Since the end of World War II the United States has not been without its share of kooks and frauds who deny that the holocaust ever happened. So has Europe. In most of Western Europe and Russia, holocaust-denial is illegal. It can land you in jail. It’s never been illegal in the United States, nor should it be. The way holocaust-denialism has been handled in the United States is a useful template for evaluating current controversies about fact and fabrication and the ways government or private media contend with speech, free or false.
Holocaust-denialism has always been recognized for what it is: a sinister attempt by bigots, cynics, attention-getters, neo-Nazis or David Duke-type politicians to rewrite history and appeal to people’s baser instincts. The motive, the means and the ends are vile. There are no exceptions, no possible accommodations for “on the other hand” qualifiers under any guise, academic freedom included (though some deniers do get accommodated): fraud is anathema to intellectual freedom.
Those dregs on the fringe don’t–or didn’t–get much attention because responsible people from publishers to college and university departments to media organizations kept them in their gutter. Reputable publishers did not publish their books, newspapers did not quote them or run their letters, television stations didn’t devote magazine features to them, except from the knowing perspective of exploring bigotry.
In other words, if deniers were discussed or quoted at all, the discredit of their position was if not assumed at least reasserted up front, even in objective news reporting. No reporter was ever accused of editorializing for calling a Holocaust-denier a liar or a bigot. Not doing so would justifiably put the reporter’s credibility in question, just as it would if a reporter in a profile of Eli Wiesel had then turned to David Irving, the British writer whose books absolve Hitler of responsibility for genocide, for a “balanced view.” That wouldn’t be balance but mendacity.
And yet mendacity in the guise of balance has become normalized. We saw it for many years in reporting about global warming, where deniers, a fringe of the scientific consensus, were quoted on par with other scientists. We occasionally see it whenever the teaching of evolution is challenged in one Scopes monkey jurisdiction or another and a reporter who wouldn’t know objectivity from Adam might feel obliged to defer to the William Jennings Bryan of the moment, again in the name of “balance.” We’ve been seeing it endlessly in the ongoing battle over masks or vaccines, with mask-deniers multiplying the monkey jurisdictions, our own among them (though in fairness the anti-vaxxer phenomenon is as old as the prejudices that shadowed the first vaccines since 1720s England, when the first smallpox inoculations were catching Voltaire’s attention and endorsement).
And of course we keep seeing it with election-denialism. Doesn’t matter that in every case the questions have been settled. The lies continue, and deference to liars, even by reporters and politicians, continues along with it. We would never afford the same freedom to holocaust-deniers. Election-deniers somehow get a pass. I count at least four of them on our local government boards. No doubt a few more are in the closet on that score.
Holocaust deniers are routinely banned from social media. That’s what keeps them in their place. That’s the difference between a society that self-regulates truth and civility and a society that–like the Balkans before the catastrophic wars of the 1990s, like Rwanda before the genocide–not only allows incendiary lies to run free, but amplifies them on mass media, stoking violence.
Companies’ decisions to ban Trump over his election-denialism was no different or less justifiable than banning holocaust-deniers. He was peddling a dangerous lie that goes to the core of the nation’s institutional credence. It wasn’t just words, as we saw from the violent and deadly January insurrection. And it’s not about balance. On one side, we had 63 court decisions, including the Supreme Court, that demolished the fabrication of a stolen election, as did innumerable federal, state and local election officials. On the other side, we had Rudy Giuliani, a television network whose name rhymes with onanism and conspiracy theorists in the grip of what David Brooks called “a venomous panic attack.”
Still, no one is quashing even these deniers’ “First Amendment rights.” I put the terms in quotes not to diminish the meaning of the terms, but because those who invoke them as alleged victims of censorship often do, by cynically misapplying them. Newspapers, television stations, social media platforms aren’t First Amendment zones. They exercise their rights under the First Amendment. But they don’t owe anyone a voice. It’s up to their editors to decide who gets one. Thank heavens they do, if not always judiciously. Call it editing, call it censorship, call it whatever you like, it comes down to the same thing. Editors judge. It’s in the job description. It’s in the word edit. That’s not an infringement of anyone’s rights but an exercise of private rights. Government interference would be the unconstitutional infringement, not the other way around.
Florida lawmakers’ just-passed bill forcing social media companies to give Trump-type liars free rein shows how partial for totalitarian methods those lawmakers supposedly so fond of the Constitution happen to be. Government may neither ban nor compel speech. Private companies are not so constrained.
Unquestionably, there are excesses. What’s being called the “cancel culture” (to excess) is giving us daily examples–in media, on campus, in popular culture, in publishing. It’s difficult to gauge which is worse, government censorship, which does not exist, or self-censorship–or self-flagellation–by private concerns, which does.
Publishers are now under pressure over book deals with several former members of the Trump administration, among them Mike Pence. There are fears that these ex-Trump officials may use their books to peddle the stolen-election myth, among other lies. It raises a fair question: if Twitter can ban false tweets about the election, what makes book publishers less responsible in that regard? But it doesn’t. Book editors fact-check. Mike Pence’s manuscript would have to pass the test as any other writer’s manuscript would, keeping in mind that former former White House alumni, some of them more lurid than Trump’s crew, never faced the same scrutiny. Liars and mass murderers such as Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon were never denied their big deal book deals. So the standards have changed, but not for the worse.
In any case none of these people are being denied their First Amendment rights, with or without quotes. Heaven knows they’re not shutting up on any of the nation’s vast right-wing radio and television panic attacks. And few of them, Trump’s crew especially, couldn’t afford to self-publish or to find themselves less scrupulous publishers to get their fabrications hardbound. Trump himself certainly did with his previous fictions, which sold bundles.
What the rogues are looking for are the big imprints–Simon & Schuster, Random House, Norton–which lend a legitimacy that shadier publishing does not. Simon & Schuster recently dumped Josh Hawley, the fabulist senator from Missouri, but is sticking with a Pence deal, though 200 employees protested. The company also signed Kellyanne Conway, out of whose rib Trump fashioned his reign of alternative facts. Good thing most of the floors in and around Simon & Schuster’s tower on Manhattan’s 6th Avenue are empty: the company can fill them with fact-checkers.
Chances are the likes of Pence and Conway will behave, the way Pence finally did even as insurrectionists were gunning for him. It’s the insurrectionists’ enablers, the “stop the steal” catastrophists, the unbalanced Trump fanatics and dregs on the fringe who claim that “fear and violence are the butter to the bread of our politics,” whose fabrications hope to fuel the next grab for power. The hope depends on a degree of mainstream buy-in as in 2015 and 2016.
That buy-in–the failure of 2016–is gone. They can embrace whatever sordid brand of denialism they like. But don’t expect responsible media to be their accomplices. And if that relegates them back to their underground, that’s their problem. Denialism is their right. It’s not our fate.
Pierre Tristam is FlaglerLive’s editor. Reach him by email here. A version of this piece aired on WNZF.
James Manfre says
There is no profession where lies, half truths and distortions are permitted without substantial repercussions. As an attorney I am allowed latitude in arguing a matter before a judge by presenting my clients case in the best light for their position, but a misstatement of fact or law would result in an immediate rebuke. This should be the case in the court of public opinion. By allowing the political debate to include outright delusions and fantasy without condemnation from all sides including the media has resulted in a blurring of facts and more importantly the credibility of the entire political process. Wouldn’t you hold accountable your doctor, accountant, plumber or anyone you employ for lying to you. Why does the Republican Party find this political messaging to be acceptable? It led to a violent insurrection against a lawfully elected legislature and President. This may only be the beginning of the fallout of lying as a course of conduct by a political party.
oldtimer says
Thank God the Democrats have never lied!
CB from PC says
Here is something DEMOCRATS CANNOT DENY:
From Reconstruction (1866 for the historically challenged) until 2014, no Southern State elected a Black Senator from either Party.
Senator Tim Scott was was elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election held November 4, 2014.
And Strom Thurmond was the only prominent segregationist Southern Democrat who became a Republican.
The Left loves to scream the filthy lie that the Democrats who oppressed Blacks under Jim Crow morphed into Republicans.
While Thurmond certainly did this, the other Dixiecrats who tortured Blacks – including Alabama’s police-dog deploying Democrat National committeeman Bull Connor, Govs. Orval Faubus of Arkansas and George Wallace of Alabama, and filibustering U.S. Sens. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, Albert Gore Sr. Of Tennessee, and many more – all lived, ruled and died as Democrats.
Pogo says
@The ghosts of joe mccarthy, roy cohn, tricky dick nixon, spiro the felon agnew, ronnie apartheid reagan and half the population of hell (Republican slumlords, robber business people, oil profiteers and polluters, war profiteers, et. al.) are barking and demanding separate but equal time
They’re disappointed that Republican blowhards and liars want them to be forgotten.
I told them to calm down and count their blessings; better forgotten than receive the same treatment trumpholes are meting out to the Bush family, the Cheney family, the McCain family, the Romney family…
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
— Abraham Lincoln
Steve says
Ancient History water under the bridge. The here and now is that theres no Honor amongst thieves or liars. May they all throw each other under the bus.
James M. Mejuto says
This denialism of the Holocaust, the elections, vaccinations, the QAnon and everything else belonging to
trump and his groupies of deplorables is still continuing to wreak havoc on our country’s effort to begin
Pres. Biden’s program for the American people.
We the people must put an end to that fat man from Mar-a-Lago and show our country with a lot of problems
we must begin to address.
Steve says
It’s sad to see supposed Adults to continue the Myth of a stolen Election orchestrated by AGolf Twittler and used as a Fundraiser. Pathetic that one would continue to be Conned. Once shame on them continued shame on you. As said by the Orange blowhard “Low IQ”
ASF says
But I bet if the “denial” in question was applied to the issue of Black slavery in America, the above opinion might be a tad bit different.
Steve says
IFF were a Horse beggars would ride
Sherry says
Ahhhhhhh spineless Pence! What does it say about any person who after trump sent a vicious mob intent on lynching him. . . Pence NOW says that serving with trump was the “honor of his life”???! No self worth! No integrity! Completely Gutless! I wouldn’t count on Pence to behave himself. . . he’s now a cowardly, mindless trumpoid!
Take a good read:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ex-trump-vice-president-pence-makes-first-public-appearance-since-january-2021-04-30/
JJ says
You mentioned “fact checkers” many times. Unfortunately, a Trump “Loyalist” (I wish they knew what that means) does not bother with such trivial sidebars. They take what they’re fed by Fox, etc… as gospel, and never question it.
I question, and often disagree with what I see and hear on CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc as slant. It usually is.
But, when push comes to shove regarding Trump, his administration , they are PROVEN LIARS. They even lie / lied about irrelevant shit.
To Trump Loyalists who haven’t seen the light yet, please do your homework. Get pissed that you’ve been duped, and move on.
Our Republic depends on your common sense.
Mistag Breeze says
Freedom of the press is so important. But fact check fact check fact check. Thanks Pierre another great one
Ray W. says
Thank you for stressing the importance of the role of ethics in journalism. Thank you for expressing your hope for adherence to the role of ethics in publishing. Thank you for highlighting Florida’s new statutory scheme designed to force social media platforms to violate ethical concerns.
Dennis says
We will see more about election fraud in the future. As far as the killing of millions of Jews, it must never even happen again to any group, yet it happened in Africa, exempt they were not Jews and the world let it happen again.
Agkistrodon says
And what about the Bush 2000 election that Democrats called rigged and protested? That don’t count right?
Pierre Tristam says
Nothing rigged about the legal fictions that led to the Supreme Court’s tortured 5-4 ruling. That’s what was protested. Beyond the, the decision was accepted, Gore conceded, and we all bent over for the next eight years’ ramming.
jw says
The New York Times still denies the “Holomodor”, a large-scale man-made famine in the Soviet Ukraine 1932-33. Over 10 million died, with some estimates of up to 30 million. I’d like to see the NYTimes returned the Pulitzer Prize that was awarded to Walter Duranty for his reporting on the Soviet Union at that time.
Pierre Tristam says
Jw is half mistaken. The Times has disowned Duranty’s reporting and has never since denied the Stalin-Lyssenko famine of the Ukraine, but it has not returned the Pulitzer.
ASF says
Actually, the New York Times does not have such a “celebrated history” where their own “Holocaust denial” is concerned. The NYT practiced a deliberate policy of downplaying what was going on in Nazi Germany for years during its rise–until they could no longer politically get away with doing so without it effecting their own financial bottom line.
To add to the tragedy of above tragic fact…The owners of the NYT at that time period (the Ochs) were rejectionist Jews who handed off their biased management to a family of even more rejectionist Jews –the Sulzbergers, who eventually converted to Christianity.
To this day, the NYT’s continues it’s systemic “Anti-Semitism-politically-disguised-as-Anti-Zionism.” They haven’t learned much. And, given the alarmingly rising rates of Anti Semitic activity being reported all over the globe, neither has the rest of the world.
That being the very sad case, there has never a more critical time for the history and lessons of the Holocaust to be taught–not rejected. Those who do no remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Pierre Tristam says
The Times had a sordid history of running ads for anti-Semitic businesses in its old days and burying reports of the Holocaust during World War II, as in this issue of July 2, 1944. Note the front page article about July 4 crowds that begins: “As New Yorkers continued to desert the city for vacation spots over the Fourth of July, throngs in railroad and bus depots were increased yesterday by the peak influx of service men and women on week-end furloughs.” You have to go to page 12 for a three-paragraph (three paragraphs!) brief headlined: “350,000 More Jews Believed Doomed.” But ASF is incorrect when she states either that the Sulzbergers are “rejectionist Jews” or that they “eventually converted to Christianity.” That’s as much a fabrication as her subsequent claim that the Times in the last many decades has been politically anti-Semitic. The Times at least since the 1960s has been as staunch a defender of Israel and Zionism as they come, though as usual in the United States (as opposed to, say, in Israel, where the press and public are far more free and intelligently self-critical on that count) any hint of criticism of Israel, any diversion from AIPAC’s Israel-right-or-wrong slobbering triggers pavlovian barks of “anti-Semitism!” I’m more of a J-Street Jew myself.
ASF says
A.G. Sulzberger, the current family owner of the NYT, does not identify as a Jew in the least. Although he once identified as being “Episcopalian”, he now claims to be Atheist/Agnostic. AG Sulzberger’s paternal grandfather was Jewish but the rest of his family was Episcopalian and Congregationalist. AG Sulzberger’s father, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, was an enthusiastic supporter of The American Council for Judaism which was founded in June, 1942 to OPPOSE Zionism (much like J Street does today.) Arthur Hays Sulzberger gave his Anti Zionist views prominent coverage is his newspaper–even while he buried coverage of Nazi atrocities against Jews in the back pages of his newspaper–of he gave such stories any coverage at all. Although some of that changed when America formally entered the war, in a 1946 speech that became rather famous, Arthur Hays Sulzberger claimed that Zionism was to blame for some of the Jewish deaths in the Holocaust. He also stated that the refugee crisis during the war had been a “manageable, social and economic problem’ until the “clamor for statehood introduced an insoluable (sic) political element into the issue.” Again, here are Sulzburger’s own words (this is not my “personal opinion” or anything I made up out of thin air): “It is my judgement that thousands dead might be alive if the Zionists had put less emphasis on statehood.” People are also free to read about the Sulzberger family’s deliberate burying of accounts of Nazi atrocities against Jews in Lauren Leff’s book, “Buried by the Times.” The family’s Anti Zionism is legendary. Anyone, including you, Pierre, are free to research the Sulzberger family history I just recounted for themselves. The overtly hostile and biased way that the The New York Times covers anything having to do with Israel is what has led some long-term historical subscribers and supporters to re-dub them “The New York Slimes.” The trouble they have gotten themselves into with their prejudiced treatment of Jewish journalists like Jennifer Rubin, as well as the Anti Semitic cartoons and erroneous “Middle East reporting” they have published multiple times and then had to issue public corrections and apologies for, is also sadly notable. It was not one of the NYT’s finer moments when they fawned over Alice Walker’s celebration of HER Anti-Semitism in a New York Times Book Review–an article in which she parroted David Acke’s “The Jews descend from lizards” canard.
ASF says
In the interests of complete accuracy, I must correct myself on one piece of misinformation I mistakenly wrote above. The New York Times journalist who recently left the NYT, citing systemic prejudices against Jewish staff writers and supporters of Israel as her reason, was Bari Weiss–NOT Jennifer Rubin.
Ramone says
I don’t think it’s fair to compare holocaust denialists to people that question whether the 2020 election was fairly conducted. I’ve never met or communicated with anyone who denied the holocaust happened. I have met and communicated with thousands that feel our Federal Election system is wrought with problems that, could and do, skew the results.
While it’s easy for Democrats to say there’s no evidence of voter fraud and anyone that says otherwise is a kook, everyone knows that’s just simply not true. There’s some level of fraud in every Presidential election. Due to this patchwork system of voter laws and rules that vary from State to State and County to County, there’s definite cause for concern. Using a pandemic to loosen regulations and allowing unsolicited mail in ballots opens the door for all kinds of shenanigans. Whether it’s not purging the dead from voter rolls, verifying only legal voters are voting, or any of the other hundreds of ways people can scam the system, everyone should agree we need unified rules and regulations to ensure vote integrity.
Unfortunately, many don’t agree. Many either turn a blind eye to what’s happening and pretend everything is fine, or they know that there’s fraud and ignore it because they believe it works to their political advantage. There’s no reason in this age of modern technology that we can’t reform our voter system to eliminate all voter errors and possible fraud. But to do this, everyone has to be committed to the same goal. If Democrats are so confident in their platforms and political ideas, they should fully support voter integrity. But we’ll never get there if we don’t painstakingly analyze the election systems, processes and ballots to identify any issues. Look at what’s happening in Arizona right now.. Democrats are fighting tooth and nail to keep this from happening. It’s sad. At the end of the day, every illegally cast vote takes away a lawful citizen’s vote. We should all support making sure this doesn’t happen. Keep denying it exists, and we’ll never get there.
Steve says
Nice try but Your belief in the Big Lie comes shining thru. The largest most secure fair Election in History. The States should be in charge of their Votes. Its the way it is. You continue to just pinpoint Dem.s like never a Republican vote cast was fradulent. Its not easy to say their was no fraud there were 60 plus cases thrown out of Court due to lack of Evidence of significant change of outcome voter fraud. What is happening in AZ. is borderline illegal and wont change a thing because its not sanctioned and I repeat, There was not significant Voter cases of fraud to change an outcome Republican or Democrat. How many times you count its the same outcome. I suggest getting over it.
JustMe says
It is one thing for one party to disagree with the other party and bring their opinions to the table and discuss a resolution for the good of our country and its voters.
Since the age of Trump that no longer is happening. He has his cult attacking Mitt Romney and Liz Chaney for voicing their opinions of what they feel. So, now he has anyone that will bully and condemn them because he is the biggest bully our country has ever seen.
He is using whoever will spread his lies about a fair and square election and now is doing a phony recount in Arizona after recount after recount and Supreme Court judges he appointed said there was no cheating in the election. But oh no Donald Trump is so against the truth because he never has learned how to tell it that he is going once again to spread more lies and cause more hate and disruption in our country.
It is a very sad country we live in the a former President of our Country sighted an insurrection against his own country because he wasn’t man enough to admit defend. He is so so bitter that he will continue to spread lies and feed out hate and bully anyone that gets in his way. If this is the now Republican party you should all be ashamed of yourselves because this is not what our government is about.
The hate, the lies, the corruption is all bringing our country down and those causing this have no business being in public office.
Joseph Rizoli says
You are a complete lunatic, I stopped reading your article after you cited talking about banning holocaust deniers.
People have free speech to talk about whatever they want. People like you shouldn’t even live live in a free country they should be deported to a Communist nation…You don’t ban Holocaust deniers you confront them and prove them wrong, you can’t, so you ban and agree with those that use these 1984 tactics and censor them…You represent yellow journalism…
Fred Leuchter an expert in prison executions exposed the fact that the mechanics of homicidal gassings was faulty at Auschwitz and other camps under German control, thus, no Holocaust….
You can’t disprove what he says so you attack him personally having nothing to do with his experience in executions and an expert who was on many prime time reputable T V shows.
Apparently these shows are Holocaust deniers for having him on…You need a new profession, its called penance, stop your fake news, slander and lies…You have no credibility…
Pierre Tristam says
You must have missed the sentence in the first paragraph, holocaust denialism has “never been illegal in the United States, nor should it be.” As for the rest of your denialism, it’s beyond repair.
Ray W. says
Is Joseph Rizoli actually arguing that one person opining that a flaw in the mechanism for distributing gas at Auschwitz and other camps proves that there was no Holocaust?