For the exponents of the new anti-Semitic propaganda the camps never existed, the Jewish survivors are counterfeiters, the gas chambers are a lie, the “Jews” have gained enormous economic and political advantage from the Holocaust cult. In “If Auschwitz is nothing” the philosopher Donatella Di Cesare faces and deconstructs the foundations of modern denial. The new edition of the volume, resulting from four years of work, includes three essays. On this page we anticipate an excerpt from the book on sale from tomorrow.
Denial is a form of political propaganda that in recent years has spread within the public space, involving different spheres and taking on ever more subtle and violent accents. It would therefore be a mistake to underestimate its relevance, that is, those effects which, far beyond the way of interpreting the history of the past, threaten the interpretative community of the future. Just think of the recent disconcerting denial of the pandemic, which cannot be reduced to extreme fringes, not to mention those who ridicule or trivialize the climate emergency. The cases are many and varied. Now we can speak of a real history of denial in the 21st century, which has yet to be written. In the rejection of the “official version”, in the vaunted search for an “alternative information”, denialism allows us to glimpse that device of the conspiracy that constitutes its matrix. This is why only by considering the links with phenomena that precede and substantiate it, first of all the powerful myth of the “world Jewish conspiracy”, can one attempt to grasp the current denialism in its devastating significance.
Despite the dissemination, there is, therefore, a continuity. Denial is closely linked to the Shoah. It occurs in fact in that context. Contrary to what is generally believed, it is not the obscure residue of the past, but rather an unprecedented phenomenon which, from that first appearance, increases, develops, consolidates itself.
As the crime against humanity that took place in the death camps comes to light, the tendency to deny increases. The exponents of the new anti-Semitic propaganda attempt to pass themselves off as revisionists, as if their intent were simply to critically review history in the name of a dispassionate search for truth. For some time they manage to break more than one barrier, not only in the community of historians, making their denial pass for an opinion like any other, that is, worthy of being safeguarded.
But denial soon turns out to be an ideological hygiene enterprise that aims to clear the horizon of the present from the bogus past: the “Auschwitz lie”. The witnesses are accused of being forgeries, the evidence dismissed as nonsense and lies. Jews are accused of lying. Denialism coagulates around this accusation in the later stages. And it is not exaggerated by saying that this is precisely the leitmotif around which the other themes are intertwined. To understand its importance, it must be remembered that precisely the accusation of lies, which arises from the age-old anti-Jewish hatred, is the keystone of anti-Semitism. In the Third Reich the very word Lüge, lie, is the mark of the Jew. Already in modernity, in the aftermath of emancipation, the Jew is seen as the stranger who tries to appear similar, the stranger who passes himself off as autochthonous. He declares himself a German, but he is only a Jew, capable of corroding and altering the identity of peoples. For Hitler, who in My fight takes up this accusation, the lie marks the existence of the Jew.
That the deniers re-launch the theme of lies is therefore not of little importance if we consider the profound and serious connection of continuity with the most virulent anti-Semitic tradition. Only those who ignore this connection can be led to believe that denial is an opinion like any other.
But why then would the Jews lie about genocide? Why would they invent that “giant historical lie”? The denier discourse broadens and becomes harsher. And it goes something like this: the Jews have concocted the “lie” of extermination not only to blame Europe and keep Germany under blackmail, but also to profit from that “scam” which allowed the abusive creation of the state of Israel. This would take place in the wake of their planetary policy of domination. The conspiracy spiral manifests itself in the repeated link between the Holocaust and the New World Order.
From the latest generation Hitlerites to the fascists of the third millennium, from ill-concealed racists to integralist Catholics, from pro-Islamic militants to followers of Red-Brunism – at the beginning of the 21st century the deniers explicitly refer to the “world conspiracy”.
The leitmotif of anti-Jewish propaganda is thus taken up in new forms. This proves that denial is not reducible in any way to revision and is instead a phenomenon that can be considered in its complexity only in the light of its conspiracy matrix.
Precisely this matrix resurfaces in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, when a new phase of denial is announced. Those who mocked the “extermination scam” are the same who believe they recognize the hand of the Mossad behind the attacks on the Twin Towers. The denier clichés mix with the conspiracy obsessions in a solid ancient alliance, a convergence that gives rise to the interpretative scheme of the machination destined to characterize the following twenty years and to become global.
But it is thanks to the network that the denier galaxy expands and strengthens. The enormous circulation of smuggled propaganda for “alternative information”, the near simultaneity with which the denier version accompanies events rivaling the “official history”, as well as the anonymity guaranteed even to the most violent manipulators, the prophets of deception, contribute to an unprecedented expansion of the denier complosphere.
If the interpretative scheme can adapt, the matrix of denial remains the conspiracy and the archiscena is still “the cemetery of Prague”, that is, the imaginary place where those who move the ranks gather, who weave the plot to subdue the world . While the question “who benefits?” Resounds, the index points to who, by inventing the “lie of Auschwitz”, would profit by laying the foundations of the planetary order.
Unassimilable foreigners, able to maintain mutual ties across borders, beyond the Zionist base in Israel, the Jews would weave a web around the globe. This becomes the super-plot, the megacomplotto that absorbs all the past ones and contains within itself those to come. Bringing the power of the “caste” to light means letting its extraneousness shine through. The elites are targeted as the pinnacle of a hidden infiltration, which undermines the identity of the people, contaminates them, manipulates them.
The conspiracy is the Party of Foreigners. The architects of globalization, the architects of the planning of crises and epidemics, of the programmed uncertainty and of the permanent threat, the great maneuvers who control the press, influence the minds, control politics, they are the strangers of foreigners, the Jews, that super society secret that governs the fate of the world. The “world Jewish conspiracy” is the cornerstone of the new denialism in its most recent version.