What, then, are the most efficacious strategies for countering these attacks? Much of the onus is on academe, portions of which have already miserably failed the test. Educators, historians, sociologists, and political scientists hold one of the keys to a defense of the truth. What they who cannot be beguiled by diversionary arguments and soft reasoning know to be fact must be made accessible to the general public.
The establishment of Holocaust museums may play an important role in this effort. These institutions, and all who teach about the Holocaust, must be scrupulously careful about the information they impart so as not inadvertently to provide the deniers with room to maneuver. They must also be careful about “invoking” the Holocaust as a means of justifying certain policies and actions.
This is particularly true for the Jewish community. The purveyors of popular culture—television and radio talk-show hosts prominent among them—must understand that by giving denial a forum they become pawns in a dangerous war.[5] As individuals who help shape public opinion, they must recognize that this struggle is not about ignorance but about hate.
There are those who believe that the courtroom is the place to fight the deniers. This is where Austria, Germany, France, and Canada have mounted their efforts. The legislation that has been adopted takes different forms. Some bills criminalize incitement to hatred; discrimination; or violence on racial, ethnic, or religious grounds. Others ban the dissemination of views based on racial superiority for one sector of the population and expression of contempt toward a group implying its racial inferiority.{26}
The problem with such legal maneuvers is that they are often difficult to sustain or carry through. In August 1992 the Canadian Supreme Court threw out Zundel’s conviction when they ruled that the prohibition against spreading false news likely to harm a recognizable group was too vague and possibly restricted legitimate forms of speech.{27}, [6] An even greater difficulty arises when the court is asked to render a decision not on a point of law, as happened in the Mermelstein case, but on a point of history, as happened in the Zundel trial, in which the judge took historical notice of the Holocaust. It transforms the legal arena into a historical forum, something the courtroom was never designed to be. When historical disputes become lawsuits, the outcome is unpredictable.
The main shortcoming of legal restraints is that they transform the deniers into martyrs on the altar of freedom of speech. This, to some measure, has happened to Faurisson, who in March 1991 was convicted of proclaiming the Holocaust a “lie of history.” The same court that found him guilty denounced the law under which he was tried and convicted.{28} The free-speech controversy can obscure the deniers’ antisemitism and turn the hate monger into a victim.{29} A recent National Public Radio report on controlling neofascist activities in Europe took exactly this approach toward Faurisson’s conviction. Rather than dwell on what he has said and done, it focused on his loss of freedom of speech.{30} When the publisher of the Austrian magazine Halt was convicted of “neo-Nazi activities” for his Holocaust-denial statements, Spotlight published the news under a headline that read, NO FREE SPEECH.{31} A disturbing reversal of the free-speech argument has recently been used by deniers to penalize those who oppose them. In 1984 David McCalden, the former director of the IHR, contracted to rent exhibit space at the California Library Association’s annual conference. The subject of his exhibit was the Holocaust “hoax.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) protested to both city and association officials. The Wiesenthal Center rented a room near McCalden’s exhibit space to set up its own exhibit, and the AJC threatened to conduct demonstrations outside the hotel in which the meeting was to be held. When the association cancelled McCalden’s contract he sued the Wiesenthal Center and the AJC, arguing that they had conspired to deprive him of his constitutional rights to free speech. Though the court dismissed his complaint, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision in 1992. The case constitutes the first time that the First Amendment has been used to attempt to still the voices of those who oppose Nazi bigotry.{32}
Another legal maneuver has been adopted by a growing number of countries. They have barred entry rights to known deniers. David Irving, for example, has been barred from Germany, Austria, Italy, and Canada. Australia is apparently also considering barring him.{33}
Others have argued that the best tactic is just to ignore the deniers because what they crave is publicity, and attacks on them provide it. I have encountered this view repeatedly while writing this book. I have been asked if I am giving them what they want and enhancing their credibility by deigning to respond to them. Deny them what they so desperately desire and need, and, critics claim, they will wither on the vine. It is true that publicity is what the deniers need to survive, hence their media-sensitive tactics—such as ads in college papers, challenges to debate “exterminationists,” pseudoscientific reports, and truth tours of death-camp sites. I once was an ardent advocate of ignoring them. In fact, when I first began this book I was beset by the fear that I would inadvertently enhance their credibility by responding to their fantasies. But having immersed myself in their activities for too long a time, I am now convinced that ignoring them is no longer an option. The time to hope that of their own accord they will blow away like the dust is gone. Too many of my students have come to me and asked, “How do we know there really were gas chambers?” “Was the Diary of Anne Frank a hoax?” “Are there actual documents attesting to a Nazi plan to annihilate the Jews?” Some of these students are aware that their questions have been informed by deniers. Others are not; they just know that they have heard these charges and are troubled by them.
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 the wall.
Though we cannot directly engage them, there is something we can do. Those who care not just about Jewish history or the history of the Holocaust but about truth in all its forms, must function as canaries in the mine once did, to guard against the spread of noxious fumes. We must vigilantly stand watch against an increasingly nimble enemy. But unlike the canary, we must not sit silently by waiting to expire so that others will be warned of the danger. When we witness assaults on truth, our response must be strong, though neither polemical nor emotional. We must educate the broader public and academe about this threat and its historical and ideological roots. We must expose these people for what they are.
The effort will not be pleasant. Those who take on this task will sometimes feel—as I often did in the course of writing this work—as if they are being forced to prove what they know to be fact. Those of us who make scholarship our vocation and avocation dream of spending our time charting new paths, opening new vistas, and offering new perspectives on some aspect of the truth. We seek to discover, not to defend. We did not train in our respective fields in order to stand like watchmen and women on the Rhine. Yet this is what we must do. We do so in order to expose falsehood and hate. 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.
5
Having written this book in the shadow of the “industry” that produces these shows, I recognize that of all my calls for action, this one has the least possibility of realization.
6
Charges may again be brought against Zundel on the basis of his having incited hatred against Jews.