Over at The Debate Link, David links to a news story about an upcoming conference on the Holocaust, sponsored by the Iranian government. Since the president of Iran has called the Holocaust a “myth,” David quite reasonably predicts that the conference will be an appalling morass of anti-semitism.
So far, so good. David then goes on to say:
My goodness.
David Irving is a flat-out Holocaust denier. But to put Chomsky – or activists who organize a boycott – on the same level as Irving is unsupportable.
The primary evidence linking Chomsky to Holocaust denial is that he once wrote an essay defending the free-speech rights of Robert Faurisson, a Frenchman who has been (justifiably, as it turns out) accused of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. Chomsky’s essay was later reprinted, without his knowledge, as the introduction to one of Faurisson’s books.
Nearly all of Chomsky’s essay was a well-worn argument for free speech. A single paragraph addressed Faurisson himself. Here’s the most controversial passage in Chomsky’s introduction:
In retrospect, this is a stupid thing for Chomsky to have written; under the circumstances, if Chomsky wasn’t willing to undertake a thorough review of all of Faurisson’s writings, he should have simply said “I don’t know his work well enough to comment on the matter” and left it at that. Instead, Chomskey concluded from the weakness of the evidence presented to him, that Faurisson probably wasn’t an anti-semite. That conclusion is wrong, I believe, but the error is understandable; there is no need to say “Chomsky supports Holocaust denial” in order to plausibly explain Chomsky’s error.
Chomsky also argued that, in principle, it was possible to doubt the facts of the Holocaust without being motivated by hatred of Jews:
I think Chomsky’s argument here is disingenuous. Logically, he is correct – it is possible for an ignorant schmuck (such as myself, when I was about 17) to take Holocaust denial seriously without hating Jews. But while Holocaust denial is not, in and of itself, absolute proof of anti-semitism, it’s certainly grounds for a very strong suspicion. The real-world association between Holocaust denial and anti-semitism is too obvious to be reasonably ignored.
On the other side of the equation, it is clear that Chomsky does not doubt the existence of the Holocaust. In 1969, he wrote:
By entering into the arena of argument and counterargument, of technical feasibility and tactics, of footnotes and citations, by accepting the presumption of legitimacy of debate on certain issues, one has already lost one’s humanity.
Chomsky has returned to this formulation several times, applying it not only to Nazis but to Holocaust deniers. So in 1992, he wrote:
Chomsky does arguably revise history a little – discussing that 1969 comment as if it were referring to Holocaust deniers, rather than to the Nazis themselves – but that’s a little besides the point. Chomsky simply cannot be fairly accused of advocating Holocaust denial. The suggestion that he’d endorse the Iranian conference is unwarranted.
I won’t discuss the British petition to academically boycott two Israeli Universities, which I assume is what David is referring to. Instead, I’ll refer readers to this link; Ilan Pappe’s and Henri Picciotto’s essays demonstrate by example that it is possible to support boycotts and divestment campaigns against Israel without being anti-semitic or supporting Holocaust denial.
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Chomsky did go farther than making “well-worn free speech arguments” into support for the holocaust denier. To that extent, David’s comment is fair.
Holocaust denial? There never were any Holocaust deniers. It was made up by the producers of the miniseries “The Holocaust” to drum up viewers.
I hope that is tongue-in-cheek.
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Amp citing Chomsky:
Yes. This rhetoric of “we need to study this to find out if it really happened” garbage that is being proposed as the point of the conference is just the old racist shit. Trying to spin it into a discourse of serious intellectual study is entirely misdirection: “scientific” or “rational” racism has been around for a long time, from phrenology to the attempts by the Nazis to “prove” that Jews, Romani, people of African descent, etc. were subhuman.
I am not at all, NOT AT ALL, defending the Iranian govt or anyone else who calls the holocaust a myth. Where the Iranians might have a point, or valid point of inquiry at least, is when they argue that compensating and forming a homeland for Jews seemed to come at the expense of a group of people who had nothing to do with the holocaust, the Palestinians. Now I know that even saying this may garner accusations of anti-seminism, and maybe I deserve this, though I sincerely hope not. But. Could Israel have been formed in a way that generated less ill will in the Middle East? Is there a way to defuse tensions even now by acknowledging that mistakes were made? These strike me as legitimate questions, even if they are asked by Iran. Debating hard questions might be a peaceful way to defuse tensions; is giving this at least a try really so terrible? Yes, stupid, indefensible things may be said, but also emphatically rebutted.
Amp Fan says:
I agree with you that there were things that were not done right and that it’s a valid thing to argue. I also agree that one people’s self-determination should not come at the expense of another’s. The problem is that there are many, many points of disagreement about Palestinian and Israeli history, pre- and post-’48. For example, w/r/t Palestinian refugees from within the pre-’67 borders of Israel: 1) Did the Israeli forces make them leave? 2) Did they leave because they were afraid and/or thought it was a bad idea to be in the country? 3) Did leaders of surrounding Arab countries encourage them to vacate the area? The answer, probably, is all three to a greater or lesser extent.
The history involved has an important role to play and is instrumental in reconciliation. The problem is that resolving the narratives is only part of the solution. Allowing people in the region to come to know the situation from each others’ perspectives is crucial–as opposed to the heaps of blame that will be handed out at this conference.
I’d welcome clarification of what’s meant by the holocaust. It can be used in a narrow sense of what the German Nazis did to jews and other folks circa 1941-44, or can be used in a broader sense that might include, e.g., the Armenian massacres by the Turks, the starvation of the Ukraine by Stalin, Mao’s purges, Nagasaki…
It’s difficult to assess whether it’s unreasonable to deny something, until we know which something is at issue. My point isn’t directed so much at the Iranian asshats, as at the broader spectrum of holocaust denial.
Elie Weisal’s “Night” tells the story of holocaust denial by jews. A crazy guy from the village comes back with horrible tales of people being rounded up and sent to camps, and no one wants to believe him…
I know that I live my life from day to day nearly forgetting that’s there’s a war on. We each have ways of blocking off awareness of cruelty and suffering, because without them we go crazy. A short trip in my case.
I wouldn’t say you’re guilty of anti-semitism, but I think you may be guilty of naivite. It might be worth asking whether there was a better way to safeguard the Jewish population after the Holocaust, but that’s not what the Iranian government is doing. They’re just trying to shore up their popularity by baiting Jews. They don’t have any valid points. They’re just trying to start a big, noisy fight which will focus the country on a common enemy and distract ordinary Iranians from the stuff that’s making them miserable, such as Iran’s sky-high unemployment rate and very high incidence of drug addiction.
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Holocaust deniers qualify automatically as antisemites: if the holocaust is indeed a myth, it is a myth propagated by US and European governments including the German government, and by major Western world class media outlets, and is part of the history taught in Western schools, and so it automatically means that Jews do indeed control the most powerful European governments, the media, the schools etc. This is classic antisemitism. A rational person who doesn’t have leanings towards believing this type of conspiracy theory would reject the possibility of sucha large-scale hoax, and would therefore reject holocaust-denial.
http://jewhatred.blogspot.com
http://pages.nyu.edu/~air1
Blogging has become the new venue for Holocaust Denial these days.
For the Anti-Semites the idea of a uni-directional diatribe without allowing for rebuttal is in most cases too tempting to pass up.
I am by no means categorizing all blogs or bloggers into the revisionist category but there are definitely signs that deniers are “hip” to the blog scene. They want nothing more than to discredit and destroy anything they can.
One must simply absorb any and all information with a watchful eye.
-Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org
If this is the extent of Chomsky’s alleged denial, then the Holocaust denial critics are on the fringe. Chomsky limited his defense to the evidence presented, and he”s right about the event itself being worthy of disbelief. The most compelling evidence that the Holocaust didn’t happen is that it happened. No one acted normally. Neither the perpetrators nor the victims, and most especially the bystanders. It counts as a transformation of the definition of humanity, and the people at that time of all countries should have been shocked to the core….but weren’t.
The holocaust absolutely happened. Which makes it all the more unbelievable.
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