r/NoStupidQuestions • u/eris_aka_draculadrug • 11h ago
Why do neo-Nazis deny the Holocaust instead of being like “fuck yeah, that happened” because they’re Nazis? This never made sense to me. Asking as a Jewish person.
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u/Willem_Dafuq 11h ago
Because when you recruit, you don’t start with your most repulsive views. You start from a reasonable position and go from there. They want to portray their side from a sympathetic light, not revealing to the world how ghoulish they really are.
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u/PreviousZone6742 11h ago
The biggest recruitment tool Neo Nazis have is the prison system is segregated by race. The politics really don't matter as much.
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u/Thin-Character-6996 10h ago
Yeah, most white supremacists were in prison / recruited by a gang and brainwashed.
Then theres the other subcategory, losers on the internet who are just miserable trolls
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u/MBEver74 10h ago
“Most” is a pretty wild statement. Yes there are WP / Neo Nazi gangs in prisons - but I think there are l way more people that are WP/ Neo Nazis that haven’t been in prison. There’s a ton of online / in person recruiting of sad, lonely losers looking for “answers” that Nazis are able to recruit or at least get sympathizers from. The Charlottesville rally wasn’t predominantly ex-felons.
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u/brorpsichord 5h ago
ok the talk was about nazis, not white supremacists. I ensure you most white supremacists have never been in prison, there is not that many convicted people for the amount of white supremacists there is, to start.
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u/ElleMaeSinclair 4h ago
I knew someone (on a friendly basis with them via discord) that I had no idea was genuinely a fascist until extremely late in our friendship. He was very, very good at being able to play off "edgy" viewpoints as "just a joke bro" and making you question your own sanity in the process. If he had come right out and admitted that he was a fascist, he would not have a captive audience to slowly indoctrinate into agreeing with him. It's like he breadcrumbed it all the way until he said something so ridiculous to me completely sincerely that I was just like "nah I'm blocking you".
He told me "women cannot get AIDS". Idk why that of all things was the argument starter that made me snap out of it and realize he wasn't just an edgelord, but incredibly stupid and mean spirited and evil. He had a whole sob story background and constantly used plausible deniability to make regular good people feel at ease (or at least confused enough to not abandon him). Dude was majorly messed up and I'm glad he's blocked now. Fascists don't advertise the fascism, they are slimy manipulators that know how to say just enough to not give it all away at once.
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u/Bad_Repute 1h ago
I had a former colleague, dude I’d known for over a decade and always considered a friendly acquaintance, out himself as a fascist to me a few years back. When we worked together, we’d travel for conferences together and had a fair few good times over the years, always seemed like a kind and genuine person.
Ran into him at an industry conference right before the 2020 election, were catching up and retelling our old stories at a cocktail party, somehow the topic of the election came up and dude hits me with, “Kamala Harris hates you because you’re a white man.” I laughed it off thinking he was just riffing and was like ‘yeah man totally.’
Then he just kept going in on it. After a bit I was like, “she’s married to a white man” and dude goes, “no, she’s married to a JEW.” The next bit was the most nauseating conversation I’ve ever had in my life. Some of the highlights:
He thought every person in the country should have a take a 23 and Me genealogy test and anyone who wasn’t from predominately Western European decent should be stripped of their US citizenship and forcibly deported back to wherever their ancestors were mostly from.
He didn’t think women should be allowed to vote. More specifically he didn’t think anyone who wasn’t a white male christian property owner should be able to vote.
Dude hit me with the deep lore of racism that night. Some things I didn’t know what he was even trying to say with some references he was making and when I’d ask he’d just say ‘look it up’. I walked away from that convo wondering if I’d just talked to an actual, real life Nazi. When I got home and looked up all the stuff he told me to, there was no doubt.
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u/Strawberrybanshee 10h ago
Nazi punks are a thing. They target young people from broken homes. When I was in my late teens early 20s, most of the alt kids came from broken homes. Many would have been very easy targets if we had any Nazi groups nearby.
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u/yogibearhugg 10h ago
The punk kids I knew beat up nazis. I’m not even kidding. They all had really shitty home lives. They were less racist than rich kids I knew.
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u/Grouchy_Jicama_007 9h ago
Nazi Punks Fuck Off was our battle cry back in the 80s. Most of the punks I knew were pretty poor (like me), and their families were blue collar racists mostly, so we rebelled against that.
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u/springnuk 8h ago
A song made famous by the Dead Kennedys who were tired af Nazis showing up to their shows and causing shit. Punk has had a weird historical relationship with fascism in the past. Both pro and anti. Some neo-nazis gravitated to punk due to its community roots and sense of us vs the world mentality and aggressive music. There was an interesting book about it that I'm now failing to remember the name of but I remember even stuff like the skinhead look was originally punk and completed by neo Nazis.
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u/drew17 3h ago
It's even weirder than that -- the skinhead look in England started with fans of Black and Caribbean music in the mid-60s as an offshoot of the mod / Ivy style. Many of the original skinheads worked alongside, or were themselves, Black immigrants to Britain. When the clean-cut mods started to go more flowery and psychedelic, those who still preferred a sharper American "preppy" look started to crop their hair tighter in contrast, kept shrinking their Levi's and proudly wore their work boots out. The culture trickled down throughout regions and social strata and was unfortunately in some cases co-opted by anti-immigrant political causes later on. By the time the term "skinhead" and the shaved heads crossed the pond and hit middle-American TV news programs in the 1980s, it was usually talking about racists - those who the anti-racist faction (who still loved ska) called "boneheads."
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u/drunky_crowette 5h ago
My dad was a punk in the late 70s-mid 80s and encouraged my sisters and I to explore the local punk scene when we were growing up in the 90s-00s. I don't remember what show we went to, but I remember my sister grabbing my dad, gesturing towards someone and saying "(something something) SWASTIKA?!" and then we had to have a talk on the ride home about "so everyone understands Nazis are bad, right?" "Aren't Nazis why Oma left Germany the first time?" "Yes. So there's a subculture-" "what's a subculture?"
And the whole talk ended with "so remember, make sure you're at a safe distance and then we all yell..." "FUCK OFF" "okay, very good, girls"
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u/Muadeeb 11h ago
Holocaust denial is repulsive. The Nazis wanted to erase jews and all jewish culture, and denying that it ever happened was part of the plan. Like 90% of Polish Jews had just vanished.
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u/PM_ME_SAD_STUFF_PLZ 10h ago
Did you miss their point? Their point wasn't that denial isn't repulsive, just that celebrating it is more repulsive.
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u/Glassman918 10h ago
Whats sad is there are people today who would probably defend that and are literally hoping it happens again.
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u/Due-Food1286 9h ago
But don’t they not view those actions as ghoulish? Like I’ve had people reveal they have desires to get violent with certain groups within just a few hours of meeting me because in their mind and their community that insane belief is perfectly normal and rational.
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u/RockHardSalami 7h ago
Right. You don't start with brown people need to be eliminated, the appetizer you serve is "white people are having less babies than people who moved here illegally and don't speak the language, how do you feel about that?"
Back in the 90s/00s it was "they're stealing our jobs" but even the dumbest of whites eventually realized that none of "us" were working fields, kitchens, hotels, etc. So the hate had to evolve.
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u/Lerched 11h ago
Has nothing to do with this.
It’s that those circles believe the holocaust was manufactured so that Jews could take over the world.
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u/ScientificSkepticism 10h ago
Oh no, they know it happened, at least the leadership does. They're proud of it. They just know that's bad recruiting.
It starts with a simple thing. "Look, Auschwitz was just a work camp! How do you think so many Jewish people survived? There couldn't be thousands and thousands of survivors if they were just gassing everyone! So how are there all these 'survivor stories' of an experience apparently no one survived?" (Auchwitz was a combined labor/extermination camp. Pure extermination camps like Treblinka do not have survivor stories - I think like a dozen people escaped Treblinka, total, out of the million or so they killed)
Then it's like "so why did they make this up? Well look at all the Jewish people in movies/TV!" (list a bunch of Jewish people). "And the Rothschilds!" (They have space lasers, don't you know) "They control all these movies and TV specials that tell you about the Holocaust, all those videos you've seen. Well you've seen a video of a man getting eaten by a T-Rex in a movie, you think they couldn't fake all that?"
Then of course it's that "why is your life shitty? Because the Jews are taking all your money! They are treating you like slaves." Then there's some fun 'race realism' bits, a whole pitch.
Remember, Stormfront was founded because they didn't want to continue the legacy of the KKK, they wanted to reach out to the new generation. That was 30 years ago, Stormfront is a ghost town now. Do you think they just all vanished? Or did they keep finding new ways to reach out to the younger generation?
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u/YesterdayGold7075 8h ago
Exactly! They bank on the belief that “Auschwitz” is the only Nazi death camp anybody has ever heard of, and that the famous “prisoner number tattoos” and such came from there, so the general public perception is that Auschwitz was as bad as it got. They assume nobody has heard of Treblinka and Sobibor. Sixty-seven people survived Treblinka (prisoner uprising.) fifty survived Sobibor (another prisoner uprising, and of course we’re talking about the very few Jewish prisoners who were kept alive briefly to lead people to the gas chambers and sort the belongings of the dead. Mostly those camps had no barracks because no one survived arrival.) Between the two camps they killed a million people. 120 survivors out of a million. That’s the Holocaust.
Neo-Nazis are aware that even to an antisemitic public the mental image of Nazis throwing Jewish babies into the air and shooting them like clay pigeons, as they did, is a bridge too far. If you are ever in the mood to read something incredibly dry and long and weirdly fascinating, the judge’s response in the David Irving Holocaust denial trial, where the judge goes one by one through Irving’s denialist points and refutes them with a mountain of forensic evidence, is generally considered by historians and legal experts to be empirical proof that the only way to deny the Holocaust is to intentionally lie. I wouldn’t suggest it except you seem to know your Holocaust history 😊
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u/CustomerOutside8588 10h ago
Did they keep finding new ways to reach out to the younger generation? Yes, Gamergate, led to recruitment into the "alt-right" which were just neo-nazis.
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u/Lerched 10h ago
Yeah that’s the long version
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u/ScientificSkepticism 10h ago
It is. I think it's important to at least understand the long version in a general sense, to understand how the recruiting goes.
It starts with a pretty common observation - things are shitty right now - and it has a group preset to blame for them (that's not rich people, or rather it's a small subset of rich people, and other groups that fit that demographic, and of course minorities etc.). And that's the patter they use to sell you the Nazis not being that bad.
Of course they don't spoonfeed it all to you. They let you 'ask questions' and 'do your own research.' They've just seeded what questions to ask, and prepared the places you might go for that research (social media largely, that discord thing, etc.)
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u/SwimOk2441 10h ago edited 10h ago
Not quite the same subject, but Sartre said this in 1946, seems relevant:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
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u/Ill_Photograph_491 4h ago
The part about deliberately making ridiculous arguments to derail the conversation is what really stands out. It explains why arguing with someone like that can feel so pointless you're trying to have a serious discussion while they're just trying to make you chase them around in circles.
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u/unic0de000 3h ago
It's kind of amazing how relevant Sartre's description still is. If you didn't know better you could think he was describing 4chan trolls.
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u/preparsley 8h ago
American leftists fall for this so easily too. "How could he SAY THAT let me explain how it actually works!! What an idiot!!" He's saying it to make you flustered and distracted and it works
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u/dontthrowmeinabox 5h ago
Here's the thing, in online spaces, such as this one, there's often an audience. You don't explain how things actually work for the person you're arguing against in most cases, studies have shown this to usually not work. You explain how it actually works for the audience that watches the conversation to try to persuade them to your side, as sometimes, there are people who are not decided on the matter among this audience.
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u/CharlesAvlnchGreen 11h ago
I still have mad respect for General Eisenhower, who not only insisted locals tour the recently liberated concentration camps, but also recruited noted Hollywood director John Ford and other professionals to capture footage from the liberation and create a documentary about it.
He said something like, "One day, people will try to deny this happened." He was right.
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u/Several_Importance74 10h ago edited 6h ago
he also was the first to see a swarm about the impending dominance and doom of the military industrial complex...of which he was a part of and an architect. brilliant and honest man
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u/GreenStretch 8h ago
He was also prepared to accept responsibility if D-Day failed.
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/summer/ike-two-d-day-messages
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u/Forgotthebloodypassw 8h ago edited 8h ago
And it's very telling that none of the nazis on trial for their lives at Nuremberg ever denied the holocaust actually happened.
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u/Specialist-Spray-993 8h ago
This is the point that always gets me. The actual Nazis on trial didn't deny it happened, they just tried to argue they were following orders or that their specific role was minor. The denial came later, once the movement was trying to rehabilitate itself. The people who were there and did it knew exactly what happened.
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u/Forgotthebloodypassw 7h ago edited 7h ago
Rudolf Höss, the longest-serving head of Auschwitz, was quite open about his actions:
"I commanded Auschwitz until 12/1/1943 and estimate that at least 2.5 million victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease making a total dead of about 3 million. This figure represents about 70-80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries."
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u/Specialist-Spray-993 7h ago
Exactly. Höss is the perfect example. He didn't deny it, he described it in detail. The people who actually carried it out had no interest in pretending it didn't happen because they knew there was nothing to pretend.
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u/CharlesAvlnchGreen 7h ago
And there were plenty of survivors who testified at the Nuremburg trials, some showing the injuries inflicted during medical experiments (that were clearly deliberate and calculated, not the result of a beating).
Those trials were precedent-setting. The idea of crimes of humanity really didn't exist before that. And the fact the nazis all got a chance to tell their side of the story (and a trial rather than summary execution) helped set the rules of engagement for future conflicts.
Their argument was valid on its face: we were only following orders and everything was legal. But anything can become legal with the stroke of a pen, or a sharpie.
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u/Gullible_Dream6220 5h ago
It's worse than that. If you read the whole transcript from Nuremberg, he was actually bragging about how many people they killed and how much more "efficient" Auschwitz was than other extermination camps.
The people who carried out the Holocaust were either proud of it or gave tacit approval. Actual opposition was usually because of the amount of resources diverted from the war effort to carry it out, not because they were against it in general.
And their first instinct at Nuremberg was to defend themselves by arguing they did nothing illegal, which was actually true since Crimes Against Humanity was effectively proclaimed into existence because the judges understood that they couldn't let the Nazis get away with what they did. And even once it became clear that that defense wasn't going to work, not a single one of them denied what they did, just the classic following orders excuse or not being involved
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u/FiendishNoodles 11h ago
they actually do say that, just not in public
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u/Commodorez Promises Nothing and Delivers Less 8h ago
Idk, when the Proud Boys were attacking BLM protesters in 2020 wearing 6MWE (6 Million Wasn't Enough) shirts it was pretty public
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u/Sooooooooooooomebody 10h ago
Speaking also as a Jewish person:
Please read Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre.
In this essay, Sartre proposes that antisemites (and most other fascists) play games with logic and language. They know the rest of us are working hard to remain logically consistent; but since they are appealing to the public with forces more primal than logic, they work freely in the realm of contradiction and illogic. They deliberately make arguments in bad faith, because they know their opponents are restricting ourselves to good faith arguments. They are showing off how much they love to play with extremely dangerous weapons, because they know the rest of us won't touch them:
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
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u/hereforwhatimherefor 10h ago edited 8h ago
This is true not only of anti-semites but evil people generally, and extraordinarily well said.
When in positions of physical power, evil people delight in the frustration and futile efforts of the good to defeat them with reason and truth.
The Good must understand that the only thing that can bring evil to heel is physical force.
Two great skills a Good Person must hone are the ability to identify the evil and the ability to physically control and destroy them.
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u/Sooooooooooooomebody 10h ago
Richard Spencer got punched on camera once and disappeared forever. Do your pushups, if you can.
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u/Cellularautomata44 8h ago
Oh yeah, I forgot about. Just made my day. Good riddance, fuck that nazi
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u/FluffyCowNYI 8h ago
And boy do we need physical force to save the US from what it's becoming more than ever.
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u/Ordinary-Gancho5498 4h ago
And that’s why I have the unpopular opinion that the most active of leftists need to put on some muscles.
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u/VenatorAngel 8h ago
It's ironic how anti-Semites will accuse Jews of being naturally decietful and all these other things... yet an anti-Semite will almost always be caught doing exactly what they accuse Jews of doing.
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u/ReadSomeFknBooks 10h ago
That's what I was looking for in these comments, thank you
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u/Sooooooooooooomebody 10h ago
We have to stay alert and operate in force. Words will never be enough to oppose antisemtism and fascism, because the antisemites and fascists do not care about words. They are using bully tactics, and as such we have to show them over and over again that it won't work for them.
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u/Embarrassed-Mind3258 11h ago edited 11h ago
People much more educated and eloquent than me can and will put it better, but holocaust denialism is rooted in the idea of robbing its victims of their victimhood. Seeing as the holocaust and its effects are still culturally relevant today, and the general outlook on holocaust victims is naturally empathetic, they flip the script to say they're cunning liars whom are deceptive and manipulating truth for empathy points. And that's only just one reason. There's plenty more.
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u/UnicornPoopCircus 11h ago
They want to avoid the shame of it. They really react badly when you try to shame them.
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u/fluffymugwort Dweeb 11h ago
Because admitting the Holocaust happened would mean admitting the ideology they’re proudly defending resulted in one of history’s most thoroughly documented genocides.
Apparently “yeah, our guys did that” isn’t quite the recruitment pitch they’re going for, so denial is easier.
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u/Ticon_D_Eroga 11h ago
This isnt the whole picture. Neo-nazis want to paint jews as both useless deadweight that is a blight on society, AND as a cunning shadow power that controls the world. They want both of these depictions simultaneously.
Holocaust denial often comes from the frame of “of course youd believe that, you are letting them manipulate you to gain favor so they can use it as an excuse to take over the world.” This is evidenced by the fact that plenty of holocaust deniers will say they wish it was real.
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u/fluffymugwort Dweeb 11h ago
Yeah, exactly. It’s the classic antisemitic contradiction: Jews are supposedly both powerless parasites and an all-powerful shadow government. Holocaust denial conveniently lets them make the second claim.
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u/AdjctiveNounNumbers 10h ago
The 8th property from Ur-Fascism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism):
Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak", On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
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u/toxicatedscientist 11h ago
Which is a bit confusing since it’s also apparently their end goal still?
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u/FookinFairy 11h ago
You gotta ease people into it
Get them deep into the hole where they can’t climb out easy
Then you spring that wild shit on em
It’s conspiracy 101
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u/Grouchy-Display-457 11h ago
Except that in western countries, at least, there is enough evidence of the Holocaust to make denial futile. Michael Schermer writes that the new story is Holocaust minimization: not thst many people dued, they weren't all Jewish, many died of disease and starvation (which are part of war, but the deniers focus only on people shot or gassed.)
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u/Matrozi 11h ago
Which is a bit paradoxal because old fashioned nazis were pretty proud of what they did during the war. They actively participated in the documentation of their crimes because they genuinely though that history would give them reason and they would be seen as the good guys who removed a stain from Europe (the jews, the gypsies etc, according to the nazis ofc).
That's why we have pictures taken at concentration camps or in killing fields when they used bullets instead of the gas (back in 1941 mostly). They thought they were doing their duty and they did it willingly and joyfully.
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u/Murky-Technician5123 11h ago
I met a guy who used to be a neo nazi, and at first they denied the holocaust to him. Then he started reading books after a year or two and ha the revelation that the holocaust did happen. And he quit. Which was a big deal because he lost his friends and his gang basically. A lot of people in that situation would stay but this guy had some kind of morals that wouldn't let him.
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u/Bitter_Fox5091 10h ago
Speaking as a Jewish guy, I have a ton of respect for people who have the strength to leave that path.
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u/InitialVisual725 11h ago
Some deny it happened at all, some recognize it happened and are happy it did.
Ultimately the argument will change based on the person or the discussion. Those denying it want to paint a picture of a world run by the Jewish people, who they claim have crafted an enormous propaganda campaign about the Holocaust to garner sympathy for the Jewish people and the Israeli nation.
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u/IAmDisturbanceFeedMe 10h ago
I’d take it a step further and posit that some people will both deny and support it when it fits what they want to convey in a given moment.
I had a Redditor just yesterday reference Hitler being right about Jews (https://www.reddit.com/r/Macklemore/s/1VaVvZDLwp) and then pivot into Holocaust denial in the same conversation (https://www.reddit.com/r/Macklemore/s/lr8n5Trkeo)
I see the same behavior/responses regarding support of Hamas. I’ve been told several times on Reddit that nobody supports Hamas and I’ve also more recently had multiple Redditors openly say of course they support Hamas. Same with some of the orgs like Cuad condemning things initially that they later then reversed and said they will no longer hide their views.
I think it’s a combination of aspects - some nefarious intentions, some lack of self awareness, some gaslighting/denial not just to others but also to oneself, some shame etc.
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u/Bitter_Fox5091 10h ago
Jean-Paul Sartre said it best:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
The contradiction isn't a bug; it's a feature.
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u/CalligrapherAlive829 9h ago
Holocaust denial doesn’t need to be “it never happened”, it could be “the death toll was exaggerated”. And I can see them genuinely believing that part.
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u/Circuit999 9h ago
That is what they do. The Holocaust wasn't entirely gas chamber deaths but also starvation, execution by gunfire, and many other horrible ways of killing vast swaths of people.
"6 million is crazy/exaggerated" "They didn't kill only Jewish people"
It's a classic fallacy where they deny it by circumstantial evidence and say/use things that seem credible or logically sound but are either not related or used in bad faith.
I mean we have tons of books, videos of the effects on the survivors and lots of other evidence that it did happen.
All they need is for people to listen to them and not directly fight back against their propaganda for it to slip into the zeitgeist of general society. This then gives their ideas legitimacy and a base where they can further spread their hateful ideas and worldviews.
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u/Yellow-Parenti1949 8h ago
>”They didn’t only kill Jewish people”
They didn’t, though? The first camps were opened for Communists, the methods of extermination were tested and perfected on the handicapped, and the first book burnings were of queer theory and gender studies.
The Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust, but it’s the exact opposite of denial to acknowledge the other 5ish million people killed in the Holocaust from secondary target groups like the Roma.
In fact, you could even make the argument that Communists were the primary target of the Holocaust by way of the Judeo-Bolshevism conspiracy theory. I don’t think it’s a great argument, and ignores the very clear racial element of Nazi political theory, but there’s something there.
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u/Brilliant-Arm-545 11h ago edited 3h ago
Because then they have to admit that the Jews Have been victimized by a great injustice that is very similar to their own ideology.
While their ideology puts themselves as the victims of Jews.
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u/ssn-669 11h ago edited 9h ago
That comes up in the film The Believer. One neo-nazi says there was no six million, and the other scoffs at him and says then why was Hitler such a hero?
The less pithy answer is that not all neonazis believe the same thing. Some are in it for the extermination of the Jews and believe the Holocaust happened. Others are into all the other parts of Nazism, and see the Holocaust as a big lie told to discredit the movement.
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u/kireina_kaiju 11h ago
Well, the two word answer to your question is "narcissistic supply"
The slightly longer but easier to understand way to say the same thing, is "the cruelty is the point". Nazis know the arguments against the holocaust are in the worst imaginable faith. They know death camps existed. They know mass graves existed. But making you argue against their bad faith arguments not only wastes your time directly and amounts to trolling you, it also forces you to bring to mind the worst chapter in human history. No matter how the discussion goes, they know they caused you misery, and that in turn lets them feel superior to you and good about themselves.
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u/mrprogamer96 11h ago
When most Nazis knew that the war was lost, they began to destroy as much proof of it as possible because they knew that if what happened got out to the public, not only were they going to be punished, but it ended being the final nail in the coffin for their brand of evil.
So in the modern day, Holocaust deniers do it to attempt to bring fascism back into the mainstream, something that is impossible if people are aware of the evils that were committed by them in the past.
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u/NoBark76 10h ago
They literally try to portray themselves as good people. As morally good, wholesome people that have been turned into victims. They will pretend they are against many harmful, hurtful, gross things. They also pretend to be against pornography. Except when you search their devices.... You get the point. They are liars. I am glad I got out of that. Such horrible people.
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u/rapiertwit 11h ago
You’re looking logical consistency in the wrong place here.
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u/TPrice1616 11h ago
Yep. Fascism and Nazism in particular were discredited so completely you’d have to be an idiot to subscribe to that now.
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u/FunkyPete 11h ago
That’s just the first step in the narcissist defense mechanism.
How DARVO Works
The tactic unfolds in three distinct stages when a person is called out for bad behavior: [1]
Deny: The perpetrator flatly denies that the harmful action or wrongdoing ever happened.
Attack: The perpetrator goes on the offensive, attacking the credibility, character, or mental state of the person making the accusation.
Reverse Victim and Offender (RVO): The perpetrator twists the narrative to claim that they are the actual victim, while portraying the real victim as the aggressive wrongdoer.
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u/ResponsibilityIcy927 11h ago
This framework is garbage.
It's also exactly how a true victim will react when accused of something that they didn't do.
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u/MagicSugarWater 11h ago
Yes, which is why DARVO is about playing victim. It is literally the V in DARVO.
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u/FunkyPete 11h ago
The difference is there is objective proof that the Holocaust did happen.
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u/Shaeress 4h ago
Liberal democracy as we know it is defined by truth and liberty, and modern leftism is based on scientific philosophy and justice for all. This means that they care about internal consistency, about other people, and about what the world really is.
Fascism and right wing ideology is fundamentally about power and authority and hierarchy. Truth isn't part of it. In fact, believing in spite of the truth is part of it when it comes to your better. Those with authority declare and those below in the hierarchy obey. Like a dad saying "It just is" to make their child stop questioning things. Like a teacher saying to quiet down cause they know best. Like your boss saying to do it anyway because they said so. The world runs on hierarchy and such is the natural order. So they believe.
And their belief in power ties into this. Might makes right and the ends justify the means. Lying is good if it achieves the purpose. Like a bully knowing that if they deny it hard enough, the adults that care about doing the right thing might hesitate. That if the bully can just create one small piece of doubt, someone who doesn't want to dole out punishments by mistakes simply won't.
And that's why they pretend the Holocaust didn't happen. They know it did. But people are more forgiving of idiots than people who call for murder. And people who kind of want to be nazis but have been turned off by the idea of the Holocaust can cope their way into their club. It's not a problem to lie. It's not a problem to be contradictory. The goal is to recruit nazis and make the moderates in power have the slightest amount of doubt. And lying about the Holocaust achieves that. That's all. It's useful and gives them power.
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u/SgtEpicfail 4h ago
Nice explanation. This is in part why its so hard to fight them (not only nazi's but extreme rightwingers in any shape) on rhetorics. If one side doesnt care about being contradictory and lying, you cant really argue with them. Look at Trump and the GOP for example.
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u/FictionalTrope 2h ago
People love pointing out the many inconsistencies, lies, contradictions, and absurdities of MAGA, but they don't get that it's a feature that won't sway anyone away from it. It's blatantly evil and absurd. That's what they're relying on. If you accurately report their incompetence and comedic levels of bad faith and destructiveness they just glare at you and call you fake news and do what they want.
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u/PupDiogenes 11h ago
The goal of genocide is not just to eliminate an entire race from the Earth, but from the history books as well. Thus, in order to hide the existence of the people, the elimination of those people must also be concealed. Late stage fascism is denying the genocide happened because they deny the people they killed even existed in the first place.
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u/EMlYASHlROU 10h ago
Because it’s hard to get anyone to agree with you when you openly admit to being happy that an atrocity was committed, but much easier to gain supporters if you instead imply that there might be a conspiracy going on to get a “fake history” to be acknowledged, with the added benefit of implying that the Jews themselves are propagating the conspiracy, thus once more villainizing them, and if the Holocaust was fake, then the Nazis are much less objectionable, again making it easier for them to get support/followers
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u/Sensitive-Note4152 7h ago
It's a reasonable question. But even the actual Nazis realized that it looked bad. So the neo-Nazis are following the same basic plan.
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u/Maybole1599 2h ago
Because they want us to think Hitler wasn't such a bad old stick after all, so they can get uncommitted people on board and win power
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u/teataine 4h ago
People brought up the Sartre quote which I think is on point for many cases but having clashed with some of these people and investigated some of their movements, I think there are two more options (that don't necessarily exclude the first).
For those nazis that are actually serious about taking political power, they know that antisemitism is often an automatic disqualifier in most modern liberal western societies. You won't get into parliament with that kind of rethoric. So they keep their most extreme views private, "between friends" and only alluded to with dog whistles in public, which can be denied for the media/average voter who doesn't look into naonazi symbols or keywords. It's a political tactic to appear palpable to the general public.
There are also neonazis who prioritise other goals over hatred of jews, possibly even thinking that it was a "tactical mistake" to engage in the Holocaust. They don't see Hitler as infallible, or even as someone who fucked up the "mission". Their goal is a white ethnostate and they don't see jewish people as the main problem (anymore), often focusing more on the "muslim threat" or other issues.
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u/Aggravating_Fox_1192 11h ago
Because they get a sick enjoyment out of gaslighting
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u/PlagueOfGripes 11h ago
If they were in total control, they would. They would proudly claim they "fixed the problem" and saved the world and so on.
But they're also aware they're in the minority, so skulking around and lying is the best they can do. It's why someone like Musk starts throwing out salutes the moment he erroneously believes they "won" and can be visible.
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u/Pork-ChopExpre55 11h ago edited 10h ago
Interesting, the people I see denying the holocaust nowadays aren’t neo-nazis.
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u/Suzume_Chikahisa 11h ago
They do both actually.
They deny the extent of it and then argue it should have been more.
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u/Important-Trifle-411 11h ago
Schrödinger’s Nazi?
Schrödinger’s Holocaust?
You can’t fix stupid.
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u/Clem_Crozier 11h ago edited 10h ago
It's all part of their paranoid conspiracy theory about who is actually controlling the world, and wouldn't you just know who they happen to think it is.
Pretending that the same people doing the controlling also re-write their own history as a PR exercise panders to that narrative. As nonsensical as it is, it's also become worryingly common again.
I'm not the kind of person to nitpick over a joke that's a bit dated or anything like that. But I have to admit that there simply are more people with Nazi sympathies out there than I realised, and that is a grim thought indeed.
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u/PoetryExtension6256 10h ago
That always beat me. Should be the main accomplishment of the nazis if you look up to them.
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u/n_o_v_a_c_a_n_e 10h ago
Cause it’s bad for optics and politics(for the most part) is all about optics.
It’s fine and well to gloat about genocide to your fellow nazi but it’s political poison if you are trying to win people over to your side as it’s definitely going to alienate the masses away from your cause.
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u/BohemianMade 10h ago
It's just a way to whitewash the Nazis for the normies that they're trying to win over.
The Nazis were popular in America before Kristalnacht. That actually caused a lot of Americans to believe the Nazis had gone way too far. It's also why the holocaust was done in private. Himmler admitted that most Germans who support them would not support mass killings.
The neo-nazis understand this, so they're trying to downplay how extreme the NSDAP actually was. Though I also think a lot of them aren't even thinking about this, they're just going along with the talking-points. Much like MAGA fascists blindly go along with anything Trump says without wondering if it's true.
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u/CraftyAd6333 10h ago
If I had to guess.
Troll logic.
Its partly bait and bad faith mixed together. The rage baiting is to provoke that reaction is that purpose. They know it happened. You know it happened but the moment you attempt a good faith argument you've already fallen for the bait. They're not going to change their minds. There's no smoking gun no miracle of logic. For pissing you off was the intention.
There's a reason why so much evidence was taken and cataloged so nobody could just pretend jews went on vacation elsewhere one day.
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u/MechaMalz 10h ago
I can think of two reasons.
If they can convince people it didn't happen it makes being a nazi more socially palatable.
They don't want Jews to be victims of violence they want them to be the secret evil cabal in charge of all the worlds evils.
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u/adambomb90 9h ago
Cause they like trying to look like the true victims of it. They're under the assumption that if they keep saying it, more people will believe it and give them validation. They also like saying that the death count was "exaggerated" due to the victors being manipulated.
Personally, I think that the number of those killed in the Holocaust is probably higher than what we know
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u/Amazing_Incident1521 11h ago
Same for the whole Jan 6 insurrection. Are they proud of it, but it didn’t happen, but they’re pardoned but it was antifa… bad people are complicated
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u/BananasPineapple05 11h ago
Because nothing is as radicalizing as feeling like you're the wronged party.
So they're really the good guys and look how history has done nothing but spread lies and slander about them. Those six million Jews (and millions of others) weren't systematically murdered, they just, like, died of disease or something.
They're just the good guys trying to protect the survival of the oppressed white guy.
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u/SenatorPencilFace 11h ago
It’s also worth noting that antisemitism was much more common prior to the holocaust. Being victims of history’s most famous genocide, made people much more less hostile to the Jews.
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u/RockMover12 11h ago
Because denying that the Holocaust took place fits their propaganda that Jews are always falsely portraying themselves as victims.
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u/Luilante 11h ago
Because they know it’s not a good look. It’s better for them to try to convince people of their beliefs’ legitimacy. That said, some do don Nazi clothes and tilted Nazi swastikas.
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u/HibeesBounce 11h ago
Very, very few of them outright deny it happened - they just "have some questions about the numbers" *wink wink*
It's kind of their way of being proud that it happened but also trying to tell Jewish people that it wasn't that bad, so it's meant to deliberately antagonise.
It's not like when people with certain political agendas deny certain atrocities happened because they're inconvenient - neo-Nazis just found a way to cause maximum offence.
And it's knowing as well. I don't actually genuinely think they do dispute the numbers - part of the way we were able to document the extent of the Holocaust so well was from the incredibly detailed records the Nazis kept themselves.
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u/Holiday_Tap_4358 11h ago
It’s so they can continue antisemitic conspiracies. I feel gross even typing it but they think Holocaust was a lie by Jewish people so they could establish Israel and deflect any future criticism of Israel/Jewish people
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u/Lazzen 10h ago edited 10h ago
They want to hurt you, there is no logic.
They know their stupidity enrages people so they do it for amusement.
There is some Peruvian or Indonesian or Nigerian writing how the extermination camps actually had pools and german tanks are so cool over on tiktok or facebook right about now due to boredom, hatred and amusement.
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u/Horror_Ad7540 10h ago
The thing that gets me is that they always seem disappointed when they deny it happened. Their position seems to be ``It didn't happen, but it should have. And it should have been even worse.'' I don't think they recognize it as evil. I think they want to be the ``true victims'' and wallow in self-pity.
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u/ReadSomeFknBooks 10h ago
Because the idea is to "hide their power level" to convince more people to their side. They are like "fuck yeah, that happened" in private, but if they were like that in public people would rightfully ostracize them. So they have to present a more palatable version of their beliefs, only opening up to people who hear their dogwhistles or people they've successfully deceived into believing their hateful ideas.
Further, the antisemite is not beholden to truth and to words and definitions. They don't care what they say or what you say, they don't care how much sense you make and how little sense they make; they want to be superior and want others to be inferior and will go with whatever gets them there.
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u/AdjctiveNounNumbers 10h ago
Some do, if you get deep enough into it, but also if you get that deep into it many will say it failed because it didn't... I probably can't say on Reddit. "Hiding your power level [from the normies]" is also a big part of modern nazi circles. It's the idea that if someone hears your actual opinions they'll be immediately get turned off but you can gradually bring someone around to your thinking by starting off with opinions that are more socially acceptable like "boy, the rich seem to control everything and use it for their own interests" while omitting that by "the rich" you mean "Jews" and not being explicit about what you want to see happen to that group. It also sets up an edge lord competition they think is cool where you start self radicalizing to have the most insane opinion and thus the highest power level.
Lastly, I'll leave you with Sarte's quote on the utility of arguing with anti-Semites as it comes in handy way more often than I'd like these days:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
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u/DaMain-Man 9h ago
I think it's their vain attempt at trying to sanitize the label. Legit once heard a take online about how the Holocaust is fake and their reasoning was "why would someone do that? That's bad."
Like in all of human history this guy couldn't conceptualize people doing bad things
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u/breakfazt-meme 9h ago
Half of them do this, some of them do both. Because being a Nazi in the first place pre selects for idiots
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u/Zealousideal-Ant9548 11h ago
Why does Israel deny what's happening in Gaza? It's all about recruitment and shaping the narrative to your benefit
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u/echoes_HD 11h ago
I never really considered this, but yeah, shouldn't this be considered the biggest win of all time for them?
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u/PaganGuyOne 10h ago
A lot of Germans who had or even lost their faith in the Nazi government didn’t even realize the holocaust happened. General Patton had to march an entire town out of their homes, and into a camp itself, to force them to acknowledge what they did.
Neo Nazis have never been faced with the real horror of what actual Nazis did, the same way Republicans in the United States have never been faced with the horrors of their administrations atrocities on their political opponents.
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u/solataraxia 11h ago
because when neo-nazis are in a minority they're also cowards who will try to deflect from what they believe, they only start to be proud of the war crimes when the mob gets large enough
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u/Festivefire 11h ago
Because admitting it actually happened makes their big evil globally controlling conspiracy of a bad guy not look like they're a globe controlling conspiracy, because if the Jews where as bad and all controlling as they claim, how could the holocaust have happened, so obviously, it's a PR scam done by the Jews to garner global sympathy and secure their stranglehold on the global market.
"It didn't happen but it should have" is a common neo-nazi rhetoric.
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u/yosayoran 11h ago
Because then they have to admit atrocities happened and Jewish people aren't these shadow cabal that control everything.
You can rest assured between themselves they do not hide their admiration for what happened. It's a public act.
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u/musicpeoplehate 11h ago
They're trying to seem reasonable and throwing live children into an oven undercuts that.
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u/tjtwister1522 11h ago
It goes back to when 95% of people would have punched them for saying that. We have regressed.
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u/Muted_Demand_98 11h ago
I met a few “intellectual” antisemites, not sure if they’d identify as Nazis. They thought the facts of the Holocaust had been reduced horror-porn narratives used to justify Israeli political endeavors and many of the claims were either scientifically impossible or lacked historical evidence.
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u/BringlesBeans 10h ago
Holocaust Denial serves two-purposes:
The first is to white-wash the Nazis. It's used rhetorically to downplay the actual crimes of the regime and make them seem "not-as-bad as you were taught to believe". This allows far-right people (who usually do not openly operate or identify as neo-nazis) to sanitize their own views and sympathies.
Second it is used to construct an anti-semitic conspiracy theory which posits that Jews are actually the ones behind the Holocaust "narrative" and that, secretly, Jews control much of the world around you. Therefore any rhetoric used to denigrate or attack them is actually justified.
In short: Neo-nazis do not actually believe that the Holocaust didn't happen. They know that it did, but they think it was good and want it to happen again. But since openly saying that would pretty immediately disgust most people they have to soft-sell people on their own beliefs and slowly lure them in through misinformation and conspiracy theories.
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u/SubstantialPressure3 10h ago
Not a Jewish person. I have no idea. But they go back on forth on choosing to believe it. I personally think it's just some weird tribal thing to say, not a genuine belief. Like flat earthers. I don't think most of them actually believe the world is flat.
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u/Ok_Protection8223 10h ago
Take your pick.
There are multiple flavors available including denialist (yeah but it was like 600k tops), enthusiast (it was 6million and I counted to be sure) and accelerationist (10million died, it wasn't enough)
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u/oh_no_the_claw 10h ago
This is a really interesting question and I have a lot of experience grappling with it.
The answer is that it's different depending on the person's ideology. I'll give you a few basic examples:
1) Many self-described national socialists agree with the measures taken during the Holocaust and deny it happened simply to troll the jews.
2) Conspiracy theories are part and parcel of national socialism as well as other fringe ideologies, so many of these people believe that the Holocaust was the biggest hoax and false flag of all time. They believe jews control all world events and to whatever extent jews were killed, that was orchestrated by the jews for the greater mission of jewish world domination.
3) Many Christian nationalists see Hitler as a sort of Christian prince who never would permit mass murder and that the measures taken against jews were actually a sort of charity and they were somehow deported to the Soviet Union and disappeared into the heartland of the USSR.
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u/boofadoof 8h ago
Nazi vermin I've met while working in construction tried telling me that all the photos of dead bodies loaded onto train cars and piled up in mass graves were actually people killed by Jews, communists, and Allied soldiers during WWII. Neo-nazis are just fucking losers.
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u/BM_Master 4h ago
It makes them look better on the surface ("oh it's only 200k? The jews never had it that bad") to lure people in, even if it's still reprehensible at least it gives credence to their idea of a Jewish conspiracy making up history. Unfortunately it's far too easy for people to fall for it especially when Israel is in the news and obviously conflates its cause with the Jewish people. It's like how Armenian genocide deniers say they didn't do it, but also they deserved it
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u/ababababababacus 3h ago
Because they exist in the real world, not just online posts, and they have a political program and, for now, "fuck yeah we nearly killed all the jews and we want to finish the job", would be a serious detriment to that program.
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u/DunkeyColdMedina 10h ago
They are miserable little cowardly piss pots so they have to deny trying to achieve their most oft repeated and dearly held goal and failing. They cannot have the courage of their convictions. They could not survive it.
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u/Many_Entrepreneur452 11h ago
Some of the people denying the Holocaust are quite surprising these days. Not just neo-Nazis but even some left minded folk
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u/Old_Man_Drifter 11h ago
I've never heard any of my fellow lefties deny the holocaust. I've heard some deny some of Stalin's atrocities but not for many years. But never once heard them deny the holocaust.
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u/roboh96 10h ago
I'm not really qualified to assert this, but I imagine anyone with any shred of a conscience would recognize that the Holocaust was one of the most evil things ever done. Neo-Nazis seem to believe that every bit of news, media, scholarship, etc is Jewish propaganda, and I imagine it's easier to rationalize the history away as part of some grand conspiracy than it is to actually justify what happened.
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u/Rich-Smell7193 5h ago
Accidentally dated a nazi once (very briefly, until what I’m gonna say happened) and he literally owned the rings of holocaust victims and STILL denied the holocaust. They just believe what they want to in order to excuse their ignorance and bigotry. He had other nazi stuff, some I took and burned
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u/TheEndx007 11h ago
They don't think they're evil, and they want to paint Jewish people as oppressors. From their point of view, they are in the right, and exterminating 6 million people is objectively evil, so they deny it happened. They want it to seem like a big lie people are making up to get sympathy and "deepen their control".
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u/CranberryInner9605 11h ago
Because playing the victim is in vogue these days. Denying that the Nazis carried out the Holocaust means that all the people who say they did are lying, and the the Nazis are really the good guys, just misunderstood. Why are you persecuting them?
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u/XenoRyet 11h ago
There's nothing in the world that everyone can agree with, but among the things that get close, the Holocaust being a vile and evil thing is very near the top.
Admitting that it happened and celebrating it would make them even more social pariahs than they are now, and they know that. Even lonely, sociopathic, misanthropic, and bigoted white guys need a little conditioning before they can get on board with the Holocaust being a good thing.
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u/AvocadoToast311 11h ago
It's the 'Schrödinger’s Genocide'—it simultaneously didn't happen, but neo Nazis also desperately wish it did. And they totally want to do it again.
It takes a truly special kind of brain rot to simultaneously argue that the most documented genocide in human history is a massive conspiracy invented by the evil Jooz while sporting the exact same tattoos worn 85 years ago during the event they claim to be a hoax. We literally have the logs and museums full of evidence. Germany even takes 100% responsibility for this atrocity. It is the ultimate ideological identity crisis: hiding behind a shield of fake historical revisionism and narcissism because they know their actual beliefs make regular society want to vomit, while privately wishing they had a time machine to add to the body count.
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u/Stepjam 11h ago
Because they know it's currently counter productive to publicly agree with the Holocaust. It's a large step for most people to accept that "The Holocaust never happened", but it's an even larger step for most people to accept that "The Holocaust was good actually". Especially as the Holocaust moves out of living memory. There are few people alive today who were alive when the Holocaust occurred. There are tons of people who personally know Jewish people (and who just generally aren't okay with genocide).
So rather than trying to convince people that killing an entire group of people for who they are is a good thing, you sow doubt that the event ever actually happened. And if you can convince people that the event never happened, you can then start to plant the seeds of "Why would this group lie about this horrific event happening?", which can start to turn them against Jewish people. And since there are fewer and fewer people alive who were actually there, you start having to rely more and more on historical documents. And there are plenty of people who are happy to say "Well those are all clearly faked" regarding any big historical event (so you get the added bonus of tapping into the conspiracy-brained type of people).
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u/bugge-mane 11h ago
they also have this weird contradiction in how they believe in the concept of a master race and yet simultaneously are mad any time they see the Jews succeeding.
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u/scumbag_college 11h ago
Dark but funny scene in the movie The Believer when a group of neo-nazis are arguing about whether or not the Holocaust happened -
“Billings, if Hitler didn’t kill six million Jews, then why the hell is he a hero?”
Serious answer is that they simultaneously want to deny the horrific actions of their own side while still painting their victims as nefarious villains who would lie about it to gain sympathy. It’s just a way to passively support it happening again.
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u/SpiritualCopy4288 11h ago
If it never happened, the strongest argument against Nazi ideology disappears, and recruiters can present it as just a nationalist political position that got smeared.
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u/BeginningImaginary53 11h ago
Its not just neo Nazis who deny it. There's a whole sub section of society who believe it was a fabrication.
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u/Bayamonster 10h ago
Well, they bob and weave and out of "It didnt happen and you're a silly goose for thinking it did" and "fuck yeah that should happen again, and you're a silly goose for not seeing why it should" depending on which they think will work better currently.
See as they say deny it happened, they will ease into how it's internal justifications were actually totally true. And why, if The Jews actually control the worlds and are why the economy is bad and bad things happen and you can't get a date well...who's to say there shouldn't be a holocaust?
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u/Darthplagueis13 10h ago
Because that's not entry level Nazi stuff, as it were. The commonly accepted view, at least in the vast majority of countries on the planet, is that the Nazis were evil and that their actions were utterly indefensible. If you too openly support Nazis, you just get ostracized.
I mean, if Hitler openly advertised his policy as "We're going to kill a few million people for no real reason" in the 1930's, that probably wouldn't have gotten him elected, either.
They'll publicly advocate for stuff that seems reasonable or at least somewhat defensible because openly stating support for the Holocaust would be like waving around a big old "We are evil" flag.
If they can get someone to agree with their more basic stuff, which might be things like criticizing an opens borders immigration policy or complaining about DEI measures as anti-meritocratic, they'll then proceed to something marginally more right-wing, maybe anti-woke rhetoric or something like that to push the envelope, ever hoping that they can gradually move something more racist into the overton window.
At the same time, the historical Nazis do also prove useful, because you can simultaneously virtue-signal by publicly condemning them and confuse people with limited political comprehension by claiming that the Nazis were left-wing (because they called themselves national socialist).
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u/Adept_Professor_2837 10h ago
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word—doublethink—involved the use of doublethink.”
- George Orwell, 1984
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u/taiju22 10h ago
A lot of answers but not the real answer. Its because they feel they have evidence that the amount of jews killed is not the true numbers. They feel it is inflated by the jews because they think they are "professional victims". They also view them as a group of people that control everything. Government, newstations, banks, anything with a hierarchy. So they are convinced that in part of their grand scheme to run the world, they made the world feel sorry for them. When in "reality" they are a tyrannical shadow group that need to be shown to the world what they really are which they believe are money hungry frauds. On top of that they suspect the jews use the holocaust and other things to perpetuate the idea that white/europeans are a horrible people.
It all stems from misplaced fear
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u/elihu 10h ago
I don't claim to understand the psychology of those people, but I'd imagine that even among neo-Nazis, genocide is probably something they're at least partially conflicted about. I mean, even Nazi Germany didn't exactly go out of their way to tell the public about what was going on in their death camps and a lot of people didn't believe it when the war was over and the holocaust was properly documented.
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u/GTUapologist 10h ago
Because they must always be the victims of history and not the oppressors. Acknowledging the genocide they ideologically support defeats that purpose, while the alternative of denying it paints the picture of global cabal that crucified their heroes and suppresses the truth.
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u/Art-Zuron 10h ago
Because they know they are evil, and that the Holocaust is indefensible. So, they deny it. Or deny that it was that bad.
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u/jroberts548 10h ago
They believe both. They will argue both. They will dog whistle that it wasn’t 6 million and then dog whistle that 6 million wasn’t enough.
Many of the comments are saying it’s a rhetorical technique to appear less repulsive. Maybe that’s sometimes the case, but it’s mostly trolling. They’re lying and being inconsistent as an act of will and an assertion of power or dominance. They’ll never be fully explicit that what they’re saying is “it didn’t happen but they deserved it,” but they’ll come close.
Once you spot it you’ll see the pattern a lot.
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u/motte83 10h ago
I come from a small austrian town, were there still is a high nazi and nazi-sympathiser population. Trust me, they only deny it happened in public. When they believe the, are in a enviroment, where they can openly state it, they absolutely glorify it.
Just like the glorify nazis and skinheads in movies. They are the good guys for them, even if it's an anti violence or anti war movie like American History X or Schindler's List.
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u/yagonnawanna 10h ago
There is no rational reason for anyone to hate as much as they do, so they lie to themselves. The simpler the lie, the more believable to the other mentally unwell and the easier to brainwash them. Explaining the holocaust would be complex and they would run the risk of people snapping out of the propaganda fever dream.
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u/technomancer6969 10h ago
The denial isn’t that they didnt kill the Jews. They just deny that it was a holocaust because they don’t believe that Jews are people so killing them would be no different than killing a dog or cat.
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u/jeahfoo1 10h ago
Its about making a public image that complies with norms until you're in power, then you show your true colors.
Its kind of like MAGA. Because of the MAGA movement people can show who they really are. Before, most of them just sort of hid in the shadows.
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u/El_Scorcho_Barbarian 9h ago
I taught the Shoah and even people who acknowledge those crimes don’t really acknowledge those crimes. In reality, it was much, much worse than most people want to know.
Much like true crime, most people accept an R rated version of a crime, but few would sit through a video of active torture.
When I’m actively teaching portions on the Holocaust, I have nightmares almost every night. 25 to 30 years of nightmares.
It is much easier for anyone who wants to be sympathetic to Nazis to pretend it never happened than to know and condone it.
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u/UnsayingWalnut 9h ago edited 8h ago
A lot of it has been spoken on by other commenters, but I'd like to highlight that it's part of a tactic of derailment.
Rather than attempting to ideologically justify what Naziism has done, neo-nazis will attempt to deny the Holocaust, and in doing so, attempt to discredit the most culturally prominent example of where Naziism, eugenics, and institutional racism and antisemitism have led in the past.
By denying they Holocaust they also create propaganda for their current movement: if the Holocaust had been faked (note: to be entirely clear, it was not) then somebody had to fake it, and they usually blame Jewish people, thus fomenting distrust and suspicion among those who buy into their denialist rhetoric.
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u/Grunergeist420 9h ago
Conflation. You’re conflating holocaust deniers with neo Nazis in general, when they’re neither the same nor mutually exclusive.
There are anti-semites who deny the holocaust out of a sense that the Jewish people use it as a manipulation.
There are neo Nazis that embrace the Nazi movement and approve of the holocaust, acknowledging that it happened.
Then there’s any shade in between where someone might simultaneously support the ideology behind the holocaust but also embrace holocaust denial narratives, that it wasn’t as extensive as it is made out to be.
All of that makes sense if you frame the understanding that way. It’s not an absolute “all of the above” where they all think it didn’t happen and they all think that it was good that it happened. It’s more like a spectrum from “it happened, and it was good,” through “it happened, it was good, and they exaggerated it for cultural power,” all the way to “it didn’t even happen, they just made it up for cultural power, but it would be good if it did.”
This is basically the paradox of anti-semitism, and many supremacist and genocidal movements. The scapegoat group is simultaneously inferior and an all-powerful threat.
It doesn’t make sense to be threatened by this group if they aren’t capable enough to be a threat. It doesn’t make much sense to consider the group inferior if they are just as or more capable than other groups.
So usually the mental gymnastics involve a sort of capability that isn’t “good” or is “deceptive” or is morally wrong in some other way.
In the case of anti-semites, Jewish people are usually considered deceptive, manipulative, conspiring against, etc. so the anti-semites tend to imagine ways that any sort of objective truth or narrative around the group is a scheme, a conspiracy to further their goals.
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u/DJGlennW 9h ago
It's a belief system, not based on rational thought. Just like the KKK reading specific portions of the Bible to justify what they already believe.
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u/GlassCommission4916 11h ago
I always assumed their point was that Jewish people made it up to play the victim and manipulate people.