Fight Nazi Holocaust Denial Online & Offline, Author Urges

How big a danger are neo-Nazis and deniers of the holocaust, whether they spread their messages online as they increasingly do, or by more traditional means? They are not “a clear and present danger,” according to the author of a book on holocaust denial, but they are “a clear and future danger” and the time to combat the propaganda is now.

Deborah Lipstadt, a professor at Emory University and author of “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,” was a luncheon speaker at B'nai Brith Canada's international symposium on hate on the Internet Monday.

Lipstadt said it is idiotic to claim the holocaust never happened, and those who make the claim are doing so for clear political reasons that have to do with making their Nazi views socially acceptable. She warned, though, that the propaganda will be harder to combat in the future, after the last remaining survivors of the holocaust have died and there is nobody with first-hand experience of what happened.

“The time to rise to action is when it's not yet a clear and present danger,” she said.

The way to fight holocaust deniers is to expose “the simple idiocy of making those claims,” Lipstadt said. She pointed out that in addition to the stories of holocaust survivors, there are also first-hand accounts from admitted perpetrators and from witnesses such as villagers who lived near some of the death camps.

She warned against treating the issue as a discussion between two credible points of view, arguing that holocaust denial is not credible, and that being treated as if it were is a key goal of holocaust deniers.

“We will lose the fight if we allow people to be ignorant,” she said. “Ignorance is their best weapon.”

The three-day conference, which concludes in Toronto today, is meant to study the question of hate propaganda on the Internet and consider possible remedies.

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