Holocaust Denial
David Duke, ideologue of Holocaust denial in the Ku Klux Klan
In the United States, Holocaust denial is constitutionally protected free speech because of the First Amendment. At the same time Holocaust denial is part of the ideology of America's neo-Nazi and right-wing organizations. These attempts at historical denial seek to portray Jews as the insidious architects of the Zionist government, a conspiracy theory claiming that Jews control the U.S. government. Belief in a "Zionist government" and Holocaust denial are ideological pillars of the white nationalist movement. Greg Johnson , editor-in-chief of the white nationalist publishing company Counter-Currents, believes that renowned British Holocaust denier David Irving was instrumental in his transition to white nationalism. In addition, leaflets from groups such as the European Heritage Association of New Jersey claim that racial equality and social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter are controlled by Jewish-funded organizations.
The Southern Poverty Society claims that the impact of Holocaust denial extends far beyond the increasingly murky confines of far-right ideologies. Just a week after Trump's presidency, his administration issued a statement on Holocaust Memorial Day that made no mention of Jews or anti-Semitism . This came just months before Trump said that "there were very good people on both sides" at a "Unite the Right" rally in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the far right chanted : "Jews will not replace us" and the Nazi slogan "blood and soil."
The Institute for Historical Review (IHR), founded by Willis Carto in 1978, was the first major Holocaust denial group to gain a significant membership base, though deniers were active before its existence. As the founder of numerous far-right groups and a campaigner for several conservative political candidates, Carto had a varied and far-reaching influence. After being fired from the IHR for fraud and mismanagement of finances, Carto founded The Barnes Review, America's leading Holocaust denier, and the American Free Press, a newspaper promoting Holocaust denial and other conspiracy theories. After him, IHR was taken over by his associate Mark Weber, who also remains active in the movement. Although the IHR no longer publishes The Journal of Historical Review , and Weber himself created a furor with his 2009 essay calling for a shift in focus from Holocaust denial to "Jewish-Zionist power" in the United States, his website continues to publish and sell Holocaust denial material. Most recently, Weber received notice that on April 28, 2015, he was banned from entering the UK because of "unacceptable behavior."
On the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, founder and editor Andrew Englin described the Holocaust as "a laughable faux mystification of a shower room death chamber and bug spray" that constitutes "the core of [the Jewish people's] identity." His rabid anti-Semitism argues that white people are deluded into achieving complacency under the control of the Zionist government. Similarly, one of the oldest KKK groups, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, questions the validity of the Holocaust. These claims are residual ideological talking points from when David Duke founded the group in 1974. On his way to leadership, Duke was influential in expanding the ideology of the Ku Klux Klan from strictly anti-black to anti-Semitic.
During the coronavirus pandemic, right-wing radicals and their sympathizers of conspiracy theories often compared American government efforts to the Holocaust by mass vaccination of the population, according to the Southern Poverty Society. Prominent figures such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Green, R-Ga. and Tucker Carlson have compared the mandatory use of masks to the Holocaust and the COVID-19 vaccine to "Nazi experiments." On January 23, 2022, Robert Kennedy, Jr. compared the measures to contain the spread of the virus to the Nazi-era restrictions imposed as part of the genocide campaign. In response, the Memorial and the Auschwitz Museum noted that its exploitation of "the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured and murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany" was "a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decay."
