Part 2 of 3

Attempts to Confuse: Misdirection

In a pamphlet entitled "What is Holocaust Denial?", Holocaust deniers deny that they are Holocaust deniers. As they often do, they posit questions about the "controversy" and then try to confuse the issue by offering non-answers:

Often overlooked in this controversy is the crucial question: Just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? [...] Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that the Nazis didn't use Jewish fat to make soap? [...] Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he does not accept that the January 1942 "Wannsee conference"....

As we have seen, there is no need for such misdirection. It is easy to find definitions agreeable to both the "revisionists" and their opponents -- namely, the ones shown above -- and it is easy to see that the "revisionists" deny each and every part of those definitions.

Attempts to Confuse: Denial Equals Revision

Another argument which they offer against the term "denier" is that "revisionists" are only trying to revise the meaning of the term "Holocaust."

But we have seen that their own definitions of the term are wholly denied. It would be as if they argued "2 + 2 = 3".

They are not trying to deny that 2 + 2 = 4 -- so they say -- but only to revise arithmetic such that the word "addition" now refers to a new operation which they will define.

Exposing this wordplay is as simple as looking up the terms "deny" and "revise" in the dictionary. Which fits best?

Greg Raven has tried this argument in the past. Presumably, so would Ernst Zündel. Zündel says he rejects "the Holocaust, as depicted by the Holocaust Promotion Lobby," perhaps implying that "the Holocaust" is simply not as it is depicted by "the Holocaust Promotion Lobby."

The problem with this argument is that "the Holocaust Promotion Lobby" seems to consist of anyone who disagrees with Ernst Zündel: the people who were in the camps, researchers, journalists, Jews, Freemasons, Communists, Anarchists, Hollywood, the Bavarian Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, and last but not least, historians.

The equivalent would be saying, "I reject two plus two equalling four, as depicted by the Arithmetic Promotion Lobby." Since the depiction is accepted by all -- scholar, amateur, and casual observer alike -- again, this is merely wordplay.

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