The denier argument from motivation and fabrication does not deny that mass deaths occurred. It claims that the picture of those deaths has been engineered for political and financial gain by Jewish organisations, by the State of Israel, by Hollywood, or by Western imperial powers. The Holocaust, on this account, has been inflated, dramatised and weaponised to serve interests that the deniers identify and the figures cited in support of those interests are tainted by the motivations of those who cite them. The argument is the conspiratorial form of denial.
The argument has a long pedigree, going back to the immediate post-war years and to figures like Maurice Bardèche and Paul Rassinier in France. In its current form it merges with classical antisemitism: Jews control the media, Jews invented the Holocaust to extract reparations, Jews use the Holocaust to silence criticism. The argument does not engage with the historical record. It explains the historical record away by attributing it to the people who suffered it.
The arguments addressed in this section
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Are Genuine is the headline document of conspiratorial antisemitism and predates the Holocaust by half a century. The Protocols were exposed as a forgery in 1921 by The Times of London, which traced their text to a French satirical work of the 1860s. The deniers’ continued use of them tells the reader most of what they need to know about the deniers’ relationship with documentary evidence.
The Holocaust is a Myth to Justify Israel is the political form of the argument. It claims that the Holocaust narrative was constructed and inflated to underwrite the case for the State of Israel. The argument does not survive examination of the chronology: the figure of six million was widely cited at Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946, before the State of Israel existed.
Jewish Organisations Fabricated the Holocaust for Reparations is the financial form of the argument. The argument claims that the Holocaust narrative was constructed by Jewish organisations to extract reparations from Germany. The reparations process is itself documented in detail, was itself the subject of intense political argument in Israel and in the diaspora, and was the work of the German federal republic responding to a documented record, not to a fabricated one.
The Holocaust is Used to Silence Criticism of Israel is the contemporary form of the argument. It is, in a softer version, a real claim that some critics of Israeli policy have made in good faith. The deniers’ version of the argument requires the reader to elide the difference between specific instances of bad-faith argument and the underlying historical event.
Hollywood Exaggerates Because Jews Control the Media is the cultural form of the argument and rests on classical antisemitic tropes about Jewish ownership of the entertainment industry. It is also factually false: the major Holocaust films of the twentieth century, beginning with the 1959 Diary of Anne Frank, the 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg, the 1978 NBC television series Holocaust, the 1985 documentary Shoah, and the 1993 Schindler’s List, were the work of a mixed group of filmmakers, Jewish and non-Jewish, working at different studios at different times.
Zionists Provoked Nazi Persecution is the most cynical form of the argument. It claims that Zionist activity in 1930s Europe provoked the Nazi response and that the Jews are therefore partially responsible for what was done to them. The argument inverts cause and effect; Nazi antisemitism preceded organised Zionist activity in Germany by several decades.
The Holocaust Narrative Serves Western Imperial Interests is the recent leftist form of the argument. It claims that the Holocaust has been used by Western powers to legitimise imperial actions in the Middle East and elsewhere. The argument does not engage with the historiography; it explains the historiography by reference to the geopolitical interests of the states in which it is studied.
Each of the pages below addresses one denier claim and the historians’ answer to it. Read together, they show that the conspiratorial argument from motivation does not contest the evidence. It explains the evidence away by ascribing it to the malign intent of those who report it.