Historical negationism, also called historical denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. It should not be conflated with historical revisionism, a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic reinterpretations of history. In attempting to revise the past, historical negationism acts as illegitimate historical revisionism by using techniques inadmissible in proper historical discourse, such as presenting known forged documents as genuine, inventing ingenious but implausible reasons for distrusting genuine documents, attributing conclusions to books and sources that report the opposite, manipulating statistical series to support the given point of view, and deliberately mistranslating texts.
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a fabrication or exaggeration. Holocaust denial involves making one or more of the following false claims:
The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is a United States–based nonprofit organization which promotes Holocaust denial. It is considered by many scholars to be central to the international Holocaust denial movement. Self-described as a "historical revisionist" organization, the IHR promotes antisemitic viewpoints and has links to several neo-Nazi and neo-fascist organizations.
David John Cawdell Irving is an English author who has written on the military and political history of World War II, especially Nazi Germany. He was found to be a Holocaust denier in a UK court in 2000 as a result of a failed libel case.
Willis Allison Carto was an American far-right political activist. He described himself as a Jeffersonian and a populist, but was primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.
The Barnes Review(TBR) is a bi-monthly magazine founded in 1994 by Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby and headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes The Barnes Review as "one of the most virulent anti-Semitic organizations around"; the journal and website are "dedicated to historical revisionism and Holocaust denial."
Radio Islam was a Swedish Islamic radio channel, now a website. The EU's racism monitoring organization has called it "one of the most radical right-wing antisemitic homepages on the net".
Serge Thion was a French sociologist. A former researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research, he was dismissed from his position at the center for Holocaust denial activities.
The Adelaide Institute was a Holocaust denial group in Australia and is considered to be antisemitic by the Australian Human Rights Commission and others. The Adelaide Institute was formed in 1995 from the former Truth Mission that was established in 1994 by Fredrick Töben, later a convicted Holocaust denier. Töben directed the Institute until his incarceration in 2009 in South Australia for contempt of court. Peter Hartung assumed the role of director of the Adelaide Institute. On assuming the role from Töben, Hartung defied the Federal Court by publishing the revisionist material that led to Töben's three months jail time. In June 2009, the Adelaide Institute was linked with an American white supremacist, James von Brunn, charged with killing a security guard in Washington's Holocaust Museum.
James J. Martin (1916–2004) was an American historian and author known for espousing Holocaust denial in his works. He is known for his book, American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931–1941 (1964). Fellow Holocaust denier Harry Elmer Barnes called it "unquestionably the most formidable achievement of World War II Revisionism."
Michael Anthony Hoffman II is an American author. He has been described as a conspiracy theorist and, by the Anti-Defamation League and other sources, as a Holocaust denier and antisemite.
Arthur R. Butz is an associate professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University and a Holocaust denier, best known as the author of the pseudohistorical book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. He achieved tenure in 1974 and currently teaches classes in control system theory and digital signal processing.
Gerald Fredrick Töben, more commonly known as Fredrick Töben, was a German-born Australian citizen who was director and founder of the Adelaide Institute, a Holocaust denial group in Australia. He was the author of works on education, political science, and history.
Noontide Press is an American publishing entity which describes itself as a publisher of "hard-to-find books and recordings from a dissident, 'politically incorrect' perspective." It publishes numerous antisemitic pseudohistorical titles, including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The International Jew. The Anti-Defamation League describes its founding and early years:
The Institute for Historical Review and its publishing arm, Noontide Press, were founded in 1978 by the leading organizer of modern American anti-Semitism, Willis Carto, and his wife Elisabeth. Based near Los Angeles in Torrance, California, the group pioneered organizing efforts among Holocaust deniers, who had heretofore labored mostly in isolation and obscurity. The group's first "Revisionist Convention" in September 1979 featured speakers from the U.S., France, Germany, England and Sweden, many of whom subsequently contributed articles to the inaugural issue of IHR's Journal of Historical Review the following spring. With the Noontide Press offering a means for the sale and distribution of their writings, professional deniers had found something of a rainmaker in Carto.
Antisemitic tropes or antisemitic canards are "sensational reports, misrepresentations, or fabrications" that are defamatory towards Judaism as a religion or defamatory towards Jews as an ethnic or religious group. Since the Middle Ages, such reports have been a recurring motif of broader antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Wilhelm Stäglich was a World War II army officer, later a financial judge in Hamburg, and a prominent Holocaust denier.
Carlo Mattogno is an Italian writer and Holocaust denier. He served on the Advisory Board of the Institute for Historical Review and as an editor of its publication Journal of Historical Review. As of 2016, Mattogno is an editorial advisor and columnist for a journal published by the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, also a Holocaust denial organisation.
The Holocaust had a deep effect on society both in Europe and the rest of the world, and today its consequences are still being felt, both by children and adults whose ancestors were victims of this genocide.
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory is a 1993 book by the historian Deborah Lipstadt, in which the author discusses the Holocaust denial movement. Lipstadt named British writer David Irving as a Holocaust denier, leading him to sue her unsuccessfully for libel. She gives a detailed explanation of how people came to deny the Holocaust or claim that it was vastly exaggerated by the Jews.
Mark Edward Weber is an American Holocaust denier, who is the director of the Institute for Historical Review, a United States, California-based Holocaust denial organization. Weber has been associated with the IHR since the 1980s. In 1992 he became editor-in-chief of the IHR's pseudoscientific Journal of Historical Review. Weber was subsequently named the institute's Director in 1995.
