“Butz dismissed the media as a ‘lie machine’ for disseminating the
Holocaust legend. At the same time, however, he used the media’s
wartime failure to highlight news of the annihilation as proof that
the story was false<36> (if it were true, the media would have
stressed it). This ‘explanation’ ignored an array of other factors
that governed the media’s and much of the rest of the world’s
response to this story.<37>* It also failed to address the fact
that all the Allied governments publicly condemned it in December
1942 and a number of papers did consistently feature the story,
among them the _New Republic_, _Nation_, _PM_, the Hearst papers,
and the Catholic journal _Commonweal_. Butz’s ‘explanation’ had
its own internal contradiction: How could the Jews have had such
control over the media after the war but virtually none during it?
Butz favorably contrasted the record of the Nazi press with that of
the American media. The refusal of newspapers in the Third Reich
to even mention the ‘Jewish extermination claim’ was evidence that
it was on a higher level than the Allied press. Butz credited the
German press for ignoring the propaganda about death camps and
focusing its attention on ‘legitimate’ questions such as the
‘extent and means of Jewish influence in the Allied press.'<38>
Butz’s citation of the Nazi press as an example of high-level
journalism, when all forms of public information in the Third Reich
were under absolute government control, is itself significant. So,
too, is his description of the question of Jewish control of the
media as a ‘legitimate’ one. These are remarkable indicators of
his own worldview.” (Lipstadt, 132)
<37> See Deborah Lipstadt, “Beyond Belief: The American Press and
the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933-1945” (New York, 1986)
<38> Arthur Butz, “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century” (Torrence,
California, 1976), p. 89
* The most significant was its unprecidented nature.
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.
Subject: Arthur Butz and “Jewish control of the media”
Lines: 45
Last-Modified: 1994/07/05
