Writing in support of Appleby, the Los Angeles Times provided an interesting slant to the argument. It pointed out that the First Amendment guaranteed freedom of association as well as freedom of speech. As a result the OAH had the right to “exclude fake historians from its ranks.”{126} It was probably the most appropriate and possibly the most creative citation of the First Amendment during this entire debate.
The responses to Holocaust denial by both students and faculty graphically demonstrate the susceptibility of an educated and privileged segment of the American population to the kind of reasoning that creates a hospitable climate for the rewriting of history. There were a variety of failures here. All of them are sobering indicators of the ability of Holocaust denial to gain legitimacy. There was a failure to understand the true implications of the First Amendment. There was also a failure by student editors to recognize that their high-minded claims about censorship were duplicitous, given their papers’ policies of rejecting a broad range of ads and articles. In fact, campus policies are often more restrictive than those of the commercial press.
There was a failure to look at the deniers’ own history and to understand what they represented. The observation of the Ohio State Lantern rings hauntingly in my ears: “It is repulsive to think that the quality, or total lack thereof, of any idea or opinion has any bearing on whether it should be heard.”{127} It is a response likely to make professors nationwide cringe. But, as we have seen, professors also showed their confusion on this matter.
Most disturbing was the contention voiced by students, faculty members, and university presidents that however ugly, the ad constituted an idea, opinion, or viewpoint—part of the broad range of scholarly ideas. However much they disassociated themselves from the content of the ad, 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. Writing in the Cornell Daily Sun, President Frank Rhodes couched the discussion in terms of freedom of the press, arguing, “Free and open debate on a wide range of ideas, however outrageous or offensive some of them may be, lies at the heart of a university community.” Rhodes was positing that Holocaust denial should be considered an idea worthy of inclusion in the arena of open debate.{128}
This assault on the ivory tower of academe illustrated how Holocaust denial can permeate that segment of the population that should be most immune to it. It was naive to believe that the “light of day” can dispel lies, especially when they play on familiar stereotypes. Victims of racism, sexism, antisemitism, and a host of other prejudices know of light’s limited ability to discredit falsehood. Light is barely an antidote when people are unable, as was often the case in this investigation, to differentiate between reasoned arguments and blatant falsehoods. Most sobering was the failure of many of these student leaders and opinion makers to recognize Holocaust denial for what it was. This was particularly evident among those who argued that the ad contained ideas, however odious, worth of discussion. This failure suggests that correctly cast and properly camouflaged, Holocaust denial has a good chance of finding a foothold among coming generations.
This chapter ends where it began. Given the fact that even the papers that printed the ad dismissed Smith’s claims in the most derogatory of terms—absurd, irrational, racist, and a commercial for hatred—one might argue that the entire affair had a positive outcome. Rarely did the ad appear without an editorial or article castigating Holocaust denial. Students were alerted to a clear and present danger that can easily take root in their midst. Courses on the Holocaust increased in number. One could argue that all this is proof that CODOH’s attempt to make Holocaust denial credible backfired.
My assessment is far more pessimistic. It is probably the one issue about which I find myself in agreement with Bradley Smith. Many students read both the ad and the editorials condemning it. Some, including those who read neither but knew of the issue, may have walked away from the controversy convinced that there are two sides to this debate: the “revisionists” and the “establishment historians.” They may know that there is tremendous controversy about the former. They may not be convinced that the two sides have of equal validity. They may even know that the deniers keep questionable company. But nonetheless they assume there is an “other side.” That is the most frightening aspect of this entire matter.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Watching on the Rhine
The Future Course of Holocaust Denial
Although the instances of outright denial explored in this book are a cause for concern, the deniers may have an impact on truth and memory in another, less tangible but potentially more insidious way. Extremists of any kind pull the center of a debate to a more radical position. They can create—and, in the case of the Holocaust, have already created—a situation whereby added latitude may be given to ideas that would once have been summarily dismissed as historically fallacious.
The recent “historians’ debate” in Germany, in which conservative German historians attempted to restructure German history, offers evidence of this phenomenon. Though these historians are not deniers, they helped to create a gray area where their highly questionable interpretations of history became enmeshed with the pseudohistory of the deniers; and they do indeed share some of the same objectives. Intent on rewriting the annals of Germany’s recent past, both groups wish to lift the burden of guilt they claim has been imposed on Germans. Both believe that the Allies should bear a greater share of responsibility for the wrongs committed during the war. Both argue that the Holocaust has been unjustifiably singled out as a unique atrocity.
This debate was foreshadowed in the late 1970s by the publication of Hellmut Diwald’s History of the Germans. Diwald, a prominent German historian, believed that since 1945 Germany’s past had been “devalued, destroyed and taken away” from the German people. He sought to rectify this by demonstrating how Germans themselves had been victimized: His book devoted significant space to the expulsion of the German population from Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, but only two pages to Nazi crimes against humanity, including the Holocaust.{1} Although Diwald’s book was vigorously criticized by German historians of all political persuasions—one called it “confused and stupid”—it was a harbinger of things to come. (Not surprisingly, the deniers were quick to adopt Diwald’s work as an extension of their own. In a letter to the New Statesman, Richard Verrall, editor of the extremist Spearhead and the author of Did Six Million Really Die?, grouped Diwald’s research with that of Butz and Faurisson, arguing that together they were all “carrying on the work initiated by Rassinier.”{2} Diwald had unwittingly given the deniers the scholarly respectability they so craved. His successors in the debate would inadvertently do the same.)