I do not want this to get into a Holocaust debate.
Straight up question - Nazism was opposed to Judaism. I think even most diehard Nazi apologists would admit that Jews were often deliberately killed as part of Nazi policy, or at least seriously harmed (dispossession, destroyed property, etc.).
Why then do many, if not most current Neo-Nazis deny the Holocaust occurred? Is it because the Nazis denied it (most denying it, I believe, to save their own skin, as opposed to disliking the idea as a matter of policy)? Is it because they believe it would keep people from joining the club, because it is such a horrific act (but who is going to join the club when it is at the “hate all Jews” level that would be deterred by admitting the Holocaust happened)?
It just seems to me that Neo-Nazis could be consistent with Nazi policy and say, “Yes it happened, and it should have happened,” or “Yes, it happened, and we believe in the Nazi ideology, but also believe Hitler/Himmler/Germany went overboard when it went to mass murder.”
Again, no debate about whether it happened (unless you simply want to state as an answer that they really believe that it did not, and then I do not care to hear why it really didn’t), no debate whether it was justified, etc. Just the question: why is it denied by a group that admittedly does hate the Jews (or believes they are subhuman, etc.)?
The best treatment I’ve seen of the subject is in Michael Shermer’s bookWhy People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time. One thing he goes into are the many types of denial (Deniers aren’t monolithic in their beliefs or in their motives- there have actually been Jewish deniers, believe it or not). Most believe because they want to, of course, and for ideological reasons.
I am not a neo-Nazi skinhead, but as I understand it, the entire Holocaust claim was started by the Jewish-controlled intelligentsia and media. In other words, they believe the whole thing was made up.
I think it is the same reason that Confederacy sympathizers in the U.S. tend to deny that slavery was bad at all. They want to support the movement to don’t want to have to counter that hugely unpopular part of history all the time. For neo-Nazi’s, they can just deny that the really bad part never existed and march right on with the movement.
So for Sampiro and kunilou, do you believe that they (meaning the majority, or crticial mass; I understand not everyone is alike) genuinely believe that it is made up? Or that they know it happened but are using those reasons as covers or excuses?
From what I’ve seen they don’t actually deny it happened, they just sort of deny certain parts of it. That is, they don’t deny that many Jews died at the hands of the Nazi regime. What they specifically deny is that there was a systematic genocide being done. They claim that Jews were put in prison camps because they were dangerous to society, and in these prison camps some of them died. A lot of Neo-Nazis I’ve read about throw around numbers like 500,000-800,000 Jews died “by natural causes” in Nazi prison camps. Theres even a book out there that attempts to prove “scientifically” that it is impossible that 6,000,000+ Jews died in the Holocaust. I’ve never read the book but from everything I’ve heard it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.
What most neo-Nazis alive today want is to convince people of the advantages of living in a society based on the racial superiority of certain groups. Consequently they would want people to believe that the one recent society based on such ideas wasn’t really that bad after all. Their ideal portrait of the situation would have the German Nazi government as a reasonably just and efficient government that did nothing majorly wrong, such as killing large numbers of people.
As for your assertion that there’s a contradicion between their all-out hatred of the Jewish people, and their denial that the German government actually carried out the obvious consequence of such all-out hatred, I don’t have an answer. I suspect, however, that such an argument involves more logic than the average neo-Nazi brain is able to handle.
I think the neo-Nazi claim is that Jews made the whole thing up in order to gain sympathy for Jewish causes (e.g., Zionism). In other words, they’re trying to turn the Holocaust into another reason to hate Jews. Whether they actually believe this stuff, I don’t know.
Keep in mind, too, that the actual Nazis did not admit to the general public that the Holocaust was going on. The Jews were being re-located, but it wasn’t broadcast that they were being gassed. The Neo-Nazis are, to a certain extent, just following the example of their heroes.
Sure. It’s just that the Nazis did not admit to it in part because they knew they would be killed themselves post-war if they admitted it. So you see a lot of documentation that did admit it getting burned, destroyed, etc. once they knew the jig was up.
The Neo-Nazis, on the other hand, do not have to worry about being hung at Nuremburg if they admit that it happened.
1- grew up in this subculture (and Truman Show rules- most people accept the reality they’re dealt)
or
2- are total outcasts who’ll cling to anything that gets them accepted and feared, and probably as such don’t particularly care whether or not it’s true. If it weren’t this it’d be Satanism or street gangs or whatever.
Non neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers include Farrakahn (though he’s inconsistent and weaselly on the subject) and, probably most famously of the past few years, Mel Gibson’s dad (who is a member of basically an ultra-conservative cultlike schism of Catholicism that teaches Jews are the bad guys).
The original Nazis, against all reason, believed that all of the world’s woes were caused by the Jews. Now, I understand that Hitler was a very charismatic guy. I saw Triumph of the Will. I don’t understand any German, but I was impressed with the man’s power. Still, his followers had to be pretty dense to believe all that “It’s the Jews’ fault” crap without asking for evidence.
The Neo-Nazis likewise are surely dimwads. The forensic evidence stacks just as high as the bones at Dachau. How can anyone look at that and deny that it happened? No crimes in history are so thoroughly documented as the Holocaust.
Three main reasons that probably apply to different Holocaust deniers to different extents:
to avoid one’s own cognitive dissonance between admiring the Nazi regime and balking at approving of the Holocaust
to get the debate to a different, more favorable territory: instead of defending the indefensible in a genocide issue, having the opportunity to cast oneself as the persecuted party in a freedom-of-expression issue.
Holocaust denial as a proxy or code, understood among the like-minded but deniable, for Holocaust approval in public.
What better way to cause controversy and gain recognotion than by spouting such assinine things like the Holocaust never existed? Hell, we’re all talking about them. They don’t IMO actually beleive it never happened. It just gets them some attention trying to piss people off.
I’m of the opinion that most people who believe such things only profess to believe them, because it either sets them apart and gets them attention, or it provides then with some tangible benefit. Many politicians fall into the latter.
This is certainly the case with the subject of Errol Morris’ documentary, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Leuchter (who is, aside from his contemptable “scientific” support of Holocaust Denial) is both a replusive and pitiful character, who originally came to notice as a designer of execution apparatus. He desired to make the equipment more effective, claiming that “…people executed by my machines have dignified, painless deaths,” and views himself as merely a technician with no real interest in the moral and ethical debate over capital punishment. Indeed, he seems to enjoy the attention of being the leading authority in the field, consulted by prisons across the nation to provide more efficient execution capabilities.
Similarly, when contacted to act as an expert witness for the defense in the trial of Ernst Zundel, a Holocaust denier charged with violating laws in Canada regarding hate speech, he slipped into a role as an authority on the Holocaust Revisionism and was subsequently invited to speak before the sort of groups you’d expect. In the process, he lost his consulting business (penal institutions, understandably, don’t want to be associated with Nazism) and his marriage (which was pretty pathetic anyway), but continued to showboat for the applause, encouragement, and payment of anti-Semitic audiences.
In short, it gives meaning to the life of a man who would otherwise be of little account, and I daresay the same is true of many who attach themselves to dogmatic and factually untenable philosophies. It’s a facinating film, all the more for Morris’ unwillingness to condemn Leuchter as evil or patronize him as a deluded (even though he is; his alleged evidence fails even a cursory challenge, as the film shows). In the end, you don’t wonder how someone could support such a claim; you wonder why (or if) there aren’t many, many more.
And, FTR, as part of their forced internment and extermination plans, the Schutzstaffel is responsible for the deaths of approximately 18 million people, including Gypsies, Poles, Communists (or suspected Communists), Slavs, Russian and Ukranian POWs, mental and physical defectives (the T4 “Euthanasia” Program), and even Finnish troops that (briefly) fought on the side of the Germans in Operation Barbarossa (against their Soviet aggressors), in addition to their campaign against Jews. “Six million” is the number often quoted but fails to summarize the entire scale of death and destruction of the Nazi regime.
There is nothing inherently contradictory in saying that you hate lawyers and think the world would, as a matter of fact, be better off without them, while at the same time denying that the Anti-lawyer League to which you belong would systematically kill, or in the past has actually systematically killed, large numbers of them.
Thanks for asking this question SlyFrog. I’ve been meaning to ask for people’s view on this for some time but never got around to typing up the OP so thanks for doing it for me.
Lots of interesting theories being put forward here.
Yeah, but the Nazis (and Neo-Nazis) often tend to go a bit further, in suggesting that they not only hate “lawyers,” but would like to see them eradicated from the earth.