This may be a little off topic but I can't figure out where it goes - and it does address the motivations and impact of HD. Today I came across this note on "revisionism" in Roger Griffin's The Nature of Fascism (the chapter in which I read the note is interesting if, of course, out of date):
Revisionism is arguably the most insidious form taken by crypto-fascism* as a publicistic phenomenon, for it not only plays a crucial role in the ecumenicalization of post-war fascism but provides common ground and channels of communication between nostalgic, mimetic (especially neo-Nazi**) and neo-fascists*** of many persuasions. In view of the body blow dealt to the credibility and "image" of fascism in general by the crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of the Nazi New Order, the conscious minimization, relativization or juggling away of those crimes plays a crucial role in the rehabilitation of palingenetic ultra-nationalism in general. Taking advantage of the more poorly educated strata of post-1945 generations concerning the realities of the Second World War, "vulgar" revisionism boils down to a point - blank detail that six million Jews died as victims of the Nazis' genocidal anti-Semitic campaign, dismissing the idea as a hysterical myth put about by the Jews themselves or their backers. . . .
Sophisticated revisionism is produced by a cottage industry of self-appointed international experts. . . . By using sophistry and bad faith to exploit genuine problems involved in social science methodology as well as empirical gaps in the historical record, these "para-historians" . . . imply the benign or misunderstood nature of the Nazi project for a new European order, and the "hysteria" of references to organized genocide and death camps. . . .
(pp 168-169) Reading this still-apt description of "historical revisionism," I thought especially of the so-called ex-deniers we've seen emerge from the dismal sewer of HD recently. First and foremost, I thought of Hunt's "End of the Line" "essay" in which he wrote, almost echoing Griffin, about "The really good factual work I did, debunking of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar Winning liewitness Irene Zisblatt, or the use of the British bombed Nordhausen camp as Holocaust propaganda . . ." - and how he will continue working "to change the disastrous course 24/7 Holocaust guilt propaganda has had on Germany, Western Civilization, Palestine, and the world" and where he wrote, giving away the ghost, that "In many ways I feel the 'denial' issue held me back from tackling other issues essential to the survival of Western Civilization. Especially Nationalism, race realism, and opposing the very real Jewish-led white genocide campaign." I also thought of the para-history evident in the Buchenwald photo obsession in this subforum along with lists of KL confessions obtained through torture and the like. This sort of cherrypicking and these obsessions strike me as extensions of the rehabilitation and bridging efforts, dressed up and presented as historical inquiry, which Griffin describes.
* Griffin defines crypto-fascist as "latent ultra-nationalism contained within a number of pressure groups and political parties which, though they officially claim to be committed to liberal democracy and may explicitly dissociate themselves from inter-war fascist regimes, especially the Third Reich . . . through their publicistic activities and affiliations, act as bridges between the far right and the ultra-right." (pp 166-167)
** For Griffin, the term neo-Nazi refers to "formations which take up the basic world-view and struggle of the inter-war fascist movements." (p 163)
*** Griffin distinguishes neo-fascist groups from neo-Nazi groups in that the former "have either introduced original themes or cultural idioms into major inter-war permutations, or reject them altogether in the name of entirely new rationales." (p 166) He situates "revisionism" within neo-fascism.
