I usually try to keep posts concise. But I thought once a month I can splurge on my word count and try talk about something in a bit more detail. Here goeth my first attempt. A few days ago Takis Konstantopoulos wrote a reaction to my 2008 post about the Holodomor (Stalin’s planned famine in the Ukraine). He raised some good questions about the nature of genocide denialism that I’d like to address by comparing the Holocaust to other genocides.
I went to a Jewish school so we probably learned a bit more about the Holocaust than most schoolkids. A common perspective we were exposed to was that the Holocaust was unique in terms of the extent of the atrocities. I strongly disagree that it’s special in this sense. It’s hard to compare cases of extreme suffering. Can we really say whether the ripping apart of babies (from the Holocaust) is better/worse than, say, requiring people to show no emotions when their family is slaughtered (under pain of death) or making children bite another child to death? Such a comparison is demeaning, too. It can even lead to an ugly competitiveness: “my genocide’s worse than your genocide!”.
But there are 2 areas where I think the Holocaust is unique. They form a [seemingly] puzzling combination. (1) There is probably more evidence of the Holocaust’s details than for any other genocide in history. (2) There is probably more third party denial [see below] of the Holocaust than for any genocide.
Degrees of Evidence for Genocides
Most genocides are pretty scarce on even on “basics” such as body counts. This year, we saw the killing of about 9200 Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka by the government’s military campaign to destroy the Tamil Tigers. Or was it 20,000? We’ll never know. The best photo evidence is a set of poor quality satellite images that show a rubble of bombed tents in a civilian camp. Similarly, the largest post-WW2 conflict is the Congo War — an effective genocide which can be considered an extension of the Rwandan genocide. The death toll is about 5.4 million, with a huge margin of uncertainty. But the Nazis did not hide anything. They deliberately accounted for as many victims as they could. They went out of their way to photograph as much as possible so that we have archives with 85,000 photos of how it really was on the ground.
Also, for most genocides there is no clear evidence of intent. To what extent were the deaths in the Holodomor planned by Stalin and to what extent was it a result of the poor crop yields and famines that the USSR experienced at the time? This really is an open question. As are most death tolls from most genocides. Unsurprising since a lot of genocides are constructed bottom-up, by the civilian masses themselves. For instance as far as I know the Rwandan genocide wasn’t the direct result of a clear chain of command. Again, not so for the Nazis, who provided the clearest possible evidence of intent all the way up their complicity chain. We have documents all the way from the [public] proceedings of the Wannsee Conference, executive orders, testimonies from trials etc.
Denialism of Genocide
In terms of denialism, there is more of a continuum. There are people who deny every form of mass murder. Some US communists today deny that Mao did anything wrong. Chomsky essentially wanted to give the Khmer Rouge a pass. Russian nationalists deny the Holodomor. Leftist intellectuals from the west denied that there was anything wrong with Stalin’s show trials. But I don’t think for there’s the same level of third party denialism for any other genocide.
By third party denial I mean denial by private individuals external to the genocide itself. I think the two most organised cases of mass murder denial are the Turkish government’s denial of the Armenian genocide (even trying to edit an Encarta article) and the Chinese government’s denial of the mass murder instituted by Mao (by censorship and downplaying). But both are cases of denialism by the political descendants of the system responsible for the original crimes. Holocaust denial is a different beast altogether: a popular movement scattered across the world with no continuity-ties to the Nazi party. (Even neo-Nazi groups are recreations — not attempts by an ongoing regime to maintain its legitimacy.)
What Does This Show?
The question of why Holocaust denialism has this special role is probably a complex intersection of racism, politics, economics, religion etc etc. This is a quagmire. But I think the existence of this special role as something unique about the Holocaust (regardless of how it’s come about) has something more plain to tell us.
The denialists of most genocides use similar tactics. Ones which take advantage of the gaps in evidence mentioned above. To take the Holodomor as the example, they claim: (1) That the death toll has been greatly exaggerated (partly true since ridiculous numbers as high as 20 million have been given in political speeches). (2) That the extent to which the deaths were deliberate is questionable (again partly true since there is some legitimate historical debate). Of course all this shows is that we don’t have enough documentation to answer these important questions. We still have enough to know that it happened.
However all of this disappears in the case of Holocaust denial. Because it’s so well documented, there are no evidential gaps for the denialists to latch on to — so they make the gaps up. For other genocides the, racism, nationalistic pride, desire to disparage the victims, all have a better hiding place behind genuine gaps in the historical record. With Holocaust denial, the gaps are removed — and the motives become crystal clear.
The comedian Denis Leary made a good joke on a late night TV appearance. He did an impression of someone anti-Irish saying: “there was no potato famine!” Because the potato famine is such an established fact, it becomes obvious the statement is simply malicious. So too with Holocaust denial, on the existence of which the joke rests.
This is why it’s important to have an awareness of Holocaust history. Not as a mere case study but as a template for genocide dynamics. Not because it was somehow “more” atrocious, but so that we are better equipped to spot the ugliness behind all the other genocide denialism. So we can appropriately say “fuck off” to the Anatoly Wassermans, the Sunsara Taylors, the Noam Chomskys — in the same way we can to the Irvings and Ahmadinejads.
6 comments ↓
Interesting. I’ve never thought about the Holocaust in this way: that it is simultaneously (i) well documented and (ii) denied by many. And (if I get it right) you claim that, precisely because the contradiction between (i) and (ii), we can use it as a basis for studying (understanding) what (stupid) tactics the denialists use.
As I said, I take issue with denialists for they do damage. But I also take issue with those who nod their heads when denialists speak because they are afraid to speak. We should be able to tell all of them a “fuck off” and if we did so they would simply be talking between themselves and form a mere comedy club.
I spent 2-3 years as a professor in Greece and had a colleague who was adamant about the “lie” of the Holocaust to the extent that when he heard that his son’s wife speak about it, he forced his son divorce her (and he was telling me this in great pride). Incidentally, the same person considered anyone with dark skin as stupid; yet he claimed he was not a fascist.
I have also met milder forms of denialists, those who wish Holocaust did not exist because it didn’t serve their “philosophical” bend.
And, as I said, I also know of many who, despite that they know (not only about the Holocaust but also of several other iniquities, say, just to put it mildly) they’d rather keep their mouths shut.
Jared Diamond, in The Third Chimpanzee discusses the genocide and also lists several genocides committed not necessarily by white supremacists.
Coincidentally, I just receive an email from eskeptic, announcing a new book about Holocaust denial:
Here is an excerpt, from Schermer’s webpage, describing the book:
And a sample audio preview here.
Thanks for the link — I usually read eSkeptic but missed that week. I agree, there should be a concerted effort to study these forms of denialism in a much closer way than we’ve been doing. My only disagreement is that I don’t think their tactics are stupid — they seem to be quite good at inciting racism in people who might have pre-existing racist tendencies.
I’d be interested what academic discipline your colleague from Greece was from. Also the fact that he told you these things with pride — does that mean there’s enough of a climate of bigotry in Greece at the moment that racists don’t take pains to hide their racism (like they do in some other countries) or was he unusually frank?
When I said “stupid” I used it in a vague sense. Of course they are wolves, they can use very elaborate techniques.
As for my (fortunately, EX) colleague, well, I can say he is quite naive in his beliefs and quite frank in speaking openly. The same person, for instance, believes that the Gods of the Greek Mythology (sorry, Religion–for it was religion back then) were real people who had built a big empire. Perhaps he also believed they came from outer space (as some people do)–but I’m not sure about that. So I’m talking about this kind of stupidity.
No, there is not an unusual climate of bigotry in Greece. I’d say it’s at the same level as other countries. At the same time, it is true that Greeks do not hide their feelings and can be painfully frank. So, even though I’m not a sociologist, I estimate that a sociologist’s job in, say, collecting racist statistics in Greece is easier than in another country. One thing, particular to Greece, is that many Greeks feel the “burden” of a “glorious past” and identify themselves with it. This makes them unusually intolerant. To make things worse, a modern Greek has been taught (brain-washed) that his Byzantine/Orthodox ancestry is a direct continuation of the Classical Greece civilization. That is, he has been taught to reconcile two unreconcilable, and, I think, almost diametrically opposite cultures. In my opinion, this is one of the causes of the “schizophrenia” of a modern Greek.
My ex-colleague suffered from this disease.
Let me add though that, regardless of the motives (regardless of whether a person is stupid or evil or both), racism and genocide denialism should not be tolerated.
Right, there is definitely an air of cultural superiority in many cases of widespread nationalist racism. For instance, the Holodomor denialists are usually Russian supremacists.
As my history teacher said when speaking of the chauvinism of the Chinese empire because of its civilisation: if you’re going to be arrogant it at least helps to have something to be arrogant about. There is something to be “arrogant about” for most cultures including the Chinese, Greek, Russian etc — I guess keeping your attitudes in balance is what a lot of people have trouble with.
On Byzantine/Classical Greek I would say they are continuations in terms of there being an unbroken chain of cultural and familial transmission. It’s just that in that time the culture morphed into something very different. However from the uni subject I did on Byzantine history I think they looked back to themselves as heirs to the Greek (and Roman) traditions even then. I guess these things aren’t restricted to a specific time period…
Quick comment: I am not too familiar with the way that early Greek Byzantines thought about their past, but the book “The Closing of the Western Mind” by Charles Freeman (2003) tells us part of the story. (The book is a fascinating read, especially because it gives an account on how science and rationality were destroyed around 300 AD.)
Leave a Comment