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Why Deny the Holocaust

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One other thought or rather anectdotal obeservation:

I have frequented a german language social online community for the last 3 years, whose participants are largely teenagers and young adults, ages 14 to 26. This site once grew out of a regional site and still has youths from a small area in what used to be east Germany grossly overrepresented.

Every day I would stumble across users who displayed nazi symbols, greeted each other with nazi greetings, linked to neonazi music, were very frank about their racism, and beefed up their profiles with short texts copied from other neonazi profiles. Those were not many, maybe 2% of all users, but they were very visible. What really struck me was the fact, that they did not just connect to one another as "friends", but also maintained cordial social links with a large number of "normal" users. Apparently, those "normal" youths in this part of Germany have no problem at all with peers who signal "nazi-ism"! Those obviously were seen as a subculture just like any other subculture, like emos, soccer fans, gothics, hoppers, etc.

Sometimes a forum discussion would erupt with someone (me, for example) putting a spotlight on neonazis.


Here comes my point: Invariably, both the nazi-subculture-adherents and many of their non-nazi friends would opine that "punks are just as bad, look how they are begging in the city, or how ugly they are".
So there seems to be one big relativism going on, and if someone or some group does something I don't like, I am entitled to do anything society does not approve of.
 
Oystein said:
Guess what? I am in Germany, and just this morning I did surf a couple of holocaust denier sites, and - whohooo! - I am not afraid I might get prosecuted! :cool:
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Oystein,

Welcome, but I must give you the same request as I did to Mondial (as you were responding to him). I created this thread to discuss the motivations behind holocaust denial, not the minutae of what evidence supports or contradicts the claim. There are more than enough threads already to discuss those.

Your few posts here do show a lot of thought and insight, so please continue to post, but please try to keep on topic for this thread.

Thank you,
 
It's the same as any form of conspiracy theory. Sure there are plenty of people who use holocaust denial to defend and propagate for Nazism and etc, but on the whole it follows the same modus operandi as any other conspiracy theory.
 
Arcade22 said:
It's the same as any form of conspiracy theory. Sure there are plenty of people who use holocaust denial to defend and propagate for Nazism and etc, but on the whole it follows the same modus operandi as any other conspiracy theory.
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I am increasingly inclined to agree. Until recently, I believed Holocaust denial was rather more sophisticated than the usual NWO-type CTs. I assumed that deniers used a better standard of evidence to support their claims and would avoid any overt anti-Semitism, instead confining debate to minutiae and hoping to imply that if some small details are wrong then the Holocaust cannot have happened. For example, by highlighting the, relatively few, cases of false eye-witness testimony they hope to undermine all eye-witness testimony. However, my recent experience of deniers is that they indeed follow the same modus operandi as any other conspiracy theory.

I have only met 3 people in real-life who have attempted holocaust-denial. Two of those were largely ignorant of the facts ('they say 6 million Jews were gassed' etc), and really just appeared to embrace the idea to be 'controversial'. I think this kind of person is more common in denier circles than is generally thought and presumably the vast majority grow out of it. The third person was someone who had always been into conspiracy theories, and then moved on to the NWO CT and is 'questioning' the historical narrative of the Holocaust. He has also become anti-Jewish in general. Having known the guy for most of my life, I can say that this was certainly not always the case.

I wouldn't try to infer that there is a direct causal link between CTs in general and eventual Holocaust denial however. I think CT-ers often get branded too harshly with the 'anti-Semitism' tag.
 
As to the question in the Thread Title, I think it boils down to two words:
Stupidity and Bigotry.
 
Oystein said:
Raul Hilberg in "The Destruction of the European Jews", third edition, Yale University Press 2003, estimates 5.1 million Jewish deaths and breaks the number down as follows:
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His estimate is considered somewhat on the low side. The high estimate (among respectable historians) is about 6,700,000, with most agreeing Hilberg's figure is an underestimate and the 6,700,000 an overestimate, the general consensus now agreeing quite well with the old "six million" figure.

But note that nobody in his right mind -- including those who disagree with his number -- calls Hilberg a "holocaust denier" just because his estimate is somewhat lower than the allegedly "holy" six million figure which "must not be doubted".
 
ive compared European Jewish census data from 1929 to Holocaust casualty figures, and came up with around 4.7 million Jewish deaths.

does this make me a Holocaust denier? Surely not.

there are some differences in estimates of the Jewish populations of the USSR and Poland, but not by that much.
 
cwalner said:
Oystein,

Welcome, but I must give you the same request as I did to Mondial (as you were responding to him). I created this thread to discuss the motivations behind holocaust denial, not the minutae of what evidence supports or contradicts the claim. There are more than enough threads already to discuss those.

Your few posts here do show a lot of thought and insight, so please continue to post, but please try to keep on topic for this thread.

Thank you,
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I am sorry I lost track of your OP, in which you specifically inquire about the brand of holocaust denial that
a) denies any organized mass killings of Jews and
b) explains the "official account" as a vast conspiracy carried out by an all-powerful Jewish cabal.

Can you point me to any relevant proponents of this theory, so we know who we are actually talking about? Or are we to assume a multitude of individuals arriving more or less independently at this conclusion (with, potentially, a multitude of motives?)
 
Oystein said:
I am sorry I lost track of your OP, in which you specifically inquire about the brand of holocaust denial that
a) denies any organized mass killings of Jews and
b) explains the "official account" as a vast conspiracy carried out by an all-powerful Jewish cabal.

Can you point me to any relevant proponents of this theory, so we know who we are actually talking about? Or are we to assume a multitude of individuals arriving more or less independently at this conclusion (with, potentially, a multitude of motives?)
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My specific hypothesis as to why is just one option. I was hoping to focus more on the why, regardless of reason, rather than getting this thread bogged down in the minutae of specific claims for/against the historical accuracy of the holocaust, as there are currently several other active threads discussing that very topic.
 
MaGZ said:
The Holocaust is a lie. We have the truth on our side. It is as simple as that.
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I married a Jewish woman. She had a copy of an old family photograph, but we weren't sure who the people really were. Her grandmother was in the photo (taken in Poland in 1937) and she remembered the first names of the people in the photo, and a little bit about them, but not very much. A couple of years ago, we did some genealogical research, and are confident we positively identified each of the 10 people in the photo.

This source was very helpful in making the identification:


http://www.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/...t_form=results

(Chaim and Tziporah Mandel, who were in the photo are listed on that page, based on the testimony of their daughter, Tatianna. After the war, she moved to Israel, where she married and had children. After the research, my mother in law successfully contacted her cousins, and is visiting them next month.)

I hope the mods will indulge me in posting the above in two different spots.

Magz,
I wonder if you could comment on the above. My mother in law successfully located real, live, people to whom she is related, using a family photo from 1937, but it would not have been possible without records related to the Holocaust. The most important of those records was the testimony of the daughters of one of the people in the photo. That daughter claims to have survived the Holocaust herself, and claims that most of her relatives were killed by the Nazis in death camps, probably Sobibor. That's where most of the Jews of Lesko were sent.

As for the OP, I think there is a certain element of truth to it. I think that people who feel powerless rarely look to their own flaws to understand their own position in life, and even if they have an immediate oppressor (the local king, or bishop, or boss, or whoever) they are reluctant to criticize those people, because they are afraid of the consequences. To make them feel more powerful, they have to find someone they can oppress themselves. However, there is a certain shame associated with oppressing the weak and helpless. To overcome this shame, they invent the fiction that these weak and powerless victims are actually part of some grand conspiracy, and the oppression of these people is actually a noble cause.

But I must thank MagZ and mondial for one thing. I've been a bit lazy. After doing the research, I decided that we really ought to make scans of the photos and upload them, but I hadn't bothered to do so yet. The posts I read today have reminded me why it is important to be able to make sure people understand that these were real people, with real names and real families, and not just names typed out on a bunch of records.
 
We're now engaged in a phony 'war with Islam'
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Yeah, and remember the phony twin towers?

More to the point, as Nizkor noted:

[SIZE=+1]Given the evidence ... why do people deny the Holocaust? [/SIZE] http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi[SIZE=-1]
 [/SIZE]
The cynical truth comes to us by way of an obscure extremist group, which boasts:
[SIZE=+1] "The real purpose of holocaust revisionism is to make
National Socialism an acceptable political alternative again." [/SIZE]​
 
Oystein said:
One line of argument for example plays a number game and goes against certain strawmen: They take that popular figure of "6 million Jews", add the (false) claim "gas" or "at Auschwitz" and then procede to argue that far fewer Jews suffered death from gas or at Auschwitz - thereby attempting to spread doubts about the "official" account.
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Oystein .... Here is Irving's succinct summary .... "More persons died in the back seat of Ted Kennedy's auto then were gassed at Auschwitz".

That is, the 'gas chambers' are a crude and preposterous hoax. If you have one ounce of curiosity you can see for yourself, at www.holohoax101.com , for example.

That's the truth of the matter and the 'denial' position.

If you want to know what the deniers' position is, ask one, don't make it up yourself.
 
The arguments that they use are not very good ones, so far i have seen the scientific ones, they are really bad.
Why deny the holocaust?
It is just to clean the name of Hitler.
 
Saggy said:
Oystein .... Here is Irving's succinct summary
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David Irving? Who was proven to be a liar and distorter of history in court?
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Saggy said:
That's the truth of the matter and the 'denial' position.
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The truth is, that not once when the matter has been objectively considered, has the denier side been found to have any merit.

which is why you continue to plug demonstrable lies on your website -- which you cite here without making it clear that it's yours.

You might begin to change this with those pictures which showed the plumbing to those fake showerheads --but we know that's just another denier lie. Lies are all you have.

.
Saggy said:
If you want to know what the deniers' position is, ask one, don't make it up yourself.
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The deniers will make it up for you....
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dtugg said:
I think that a lot of them damn well know it happened. Their efforts to change history are simply an effort to whitewash their heroes the Nazis in order to make the ideology more acceptable to normal people. That way, they hope, they can have another Holocaust, except this time kill ALL the Jews.
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Very to the point. It's not about "bad Jews" so much as about "good Nazis." They've sided with a bunch of losers because they understand that mindset, it's run their life to date.
 
Gawdzilla said:
Very to the point. It's not about "bad Jews" so much as about "good Nazis." They've sided with a bunch of losers because they understand that mindset, it's run their life to date.
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From their mothers basement
 
I think part of holocaust denial is to simply take something away from Jews. As horrible as that legacy is, it is part of their history. Deniers will diminish Jews however they can, especially if they can erase the sympathy that any decent person would feel toward those who have suffered so much.

Since holocaust denial is based on blind bigotry and ignorance, I wouldn't think that they're motivated by anything at all sophisticated. They just lash out and seek to diminish the Jews while trying to remove the accountability of the Nazis for the crimes against humanity that they perpetrated.
 
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