This op-ed was published in the online Icelandic newspaper Dagblaðið Vísir on December 3rd, 2020
By Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Like flat earthers, Holocaust deniers simply refuse to acknowledge reality. On being shown pictures taken from a satellite that showed the earth as a sphere, Samuel Shenton, the head of the Flat Earth Society, reportedly said, “It’s easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye.” In a similar vein, Arthur R. Butz, who has long been recognized as one of the most notorious Holocaust deniers, called the annihilation of millions of Jews by the Nazis during World War II a “propaganda hoax” in his notorious book, “The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry.”
Butz also dismissed the gas chambers in which hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered at Auschwitz, Treblinka and the other death camps as “wartime propaganda fantasies.”
While the flat-earthers are, on the whole, benign kooks, Holocaust deniers are dangerous, generally combining their efforts to defend and whitewash Adolf Hitler, Nazism and the Third Reich with an obsessive, more often than not, virulent antisemitism.
The World Jewish Congress was appalled, therefore, to learn not only that this year’s Bókatíðindi catalogue promotes a new Icelandic translation of Butz’s book, but that the chairman of the Association of Icelandic Book Publishers, Heiðar Ingi Svansson, claimed that including the book in the catalogue is “a basic premise” of freedom of the press and expression.
“The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,” originally published in 1976, is considered an “antisemitic classic,” and Butz himself has steadily promoted Holocaust denial on different platforms for over 40 years. Based on the repulsive conspiracy theory that the Holocaust is a hoax created by Jewish organizations in order to promote their agenda, this book reeks of antisemitism in its glorification of the perpetrators of the genocide of the Jewish people.
Since its release, the book has been continuously debunked by historians. According to Deborah Lipstadt, for instance, Butz’s explanations about the disappearance of millions are so ridiculous that they would be hilarious, hadn’t the topic been so serious. Canadian law found the book to be immoral, indecent and seditious, and thus banned it completely. In Germany, the book cannot be advertised or displayed in any way, and the E-commerce giant Amazon removed the book from both its American and its UK websites.
Article 233a of the Icelandic Penal Code provides that, “Anyone who publicly mocks, defames, denigrates or threatens a person or group of persons by comments or expressions of another nature […] shall be fined or imprisoned for up to 2 years.” While this statute does not explicitly refer to Holocaust denial, it is important to bear in mind that Holocaust denial is, in fact, widely considered to be a form of antisemitism. Most recently, the social media giant Facebook announced that it will ban materials that deny or distort the Holocaust, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg linking the decision to “an increase in antisemitic violence.”
Butz’s book should clearly be classified as defamatory and as a mean of spreading antisemitism. Promoting and selling it should be treated as an antisemitic act that goes against democracy and what it stands for. The Holocaust is not a speculation but a historical fact. Holocaust denial is not an opinion but purely a malicious and malevolent distortion of the truth, a fact that has nothing whatsoever to do with freedom of expression or freedom of the press.
This is what makes the book and its message so dangerous. While Icelandic law does not prohibit the publishing of hate-filled materials, opinion shapers, including the publishers of the Bókatíðindi catalogue, have a moral obligation not to endow such materials with credibility or legitimacy. Freedom of speech should never be confused with freedom of reach, just as the freedom of self-expression should not be turned into the right to offend and denigrate the memory of Holocaust victims and survivors. This book is no better than hardcore pornography or any other manifestations of racism and bigotry. It must be condemned, labeled, and repudiated as antisemitic, defamatory hate-speech.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft is Associate Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the World Jewish Congress. He teaches about the law of genocide at the law schools of Columbia and Cornell Universities.