Library:Denying the Holocaust
| Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory | |
|---|---|
| Author | Deborah E. Lipstadt |
| First published | 1993 |
| ISBN | 978-0-02-919235-1 |
| Role | Analysis |
| Domains | History |
| Tactics | Fabrication Conspiracy Theory |
Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory is a 1993 book by Deborah E. Lipstadt.
Summary
Deborah E. Lipstadt, a historian of the Holocaust at Emory University, published this book in 1993. It was the first full-length study of the Holocaust denial movement, and it traced how a fringe of antisemites and pseudo-historians tried to present denial as legitimate historical "revisionism." The book later became the centre of one of the most important libel trials of modern times.
The movement
Lipstadt traces denial from its origins after the Second World War through the writers who built it into a movement. She examines early figures who questioned the scale of Nazi crimes, the development of pseudo-scholarly publications claiming the gas chambers did not exist, the founding of organizations designed to give denial an academic appearance, and pseudo-scientific reports purporting to show that the gas chambers could not have worked.
The disguise of scholarship
Lipstadt's central argument is that denial disguises itself as scholarship. Deniers called themselves revisionists, published journals with footnotes and held conferences. Their real method, she shows, was to distort, misquote and selectively use evidence while ignoring the vast documentation of the genocide. Their motivation was antisemitism, and their aim was to rehabilitate Nazism.
The campus campaign
The book describes efforts to place advertisements in American student newspapers calling for "open debate" about the Holocaust. Lipstadt argues that this tactic exploited ideals of free inquiry to gain legitimacy, and she explains why historians refuse to debate deniers: doing so would imply that the reality of the Holocaust is an open question.
The trial
In 1996 the British writer David Irving, whom the book described as a dangerous Holocaust denier, sued Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin, for libel in England, where the burden of proof falls on the defendant. Lipstadt's team had to prove that what she wrote was true. In 2000, after a trial in which historians examined Irving's work in detail, the judge ruled in Lipstadt's favour, finding that Irving had deliberately distorted historical evidence and was a Holocaust denier and an antisemite. The case was dramatized in the 2016 film Denial.
Relevance to Bullshitopedia
This is the essential text on how deception borrows the forms of scholarship. It anchors the History domain, and the trial shows how meticulous documentation can defeat even a skilled distorter in court. Its argument against debating deniers is relevant to how the site handles bad-faith challenges.