The Holocaust and Intellectual Freedom

by Mark Luedtke

A funny thing happened on the way to the Iranian holocaust conference – the world finally noticed that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a dangerous antisemite in charge of a regime developing nuclear weapons. Previously, the world had looked the other way each of the hundred or so times Ahmadinejad had announced his desire to wipe Israel off the map, and while Iran developed nuclear weapons to carry out his threat.

But when Ahmadinejad hosted a conference questioning the holocaust and wrapped it up in the trappings of scholarship, the world was outraged despite knowing full well the conference was an attention grabbing farce, even featuring former KKK leader David Duke. Ahmadinejad had threatened to reenact the holocaust by nuking Israel off the face of the earth, and the world yawned, but the world won't stand for him questioning the holocaust. Both responses to Ahmadinejad are dangerously out of proportion.

The holocaust holds a special horror for the west, to the point where skepticism is virtually not allowed. The number of people murdered by Mao and Stalin dwarf the number of people killed in the holocaust. Pol Pot killed a higher percentage of his own people than both. Japan's rape of Nanking has been all but expunged from history. But all those horrors happened “over there.” "They" are not like us.

But our enlightened west produced Hitler and the holocaust. Westerners elected Hitler. Jews were nearly exterminated in Poland and elsewhere. The victims of the holocaust were family, friends and neighbors of people we know. Neighbors looked the other way as the holocaust occurred around them. Hitler mechanized mass murder in a way that must never be forgotten. There's always the possibility that it could happen to the west again, and it's personal. The holocaust reminds us that we, the west, and democracies are capable of genocide.

Another reason the holocaust has been uniquely over-protected in western history is how Stalin and his liberal sympathizers reacted. Stalin used the holocaust to his advantage when he discovered the camps during the Russian march on Germany. Stalin didn't broadcast that Germans were killing Jews, Gypsies, gays and others in an act of racial cleansing, he said Germany was executing Russians. Stalin didn't care about who the victims were, he just used the situation to his advantage.

Stalin was more of a holocaust down-player than denier. Paranoid that he was, Stalin wouldn't give the Jews any power by denying the holocaust. Most of the extermination camps ended up behind the Iron Curtain, in Stalin's iron grasp. He quashed information on the victims of those camps, so in that sense, Stalin carried out a holocaust denial campaign that effected half the modern world.

Stalin's position also affected the west. Western liberals loved Stalin because they disdained capitalism, they thought Stalin was building a utopia, so they apologized for him while he murdered 10s of millions. Sympathizers throughout the free world followed their Uncle Joe's lead and ignored the holocaust. Not only did Stalin turn the holocaust into a non-event behind the Iron Curtain, but thanks to self-censorship by Stalin's "useful idiots", many in the mainstream press like New York Times Moscow correspondent William Duranty before them, the holocaust didn't make it into the mainstream here either.

The world largely ignored Stalin's concurrent purge of Jews in the Soviet Union. After Israel was created, ambassador Golda Meir energized Russian Jews, and they turned out in an overwhelming show of support. Stalin was so threatened by this display, he went after those Jewish “cosmopolitans." Stalin's apologists looked the other way, and the holocaust was a secondary issue as Jews were again exterminated in Russia and fought to survive in newly formed Israel.

After Stalin died and the civil rights movement took off in the U.S., Jews and their holocaust cause made it into mainstream American culture. Since then, any serious attempt to deny the holocaust, now just a cover for antisemitism, triggers not only the natural Jewish and human response, but the liberal guilt response as well. The liberal dominated mainstream media and historians overreact and attempt to silence any skepticism regarding the holocaust.

Ironically, it's this attack on intellectual freedom that most endangers the history of the holocaust and society. Once we declare any one subject off limits for skepticism, we open the door to shutting down dissent on any subject. One of the prices of our free society is holocaust denial, but that freedom guarantees the holocaust can never be denied.

But intellectual freedom is under attack in the name of the holocaust. For example, U.S. Senators wrote Exxonmobile and warned against funding research refuting the "accepted fact" of global warming. It seems bizarre to link the holocaust and global warming, but David Roberts, a global warming supporter, suggests “Nuremberg” style trials for global warming skeptics. Zealots are likening global warming skeptics to holocaust deniers.

There's nothing enlightened about quashing skepticism or research. This is just one example of why we must stand up for intellectual freedom, even regarding holocaust denial.