RadixJournal - The Holocaust—and Holocaust Denial—in American Life

00:00:00.000 I will just get us started off.

00:00:03.280 I guess I'll call you Matthew or History Speaks is what you would like.

00:00:07.140 You are a PhD student at the London School of Economics.

00:00:13.340 But you're American, as we can all tell by your accent.

00:00:19.840 We got in touch, although I would say vaguely in touch,

00:00:25.080 maybe a year ago or months ago.

00:00:29.940 I can't quite remember.

00:00:32.040 And we've had some brief, casual conversations or just sharing of things.

00:00:38.260 I think we've been on a space together a few times or what have you.

00:00:42.340 And you actually invited me to moderate a debate

00:00:47.080 that I saw you yammering away about months with Mike Enoch.

00:00:52.740 And as you can attest, I was a bit surprised by the whole thing.

00:01:00.100 And my first instinct was like,

00:01:02.340 well, I'm not sure I want to touch that thing with a 10-foot pole.

00:01:04.920 But then I thought about it.

00:01:06.200 I was like, well, I'll do it.

00:01:08.600 I will actually be fair.

00:01:10.740 I'll hear out Mike and his stuff.

00:01:14.160 I'm not afraid of these ideas.

00:01:16.980 And maybe I would be the best one for it in a way.

00:01:21.060 And then, of course, Mike refuses.

00:01:24.680 So it was very odd.

00:01:27.240 But what do you tell us?

00:01:29.140 Before we get, I want to talk about historiography of the Holocaust

00:01:33.120 and Holocaust revisionism.

00:01:34.620 But before we talk about that, just give us your sense of,

00:01:40.260 you know, dealing with Mike, the debate itself,

00:01:43.500 and all of the ins and outs of that.

00:01:46.360 Okay, so I want to say,

00:01:49.800 because it's been like some mud sleep in the last forever,

00:01:54.080 I want to start with a few positive things about,

00:01:56.820 and I don't take anything back I said.

00:01:58.160 He dealt with me dishonestly.

00:01:59.480 And people can read about that.

00:02:00.580 I don't find it that interesting.

00:02:02.080 I want to say some things about Mike's personality,

00:02:04.580 which I was impressed by.

00:02:05.920 So intellectuals, and I will, with a bit of cringe,

00:02:10.560 put myself in this category.

00:02:11.600 I think intellectuals sometimes have a tendency to look at people like Mike

00:02:14.780 or Nick Flentes and say, 1.00

00:02:16.400 these people are saying dumb shit. 1.00

00:02:17.820 They don't know what they're doing. 1.00

00:02:19.000 I could just embarrass them in five minutes.

00:02:21.560 Actually, like, the skill set, like, a shock shock has

00:02:25.860 is something that a lot of intellectuals don't have.

00:02:29.580 And I think Mike exhibited that in the debate.

00:02:31.880 And I was impressed, and I felt, in terms of his just charisma,

00:02:36.620 I felt, like, tired at the end.

00:02:38.020 Like, wow, he really wore me out.

00:02:40.840 In terms of the actual intellectual content we can get into more,

00:02:43.800 I think he didn't have anything compelling.

00:02:47.060 I mean, he didn't.

00:02:48.320 He was reduced, in terms of the big gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau,

00:02:52.120 he was reduced to arguing that, oh, it may have been intended at one point

00:02:56.140 as an explanation for why hydrogen cyanide detectors were installed,

00:02:59.260 why it was called a gas cellar in multiple documents,

00:03:01.900 why there was a preheating system.

00:03:03.800 Um, he was reduced to saying, oh, maybe the Germans intended it

00:03:07.920 for gassing corpses.

00:03:09.520 So gas chamber for gassing corpses, which I agreed on.

00:03:12.200 So I just think, yeah, I think that he just,

00:03:15.980 he was definitely the hardest of the verbal debates I did.

00:03:18.900 The other two were kind of cupcakes.

00:03:20.700 He was by far the most charismatic and strong.

00:03:24.080 But I just think he had an argument, and I had the facts.

00:03:27.980 Well, I will praise him maybe a little bit more than you have.

00:03:32.480 So I think that Enoch made a compelling ethical critique,

00:03:41.460 but he didn't make a very compelling historical argument.

00:03:47.720 So what I mean by that is that for, I think,

00:03:51.300 probably like the second half of his opening statement,

00:03:55.320 and he would reiterate these themes again and again,

00:03:59.320 he was saying things like, you know,

00:04:02.080 we talk about the Holocaust all day long, 0.50

00:04:05.240 and we skate over the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

00:04:14.900 And in fact, there's an upcoming Christopher Nolan film

00:04:17.820 that is going to lionize Oppenheimer

00:04:21.180 and the group that created the atomic bomb.

00:04:23.800 And we don't even mention Dresden.

00:04:26.860 I bet most high school graduates in America

00:04:29.840 don't know what that is or was.

00:04:33.600 And the winners write history,

00:04:36.260 and we tend to let ourselves off the hook

00:04:40.420 for these things that are, at the very least,

00:04:43.780 you know, things that you should contemplate morally.

00:04:46.920 Maybe they're morally dubious.

00:04:48.280 Maybe they're justified but still horrifying.

00:04:51.120 I mean, these are things we need to talk about.

00:04:53.500 And yet we talk about the Holocaust all day long

00:04:56.740 as a pure good and evil situation

00:05:01.700 and, you know, the incredible suffering, etc.

00:05:06.240 I think that is actually a very solid point.

00:05:10.560 And I agree with the basic tenor of that.

00:05:15.080 But it's not an historical argument.

00:05:18.540 And so when you say those things,

00:05:21.000 you kind of lessen the power of that ethical critique

00:05:26.260 by making it just kind of whataboutism.

00:05:28.940 You know, it's like, did this man murder his wife?

00:05:31.860 You know, it's like, well, Stalin murdered millions.

00:05:35.020 It's like, well, okay.

00:05:36.780 Did this man murder his wife?

00:05:38.540 You know, we're trying to figure that out.

00:05:39.980 It becomes a whataboutism and thus just totally irrelevant.

00:05:44.940 And that was my impression.

00:05:47.120 So I think he did.

00:05:48.360 He's not the first one to make this case.

00:05:50.300 And he's not the best one.

00:05:51.700 But he did make it.

00:05:52.800 And it is something worth talking about.

00:05:55.620 But it's just not a historical argument about the Holocaust.

00:06:00.160 So there is my praise for Mike.

00:06:04.560 Yeah, I mean, I agree.

00:06:06.460 And he had to resort to conspiracy theories with no evidence.

00:06:11.560 So, for example, in the case of Belzick,

00:06:15.260 whether a mass grave has been exhumed in a camp or so on, it varies.

00:06:19.160 In the case of Belzick, which was, gosh, 0.90

00:06:22.260 the third deadliest death camp, I believe.

00:06:24.300 In the case of Belzick, 33 colossal mass graves have been uncovered by archaeologists in the late 1990s.

00:06:32.580 They drilled down and found these mass graves.

00:06:35.540 And Mike, he had two tactics on the Kola mass graves.

00:06:38.360 It was probably the late 1990s.

00:06:39.520 First, he said, oh, only 15,000 corpses were in them,

00:06:42.220 which was true but really dishonest because there were 15,000 unburned corpses in there.

00:06:47.880 The ash is what's important.

00:06:49.980 And the ash corresponded to hundreds of thousands of victims.

00:06:52.140 And so I thought just focusing on,

00:06:55.660 and again, I want to try to be less in the mud than we have been on this.

00:06:58.720 I thought trying to make the point about the corpses without avoiding the ash was dishonest,

00:07:04.260 but I was able to tell him on that.

00:07:06.160 And then when I made the point that the ash corresponds to hundreds of thousands of corpses,

00:07:09.880 he just said, yeah, I don't believe that.

00:07:11.640 And they were lying or something, you know?

00:07:13.480 So, yeah.

00:07:15.520 Well, let's back up here.

00:07:18.200 And let's kind of get out of the nitty-gritty.

00:07:21.880 First off, I don't have a whole lot to say about the nitty-gritty.

00:07:25.580 I mean, I'm not a historian of the Second World War or anything.

00:07:29.240 But I also think it would be more useful to listeners to understand kind of like the trajectory of all this stuff,

00:07:38.700 the trajectory of the historiography of the Holocaust,

00:07:41.340 but also the trajectory of the historiography of revisionism and the kind of history of that,

00:07:48.780 because it certainly didn't begin with, you know, alt-right online podcast or something.

00:07:56.780 It goes back further.

00:07:58.620 And then I think we could also talk a little bit about the kind of like myth of the Holocaust. 0.53

00:08:05.540 Again, not in the sense that it didn't happen, but the kind of way that it's used or misused, etc.

00:08:10.540 But I want to start with the historiography of it.

00:08:14.400 So why don't you tell us, give us the lay of the land in terms of the public awareness of the Holocaust

00:08:27.200 and historians beginning to examine it, kind of maybe starting after the war.

00:08:36.440 I think we'll put the event itself aside just for at least the moment.

00:08:40.260 But I want to talk about kind of the reception or reaction to the event.

00:08:43.780 So what was the perception of these things as the war was coming to a close and then forward?

00:08:55.180 So, yeah, it's a really good question, a very interesting question.

00:08:58.440 So there's been a huge change, massive change in public perception of the Holocaust.

00:09:02.720 Just taking America as one country, Peter Novak has a book called The Holocaust and American Life.

00:09:09.640 And the fascinating element of this is that right after the war, the position of the general public was much more indifferent.

00:09:18.820 There was a sense of Nazi barbarism, Nazi thugs, etc.

00:09:22.420 that wasn't specifically confined to Jews in a way maybe it is today.

00:09:27.020 And among the Jewish community, there was a sense that something shameful has happened, rather sad, really.

00:09:32.720 They weren't – survivors weren't lionized in the way they are now.

00:09:37.520 Even there were – Novak mentions this in his book – early efforts to create monuments to sufferings and murders of Jews

00:09:45.340 were actually vetoed by the organized Jewish community in America, like the ADL, for example.

00:09:51.000 I can't remember the precise city, but they said, no, we don't want Monument X to the Nazi Holocaust, to the Holocaust victims.

00:09:59.260 So there was in the 40s and 50s quite a bit of silence, obviously after 45, quite a bit of silence.

00:10:06.020 There was a flurry at Nuremberg of interest.

00:10:08.480 After that, there was quite a bit of silence and quite a bit of shame surrounding it.

00:10:16.740 There wasn't enough resistance.

00:10:17.420 Of course, you have resistance.

00:10:18.780 You have the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

00:10:19.860 Everyone knows about it.

00:10:20.820 But you also have the cases where there isn't resistance.

00:10:25.900 There's passivity, right?

00:10:27.120 A lot of them, frankly.

00:10:29.500 So there's a sense of shame and a sense of more indifference in culture.

00:10:36.180 And also, I think there's a political element to this.

00:10:39.260 So after the Cold War emerges, there was this kind of attempt at a quasi-rehabilitation of Germany.

00:10:46.640 And you even see this with, like, Adenauer and early West German politics.

00:10:52.420 Sure.

00:10:52.640 And also, like, the Wehrmacht clean hands myth.

00:10:55.560 So the idea that, okay, Hitler was bad. 0.75

00:10:58.500 The SS were bad.

00:10:59.700 Himmler was bad. 1.00

00:11:00.240 These were all thugs and evil. 0.98

00:11:01.580 But the common German soldier was not bad. 0.99

00:11:04.920 Had a nobility to him.

00:11:06.920 And there was this – and even you see this in films at the time.

00:11:09.620 So there's a film, a very fun film and a very – silly at some level, but also very fun.

00:11:14.560 I actually recommend it to people not – do not get your history from it.

00:11:17.560 It's called Battle of the Bulge.

00:11:18.780 I don't know if you've seen it.

00:11:20.600 Heard of it.

00:11:20.980 I've not seen it.

00:11:21.880 Yeah.

00:11:22.440 It's like an early 60s film.

00:11:24.980 But again, it's about the Arden offensive.

00:11:28.840 But it's – the way the Germans are portrayed is not how they would ever be portrayed today, right?

00:11:32.960 There's a nobility and kind of masculine power portrayed in the German panzer offensive that you wouldn't see today.

00:11:46.980 And so I think that the politics of the situation where vilifying Germany wasn't really politically expedient, expedient once the Cold War breaks up because you want West Germany to have some level of pride and dignity, right?

00:11:59.500 And nationalism, civil work against communism, and then also the attitude of the Jewish community, which was to see this event as shameful.

00:12:06.620 In terms of historiography, the first major work was written by – can I get the year correct?

00:12:14.780 It was written by – this is why I'm a PhD student, not just a historian – but it was written by Gerald Reitlinger in 1953, yeah, The Final Solution.

00:12:22.500 And Reitlinger represented a breakthrough, but not so much in the culture.

00:12:30.120 And he – there were a lot of blind spots in his research.

00:12:33.860 He didn't have all the documents we have today.

00:12:36.480 He estimated the death toll at a little under 5 million.

00:12:39.440 He didn't – again, he didn't have all the evidence we have at hand today.

00:12:41.580 But the big kind of breakthrough that made an impact on popular culture that filtered onto popular culture was Raoul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews, published in 1961, which was very controversial.

00:12:54.480 A lot of Jews – so Hilberg basically uses like social science methods to try to get how many Jews died, where did they die, when did the policy develop.

00:13:02.800 It's like written in the language of a social science journal, right?

00:13:07.100 And there were people in the Jewish community that thought this is the most vulgar exercise you could imagine.

00:13:11.660 So Hannah Arendt, who, you know, whatever people think of her, she's a pretty brilliant woman, I think it's fair to say.

00:13:18.280 She wrote that – Hilberg – she wrote a kind of contradictory comment, which I found amusing, but also insightful to her perspective.

00:13:25.140 Hilberg's book is brilliant because it's – as a matter of like history and empiricism, it is brilliant.

00:13:29.620 But it's also not unworthy of a singed pig.

00:13:32.880 So the idea of compiling how many died, where did they die, how did they die, when did the policies develop is just – how can you speak about this the way you'd speak about some other kind of social science, you know?

00:13:46.120 Yeah.

00:13:46.560 Hilberg's book made a huge impact on academia and was very controversial at the time, as you can see from Arendt's reaction.

00:13:52.360 And Arendt, though – and this is – even though I admire Arendt's work, one dishonest thing she did is for her – I think it became a book, I don't remember, I think it was originally a series of articles, Eichmann in Jerusalem, where she's kind of assessing the Nazi regime in the context of this one man's trial.

00:14:09.400 One mediocre man that she sees as like a door-to-door vacuum cleaner who somehow gets involved with this evil.

00:14:15.560 She actually borrows heavily from Hilberg while she's like bashing him. 0.85

00:14:20.280 So that's interesting.

00:14:21.740 But I would say the big breakthrough was Raoul Hilberg in 1961.

00:14:26.980 And then just to put a button on this, in terms of the popular culture, it's – there's at some point a turnaround.

00:14:35.560 So there's – first, there's this reaction of shame or indifference or very mild interest.

00:14:42.520 And then by the 1970s, by the 1980s, there's this huge uproar in popular culture about the Holocaust.

00:14:50.120 So obviously in Germany, you get interest with the Auschwitz trial and the 68ers. 0.99

00:14:54.240 So you get things in Germany, too.

00:14:56.260 In Germany, again, there wasn't much discussion of this in the 50s and so on, very little.

00:14:59.860 So – but in the United States, in Britain, this starts to enter into popular culture in the 70s and 80s.

00:15:06.900 It becomes huge by the 1980s.

00:15:08.640 So – and to the point where people are kind of retconning – old veterans are kind of – World War II veterans are kind of retconning their motives for fighting, right?

00:15:17.460 And, you know, so it – so essentially, the way we perceive the Holocaust now and its cultural importance to Americans, to Brits, you know, and Germans was not the case immediately after the war.

00:15:30.500 That is interesting, and I don't think terribly surprising.

00:15:36.520 Germany in the 50s had – I mean, you had to go from being defeated, being destroyed in many ways, being divided, to getting at least the western half and the eastern half in the other direction on a Cold War footing.

00:15:52.380 And you can't really be demonizing your new ally or vassal.

00:15:59.740 That is just simply not going to work.

00:16:03.260 So I think a lot of this – I mean, this is the kind of Adenauer era, you know, in a nutshell.

00:16:09.360 And so a lot of that's not surprising.

00:16:10.960 I mean, we see a lot of that in the, you know, embrace of the Confederacy in the United States.

00:16:17.600 There is a certain arrangement or deal of we are going to admire you, claim that your generals were the most brilliant gentlemen to ever walk the face of the earth, you know, under the assumption that we, the Yankees, won and we're not going to do this again.

00:16:38.420 And it's an understandable arrangement, and so it doesn't terribly surprise me.

00:16:45.980 I mean, even Adenauer himself is kind of interesting.

00:16:48.380 He's, what is it, 20 or 20, 30 years older than Hitler. 0.75

00:16:52.100 I mean, you're going back to the previous generation after this disaster.

00:16:58.060 So – but that is very interesting.

00:17:01.380 In terms of a lot of the things, I mean, there are some aspects of the Holocaust which are, like, clearly fraudulent. 0.77

00:17:13.680 These kind of, like, the soap or the lampshade notions.

00:17:19.180 Was that – were these kind of rumors coming out almost immediately, or is that something that developed?

00:17:27.120 Or the gassing itself?

00:17:28.540 Was it thought of – because Mike said this, and he was right on this one, that when people hear the word the Holocaust, they do think gassing.

00:17:36.820 When did these – when did our kind of public perception kind of solidify?

00:17:43.440 So there were – of course there were false atrocity claims, but you have to look at – so I would reject the idea that it's, like, false aspects of the Holocaust, because I think Holocaust means, like – there's an academic definition of the term.

00:17:57.700 Obviously, it's a little confusing, and there's some historians who really dislike the term because of the role of it in popular culture.

00:18:05.360 So that can create some problems.

00:18:08.420 But, like, soap and so on, you know, a lot of these rumors had bases.

00:18:12.940 So, like, it's false, as many people believe, that Jews were made into soap.

00:18:16.460 That's not true.

00:18:17.060 But at the Danzig Anatomical Research Center, people were made into soap.

00:18:24.980 Corpses were used to make soap at a very small scale.

00:18:27.740 It wasn't of Jews in concentration camps, but this did happen.

00:18:30.120 So you can see the source of these rumors, Ruud and Hearsay.

00:18:34.220 Shrunken heads were real. 1.00

00:18:35.380 We know the drunken heads were real because of – the SS actually investigated this at Buchenwald, and they were upset.

00:18:44.700 They're like, don't do this.

00:18:45.540 This is not authorized.

00:18:46.840 So the fact that they're condemning it and investigating it shows it happened.

00:18:50.100 In terms of lampshades, my understanding is that the artifacts presented as human lampshades were tested and found to be animals.

00:18:56.640 But I just – you know, I think you're going to have war propaganda in every war, and the question is what has a strong evidentiary basis, and this stuff does not.

00:19:09.380 I mean, it's hearsay.

00:19:11.140 It's hysteria.

00:19:13.380 It's fear.

00:19:13.940 It's understandable.

00:19:14.560 These people are horrified.

00:19:15.640 And there's often kernels of truth to them.

00:19:18.060 In terms of their lampshades, though, I would say, like, against – you know, I don't want to get into some debate nonsense, but, like, I mean, they were tested, right?

00:19:25.100 So, like, they were presented as human lampshades.

00:19:27.180 Yeah, that was a mistake.

00:19:28.060 But they were then tested, and they were found to be animals.

00:19:30.320 So, like, if there was some conspiracy, the tests would be falsified or whatever, you know?

00:19:35.660 So, yeah, I mean, there are false – there are things that people believe that historians are found to be false.

00:19:41.840 But one thing I would clarify, too, is it's not Holocaust revisionists or deniers who've drawn attention to this.

00:19:48.900 Only historians have debunked these things, you know, by saying the evidence – under mainstream historical systemic standards, the evidence for, let's say, lampshades or soap of Jews is not there, if that makes sense, you know?

00:20:04.780 Yeah, no, I understand.

00:20:07.400 If you were to ask a recent high school graduate who's a bit of a dummy, these are the things that he would say.

00:20:16.160 So I'm trying to get at, like, when public consciousness changed or kind of solidified.

00:20:21.780 Like, the word Holocaust, for instance, was that used by Hilberg, or when did that – because that is a powerful word, it's a Greek word for burnt offering.

00:20:35.780 So when did that kind of come into saliency?

00:20:41.540 Well, it certainly wasn't salient after the war at the time Hilberg was writing.

00:20:53.420 I believe it wasn't until the 1960s that the term was ever used.

00:20:59.720 And certainly the film that, like, solidified this as the term for the annihilation of the European Jews was a 1978 made-for-TV film Holocaust with Meryl Streep of people that really – I mean, it was already happening before then, but that film really got vast viewership and a lot of sympathy from Americans for the victims.

00:21:22.900 And that really solidified the cultural role of the Holocaust in the United States. 0.63

00:21:27.140 It's also the use of the term.

00:21:28.260 It's this very important TV show.

00:21:31.980 So I couldn't pin the exact date, unfortunately, when the first usages of this were.

00:21:38.460 Definitely not during the war.

00:21:39.820 Definitely not Nuremberg.

00:21:41.580 In the 1960s, it started.

00:21:43.940 In 1978, it kind of is confirmed, this term, with the film.

00:21:48.860 With the film, yeah.

00:21:49.840 That's interesting.

00:21:50.420 So – and then where is it going now?

00:21:56.000 Like, I was born in 1978.

00:22:00.020 I guess the year that film was produced, by coincidence.

00:22:04.380 I certainly can well remember the 90s.

00:22:08.340 I was in high school.

00:22:10.100 I was, you know, becoming aware of these things and so on.

00:22:13.540 That was – Schindler's List came out in – was that around 94, 95 or thereabouts?

00:22:20.420 And that was, I would say, you know, peak Holocaust in terms of the public awareness. 0.62

00:22:30.620 Prestige Hollywood movies, documentaries, teaching in high schools.

00:22:36.700 But my sense – granted, I'm out of high school now, of course.

00:22:41.740 But my sense is that this is – it's on the wane as time passes.

00:22:48.600 But what do you – what is going on, say, over the past 25 years in terms of academia?

00:22:55.920 And then I think the public – like, public awareness of it is, I think, obvious.

00:23:01.480 But what is going on in terms of academia or where – give us a taste of where that is.

00:23:05.820 I would – I mean, I would agree just from reading about the subject that I would guess that when you were a kid in the 90s or 80s or whatever.

00:23:15.300 I'm not sure how old you are, Richard.

00:23:17.440 The – I would – my impression – actually, I'm almost certain of it, even though I wasn't alive in the 80s – is that this was a much more important issue in popular culture than it is now.

00:23:26.960 I'm not saying it's important now.

00:23:28.160 It still has importance.

00:23:28.980 But I think it is – it is waning.

00:23:31.300 In terms of academia, you know, I think a lot of the debates around the Holocaust have kind of been ironed out.

00:23:39.780 I think there are still some interests – like, a lot of interest, too, is the broader question of the dissolution of the European Jewish community, like, through migration, right?

00:23:48.300 So – and also, like, kind of fringe questions, such as, was there a plan to extend the exterminations outside of Europe, right?

00:23:58.460 Because Jews are not – like, Jews in North Africa, for example, were not systematically killed, right?

00:24:05.420 So the question is, well, they weren't.

00:24:06.840 We know they weren't.

00:24:07.500 But was there a plan to do this?

00:24:08.700 So, like, debates like this.

00:24:09.960 But I would say that research into the big questions, like how many – why did they do it?

00:24:18.140 When were the decisions made?

00:24:20.140 The kind of big questions that even a layperson who's not a historian or a student of history but is just interested in the subject would find compelling.

00:24:26.920 I feel like a lot of the research into those has been – you know, you never say concluded, but it's becoming more and more pedantic as, like, volumes and volumes of this stuff have compiled, you know?

00:24:40.520 And in terms of the popular culture – so I think it's on the wing kind of bit in both.

00:24:44.560 For me, what's interesting is the refugee movements – and I actually got interested in this a little bit because of the anti-denial stuff because, like, you know, Ryan Falk and so on, people like this, were saying, oh, they were all migrated from Europe.

00:24:58.120 And I got – and obviously, like, it's not true, but they migrated to Europe in such a way that can account for the population losses, in other words, right? 0.58

00:25:06.880 And that's not true.

00:25:07.640 But there are these interesting stories which I've been – which I'm researching as part of my work, my doctoral work, about these Jews who went to British India, right, in the 1930s.

00:25:18.020 Or Jews who went to Hong Kong, like 1,000 here, 200 there.

00:25:22.180 It's obviously not the numbers the deniers are going to need – are going to – you know, that's going to help the deniers.

00:25:26.620 But these are interesting stories, right, about the destruction of the Jewish community, not just through murder, but also through forced immigration, right?

00:25:34.920 So, yeah, but I feel like the big questions have kind of been ironed out.

00:25:41.940 And, you know, maybe there'll be some startling new interpretation or revision of this or that element.

00:25:48.560 But I think that the core questions are kind of – I've kind of been dealt with, you know.

00:25:53.220 So that – I mean, I viewed this as – look, I viewed my work in denial as not, strictly speaking, historiography or me acting as a historian in training or whatever the hell I am.

00:26:02.940 But I viewed it as kind of, like, I have a skill set and knowledge from history, and I can use that for, like, a popular discourse, which is – which I kind of see anti-denial as, if that makes sense.

00:26:12.860 But, no, I think that it's on the way in both.

00:26:16.100 And I think cultural – look, and as the survivors, you know, and I have to say, like, I didn't have, like, a great passion for this subject going in.

00:26:23.340 But I've become – I felt like more of a kind of – how should I say this?

00:26:28.580 More of a kind of normie compassion or interest in the survivors, even stories as well-known in our cultures, like Anne Frank and so on, as I've – and, you know, who obviously dies in Belzin.

00:26:40.840 But I felt more of that as my work has gone on.

00:26:45.620 But I think, generally speaking, where the way the culture is going and historiography is going, I think this is going to be less salient than it was in the 70s, 80s, 90s, where it was huge in all three domains, you know?

00:26:59.360 I mean, one point I'll make about the historiography is that deniers are actually correct about, or were, is that before Jean-Claude Prasac, who was an ex-Holocaust denier – and he found a lot of documents about Leisch & Keller I, the big gas chamber in Auschwitz, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, that I cited against Mike, like, calling it a gassing cellar for a gassing cellar, the need for hydrogen cyanide detectors, a gas-tight door with a peat pole, et cetera.

00:27:26.360 These were found by him. Before that, we really had very little documentary evidence of, like, these buildings being gas chambers, right?

00:27:33.720 It was – but we have that now, you know?

00:27:36.140 So it corresponds with the testimonial evidence that corresponds with the hydrogen cyanide in the ruins of the gas chambers.

00:27:44.540 So, like, I feel like the questions have kind of been answered by historiography, if that makes sense.

00:27:51.080 And the cultural stuff – I'm repeating myself – but the cultural stuff, I think, is also waning.

00:27:54.780 Yeah. No, that definitely makes sense.

00:27:58.240 So what is the history of so-called Holocaust revisionism or so-called Holocaust denial?

00:28:05.620 So presumably that wouldn't – presumably that was a reaction to the historical or historiographic development that we've just talked about.

00:28:17.040 But when was this becoming a thing, in other words?

00:28:22.560 Yeah. So I think you have to distinguish between two things.

00:28:26.580 So there's obviously popular denial, and then there's, like, intellectuals who engaged in denial, like professors.

00:28:35.380 Really, very seldom – there's almost, like, no historians who were involved in this.

00:28:38.720 I think the reason for that I'll come to, but they were professors and so on.

00:28:41.980 But popular denial, you know, was a thing among Germans, but became much more of a thing as the Holocaust became more salient and more kind of a source of shame for the Germans.

00:28:57.520 So in the 1950s, denial was Fringe.

00:29:00.380 God, I can't remember the name of this book.

00:29:01.540 Very good book.

00:29:02.260 I'm going to actually look it up.

00:29:03.160 It's not about the Holocaust.

00:29:04.120 It's about Germany after the war.

00:29:06.920 It's a popular history, but it's just so good.

00:29:09.080 So I think your viewers and you would like it. 0.97

00:29:11.880 God damn it, I cannot find this. 0.99

00:29:13.200 I'll find it. 0.98

00:29:13.740 But this book I read recently, which for some reason I'm forgetting right now, I'm going to find it, but it provided a history and showed very little references to the Holocaust as a source of shame or as a source of denying these crimes or really just not much discourse.

00:29:29.260 So as a matter of popular discourse, there was very little Holocaust denial among Germans or Americans and so on.

00:29:39.700 And there wasn't a major denial work written either until I believe the first book was – the first work of Holocaust denial, like a comprehensive work, I may be wrong about this, was The Hoax of the 20th Century by a Northwestern university, still around actually, professor of engineering, Arthur Butz.

00:30:02.560 Oh, no, no, sorry.

00:30:03.600 Paul Rassigny, who was a French survivor of a camp, not a death camp.

00:30:07.320 He was held in Buchenwald.

00:30:08.160 So deniers say he's a witness or whatever, he's really not.

00:30:11.100 But he published in 1964 the first kind of big denial book.

00:30:16.360 He was, I believe, like a – I don't know.

00:30:19.460 I'm not quite sure what his background was.

00:30:21.300 But anyway, he wrote the denial work, and Arthur Butz wrote it.

00:30:27.600 But the interesting thing is both intellectually and popularly, denial really explodes at the same time.

00:30:32.860 The Holocaust becomes a much bigger source of pop culture significance.

00:30:38.840 So denial was not really a thing.

00:30:41.120 You had people like Harry Elmer Barnes, who was very anti-war and kind of, I think, was sympathetic to denial as a means of deprecating the American war effort more than as neo-Nazism or whatever.

00:30:53.120 But he didn't really comprehensively write in this.

00:30:56.780 He just kind of dog-whistled about how he didn't believe it.

00:30:59.280 He was a historian at Columbia University.

00:31:00.840 But the first two, I'd say, intellectuals who wrote about this were Rossigny and Butz.

00:31:07.600 And then you had the foundation of the Institute for Historical Review in 1978.

00:31:11.160 So what's interesting is denial, both at a popular level and at an intellectual level, if you will, came about decades after the war.

00:31:20.220 It wasn't really a thing right after the war.

00:31:21.960 Just as discussing the Holocaust wasn't a thing.

00:31:26.160 To be clear, it was seen as an uncontroversial statement of fact among normies that are informed that Hitler annihilated the Jews.

00:31:33.260 That was just seen as like, yeah, he did that.

00:31:35.320 But it wasn't like the Holocaust wasn't this big thing used to draw broad political conclusions, if that makes sense.

00:31:42.020 Or to draw even derogatory conclusions about the average German.

00:31:46.100 This really changes in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

00:31:51.960 By the way, these days, interesting.

00:31:53.500 So the IHR is founded in 1978.

00:31:55.300 These days, the IHR has basically given up in Holocaust now.

00:31:58.260 I don't know if you found this, but the director, Mark Weber, has admitted to – he basically has admitted to two-thirds of the Holocaust.

00:32:05.400 And the last third, Auschwitz, he's like not sure.

00:32:10.800 So the main body to advocate for Holocaust now is kind of thrown in the towel.

00:32:15.640 And I actually have some respect for Weber because, I mean, you don't really have anywhere else to go.

00:32:20.240 But you're like – and he has a master's in history.

00:32:23.460 So he looks at the evidence.

00:32:24.860 He's like, you know, I have to say the convergence of evidence is for – in favor of the mainstream on the mass shootings element and at least the Reinhardt camp's gassing element.

00:32:33.800 Like I mentioned the mass graves at Belzec, you know.

00:32:35.800 So, I mean, he's not going to say that's a conspiracy, right?

00:32:39.480 Right.

00:32:39.840 So, yeah.

00:32:41.620 But I would say today denial is dying.

00:32:46.040 So here – it's dying and thriving.

00:32:47.660 So it's thriving on the far right of people like Mike and so on.

00:32:50.880 But it used to be that there were intellectuals involved in this, not historians.

00:32:54.940 I think there are reasons historians weren't involved in it, but they were like professors and so on.

00:32:58.720 And, like, a guy who's a guy for us on.

00:33:01.820 He's a professor of French literature.

00:33:02.860 So you have had intellectuals involved in this.

00:33:04.940 Yeah.

00:33:05.220 But I just think that – I think – and David Irving was involved in this, right?

00:33:08.440 But I just think that the defeats deniers have had really in open debate, as it were, and in court as well when David Irving sued Deborah Lipschek, have been sufficiently devastating that I just think intellectuals have kind of said, look at this, said, like, you know, the case is not there, you know?

00:33:25.600 But it probably flourishes with, you know, moon landing stuff and vaccine stuff and so on on the online far right.

00:33:36.080 It seems to just go – I mean, I don't know if QAnon mentioned this nonsense, but, like, it just – it would seem to go along with that in an almost, like, debased form, you know?

00:33:50.620 I mean, as opposed to someone who was, you know, acting in good faith, might have had his biases, of course, but was genuinely trying to get at the truth.

00:34:00.280 Now, if it exists at all, it exists alongside, you know, vaccines, give you AIDS or whatever.

00:34:09.280 Yeah.

00:34:09.600 I mean, look, I debated one of the higher IQ deniers in Thomas Dalton, which is available on the Committee for Open Debate in the Holocaust website.

00:34:17.360 But he's really a dying breed.

00:34:19.440 I mean, the people who can write, who can, like – who can at least put on the form of academic discourse.

00:34:26.460 There used to be deniers like that, but I just think they lost their argument and they're a few now.

00:34:31.040 Like, now, denial isn't going to die, but I think it's going to become more and more vulgar.

00:34:34.580 So, for example, the guy debated Dalton.

00:34:36.240 He'd never make this retarded argument you see on the internet, like, oh, the swimming pool or the soccer team. 0.99

00:34:40.860 So the soccer team are British POWs, nothing to do with Jews.

00:34:43.400 The swimming pool is an Auschwitz one where there was no extermination by 1944 when it's constructed and Jews were killed in Birkenau, nothing to do with Jews.

00:34:51.540 So it's just, like – you're going to get memes like the swimming pool and the soccer team, and I think you're going to get less of, like, the Mark Webber IHR stuff from Kate's past, if that makes sense.

00:35:02.860 Right.

00:35:03.400 Who funded IHR in the 70s?

00:35:07.580 Oh, I'm actually not sure.

00:35:09.060 It was involved with Willis.

00:35:10.200 So, like, they were trying to –

00:35:11.580 Willis Cardo.

00:35:11.920 Yeah, yeah.

00:35:13.440 So – but here's the thing.

00:35:14.660 It's pre-internet, right?

00:35:16.100 So they had some smart people associated with it, even there – and they had, like, extremists like Cardo.

00:35:20.740 So they tried to – when they thought they could win the argument, they kind of tried to – well, they thought they had some winning arguments, which they obviously don't anymore.

00:35:28.340 They're not engaged in it.

00:35:29.320 They tried to kind of sanitize the anti-Semitism because, obviously, if you have an empirically compelling argument that there were no gas chambers or whatever, or that they have – there's some explanation for how these people disappeared other than killing or whatever the case is, or that there's some evidence for a hoax or whatever.

00:35:48.960 I mean, they never made the hoax claim.

00:35:51.700 I kind of trapped Mike on that.

00:35:52.840 But the smart people, like, said it – oh, it wasn't a hoax – because they know – they're smart enough to know you need – if you're going to make a positive claim, you need evidence.

00:35:58.960 You can't just say hoax and then give no evidence that the Soviets or the British or the Americans did this.

00:36:03.940 But to say it's a misunderstanding is also odd.

00:36:07.580 I mean, that relieves you of a burden of proof.

00:36:09.560 Dalton did this.

00:36:10.300 He said it's not a hoax, right?

00:36:11.860 But to say it's a – even if it was biased, like say there was extreme bias but no attempt to frame them, it just is very strange to me that they would all confess the same thing if there's no conspiracy.

00:36:21.660 But regardless, the IHR was funded by extremists and tried to kind of disassociate themselves from them when they thought in the 1990s that they had a winning argument.

00:36:30.540 And they actually wanted to reach the public and professors.

00:36:34.280 So they tried to kind of sanitize themselves a bit.

00:36:39.660 But, you know, I don't think they're very interested in doing that at this point because they've given up on Holocaust denial, you know?

00:36:47.140 Yeah, I can remember even a kid – I don't know if I've seen clips of this or if I might have even watched it when I was a young man in the 90s.

00:36:57.620 But, like, David Cole, who is currently an op-ed writer at Taki's Magazine, and Weber – they went on, like, Oprah or Montel – maybe not Oprah, but Montel Williams or one of the lower-grade Oprahs.

00:37:16.560 Donahue.

00:37:16.920 Donahue, okay.

00:37:18.840 Yeah.

00:37:19.560 Yeah.

00:37:20.500 So – sorry, go finish, Richard.

00:37:22.020 Go ahead.

00:37:22.300 Well, that's it.

00:37:23.940 They were absolutely trying to reach the mainstream, maybe successfully doing it.

00:37:28.920 They definitely were not presenting themselves as far right in doing that.

00:37:34.220 They were presenting themselves as, you know, we've got this, you know, good news we need to bring to the world, basically.

00:37:39.280 And so I do think that, you know, again, we're just in a very different place right now with the Internet where – I mean, this is something I've talked a lot about it – where there's no mainstream.

00:37:53.600 So, I mean, Donahue wasn't the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, but he was reaching average people, and he was a source of authority.

00:38:04.140 I mean, Donahue was actually an interesting man, at the very least in comparison with his colleagues today.

00:38:11.240 He was fired for opposing the Iraq War from NBC, by the way.

00:38:16.120 But anyway, they were reaching the mainstream.

00:38:21.120 I think where we are now is that there's no mainstream.

00:38:24.100 Like, there's no – the New York Times is all lies in the mind of, you know, your average Trump supporter.

00:38:32.220 And many people, Trump supporter or no, they are getting their information from a Facebook group or from a port server or something like that.

00:38:43.420 They have this – we're in this kind of place where technological society, as it functioned, has broken down.

00:38:51.340 And there's no mainstream.

00:38:53.200 There's no – there's increasingly less of a shared culture.

00:38:56.420 And I think it's both hyper-polarized, to be sure, but it's also kind of fragmented, where, you know, I'm – I don't want to go too much on this because I want to focus on your stuff.

00:39:09.860 But, you know, there's no band that represents Americans, or at least young Americans, that they all agree with is, like, this is – they speak for our generation.

00:39:22.680 There were many bands like that.

00:39:24.660 And at this point, music is utterly fragmented, and people are in their own little echo chambers.

00:39:30.180 And I think they are as well in terms of mainstream discourse.

00:39:33.960 Like, there's no way to even reach them.

00:39:37.940 And, you know – and so the degree to which discussion about this is going to take place, I think it is going to be – it's going to take place through the, you know, the mouth of someone like Mike Enoch, maybe at best.

00:39:53.240 And at worst, it will take place in this totally deranged and conspiratorial atmosphere.

00:39:59.860 Yeah, I agree with that.

00:40:02.840 So, first, I'll make the point about Cole.

00:40:04.560 So, Cole has changed his views.

00:40:07.520 Not entirely, but he's changed his views.

00:40:09.440 So, Cole has conceded almost all of the Holocaust, but not quite all of it.

00:40:12.600 I'll just explain his – I think I've talked to David a number of times.

00:40:15.300 And I like David, by the way, quite a bit.

00:40:17.680 But I'll – so I think I can characterize his views.

00:40:20.160 And I'll post it and tag him, and he can –

00:40:22.860 He hates me for some reason.

00:40:24.420 Oh, really?

00:40:24.720 I've never met him.

00:40:25.800 It's very odd.

00:40:27.200 Yeah, he hates me for some reason.

00:40:29.100 He's always, like, variously taken pisses on me on Twitter, although I think we still follow each other or something like that.

00:40:37.460 I just find it very serious.

00:40:38.540 David is the sweetest guy in the world.

00:40:40.180 I wonder – maybe, like, he doesn't like the 2016 – I mean, I wouldn't have liked the 2015-2016, like, swaggering, you know, super right-wing. 1.00

00:40:49.060 I would have said, fuck you. 0.98

00:40:50.820 I mean, I told you, like – I think it's better than that, though. 1.00

00:40:54.080 I told you, for example, like, I was surprised by how intelligent I considered you to be because, like, I guess maybe this is my liberal mind.

00:41:00.700 But the little pieces I saw in 2015-2016, I'm like, oh, this guy's a meathead frat boy, you know.

00:41:06.640 Yeah.

00:41:06.800 Yeah, and then I'm like, no, he's actually an interesting guy.

00:41:09.040 But anyway, you know, to David, though, you guys – I guess you guys need to make up.

00:41:13.820 But in terms of David –

00:41:15.420 If we do, if we don't, it's no luck.

00:41:19.160 Yeah, it doesn't matter.

00:41:19.960 Yeah, it doesn't matter.

00:41:21.020 But I always found it curious, though.

00:41:23.380 I was like, oh, this 90s Holocaust revisionist saves me.

00:41:27.040 But make it that way, you will.

00:41:28.720 More interesting – so David is actually a good example, though, of how the smarter ones have kind of run away from their views.

00:41:34.060 So let me go through a couple things.

00:41:36.620 David was right about a couple things.

00:41:38.400 So one thing David was right about, for example, is there's one building at Maidonic that was identified by the museum and some books as a homicidal gas chamber that it makes absolutely no sense.

00:41:49.300 Like the door literally opens on the inside, for example.

00:41:53.540 And so Maidonic did have gas chambers.

00:41:56.260 But this particular building should not have been labeled a gas chamber.

00:41:59.180 And Cole was correct about that.

00:42:00.420 But for the most part, Cole was wrong, and Cole has been running away from – not running away from, because he's been honest about it, but he's been backing away from the views he took in the 90s without entirely giving up on them.

00:42:14.480 So I mentioned in the Enoch debate, in the Dalton debate, and I'll just say here, there are, like, three big stages of the Holocaust mass shootings, killing in the Reinhardt camps, and killing in Auschwitz.

00:42:25.480 So Cole completely concedes the first two.

00:42:27.220 He's just totally – he doesn't say Belzick mass graves.

00:42:30.080 Like, basically, when someone like Cole sees, like, 33 colossal mass graves filled with ash, he's like, okay, let's move on.

00:42:36.300 He's not going to say, like, conspiracy or why'd they pave over it or whatever.

00:42:40.320 Yeah.

00:42:40.900 I mean, okay, that's weird.

00:42:41.900 But the one thing Cole will not let go of is – so, like, remember, in the Auschwitz debate with Enoch, we were focusing on the big gas chamber, Leichen Keller 1, Quirksiller 1.

00:42:51.540 Cole will not let go, and I think he's wrong on the evidence, but he will not let go of the fact that that was not a homicide gas chamber.

00:42:58.400 And that is the one thing he continues to – he even says Auschwitz there was gassings, but in the bunkers, not the big gas chamber.

00:43:06.080 So Cole is still a revisionist in this regard.

00:43:10.680 He won't let go of that, but he's much more in agreement with the mainstream than he is with, like, Mike Enoch.

00:43:16.500 And I think – I don't want to psychologize him.

00:43:19.180 I will say – I'll say this instead of psychologizing him.

00:43:21.440 If I were in Cole's position, I would find it very difficult to say, okay, Leichen Keller 1 was a gas chamber.

00:43:26.720 I was wrong about everything.

00:43:28.660 So I would – everything other than, okay, one building may have been misidentified at Maidonic or whatever.

00:43:32.980 I was wrong about every substantive claim, and I suffered so much for something I was completely wrong about.

00:43:38.340 That's difficult for a human being to do.

00:43:40.060 I mean, we're vain.

00:43:40.760 We have confirmation for us.

00:43:42.000 We want to look cool.

00:43:43.240 So I'm not saying that's his motive.

00:43:44.680 I'm saying if I were him, I could picture myself struggling with that.

00:43:49.260 But I think he's representative of the fact that – I mean, the guy hasn't, like, graduated college, but he's smart.

00:43:54.260 I care about whether people are smart.

00:43:55.720 Credentials are cool.

00:43:55.980 He's definitely smart, yeah.

00:43:57.080 Yeah, credentials are cool, and they help us figure out stuff, but, like, Cole's smart.

00:44:01.020 I don't care that you didn't graduate college.

00:44:02.280 David Irving is –

00:44:02.740 He's so smart that he steals my takes.

00:44:05.700 I've noticed this.

00:44:07.780 Okay, that's a little jab there.

00:44:10.380 But, yes, I've noticed that.

00:44:11.840 I was like, well, you seem to hate me, and yet I'll say something, and it will appear in your column three months later.

00:44:18.280 That's a curious matter.

00:44:19.600 Anyway, I'll leave it at that.

00:44:21.920 The point about David, I think, would be – the point about David would be he's a good example of how the smart deniers have kind of – have looked at the evidence and said, well, you know, this claim isn't really justified.

00:44:34.100 That claim isn't really justified.

00:44:34.980 I will say this, too, about deniers.

00:44:36.800 So, like, for example, I'm going to read a quote that was published in a book, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken, in the late 1980s, which was true at the time, by a Princeton historian.

00:44:45.420 Sources for the studies of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable.

00:44:48.800 So that's what he said.

00:44:49.900 That was true at the time.

00:44:51.360 It isn't true anymore.

00:44:53.160 And the reason it isn't true anymore is because primarily of a historian, Jean-Claude Prasac, who found the construction documents.

00:45:01.240 He found what he called the criminal traces, references to Leichter and Keller, which we talked about as a gassing cellar, references to it as a, you know, gassing-based, right?

00:45:10.680 References to the hydrogen cyanide detectors.

00:45:12.760 Basically, documents which I used against Mike, which I think discredit the claim that it was a morgue, a preheating system.

00:45:18.340 You want to cook the corpses, apparently, right?

00:45:19.940 So I guess the one thing you have to admit to deniers, which I think people don't want to, but I think is true, is that they did, through their provocations, they spurred more research, which led their claims to be discredited.

00:45:33.120 But probably nobody would have researched it if they hadn't done it.

00:45:37.720 Here's an interesting quote on Prasac's book.

00:45:39.320 So Prasac's book, Technique and – Prasac was an ex-denier who basically went to the archives in Auschwitz and found these criminal traces, right?

00:45:45.700 He found the evidence that these buildings were not morgues.

00:45:48.400 They were gas chambers.

00:45:49.140 So this was a review of Prasac's book.

00:45:52.640 Prasac is a former revisionist.

00:45:54.320 He's convinced the gas chambers did actually exist, and he's not discovering anything new in this.

00:45:58.120 Absolutely nothing.

00:45:58.840 He opens the door of the gas chamber.

00:46:00.740 Everyone knew they were already there.

00:46:02.220 So his work is kind of polarizing, but it's interesting.

00:46:06.740 So, like, because mainstream people, some of the time, okay, we didn't have documents showing that this building was a gas chamber.

00:46:12.740 These documents show that.

00:46:13.840 It couldn't have been a morgue.

00:46:14.560 It must have been a gas chamber.

00:46:15.540 Or, you know, so what?

00:46:18.220 Who cares?

00:46:18.620 We all knew they were there already, right?

00:46:20.560 But so whatever one thinks of this research, though, it was definitely prompted by deniers to some extent.

00:46:25.660 And it was even carried out by an ex-denier.

00:46:27.400 This guy was a denier, and he changed his mind after going to the construction records.

00:46:31.620 There also is a – there are more documents that people haven't read because historians just aren't primarily concerned about this.

00:46:36.480 So, like, for example, a document was found by a Holocaust denier, of all people.

00:46:41.720 I don't remember how many years ago.

00:46:42.780 It was 10, 15 years ago, which was about a gas-tight door for a delousing chamber, like, for non-homicidal gassing of clothes.

00:46:50.720 And the document said this door, this gas-tight door, needs to be made exactly like the gas-tight door used for special treatment, zonderbehandlung of the Jews. 1.00

00:47:01.260 And other documents, special treatment is defined as execution.

00:47:04.220 So, like, it's not me making this up.

00:47:06.060 Like, Himmler once said, okay, this special treatment carried out by hanging, this special treatment by shooting.

00:47:10.780 So there's a document that says the gas-tight door for the delousing chamber, non-homicidal gas chamber, should be exactly like that for the gas chamber used for the execution of the Jews.

00:47:19.940 I mean, I don't know what to tell you at that point.

00:47:22.360 But, yeah, you know, I mean, the best thing that Tanya could say is, oh, special treatment means something different in this context.

00:47:29.780 He admits it's a code word for killing because it's one of the few, very few revisionists left who's, like, AIQ, let's say, and works on, like, archives.

00:47:38.300 It just is like, bro, okay, you can find some case where some German says special treatment doesn't mean killing.

00:47:43.100 But you admit it was a code word for execution.

00:47:46.260 What else could that mean, special treatment of the Jews with a gas-tight door?

00:47:49.860 Like, it's time to get out of the show, you know?

00:47:53.560 Yes.

00:47:54.840 Let me talk a little bit about where I think this is going, and you can respond.

00:48:01.540 As I was saying before, I don't think we can underestimate the degree to which many normies out there, that is, mainstream people, average Americans, have become largely deranged in their views.

00:48:21.060 Now, there's probably a lot of causes of that in, you know, economic distress and just this kind of malaise or anxiety, anxious malaise that we all kind of feel about the state of the world and America, all of that stuff.

00:48:39.340 But a lot of it is caused through the internet and through what I was speaking of before, this breakdown of technological society, where the apparatuses of, you know, the nightly news, your local paper, the big national papers, just the way that life was, for better and for worse, organized so that society could function

00:49:08.480 and the people could have a sense of up and down and right and left and good and bad and all that kind of stuff.

00:49:14.880 These are breaking down and people are, probably particularly conservatives, but I would say it's across the board, are entering these deranged places.

00:49:27.480 I imagine that Holocaust denial is, it's not a major force, but I wouldn't be surprised if it cropped up in a lot of these forums, the QAnon type forums places.

00:49:42.160 And I'm not trying to defend them, but I think in a weird way, they might not even do it for anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi reasons.

00:49:50.200 It's just one more conspiracy to throw into the bouquet of, you know, the moon landing, you know, JFK and all that kind of stuff.

00:50:01.160 I think it will still persist in, with people like Enoch.

00:50:08.200 I think what he is trying to do, and I more or less, again, I take your word for it.

00:50:16.360 I agree.

00:50:16.900 I've seen this myself.

00:50:17.960 You know a lot more of it than I do.

00:50:19.700 I think in terms of higher IQ people or people who want to use some sort of historical method,

00:50:24.900 I think it is a slowly dying field, and it will probably not be with us, say, 25 years from now.

00:50:35.280 But I think it will be with us in an intense way in these deranged forums and with people like Enoch.

00:50:42.560 What Enoch would do, and I think he would actually agree with me if I talked with him about it,

00:50:49.520 is that they view themselves as oppositional to Jewish power.

00:50:56.140 So that's Hollywood, Wall Street, et cetera.

00:51:01.140 This is, from their mind, this torpedo launched at the USS Israel.

00:51:09.900 If you can debunk the Holocaust, they're going to wither away or turn to water like the Wicked Witch or something. 0.99

00:51:21.760 They feel that this is such a powerful weapon they can use against their enemies, and that is why they do it.

00:51:32.000 And I think from my standpoint, I think it's a very – putting aside truth and false claims,

00:51:40.200 I think it's just a bad idea to focus on this or put your eggs in that basket.

00:51:46.920 Like, you know, I'm going to – the fact that I'm revisionist, something about what I say politically and socially and intellectually is at stake in this.

00:51:59.120 But they will do that, and they have done that.

00:52:02.580 I don't think – I'm not misrepresenting them.

00:52:05.020 The Holocaust denial isn't just like a curious, you know, hang-up.

00:52:10.100 Like, I could have an argument about, you know, who's better, Verdi or Wagner or whatever.

00:52:15.500 Whether I win that debate doesn't matter.

00:52:18.160 You know, it's a matter of taste on some level.

00:52:23.220 For them, it's not a matter of taste.

00:52:25.180 I think they have their eggs in this basket in a very curious way.

00:52:29.500 And I also think they feel that it's a silver bullet, if you will, or this just huge ammunition that if they can win on this field and they might very well win the argument, quote-unquote, in the sense of influencing, you know, the far right on podcast and on 4chan, et cetera.

00:52:53.280 They might very well win the argument on those forums, that that will lead them to political power.

00:53:01.540 So it's a means towards an end.

00:53:03.460 That's how I think they think about this question.

00:53:07.860 Do you agree with that?

00:53:10.200 Yeah.

00:53:10.740 I mean, look, my activities have had political salience.

00:53:15.200 So a lot of Jews ended up following me on Twitter because they see my activities as fighting anti-Semitism.

00:53:21.080 And I'm happy to do that.

00:53:22.800 I don't like – obviously, I don't like anti-Semitism.

00:53:24.720 But my – actually, my biggest – the biggest political motivation wasn't that.

00:53:28.600 It was trying to deprogram these people on the far right who I think – and this is controversial, obviously, for somebody who's in a PhD program who wants to be an academic and be a historian.

00:53:38.860 But, like, I think these white boys, as it were, have some grievances with society that are legitimate, and they're being seduced by race hatred and kind of crazy ideologies.

00:53:49.720 So I want to reach them and deprogram them. 0.92

00:53:52.160 I think – look, I think I've been effective at that at a very small scale.

00:53:58.200 So, in fact, I know I've been effective at that.

00:53:59.760 In fact, during our debate, TRS had to, like, delete comments from – again, a very small minority.

00:54:04.880 I'm not – the vast majority of his people thought Enoch won, right?

00:54:07.380 But there were some who thought – and even in their Odyssey channel, you see this.

00:54:10.500 There's some who thought I was more compelling.

00:54:12.520 And that's kind of my goal in this.

00:54:14.480 Try to deprogram 2%, 3%. 0.72

00:54:16.480 Because, like, you're never going – with confirmation bias as it is, like, if Trump debated Biden, you'd never get more than 10% Democrats saying Trump won or 10% Republicans saying Biden won.

00:54:26.080 But my goal has been to deprogram a small number of these people, maybe the clever ones or the ones who may be a little on the fence.

00:54:33.040 And I think I've been successful in it, although it's exhausting because it's a very toxic place.

00:54:38.200 But, no, I mean, if I have a political motive in this, it's been to – it's concern about the far right.

00:54:44.900 I don't think – I'm concerned about these people.

00:54:46.740 I think they're a danger to themselves, to others.

00:54:49.200 And I think they have legitimate concerns, too.

00:54:51.160 So I think the problem will continue, right?

00:54:53.040 So I guess partly I'm with the left on their analysis.

00:54:56.100 This partly I'm on the right.

00:54:56.980 So the right – I'm on the right in the sense that I think they have legitimate grievances, right?

00:55:00.100 And I'm on the left in the sense that I think that, no, it isn't just Fed posting.

00:55:04.300 This Mike tried to, by the way, write off, like, the Nazis as Fed posting, like, these statements about we're killing 1.2 million here.

00:55:09.540 This bothered me.

00:55:10.640 I mentioned this on Tuesday when we talked about this.

00:55:13.520 Mike Enoch struck me as – it's as if he believed the Nazis were TRS members or something.

00:55:20.020 And so it was all about Fed posting or letting off steam or something.

00:55:24.840 You know, it's like, oh, you can't take that seriously.

00:55:26.540 He's just being edgy or whatever it is.

00:55:29.100 I mean, the point I made to this, though, is that, okay, Mike, you're putting your interpretation – and I think I made a very good response.

00:55:34.620 There's some things where I'm like, oh, God, why didn't I say this?

00:55:36.720 Of course, you get that in verbal debates.

00:55:38.200 But this one, I think I got a good response.

00:55:39.660 Like, Mike, you're putting your interpretation over Horty, Hitler's own ally, who was distressed.

00:55:44.880 He was an anti-Semite.

00:55:46.140 He was in the Axis. 0.54

00:55:47.300 But he was distressed by the fact – I think morally, too – by the fact that Hitler, in his words, as he said to his – this isn't after the war and some trial.

00:55:55.600 This is 1944, as Hitler's ally, he says to the Crown Council, Hitler reproaches me because I won't allow the Hungarian Jews to be turned over and massacred.

00:56:04.040 It's kind of a tragic thing that he's putting in his lot with this person who now wants him to massacre some of his citizens who he may not like, but –

00:56:12.600 Yeah, but anyway, Mike was – the Fed Post's interpretation was saying, okay, my Mike Enoch know in 2023 better than Horty, but Hitler's ally who spoke German knew in 1944, you know?

00:56:25.100 Right.

00:56:26.220 Yeah.

RadixJournal - June 24, 2023

The Holocaust—and Holocaust Denial—in American Life

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