Stranger than fiction … and why do neo-Nazis deny the Holocaust while openly wishing for another one?

I thought that a comment signed by Jared Taylor at The Inverted World was so ridiculous it could not possibly be by Jared Taylor, that it was a parody. It turns out I was wrong. Here’s the discussion, including my first comment, where I said, “This can’t be real,” and my second comment, where I said, “Oh my gosh, it is.”

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Michael Jose writes:

It seems to me that Jared Taylor is trying to erect plausible deniability around his “Holocaust agnosticism,” by acting as if the entire question were the exact number of Jews killed.

If you look at his answer, he phrases it in such a way that it can be interpreted that he is agnostic about the Holocaust in essence, or that he just isn’t sure whether it was 5 million, 6 million, or 7 million Jews.

So he can get indignant when people show incredulity as his “agnosticism,” and at the same time not actually admit that Hitler committed mass murder against the Jews.

A rather disingenuous ploy.

Dimitri K. writes:

Though it is not exactly to the topic, I want to discuss one reason for denying Holocaust, as I understand it. The reason seems to be the shame. Not the shame for the cruel did, but the shame for fear. In order to organize such a terrible process of killing civilians, Hitler must have felt the real fear of them. That is the source of shame—how could the supermen feel that fear? Being an oppressor or slave-owner is not a shame, vice versa, it is rather a sign of might, and nobody tries to deny it. But killing jews is different—it is the sign of weakness. And that is what those people cannot admit of themselves—weakness.

AM writes:

Why do neo-Nazis deny the holocaust? Some openly wish for another, and don’t shy away from the most violent and repellent sort of hatred. So being tarred with the deaths of millions shouldn’t bother them (and they are so marginal, a status they revel in). Why deny that what you clearly want did not happen before?

LA replies:

By the same token, why do Muslims deny that Muslims carried out the 9/11 attack, even as they glory in it?

People get confused by these questions because they look for rational reasons rather than gut-level or existential or strategic ones.

Muslims are oriented toward sticking it to the enemy and putting themselves in a positive light. Since we infidels say that Muslims carried out 9/11, to agree with us would be to go along with a critical statement by infidels about Islam. Under Islamic law, non-Muslims are not allowed to criticize Islam. When we infidels say that Muslims did 9/11, that puts Islam in a negative light, and Muslims will deny it. But when Muslims affirm the greatness of 9/11, they are putting 9/11 and Islam in a positive light.

So there are two imperatives in operation here for Muslims: (1) to stick it to the infidels, and (2) to assert the greatness of Islam and not allow anything negative to be said about it.

Re the Holocaust deniers it’s basically the same thing. They will discuss the killing of Jews only on THEIR terms. To agree with the Jews and with regular, non-Nazi, society that the Holocaust happened is to legitimize the Jews and affirm regular society’s orthodoxy. They want to stick it to that orthodoxy. It gives them pleasure to mock the Jews’ claims about a Holocaust even while boasting that next time we’ll get it right.

Also, given the fact that the Nazis’ intent is to finish the job next time, delegitimizing the belief that it happened the last time delegitimizes the Jews, delegitimizes non-Nazi regular society, delegitimizes factual truth, delegitimizes moral truth, and creates resentment against Jews who have been supposedly forcing this lie on the world for the last 60 years in order to gain power over the world. So delegitimizing the belief that it happened defeats the moral and social forces that have kept the Nazis down, allowing the Nazis to rise to power and finish the job.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 17, 2007 09:42 PM | Send