Fetch Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory Designed By Deborah E. Lipstadt Publication

New York Times Book said of this book, Not only an exposé of the deniers' claims but a terrifying study of how hate can wear away what happened within living memory And so it is.
This is a powerful book which illustrates that the deniers' debate is not a debate their arguments are no arguments.


A Roper Poll, taken near the turn of thest century indicated thatof American said that the Holocaust may have happened andsaid it did not.
A follow up to those questions revealed thatof adults andof high school students had little, to no, information about the details of the Holocaust or why it occurred.
These rather appalling statistics provide fuel to the fire of the deniers,

The author describes the beginning of this denial, which got its first foothold in France which may have been a result of the Vichy mentality, and follows it through to the current era although the book was published in the lates.
She particularly specifies those individuals who were in the forefront of the deniers, most of whom I did not know, except for George Lincoln Rockwell and Austin App.
Some of the "facts" that these men put forward as proof that the Holocaust is a "fraud" are:
The Allies, not Germany started WWII
The Holocaust was an idea backed by "Zionists" or wealthy Jews.

The death camps were only prisons, never death camps and were also used to protect Jews from the horrors of the war.

The ovens, where millions died, were built after the war by the Allies to prove the lie of the Holocaust was true.


Their "facts' get more and more absurd and there is no need to repeat them here, But they still resonate with those people who believe them,

This book made me very angry and its contents are relevant to the current environment of racial/religious hatred.
It is well documented, well written, and an important history that should be read, Recommended.

Never Again I came at this book backwards, because I've previously read a couple of books about the Irving libel trial, where David Irving tried to sue Deborah Lipdstadt for accurately calling him a Holocaust denier.
Bascially, that's what this book is: Lipstadt accurately calling people Holocaust deniers and laying out their methodologies and pet fallacies and so on.
It is, of course, almostyears out of date, so more a primary text about the history of Holocaust denial in thes than anything else.
But it was still engaging and interesting and infuriating and I'm sure that though the players have changed, the script is still relevant.
In JuneI was in Atlanta for the American Library Association's Annual Conference and chose to attend a presentation by this author on a Libel Suit she had been involved, with Holocaust Denier David Irving, in Britain.
At the time, I was quite surprised by the fact there were people who still believed the Holocaust did not happen and wanted to know more.
In this book, Irving is mentioned maybe about a dozen or so times, Based on what she did say about him, he decided to bring a Libel Suit against Dr Lipstadtin the UKwhere SHE had to prove that he was a Holocaust Denier, an antisemite as well as a horrible historian.
If he had filed the suit in the US, he would have had the burden of proof, So, this is the book that started one of the most famous trials in regards to the Holocaust, A movie has just been released, "Denial", which is the story of the courtroom battle, A follow up review on her book about the trial will be next, People are stupid. Sometimes you don't realize how stupid, though in a free culture, you can quickly realize how stupid,

At times a little dry, Lipstadt's book discusses the history of Holocaust Denial as well as the tactics that such deniers use.
She also illustrates the difference between the right to say anything and the fact that no one needs to publish it.
This makes me so mad, I just wish I could find these people and smack the stupidity and racism out of them, Sadly I don't think that would work and instead we need to be tireless in our efforts to stop this infiltration of what I will now call 'fake history'.
There was a lot of good info in here, but Lipstadt falls into the trap repeatedly throughout the book of making ad hominem attacks against all Holocaust deniers, a claim which, ironically enough, she constantly accuses the very same deniers of doing.
Yes, a lot and maybe even most Holocaust deniers are white supremacists who hate Jews, but that doesn't mean this discussion can't be engaged with an academic tone and intellectual honesty.
She compares Holocaust deniers to Flat Earthers, which isn't a fair comparison since one topic deals with history and the other is science.
Science deals in objectivity, observation, and theorizing, History is subjective and under constant revision, depending on the people writing it,

By no means am I saying that the Holocaust didn't happen, but the event has turned into propaganda machine for Israel and it's tough to determine what actually happened.
Authors like Norman Finkelstein have shed some light on this, Excellent. Anyone who is even contemplating whether the Holocaust happened of not need only read Lipstadt's refutation and they'll soon see reason.


Not only does she debunk the claims of deniers through its recent history, Lipstadt also takes into account whether the rights to free speech are impeded by the 'noplatforming' of Holocaust deniers.
In today's debates this is very relevant with fascists taking many guises to sell their mandates onto campuses,

"We will remain ever vigilant so that the most precious tools of our trade and our society truth and reason can prevail.
The still, small voices of millions cry out to us from the ground demanding that we do no less.
" DL

Essential reading, This is one of those books that you pick up and immediately grabs your attention and gets you going.
  I was infuriated from the very beginning of the book not with Dr, Lipstadt but with the fact that there are these “deniers” out there who have gone and continue to go to great lengths to revise history and whitewash the German responsibility for World War II and for the Holocaust in particular.


Their methods initially were very rudimentary and poor in that they produced pamphlets that had limited circulation and were of low quality that is was obvious that their target audience was simply likeminded individuals.
  Initially much of their effort seems to have been devoted to exonerating Germanys role in the war and portraying the Nazi regime as more victim of the Allies and of Jews in particular.
  The early deniers focused more on minimizing the numbers of Jews murdered in the death camps like AushwitzBirkenau, Treblinka, Buchenwald and others and on blaming those deaths to starvation and to the deprivations Nazi Germany experienced due to the Allies bombing campaigns.
  The initial focus was not on the gas chambers but rather explaining away the deaths and minimizing them and even equivocating them to the German deaths due to the Allies.


Over time their tactics changed more to denying that any Jews actually were murdered in the homicidal gas chambers at the death camps.
  The deniers focused on making claims that there was insufficient proof of wholesale slaughter when in reality there has always been ample proof and that the homicidal gas chambers were actually used for delousing prisoners clothes and property.
  Over time they went from printing pamphlets to whole books usually published by neoNazi publishing houses and to updating their presentation to having a pseudoscholarly look to it by creating an “Institute” for historical research that publishes a “journal” I hesitate to call it that since the “methods” used by the authors of the “articles” in this “journal” are nowhere near the historiographic bar for legitimate journals.
 

Dr. Lipstadt does an amazing effort to expose these people for who they really are: Antisemites who simply are looking to whitewash Germanys crimes committed during World Warparticularly in reference to the Holocaust and to bolster their false claims that Israel and Jews in general are trying to pull a “fast one” over the rest of the world.
These people cherry pick their facts, misquote historical documents, or just fabricate lies to bolster their claims, Their behavior deserves to be derided by all but yet they continue to attract likeminded neoNazis and Antisemites to them.
Whats worse is that even those who are NOT neoNazis or Antisemitic sometimes fall into their traps and help promulgate their message unwittingly.
The worst cases of these happens on university campuses where students and professors alike who should have critical thinking skills fail to realize that not all ideas or speech have merit and need to be defended.


I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about these deniers and their false messages and the danger they pose to historical accuracy and truth.
We must be ever vigilant against them and call them out whenever they appear, Thank you Dr. Lipstadt for this wonderful work, A wellargued and passionately felt examination of the growth of Holocaust denial, This is in no respects a history of the Holocaust nor a refutation of the "arguments" of those who seek to deny it ever happened.
Instead it seeks to trace the growth of Holocause denial and the way it has spread through its use of halftruths, distortions, outright lies and plain ignorance from halfbaked theorist to halfbaked theorist, each eagerly grasping at straws in support of their crackpot ideas and firmly ignoring the major planks on which our knowledge of the FACT of the Holocaust is built.

Read this and see how far men who claim to be intelligent can sink in the pursuit of their nasty little obsessions.

A highly worthwhile read for anyone interested in the history of the Second World War and for the uses and abuses of the history in the years since the war ended.
One of the interesting points Liptadt makes in this book is not so much the nature of Holocaust denial itself, but the inability of the media and public to distinguish between a debatable issue and one that lies beyond the parameters of reasoned discussion.
This deficiency has worsened since the book first appeared in the early nineties,

The book is partly a history of the denial movement and the five or six men who got it going.
. The pattern of denial Liptstadt traces shows the increasing sophistication of the movement, whose believers have gone from outandout antiSemitism to an insidious skepticism, a sort of “whos to say” about the Holocaust that confuses journalists and the public into thinking the reality of the event is in doubt.


Most amusing, if it can be called that, is the pronounced breakdown of reasoning in the face of one tactic: taking out denial ads in college campus newspapers.
Not just student, but academics and school presidents, became confused over the propriety of doing so, and the author recounts the way irrelevant and secondary considerations flummoxed the newspaper staff and editors.
This is a useful paradigm for how reasoning breaks down over any conspiracy theory,

The book appeared before the Internet became the repository of such theories, but the author outlines the general way reason breaks down.
What she could not have known was the power of the Internet to magnify bad reasoning, While she discusses the confusion among journalists on this issue, she also did not take into account the emergence of a mass media in which the propagation of false and sensationalist notions has in many cases become the whole point of journalism.


What to do about the elevation of false consciousness to the level of respectability has become the central problem society faces today.
This author suggests that primary responsibility lies with academia the people who of all people know better, She points out a paradox: People get into the academic world in order to explore new horizons, not to fight battles over the basics.
But this is something they have to do nonetheless,

While I like this book, the author tends to her points with repetitive examples, Perhaps this is necessary, but another small annoyance was the poor editing that gave the book the feel of a rush job.
In addition, the advent of the Internet has dated the material, While I have to take points away for those faults, the fact remains that the book covers unique territory and the writing is good overall.
I recommend the book because the problems it identifies have become so amplified by the direction mass culture has taken since Denying The Holocaust first came out.
Reading Denying the Holocaust gave me similar feelings to those I had when I read The Gospel According to the KKK.
First: revulsion. Second: repulsed fascination. Third: Relief that the truth still stands despite deniers,

The burden and blessing of the historian is telling the truth while acknowledging one's slant, In this day, when "alternative facts" is something certain people take seriously, and "fake news" can decry anything that doesn't fit one's fancy, it's fair to say the truth is under attack.
As Pilate said, "What is truth" There are more than a few people in my life who have drawn me, unwillingly, into arguments about simple facts I know to be true, facts in previous years we agreed oneven facts they taught me.
What's changed is our mutual willingness to adhere to objective truths about reality, In sitelinka recent Atlantic interview, Barack Obama calls this an "epistemological crisis, " That phrase is an apt description of what Lipstadt combats in her work regarding the truth of the Holocaust and the lies of its deniers.


Lipstadt's work here centers on three things, First, she identifies deniers and denial movements, tracks their arguments over time, and evaluates their claims, Second, she considers the reception of these arguments in public and academic spheres, She especially focuses on reception on varied college campuses, Third, she argues that denialism is not a valid "other side" deserving of debate, reception, or promotion by scholars.
Largely, this is because Holocaust denialism blatantly ignores evidence and builds on fictions, forgeries, and misquotations, You can't rationally argue with someone who values irrationality over reason, Below, I quote some of her pithier statements on this, but one of her main points is that denialism is not the "other side" because it is built on perversion and deliberate ignorance of historical fact.
Another is that publicly debating deniers, running their ads in campus newspapers, reviewing their books, et c, positions them as the "other side," even when the purpose is to discredit, Thus, Lipstadt chose to write a book on Denying the Holocaust to discredit denialism safely, without trying to "nail a glob of jelly to the wall.
"

It's worth noting that Lipstadt makes many public appearances, She has a TED Talk, debated making denialism illegal at the Oxford Union, and is one of the foremost Holocaust historians in the world.
Her refusal to debate deniers has only given her broader reach, because she is not sullied by association with the pseudohistorical nonsense of denialism.
In the preface to thepaperback edition, she lists example questions of what is up for debate in Holocaust historiography: Was the Final Solution Hitler's plan, or did it come from lowerlevel officials in response to the war Is the Holocaust the same variety of other persecutions/genocides Were the actions of nonJewish rescuers heroic, or the bare minimum xiv As this book was published in, and I am not a Holocaust historian, I don't know whether these questions have been satisfactorily answered,.
Based on my memories of visits to Holocaust remembrance museums, many questions about the Holocaust are still up for debatejust not the fact of the genocide itself.


Lipstadt discusses David Irving, a famed British denier of the Holocaust, in this book, He took her to court for slander in

England, and the burden fell on Lipstadt, the accused, to prove the Holocaust happened.
Denialis the film made of the story, If you don't have the stomach for Denying the Holocaust, Denial is less of a commitment, and a good introduction to the slimy world of denialism.


If you can manage to sit through a book on Holocaust denialism, I'd recommend this one purely for its value in thinking about truth and history in today's world.
Remember inwhen the White House's statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day didn't mention Jews or antisemitism Yeah, sadly, Holocaust denialism is alive, well, and living in Charlottesville.


What I found particularly interesting, reading this overyears after its publication, is how the world has changed in regard to historical truth.
Denialisms of all sorts have taken root, following identical paths to the ones Lipstadt charts in Denying the Holocaust.
Yet, I'm encouraged by many folks of my generation who are so plagued by such denialisms that they are becoming wonderful, loud historians.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened in, reminds our nation of the victims of lynching and racial violence.
Dress historians regularly lambaste period dramas for inaccurate costumes and hair/makeup, appealing to fashion plates, paintings, and extant items of material culture as historical record, all while recreating historical garments with astonishing devotion.
While "the media" may consider Uggs in ans film okay, YouTube dress historians do not see history with such relativism.
Many other young historians and historical groups are responding to denialism in their own ways, and more than ever, I'm seeing historical research becoming popular again.
If the purpose is to spite deniers, so be it, as long as the truth is told in the process.




Quoting Hannah Arendt "Facts inform opinions and opinions, inspired by different interests and passions, can differ widely and still be legitimate as long as they respect factual truth.
Freedom of opinion is a farce unless factual information is guaranteed and the facts themselves are not in dispute.
" xv

"One can believe that Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in Moscow, However sincere one's conviction, that does not make it a legitimate opinion or the 'other side' of a debate.
In the name of free inquiry we must not succumb to the silly view, . . that every idea is of equal validity and worth, Although the academy must remain a place where ideas can be freely and vigorously explored, it must first be a place that differentiates between ideas with lasting quality and those with none.
" xvi

Regarding Stanley Fish and others that argued that texts had no fixed meaning, leading to a relativistic approach to truth in the academy and attacks on history "These attacks on history and knowledge have the potential to alter dramatically the way established truth is transmitted from generation to generation.
Ultimately the climate they create is of no less importance than the specific truth they attackbe it the Holocaust or the assassination of President Kennedy.
It is a climate that fosters deconstructionist history at its worst, No fact, no event, and no aspect of history has any fixed meaning or content, Any truth can be retold, Any fact can be recast, There is no ultimate historical reality, "Sound like Twitter

"Virtually all Holocaust scholars call attention to the fact that Nazi annihilation of the Jews was irrational.
Skilled workers were killed even if their tasks were unfinished, Precious freight cars needed to transport matériel to the front were used to carry Jews to their deaths.
The Holocaust must be understood as something lacking in functional reason, ", emphasis mine

"This evaluation by Wilson is further evidence of why the new pseudoacademic style adopted by deniers in recent years is so dangerous.
Their packaging, which mimics legitimate scholarly research, confuses consumers, Readers are more susceptible to being influenced by an academic style than by poorly printed extremist and racist publications.
"

"Although the IHR Institute for Historical , a denialist publication and its followers proclaim that Holocaust denial is heir to a genuine intellectual legacy, analysis of the institute, its publication and activities, and the people most closely associated with it throws into stark relief the fact that, notwithstanding its claims to intellectual legitimacy, the IHR is part of a continuum of extreme antisemitism and racism.
"

"This is the denier's ultimate trump card, They have the only rational explanation for something that remains, despite massive research, essentially irrational: It could not happen.
When Pressac who was being courted by French deniers subjected deniers' theories to documentary analysis he understood that they were not just essentially flawed.
They ignored reams of evidence that proved precisely what Faurisson and his cohorts wished to deny, "

"A review of his David Irving's recent book, Churchill's War, which appeared in the New York Books, accurately analyzed his practice of applying a double standard to evidence.
He demands 'absolute documentary proof' when it comes to proving the Germans guilty, but he relies on highly circumstantial evidence to condemn the Allies.
This is an accurate description not only of Irving's tactics, but of those of deniers in general, "

"Leonard Zeskind, the research director of the Center for Democratic Renewal in Kansas City, Missouri, and a respected specialist on extremism in America, categorized Smith's a denier's efforts as reflective of a general shift among 'white supremacists' and extremists away from the political margins into the mainstream by avoiding any overt association with swastikabedecked or whitesheeted fascist groups.
David Duke's recreation of his past during the presidential campaign was an example of this strategy, which confuses many people who can easily identify the objectives of Klan, White Aryan Nation, and Posse Comitatus but who find it more difficult to recognize extremism when it is cloaked in a seemingly rational and familiar garb.
"

"The minute they categorized it as a 'view,' they advanced the cause of Holocaust denial, That students failed to grasp that the ad contravened all canons of evidence and scholarship was distressing, But those at the helm sometimes also failed to grasp that the ad was not advocating a radical moral position but a patent untruth.
"

"In the future, deniers may adopt and adapt a form of relativism as they attempt to move from well outside the parameters of rational discourse to the fringes of historical legitimacy.
"

"Denial aims to reshape history in order to rehabilitate the victors and demonize the victims, "

"The deniers will, to be sure, cultivate this external guise of a reasoned approach all the more forcefully in years to come.
They will refine this image in an attempt to confuse the public about who they really are, Any public contact with whitepower and radical rightwing groups will be curtailed, People without identifiable racist or extremist pasts will be drafted for leadership positions, . . Overt expressions of antisemitism will be restrained so that those who fail to understand that Holocaust denial is nothing but antisemitism may be fooled into thinking it is not.
"

"Not ignoring the deniers does not mean engaging them in discussion or debate, In fact, it means not doing that, We cannot debate them for two reasons, one strategic and the other tactical, As we have repeatedly seen, the deniers long to be considered the 'other' side, Engaging them in discussion makes them exactly that, Second, they are contemptuous of the very tools that shape any honest debate: truth and reason, Debating them would be like trying to nail a glob of jelly to a wall, ", emphasis mine.