WHY DENY?

A friend told me recently that someone she knows - a Muslim and a Jew-hater - denied that the Holocaust happened. As is typical of Holocaust deniers, this particular denier did not offer evidence to support her claim. She did not refute any specific facts that have established the existence of concentration camps, of mass murders; she did not put into contention thousands of eyewitness accounts, photographs, historical documentation, witness testimony, and so forth, that proves that the event occurred. Bigots need to do no such thing. Hate does the leg work for you. The bigot in question, when confronted with the notion that she was a Jew-hater, claimed to my friend, "You are trying to draw a false and illogical implication. The mere fact that I claim that the Holocaust did not happen does not necessarily imply that I hate Jews. You have failed to draw out the necessary assumption on my part that makes your implication correct."

As a matter of wordplay, and without the bigot's knowing it, she may technically be correct. But as Justice Scalia once said, what is true is not necessarily relevant, and what is relevant is not necessarily true.

I have spent dozens of hours, merely by having typed the phrase "Holocaust denial," and iterations thereof, into various search engines, over the years, researching what I would call the phenomenon of "Holocaust denial." (Deniers are indeed quite defensive about this term - although if they are right as they claim they are, they should not be; they claim that the term is reductive and has sinister implications; i.e. it makes them look evil and hateful). Ever single high-profile Holocaust denier (i.e. denier who has lectured about the topic; who has "sang" about the topic - a la the Gaede hate twins; who has "debated" others about the topic; and who has spread propaganda about the topic - has, in doing these acts - made overtly anti-Semitic comments. But not just anti-Semitic comments. The majority of these hate purveyors have made racist and ethnic slurs regarding other religions; regarding African-Americans; gays; witches; Latinos, you name it. A veritable cornucopia of hate. Perhaps these groups do this to claim that they are not fixated on hatred of Jews. If so, the ploy has backfired: Hitler was not solely fixated on hatred of Jews, either, but hate is hate is hate, and it is hard to compartmentalize once it has reached a certain level).

While my friend's comment may not have been correct syllogistically, I would argue that it is accurate observationally and anecdotally. When someone claims that the Holocaust has not happened, to a mass audience whom he knows does not believe his claim, what is that person seeking to do? To first insult, injure and humiliate the audience's intelligence, whatever the ethnic mix of the intelligence, and to second, create an actual DEBATE on a subject about which there actually is none. Why would someone want to do the latter?

Because even though we are told to "never forget," one can "never forget" only if one remembers to tell a tale to his progeny, who in turn remembers to tell it to his. Holocaust survivors are dying quickly. The strategy of the deniers is, in legal terms, to create a question of fact, NOW, as to whether the event happened, MERELY BY CLAIMING THERE IS A DEBATE (much as Bush is claiming there is a "debate" about intelligent design simply because he has decreed that there is one), and to then, once survivors die, through their denier offspring, to WIN that debate.

Why would deniers wish to claim that an event never happened - to change world opinion - if not to change world opinion about the people involved in the event? Do we see massive efforts undertaken to convince people that, yes, a tomato is really a fruit? To convince people that inflammable and flammable really mean the same thing? If the deniers believe the world denied along with them, they would not expend their efforts. All speech is persuasive speech; the deniers intend to persuade us of something. Why? And for what purpose?

When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, as Sherlock Holmes once said. Holocaust deniers - who as I have stated above consist of anti-Semites (please, prove me wrong if you disagree) have had an easy go of sliming Jews throughout history, through opinion slurs, and even through slurs of fact (i.e. the blood libel, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). It was not until Jews arrived in America (and until the creation of a Jewish state, in a sense) that the ability that comes with being able to focus properly(without being diverted by such matters as where am I going to live tomorrow) on combating lies takes shape. Once Jews came to America, America soon found itself engulfed in a global conflict, World War II, in which most nations took sides, and in which public war crimes hearings - the Nuremburg Trials - took place. The world saw - with its own eyes - that atrocities were committed against Jews. No longer could anti-Semites rely on the old slurs; no longer could they rely on their machinery of their own dictatorships to manufacture whatever myths they wanted to about Jewish suffering. Reality finally overpowered hate. And this drives the Holocaust deniers, who still live in the pre-reality hate state, absolutely nuts. They think that living in this state is still good enough - still sufficient enough - to let them hurl another blood libel - "The Holocaust never happened" - and to make it stick. They are wrong, and many don't even know it. Those who do have only become more
brazen in their hate.

Sickening, sad, and shameful. Truly, we must never forget, because hate doesn't go away by itself.