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Return of the Big Lie
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10267 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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12 / 1993 |
2,053 Words |
| Author
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Alan J. Levine
Alan J. Levine is a historian specializing in twentieth-
century international relations and the author of From the
Normandy Beaches to the Baltic Sea. |
DENYING THE HOLOCAUST
The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
Deborah E. Lipstadt
New York: Free Press, 1993
278 pp., $22.95
On hearing that someone had devoted an entire book to dealing with the phenomenon of "Holocaust denial"--the pretense that the Nazi destruction of the European Jews never took place--this reviewer's reaction was surprise that anyone would waste time and effort on refuting such palpable nonsense. The propagators of such absurdities seemed no more worthy of attention than those who still insist that the earth is flat. They might be of limited interest to some psychologists, but as a political or social phenomenon they could not be very important. Surely, the best way to deal with them is just to ignore them.
Interestingly Deborah Lipstadt tells us that she herself once favored this course. But she effectively demonstrates its inadequacy in her fine book, Denying the Holocaust. One can only admire her persistence, for writing it required slogging through a mountain of moral and intellectual muck. The people and ideas she describes may not be quite as threatening as she maintains, but she makes a convincing case that they are worthy of attention and ably exposes their ideas and methods.
Denial and its dangers
Holocaust denial is not the breakthrough of a new set of bad ideas so much as a camouflaged revival of old ones. As Lipstadt shows, it is essentially a revival and defense of fascist-style anti-Semitism. Most, although not all, of those engaged in it are far-right extremists. (Its appeal, however, may not always be limited to those circles, as they have already acquired some leftist fellow travelers in France and defenders in the United States, of whom Noam Chomsky is the best known.) Their basic ideas are not new, but to advance them they have had to make significant shifts in method. The Nazis' slaughter of the Jews has been an albatross around the neck of the remnants of fascism in the Western world since 1945. Almost no one, not even those in the prisoner's deck at Nuremberg, seriously tried to defend it.
To revive their prospects, it is necessary for anti-Semites to claim, paradoxically that the Nazis were not guilty of committing the crime they believe they should have committed. Deniers say that if any Jews died at,
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