"Why I Will Not Debate Holocaust Deniers," by Prof. Sanford Pinsker "I get more than my fair share of invitations to speak out about such hot-button issues as affirmative action, academic feminism, and cultural studies. And whenever possible, I think it important to put my best two cents on the table. Why so? Because ideas of this sort need to be aired out in what John Stuart Mill called "the marketplace of ideas" -- and this activity, if it is to warrant serious attention, necessarily means the full spectrum of opinion. "...Why, then, won't I debate Holocaust deniers, and why was I so upset when the _College Reporter_ at Franklin and Marshall in Lancaster, PA, last month ran an ad from the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. The ad offered hard cash to anybody who would set up a debate between an open anti- Semitic group that passes itself off as revisionist historians and the Anti-Defamation League. After all, given my commitment to much of what Mill has to say in "On Liberty," isn't it true that all ideas, including bad ones, deserve a hearing? "A distinction between free speech and debate may help to clarify any position, for a wide variety of reasons, including my sense that the First Amendment matters. I am uncomfortable joining those who would censor repugnant ideas. I feel that driving unacceptable thought underground is neither good in itself nor will it effectively put hatemongers out of business. "But if it's true that I can choose not to read material that I would defend if it were threatened by censorship, it's even truer that I can, indeed, should refuse an invitation to "debate" groups more interested in spreading their vicious lies than in pursuing the truth. "A debate worthy of the name implies that there are many aspects of a given subject, and that honorable people can differ sharply about why one idea has more merit than another. This is decidedly not the case with those who deny that the Holocaust happened. It did happen, and the evidence is overwhelming. Therefore, to act if this is the real question, one in the same league as other controversial, debatable questions, is nothing short of an obscenity. "I worry that Holocaust deniers, in one form or another, will always be with us, but I worry even more that college students will be increasingly vulnerable to their slickly packaged ads. After all, as the last of the survivors die off and the Holcaust itself recedes from collective memory, many things are possible, including the "revisionist history" that hatemongers peddle. This thought makes me shiver: why? Because such mantras as "a tolerance for all people" and an "openness to all ideas" from a simplistic way of understanding and confronting a complicated, often ugly world. "To know when a person is speaking rot (and dangerous rot to boot) is perhaps the most important indicator of a liberal education and our best guarantee of a humane society. But I would argue, to distinguish good from the bad, the noble from the base, one needs a moral center -- and that is the place where relativism gone amuck sells our students short. Some ideas are, in fact, better than other ones; and some ideas (totalitarianism for example) cannot be separated from the oceans of blood spilled in their name. "Absolutely Unworthy Ad "I was embarrassed that the _College Reporter_ saw fit to publish a scurrilous, absolute unworthy ad. That it did so during a week when many students were grappling with the difficult issues of bigotry and hatred only made matters worse; the ad appeared the same week that hate graffiti ... had been scrawled across a dormitory wall. At the same time, however, I continue to believe that education happens when people begin to question their formerly unquestioned beliefs. That, I hope, will happen here, not only to the _College Reporter_ staff, but also to those who read the ad as just another invitation to a debate. "I do not debate Holocaust deniers because that would give a measure of respectability to their paranoid, ugly, and dangerous vision of how the world works. "True enough, they have a "position" -- namely, that everything is a Zionist conspiracy -- but that is quite different from an argument, "just as debate," as I've defined the term is quite different from merely having an opinion. In short, we are not talking about ideas in contention, but, rather, a set of facts being denied by people with no interest in the truth. "Suppose that the _College Reporter_ were asked to run an ad by a group seeking a debate about slavery in America, their point being that it never happened, and that the gruesome pictures of lynchings were faked. Would the editors run that ad also, or would they chuck this particular obscenity in the waste basket where it surely belongs? Or would they insist that the "free speech" demands that they run any ad heaved their way as long as it is accompanied by a check? "Exposing the Charlatans "Other college newspapers have wrestled with the mischief of Holocaust deniers. Some, to their credit, have stood tall and said "No." in thunder. Often, they went on to explain their position in opinion pieces that exposed the deniers as the dangerous charlatans they are. "The result in such cases was a more richly informed campus community and exemplified one of the reasons we have campus newspapers in the first place. In this sense, the _College Reporter_'s staff missed a great opportunity. I'm sorry about that, but I take a measure of solace in adding my few paragraphs to the many that concerned students have felt compelled to write. "In the final analysis, good and evil are not merely abstractions but palpable occasions in which some become murderers and some victims. On such matters, college students need to speak out with head and heart -- and especially so when those who would deny the Holocaust try to elbow their messages into the pages of a college newspaper. --------- "Prof. Sanford Pinsker is Shadek Professor of Humanities at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. The article first appeared in _The Dispatch_, the college paper." Work Cited Pinsker, Sanford. "Why I Will Not Debate Holocaust Deniers," in Martyrdom and Resistance, vol. 25, no. 5 (May-June 1999), pp. 12-13. [Ellipses in original.]
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.