Monday, April 02, 2007

Politics of holocaust denial

Here's an article from the New England Skeptical Society on the politics of holocaust denial.

The Holocaust deniers come from the most extreme fringes of the political spectrum; they are (for now) mainly far right or far left wing demagogues: radical anarchists, so-called "libertarians", extreme "conservatives" and most of all dedicated fascists and neo-Nazis. Not all of them, however, have kept their distance from the mainstream in American politics. David Duke, the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, the founder of the NAAWP [National Association for the Advancement of White People], a self-proclaimed disciple of Adolf Hitler, garnered nearly 40% of the popular vote in Louisiana during his bid to become a United States Senator in the late 1980's. Patrick Buchanan, though not overtly a Holocaust denier, has in his earlier days as a right-wing columnist, cast doubts on certain specifics about the history of the Holocaust and questioned the validity of survivor stories in general. Talk show hosts have regularly invited and interviewed Holocaust deniers and have given them somewhat excessive exposure on daytime television. Invariably, they have subjected tens of thousands of American TV viewers to vulgar and abusive campaigns of hate and bigotry.

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