unconstitutional. Zündel had a website, web-mastered by his wife Ingrid, which publicized his viewpoints. In January 2002, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal delivered a ruling in a complaint involving his website, in which it was found to be contravening the Canadian Human Rights Act . The court ordered Zündel to cease communicating hate messages. In February 2003,
6667-639: The Vatican. Radical Traditionalist Catholics ( rad trads ) who oppose Christian–Jewish reconciliation have continued peddling the Jewish deicide . Subreddits r/Catholicism and r/AskAChristian on Reddit are reportedly frequented by rad trads for years. As per the SPLC, the rad trads often circulate content from the forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion . Notably, the rad trads have peddled: The ADL noted, Traditionalist Catholics [...] continued to incorporate explicit antisemitism into their theology [...]
6780-418: The accepted facts of the Holocaust. Critics argued that Rassinier did not cite evidence for his claims and ignored information that contradicted his assertions; he nevertheless remains influential in Holocaust denial circles for being one of the first deniers to propose that a vast Zionist/Allied/Soviet conspiracy faked the Holocaust, a theme that would be picked up in later years by other authors. Austin App ,
6893-440: The anti-usury Statute of Jewry . Many English Jews were arrested, 300 of whom were hanged. In 1290, all Jews were expelled from England . German-American Jewish historian Walter Laqueur noted, The issue at stake was not really whether the Jews had entered it out of greed [...] The high tide of Jewish usury was before the fifteenth century; as cities grew in power and affluence, the Jews were squeezed out from money lending with
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#17328524385827006-484: The article as "evok[ing] age-old myths about Jews". In December 2023, Australian Green MP Jenny Leong , echoed Mahathir Mohammed's 2003 speech at a Palestine Justice Movement forum: the Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby are infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups [...] they rock up to every community event because their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power. Leong apologized after being condemned. Whereas,
7119-565: The bestiality of the Jew climaxed in the image of the Judensau . Judensau ( German for Jews' sow ) is a dehumanizing imagery of Jews that appeared around the 13th century . Its popularity lasted for six centuries until Nazi revival. Sculptures of Jews, typically portrayed as "obscene human contact" with unclean animals like pigs and owls, were often found on cathedral or church ceilings, pillars, utensils, etchings etc. The images always combined multiple antisemitic motifs, which sometimes included derisive prose or poetry. Martin Luther ,
7232-442: The bodies of the 25,000 mostly Latvian Jews whom Friedrich Jeckeln and the soldiers under his command had shot at Rumbula (near Riga ) in late 1941 were dug up and burned in 1943. Similar operations were undertaken at Belzec , Treblinka and other death camps. In occupied France , the situation with respect to preserving war records was not much better, partly as a result of French state secrecy rules dating back to well before
7345-554: The broad tradition of historical revisionism, by soliciting token supporters who were not from a neo-Nazi background such as James J. Martin and Samuel Edward Konkin III , and by promoting the writings of French socialist Paul Rassinier and American anti-war historian Harry Elmer Barnes, in an attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a base of support beyond neo-Nazis. The IHR republished most of Barnes's writings, which had been out of print since his death. While it included articles on other topics and sold books by mainstream historians,
7458-506: The current owner of X (formerly Twitter ), has also been accused of endorsing the theory, when he showed approval of the theory in a tweet. In the US, there have been several terrorist attacks associated with the belief in the theory, the most recent of which include the 2017 Unite the Right rally , where dozens of casualties occurred in a car ramming attack , and the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting , where 11 were killed and 7 injured. The SPLC noted, The "great replacement" theory
7571-407: The defense, Fred A. Leuchter , David Irving and Robert Faurisson . The pseudo-scientific Leuchter report was presented as a defense document and was published in Canada in 1988 by Zundel's Samisdat Publishers, and in Britain in 1989 by Irving's Focal Point Publishing. In both of his trials, Zündel was defended by Douglas Christie and Barbara Kulaszka . His conviction was overturned in 1992 when
7684-406: The denial of historical crimes against humanity . It is not a reinterpretation of known facts, but the denial of known facts. The term negationism has gained currency as the name of a movement to deny a specific crime against humanity, the Nazi genocide on the Jews in 1941–45, also known as the Holocaust (Greek: complete burning) or the Shoah (Hebrew: disaster). Negationism is mostly identified with
7797-417: The denial or trivialization of anti-Jewish atrocities, especially the denial or trivialization of the Holocaust , or of the Jewish exodus from Muslim countries . Holocaust denial and antisemitic tropes are inextricable, typical of which is the libel that the Holocaust was "fabricated" or "exaggerated" to "advance" Jews' or Israel's interests. The most recent example is the denial or trivialization of
7910-445: The documentation of Nazi crimes as propaganda and took steps against it. Eisenhower, upon finding the victims of Nazi concentration camps, ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and made to bury the dead. The Nuremberg trials took place in Germany after the war in 1945–1946. The stated aim was to dispense justice in retribution for atrocities of
8023-636: The effort at re-writing history in such a way that the fact of the Holocaust is omitted. In "Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah", Clemens Heni [ de ] writes: Contrary to the hard-core version, soft-core denial is often not easily identifiable. Often it is tolerated, or even encouraged and reproduced in the mainstream, not only in Germany. Scholars have only recently begun to unravel this disturbing phenomenon. Manfred Gerstenfeld discusses Holocaust trivialization in an article published in 2008. In Germany in 2007 two scholars, Thorsten Eitz and Georg Stötzel, published
8136-457: The entire Holocaust, thus producing a comprehensive record. The Israeli government arranged for the trial to have prominent media coverage. Many major newspapers from all over the globe sent reporters and published front-page coverage of the story. Israelis had the opportunity to watch live television broadcasts of the proceedings, and videotape was flown daily to the United States for broadcast
8249-418: The fabric of White-majority societies. Such libel is often peddled in conjunction with older myths, like the " Jewish power ", to raise its plausibility among the targeted audience. Much of such sentiment stems from an extinction anxiety about the majority White population becoming outnumbered by the non-white population, who are often assumed as "foreign" and " incompatible " with the mainstream. Elon Musk,
8362-494: The first German defeats", "the high mortality is due to the 'weakening' of prisoners and epidemics", "only lice were gassed in Auschwitz ", etc. Harry Elmer Barnes , at one time a mainstream American historian, assumed a Holocaust-denial stance in his later years. Between World War I and World War II , Barnes was an anti-war writer and a leader of the historical revisionism movement. Starting in 1924, Barnes worked closely with
8475-570: The following centuries, similar libels circulated throughout Europe and caused several pogroms , which did not subside until Sigismund II Augustus repudiated it in 1558. However, massacres resulted from host desecration libels happened until the 19th century. The last recorded accusations were brought up in Barlad, Romania , in 1836 and 1867 respectively. Throughout history, Christians alleged that Jews either dislike or sought to destroy Christianity. A 65,000-word treatise written by Martin Luther ,
8588-533: The following day. In the immediate aftermath of the war, prior to the extensive documentation efforts by the Allied forces, a sense of disbelief caused many to deny the initial reports of the Holocaust. Compounding this disbelief was the memory of forged newspaper accounts of the German Corpse Factory , an anti-German atrocity propaganda campaign during WWI, which was widely known to be false by 1945. During
8701-479: The following millennia, ultimately subject to Nazi co-optation to garner Christian support for the Holocaust. In such regard, historian Jeremy Cohen wrote, Yet the very impulse that propelled the Christian imagination from the Jew as a deliberate killer of Christ to the Jew as a perpetrator of the most heinous crimes against humanity also led to the portrayal of the Jew as inhuman, satanic , animal-like, and monstrous [...]
8814-618: The forgery to discredit the Bolsheviks by accusing Jews of organizing the Russian revolution . The forgery scapegoated Jews as the leading subversive force to try to dispel mass revolt and keep the empire united . Later, the trope spread westward when the Great Depression and Nazism's rise catalyzed its dissemination. A Polish equivalent goes by Judeopolonia , which posited an imaginary Jewish domination of Poland. Contemporarily,
8927-654: The gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five. Despite this, the IHR refused to pay the reward. Represented by public interest attorney William John Cox , Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County for breach of contract , anticipatory repudiation , libel , injurious denial of established fact , intentional infliction of emotional distress , and declaratory relief . On October 9, 1981, both parties in
9040-513: The gas chambers existed. On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered a judgment based upon the Stipulation for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $ 90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them. In
9153-513: The gas chambers in which they looked for remnants of the [chemical process engendered by Zyklon B]", and that "'Of course, I am against revisionists, but Fred Leuchter's 'study' of the Nazi gas ovens has to be given attention because one has to stay open to 'other' ideas." Antisemitic conspiracy theory Antisemitic tropes , also known as antisemitic canards or antisemitic libels , are " sensational reports , misrepresentations or fabrications " about Jews as an ethnicity or Judaism as
9266-565: The huge one billion Reichsmark fine imposed on the entire Jewish community in Germany after the 1938 Kristallnacht as a reasonable measure to prevent what he called "Jewish profiteering" at the expense of German insurance companies and alleged that no Jews were killed in the Kristallnacht (in fact, 91 German Jews were murdered in the Kristallnacht ). Subsequently, Hoggan explicitly denied
9379-594: The incitement of hatred against a portion of the population and given the maximum sentence of five years in prison. In 1987, Bradley R. Smith, a former media director of the Institute for Historical Review, founded the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH). In the United States, CODOH has repeatedly attempted to place advertisements questioning whether the Holocaust happened, especially in college campus newspapers. Bradley Smith took his message to college students—with little success. Smith referred to his tactics as
9492-671: The last war for the manufacture of fat which was a grotesque lie"; likewise, The Christian Century commented that "The parallel between this story and the 'corpse factory' atrocity tale of the First World War is too striking to be overlooked." Neander notes that "There can be no doubt that the reported commercial use of the corpses of the murdered Jews undermined the credibility of the news coming from Poland and delayed action that might have rescued many Jewish lives." The Neo-Nazi movement has been revitalized by Holocaust denial. Small but vocal numbers of Neo-Nazis realized that recreation of
9605-496: The majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust. In 1980, the IHR promised a $ 50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Mel Mermelstein wrote a letter to the editors of the Los Angeles Times and others including The Jerusalem Post . The IHR wrote back, offering him $ 50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in
9718-518: The mass murder of Jews but deny the participation of their own nationals in the Holocaust. Holocaust denial is considered a serious societal problem in many places where it occurs, and it is illegal in Canada, Israel, and many European countries . Holocaust deniers prefer to refer to their work as historical revisionism, and object to being referred to as " deniers ". Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt has written that: "The deniers' selection of
9831-474: The media and finance. As per Argentine-Israeli educator Gustavo Perednik , antisemites often pass off their aggressive instinct as a "struggle" of "the oppressed" against the "powerful" to maximize its appeal to left-wing audience. Another common antisemitic trope is that "the Jews control the media and Hollywood ". In Eastern Europe , the Czech politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk , believed that Jews "controlled
9944-563: The millions and that Jews were not systematically murdered in gas chambers. In 1984, James Keegstra , a Canadian high-school teacher, was charged under the Canadian Criminal Code for "promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements to his students". During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy." He also tested his students in exams on his theories and opinion of Jews. Keegstra
10057-606: The most powerful countries. The New Black Panther Party (NBPP), a black separatist group, has actively peddled the myth. Prior to a 2006 Democratic primary runoff in the U.S. state of Georgia , the NBPP alleged, So-called Jews in Israel in what's really Palestine…some player haters, some Zionists , some so-called Jews who the Book of Revelations […] calls the Synagogue of Satan . When
10170-517: The myth that "global banking is dominated by the [Jewish] Rothschild family " traceable to the medieval prevalence of Jews in moneylending . In the Middle Ages , Jews were restricted from most professions and pushed into marginalized occupations, such as tax collection and moneylending , due to the Roman Catholic Church's prohibition on Christians charging interest for loans. In 1179,
10283-412: The name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past." Scholars consider this misleading since the methods of Holocaust denial differ from those of legitimate historical revision. Legitimate historical revisionism is explained in
10396-564: The new National Office for Veterans and Victims of War ; however, the bureau then held them in secret, refusing to release copies later, even to the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC). In 1943, Isaac Schneersohn , anticipating the need for a center to document and preserve the memory of the persecution for historical reasons and also support claims post-war, gathered together 40 representatives from Jewish organizations in Grenoble which
10509-463: The occurrence of the Holocaust, has claimed that the Wannsee Conference of 1942 never happened and that the minutes of the conference were post-war forgeries done by "biased" Jewish historians designed to discredit Germany. The British historian Ian Kershaw has argued that Nolte was operating on the borderlines of Holocaust denial with his implied claim that the "negative myth" of Nazi Germany
10622-564: The outbreak of the war." Following World War II, Barnes became convinced that allegations made against Germany and Japan , including the Holocaust, were wartime propaganda that had been used to justify the United States' involvement in World War II. Barnes claimed that there were two false claims made about World War II, namely that Germany started the war in 1939, and the Holocaust, which Barnes claimed did not happen. In his 1962 pamphlet, Revisionism and Brainwashing , Barnes claimed that there
10735-639: The press", despite his previous objection to antisemitism during the Hilsner affair . In Western Europe , Arthur Griffith , the founder of the Sinn Féin party decisive to Ireland's independence, was subscribed to the "Jewish media control" trope. Griffith alleged that Dublin newspapers were almost all Jew rags [...] Fifty other rags like those which have nothing behind them but the forty or fifty thousand Jewish usurers and pick-pockets in each country and which no decent Christian ever reads except holding his nose as
10848-438: The same room with a human corpse. Historian Alexis P. Rubin noted, Church and secular leaders sharply denounced these defamations [...] people refused to abandon this myth [...] Popes, kings and emperors declared that Jews, if for no other reason than their strict dietary laws banning even the smallest drop of blood in meat or poultry, were incapable of the crime. The Christian populace was not impressed. Among those who refuted
10961-566: The scale or brutality of the Inquisition , with the victims heavily Jewish . Some Catholics exaggerate their role in the WWII rescue of Jews to downplay the Catholic history of brutal systemic antisemitism . The blood libel accusation's origin dates to the 12th century. The first recorded accusation against Jews was associated with the death of William of Norwich . Torture and human sacrifice in
11074-515: The study of the Holocaust as new facts emerge to change the historical understanding of it: With the main features of the Holocaust clearly visible to all but the willfully blind, historians have turned their attention to aspects of the story for which the evidence is incomplete or ambiguous. These are not minor matters by any means, but turn on such issues as Hitler's role in the event, Jewish responses to persecution, and reactions by onlookers both inside and outside Nazi-controlled Europe. In contrast,
11187-437: The swindlers of the crematoria, the Israeli politicians who derive billions of marks from nonexistent, mythical and imaginary cadavers, whose numbers have been reckoned in an unusually distorted and dishonest manner." Using Rassinier as his source, Barnes claimed that Germany was the victim of aggression in both 1914 and 1939 and that reports of the Holocaust were propaganda to justify a war of aggression against Germany. In 1961,
11300-465: The term denial to describe the views and methodology of Holocaust deniers in order to distinguish them from legitimate historical revisionists , who challenge orthodox interpretations of history using established historical methodologies . Holocaust deniers generally do not accept denial as an appropriate description of their activities and use the euphemism revisionism instead. In some former Eastern Bloc countries, Holocaust deniers do not deny
11413-536: The trope often goes by Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG), which accuses the Jews of "controlling Western governments" for selfish ends, like benefitting Israel . The ZOG is widely peddled by antisemites, such as the Neo-Nazis , white nationalists , Islamists and black supremacists . Malcolm X , a well known Black American activist, believed in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , which he introduced to
11526-470: The two-thousand year relationship between Judaism and Christianity, many of them marred by anti-Jewish polemic and Christian persecution of Jews , some rabbis have fulminated against the church [...] But contemporary anti-Semitic polemicists are not interested in learning or reporting about the historical development of Jewish-Christian relations . Their goal is to incite hatred against Judaism and Jews by portraying them as bigoted and hateful. As early as
11639-681: The underlying evidence in his 1989 book, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers . Henry Bienen , the former president of Northwestern University, has described Arthur Butz's view of the Holocaust as an "embarrassment to Northwestern". In 2006, sixty of Butz's colleagues from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty signed a censure describing Butz's Holocaust denial as "an affront to our humanity and our standards as scholars". The letter also called for Butz to "leave our Department and our University and stop trading on our reputation for academic excellence". In 1978
11752-555: The war aimed at protecting the French government and the state from embarrassing revelations, and partly to avoid culpability. For example, at Liberation , the Prefecture of Police destroyed nearly all of the massive archive of Jewish arrest and deportation. One of the earliest efforts to save historical record of the Holocaust occurred during the war, in France, where Drancy internment camp records were carefully preserved and turned over to
11865-411: The work of Holocaust deniers as superior to "mainstream scholars". Nolte wrote that "radical revisionists have presented research which, if one is familiar with the source material and the critique of the sources, is probably superior to that of the established historians of Germany". In a 1994 interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Nolte stated "I cannot rule out the importance of the investigation of
11978-595: The work of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on the ground that the Holocaust did occur, but went on to argue that Faurisson's work was motivated by what Nolte claimed were the admirable motives of sympathy towards the Palestinians and opposition to Israel. In his 1987 book Der europäische Bürgerkrieg ( The European Civil War ), Nolte claimed that the intentions of Holocaust deniers are "often honourable", and that some of their claims are "not obviously without foundation". Nolte himself, though he has never denied
12091-409: Was a "lack of any serious opposition or concerted challenge to the atrocity stories and other modes of defamation of German national character and conduct". Barnes argued that there was "a failure to point out the atrocities of the Allies were more brutal, painful, mortal and numerous than the most extreme allegations made against the Germans". He claimed that in order to justify the "horrors and evils of
12204-488: Was charged under s 281.2(2) of the Criminal Code (now s 319(2)), which provides that "Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group" commits a criminal offense. He was convicted at trial before the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench . The court rejected the argument, advanced by Keegstra and his lawyer, Doug Christie , that promoting hatred
12317-436: Was created by Jewish historians, his allegations of the domination of Holocaust scholarship by "biased" Jewish historians, and his statements that one should withhold judgment on Holocaust deniers, whom Nolte takes considerable pains to stress are not exclusively Germans or fascists. In Kershaw's opinion, Nolte is attempting to imply that perhaps Holocaust deniers are on to something. In a 1990 interview, Nolte implied that there
12430-582: Was elevated to an unprecedented status in Nazi Germany. Luther's antisemitic thesis is considered by many Western historians to have brought about the Holocaust , despite the 400-year lapse. Beyond Abrahamic religions , the demonization of Jews is also common among new religious movements , one of which is the Black Hebrew Israelites . Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI) believe that African Americans are descendants of ancient Israelites . However,
12543-400: Was fired from his teaching position shortly afterward. The Toronto-based photo retoucher Ernst Zündel operated a small-press called Samisdat Publishers , which published and distributed Holocaust-denial material such as Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood (a pseudonym of Richard Verrall – a British neo-Nazi). In 1985, he was tried in R. v. Zundel and convicted under
12656-534: Was something to the Leuchter report : "If the revisionists [Holocaust deniers] and Leuchter among them have made it clear to the public that even 'Auschwitz' must be an object of scientific inquiry and controversy then they should be given credit for this. Even if it finally turned out that the number of victims was even greater and the procedures were even more horrific than has been assumed until now." In his 1993 book Streitpunkte ( Points of Contention ), Nolte praised
12769-409: Was under Italian occupation at the time in order to form a center de documentation . Exposure meant the death penalty, and as a result little actually happened before liberation . Serious work began after the center moved to Paris in late 1944 and was renamed the CDJC. In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower , Supreme Allied Commander, anticipated that someday an attempt would be made to recharacterize
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