It’s disturbing to hear, on Holocaust Memorial day, that one in 20 people in this country do not believe the holocaust happened*. It makes you think. It means that it’s quite possible that out of all the people you know, some might be holocaust deniers, which is a troubling thought. It makes you wonder to what extent this is increasing; another worrying thought. You have to wonder where that 5% get their beliefs from; I was taught about the holocaust at school, and there were documentaries on TV when I was growing up. In the 90s, when I worked at a Waterstone’s bookshop, the book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” (Daniel Goldhagen) was published, and I remember the controversy and the discomfort that book caused, as it set out to prove that ordinary people in Germany willingly took part in the persecution and murder of Jews. For me, in my early twenties, that was the first time hearing that argument, and it affected me deeply. I understood that ordinary people, the majority of a population even, can be persuaded, goaded and manipulated into unthinkable acts of cruelty. Shortly after that, a BBC documentary called ‘The Nazis: A Warning from History’ was aired, and again it revealed that new evidence showed that ordinary members of society participated in violence or acted as informants willingly and without coercion. I don’t understand how anyone in my generation can be a holocaust denier given all the information, discussion, and debate that has been around us in our lifetimes. Perhaps other generations have had different experiences, I don’t know.
One of my fears about rising antisemitism and other forms of racism is that ideas are being spread online and targeted at disaffected and vulnerable groups in a way that is off the radar and therefore can’t be exposed and combatted. A form of online advertising known as microtargetting can be used to disseminate misinformation sometimes called ‘dark ads’, and there is some evidence that this has been used in political campaigning in recent years**. I won’t go into too much detail on this, but it’s important to understand that this form of advertising is dynamic and can use profiling, meaning that it can identify target groups such as frustrated, anti social young men; people who are isolated; people who are angry with the world; people who are vulnerable or who may have mental health challenges. Those groups can then be targetted with ads that are capable of dynamically testing what pushes their buttons and gets a response, and what doesn’t. As a propaganda tool to sow division in society and destabilise it, you can see how powerful this form of online advertising could be.
This brings me to a story that I want to tell about antisemitism and how it manifests itself. About 2-3 years ago, here in Ramsgate, I found myself in conversation with a man who was firmly denying the holocaust. It took me by surprise, as he was an ex-hippie, or at least someone who had been very much involved in 60s counterculture as a young man. He had been talking to me about the Grateful Dead, and before that we talked about what was happening to the NHS – that was how the conversation had started – I had given him a leaflet about a march in London. He seemed to have progressive values, and therefore when he turned the conversation to his belief that the holocaust was a conspiracy, I was (perhaps naively) very shocked. We talked for a while, as I wanted to understand WHERE he was getting his ideas from. He was very insistent that his theories must be true as they didn’t come from books, which were not be trusted, but from ‘his own research’. From what he explained, it seemed that he had been led from website to website, believing he was conducting autonomous ‘research’. He could not conceive of the possibility that he was being manipulated by online sources. Try as I might, I couldn’t convince him that online sources could be just as unreliable as those in print; in fact even more so. He was fervent in his belief that his ‘research’ was infallible simply because he had discovered it from multiple sites and because he had done some detective work of his own. He could not accept that people can get away with posting anything they like online, with no checks and balances, no verification processes. I have to confess I felt sorry for him and wondered if there might be some emotional crisis or mental health problem behind what seemed like an otherwise intelligent man being so gullible. When I realised that there was no persuading him, I asked if he could at least concede that even if it was only a few thousand that died in the camps (his theory) then that was still horrific and a great tragedy. This was the point when he said to me that the ‘reason’ why jews have always been persecuted is ‘because they are a bloodthirsty and murderous race’. So this is a nasty and disturbing story, and it taught me that even those with progressive, countercultural, egalitarian views can in extreme circumstances end up on a path that leads to fascist, extremist, antisemitic and racist views. Thinking about it later, I realised that I should not have been so surprised; of course no one political grouping is automatically impervious to the insidious creep of racism. But I did keep thinking about the factors that would have led him to be able to hold such extreme and irrational opinions.
I wondered if there was something in his emotional make-up that had allowed this, perhaps a crisis of some kind that meant that he wasn’t truly himself? On the other hand, I wondered if he had been an antisemite all his life and finding these materials online just helped him to justify ideas that he had always held. I’m probably never going to know the answer to that, but one thing I think we can be sure of is that the constant drip-drip of hate of and insinuation about a particular culture can one day lead to to the unthinkable happening. I think we can add to this the new threat posed by secretive, malicious advertising that is turbo-charged by its ability to test and adapt to the responses of viewer in real time. If anti-semitism and racism is being ramped up, it is not only in the tabloid press and by racist groups. In my opinion, something else is happening too, and companies like Facebook and Google who are the main financial beneficiaries of this ought to accept responsibility and reveal some of what has been going on.
Incidentally, whilst I was working in Waterstone’s in the 90s, something else happened that brought the continual battle against antisemitism to the fore. David Irving, a historian and Holocaust denier threatened two Waterstone’s employees with legal action over their decision to stock Deborah Lipstadt’s book on their shelves. This wasn’t in my branch – I think it may have been in a London or Manchester branch, but as a result, the store manager called a meeting and explained to us that this author was suing Lipstadt and Penguin books for libel (Lipstadt had dissected Irving’s misuse of historical evidence to argue the case for holocaust denial). He told us that by stocking the Lipstadt book, as we currently were, that we might be a target for legal action, and he wanted us to decide as group what to do. We unanimously agreed to keep the book on the shelf. What was so ridiculous was Irving’s choice to target low paid booksellers in the first place. Bookshops are full of controversial books, why go beyond suing the author/publisher? Why not target the bookshop management? It was a clear case of strong arm tactics, and an attempt to use fear to silence his acclaimed critic by targeting the weakest in the chain, the lowly booksellers. Irving must have dropped his case/threat of a case against the booksellers – it’s so long ago now, I can’t remember the details. He lost his case against Lipstadt and was found to have actively manipulated the facts in his works to back his antisemitic viewpoint.
Racists and antisemites will always be trying their hand, looking to see how far they can go, what they can get away with, prodding for weak spots, looking for a way in.
It’s more important than ever that we recognise where the most potent threats are coming from. Characters like Steve Bannon want to divide and disrupt, and they don’t care how they do it. Racism is an ideology but it is also a tool to be used for distraction, destabilisation and division.
The malicious myths and outright lies spread about racial and cultural groups damage our societies; where that can ultimately lead should always be in our minds.
*https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/27/one-in-20-britons-does-not-believe-holocaust-happened
** A lot has been written on this topic, one good long read on it that is now quite old but a good source of information is this article: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win
In Whose Interests? 