Conclusion: Effect of the Conflict on the Holocaust Denial Movement

The impact of the IHR conflict on the Holocaust denial movement's direction and viability remains to be seen. But even if IHR and Carto continue down a self-destructive path, the movement will certainly not fold. Holocaust denial remains a propaganda mainstay for several other extremist figures in the United States, including:

* George Dietz, publisher of Liberty Bell, a gutter level,
pro-Hitler monthly publication;

* Arthur Butz, the previously mentioned Northwestern University
professor of electrical engineering who wrote The Hoax of the
Twentieth Century;

* Bradley Smith of the "Committee for Open Debate on the
Holocaust," an organization which continues to place in college
newspapers advertisements that deny the Nazi murder of six
million Jews;

* Jack Wikoff, a self-proclaimed white separatist who started his
own anti-Semitic "revisionist" periodical, Remarks, in August 1990;

* Charles Weber, founder of the one-person Committee for the
Reexamination of the History of the Second World War and
contributor of several articles to the publications of well
known hate groups;

* Gary Lauck, the leading supplier of Neo-Nazi propaganda abroad, and

* Hans Schmidt, who founded the German-American National Political
Action Committee to promote Holocaust "revisionism" and to fight
what it perceives to be an anti-German sentiment on television
and in the news.

In addition, certain Black extremists in the United States have ridiculed and sought to cast doubt upon the horrors of the Holocaust. [See ADL report "Uncommon Ground: The Black African Holocaust Council and Other Links Between White and Black Extremists" (1994)]

Furthermore, this brand of "revisionism" extends well beyond the United States. In Canada, Ernst Christof Friedrich Zundel has been an active pro-Nazi propagandist for over two decades. His materials defending Hitler and the Third Reich and denying the Holocaust have been mailed to numerous individuals in Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. French Revisionists include the aforementioned Robert Faurisson, and Henri Roques, who became the center of a controversy for submitting a Holocaust-denying doctoral thesis which was approved by the University of Nantes in 1985.

The question of whether or not the movement's guru, Willis Carto, will maintain a prominent position in IHR is less important than how effectively Holocaust denial propaganda can be countered. The denial or distortion of the Holocaust has served many groups of the radical right, as well as some on the radical left, in their campaigns to attack Jews and the State of Israel, and to justify their own totalitarian agenda. Wherever they operate, these propagandists find small but fertile ground to cultivate their intellectual fraud among those people ignorant of or indifferent to the fact that Nazi Germany deemed Jews and other religious, ethnic, and cultural minorities subhuman, and in so doing, itself succumbed to inhumanity. Most importantly, an increasing distance separates this generation from the events of World War II. As the survivors themselves pass from the scene, and as hollow comparisons proliferate, the danger of losing sight of the Holocaust's unique place in history grows.

In response to this propaganda, measures to preserve the memory of Hitler's victims have taken on a new importance. Education on the Holocaust, at both the secondary school and college levels, the establishment of Holocaust museums, other programs, and public exposure of these hateful propagandists are vital tools in upholding the promise never to forget.

The original plaintext version of this file is available via ftp.

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