Anti-Semitism in the Internet

The Institute for Historical Review

What is the IHR?

• An organization gathering historians and pseudo-scientists, which propagates Holocaust denial.
• Established in 1978 by right-wing activists
• Based in Torrance, CA (near Los Angeles)

• Know to have connections with neo-Nazi groups, such as the National Alliance

Willis Carto

• American lobbyist, right-wing activist, anti-Semitic and racist propagandist.
• Criticized by the ADL as the sole person responsible for keeping organized anti-Semitism alive as a political movement.
• Has been publishing anti-Semitic magazines from the late 1950s.
• Founded Liberty Lobby, a “patriotic populist” political organization (1958-2001)

What is historical revisionism?

• The reinterpretation of history by contemporary scholars.

• Holocaust denial – the denial of the extermination of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

• Historical revisionism uses established methodologies, whereas Holocaust denial contradicts proven facts.

"Holohoax" claims

• Gas chambers were allegedly used as bomb shelters
• Denial of the fact that the murder of Jews was a Nazi policy
• Holocaust made up by Jews to "guilt-trip" the West for money and support for founding of Israel
• Survivor testimonies dismissed as fraud
• Conspiracy theories involving plots and “shadowy, hidden forces”

IHR director Mark Weber on the Holocaust

​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urlUkTtbnPY

The Mermelstein case

• In 1979, the IHR offered $50,000 to whomever “could prove that the Nazis operated gas-chambers to exterminate Jews during World War II”.
• Mel Mermelstein responded with a testimony,  but the IHR didn't pay up
• Mermelstein began recieving anti-Semitic publications and sucessfully sued the IHR

Dangerous Euphemisms

"The Institute for Historical Review is an independent educational research and publishing center that works to promote peace, understanding and justice through greater public awareness of the past, and especially socially-politically relevant aspects of twentieth-century history. (...) We vigorously defend freedom of speech and freedom of historical inquiry."

Later activities & decline

• Decline after controversy over banned conference in Beirut (2003)
• Anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi publications
• Minor conferences with neo-Nazi groups (last one took place in 2004)
• Interviews on niche radio stations & other media focused on conspiracy theories
• Anti-Israeli agenda

Thanks for listening!

More info at: adl.org