“In contrast to [other deniers], Butz did not justify the German
persecution of the Jews by claiming that Jews were disloyal,
untrustworthy, or intent on causing Germany’s downfall. He gave
the anti-semitism.<4> Closer examination revealed that he harbored
precisely the same attitudes and used the same methodology that had
charactorized all Holocaust denial literature up to this point.
The packaging had changed but the contents remained the same.
Anything that disagreed with Butz’s foregone conclusion and the
thesis of his book – that the story of Jewish extermination in
World War II was ap propaganda hoax and that the Jews of Europe had
not been exterminated <5> – was dismissed as ‘obvious lies,’
‘ludicrous,’ ‘breathtakingly absurd,’ ‘absolutely insane,’ ‘fishy,’
‘obviously spurious,’ and ‘nonsense.'<6> ‘Survivor’ literature –
the term is always placed in quotes – is dismissed as full of
‘endless raving about extermination.’ Despite his attempt to
project a scholarly aura, however, Butz allows his rhetoric to fall
into a very different category: American diplomats engaged in
‘hysterical yapping about the six million,'<7> and stories of ‘gas
chambers’ were ‘wartime propaganda fantasies,’ ‘garbages,’ and
‘tall tales.'<8>
Evincing the same sypathies as previous generations of deniers,
Butz declared that the greatest tragedy was that the Germans and
Austrians had been the real victims.<9> He also showed the same
antipathies as those who had preceded him. Describing Jews as
among ‘the most powerful groups on eart,’ he argued that they
possessed formidable powers to manipulate governments, control war
crims trials, govern the media, and determine other nations’
foreign policy, all in the name of perpetrating the hoax of the
twentieth century.<10> According to Butz, Jews invented this hoax
in order to further ‘Zionist ends.'<11> Thus one could extrapolate
from Butz’s argument that whatever anti-semitism the Nazis
displayed was well justified. This demonology, common to virtually
every denier, is an affirmation of Nazi ideology. The Nazis
depicted Aryans as the ‘master race’ – strong and invincible.
Jews, in contrast, were not human. Despite their superiority
Aryans were considered highly vulnerable to Jewish conspiracies.
The Jews’ ability to create the hoax had proven the Nazi thesis
correct: They were a threat to the world.
In the book and in subsequent articles published in the _Journal of
Historical Review_, Butz acknowledged the validity of a number of
the criticisms commonly directed at deniers, including that their
ranks numbered no historians with any scholarly academic standing.
Bemoaning this, Butz attributed it to the fact that respected
scholars had been frightened away from questioning something as
‘established as the Great Pyramid.’ It was because of the ‘default’
by professional historians that nonhistorians such as himself were
left with the responsibility for exposing the ‘idiotic nonsense’ of
the Holocaust.<12>
In order to mainstream Holocaust denial and attain for it scholarly
respectability, Butz also had to acknowldege that denial books,
articles, and journals are published by neo-Nazi, extremist, and
racist groups, side by side with intensely nationalist or
white-supremacist racial diatribes. Attempting to deflect this
criticism, Butz agreed that in an optimal situation deniers’ work
would appear in scholarly journals, but the normal channels of
scholarly research had been blocked to those who would reveal the
‘truth.’ In the interest of exposing the hoax, those who worked in
this field had no option but to turn to these ideological
publications. When he depicted the deniers as martyrs willing to
risk their reputations by appearing in these publications because
they had no other option, he ignored the intensive, symbiotic
relationship between these groups.
Since the publication of the book, Butz, who has assiduously tried
to maintain his image as a disinterested scholar, has been
associated with a variety of extremist and neo-Nazi grouips. His
books are promoted and distributed by the Ku Klux Klan and other
neo-Nazi organizations.” (Lipstadt, 124-126)
< 5> Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Torrence,
California, 1976), p.12
< 6> Ibid., pp. 107, 131, 171, 195, 223
< 7> Ibid., p. 249
< 8> Ibid., pp. 240, 287
< 9> Ibid., p. 240
<10> Ibid., pp. 33, 89
<11> Ibid., p. 87
<12> Ibid., pp. 247-48
Work cited
Lipstadt, Deborah E. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on
Truth and Memory. New York: The Free Press (A division of
Macmillan, Inc.), 1993.
Last-Modified: 2008/03/20
