SOURCE: "Chomsky and the Neo-Nazis," in Quadrant, Vol. XXV, No. 10, October, 1981, pp. 8-14.

[Rubenstein is an American historian and educator. In the following essay, he discusses his correspondence with Noam Chomsky regarding the latter's defense of Robert Faurisson.]

The strange nexus between Noam Chomsky, the eminent linguist, and Robert Faurisson, an Associate Professor of Literature at the University of Lyon in France, who believes, in his own words that "there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz or anywhere else in wartime Europe," and who has described the Holocaust as "a historic lie", an "abominable lie", and a "politico-financial swindle" is by now fairly well known—at least in France and America, where it has received wide publicity in journals like the New York Times, New Republic and Le Monde. It is perhaps less well known in Australia, where, so far as I am aware, only one mainstream publication (The Bulletin, 3 February 1981) has reported on the matter. The purpose of this essay is to outline concisely the history of this affair, and to add what I believe is some interesting fresh information about it, particularly concerning Chomsky's attitudes and connections with Faurisson. This in turn leads on to a more basic discussion of Chomsky's view of the world and of history, and of the neo-Nazi view of these matters, which in my opinion are remarkably similar.

To the uninitiated, it is, of course, necessary to describe the dramatis personae and my own locus standi in this business. First, as to the neo-Nazis. Most Australians will be aware of the revival of Nazism, anti-semitism, and right-wing terrorism, especially in Europe. One of the central strands in this movement is the whitewashing of Hitler and his crimes, and central to this thrust are various attempts to prove that the Nazi mass murder of six million Jews never happened, and, moreover, that it was a legend concocted during and after the War by "Zionists" and "Marxists" in order to gain sympathy for the creation of Israel, to compel Germany to pay billions in retribution, and for various other diabolical ends stemming from the extreme wickedness of Jews and their allies. Although the centre of this revival is clearly West Germany, whose government recently confiscated literally tons of extremist hate literature of this type, it has devotees almost everywhere in the Western world: in England, through the British Movement, the National Front, and similar bodies, as well as in France, Australia, and the United States. Often the advocates of neo-Nazism have their origin in their own right-wing national traditions, although their basic view of politics is similar.

Those connected with the ultra-right fall into two distinct groups. One consists of Nazis pure and simple, purveyors of religious and racial hatred of a type which my generation hoped had perished in the Berlin bunker in 1945.

Far more important, and certainly more interesting, are the handful of intellectuals—if that is the right term—who have attached themselves to this movement. In an attempt to gain credibility in the English-speaking world, in 1979 an organisation with the misleading title of the "Institute of Historical Review" was founded in California by Willis A. Carto, who also finances other American lunatic fringe outfits, such as the "Liberty Lobby". It publishes a curious journal mistitled Journal of Historical Review, which purports to be a serious academic publication, but which in reality consists of neo-Nazi literature "disproving" the Holocaust, whitewashing the Nazis generally, attacking Roosevelt and Churchill (described in one issue as a "drunken chameleon") and the like. Some of the authors appear to have legitimate academic or professional standing—though they are never, of course, serious or respected historians—and to have little or no connection with the neo-Nazi right. One such man is Arthur Butz, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Northwestern University, who wrote the current "Bible" of this movement, the notorious Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Another is Australia's best-known advocate of this position. There is also Robert Faurisson. (All three are members of the "Editorial Advisory Committee" of the Journal of Historical Review.)

One does not really know what to make of such men. Perhaps the best way of explaining them is to view them as the John Hinckley Juniors of the intelligentsia—lone-wolf malcontents, like Reagan's would-be assassin—who, unable to gain esteem by valid means, advocate the most outrageous, unbelievable thesis conceivable to win publicity for themselves. Many of the English-speaking among them claim to be dedicated "civil libertarians", mistrustful of "established authority" and of "establishment big lies", and the movement's intellectual component, at least in the English-speaking world, seems to have as much of what might be termed a libertarian-anarchist input as of a totalitarian one. This movement also advocates a consistent right-wing conspiracy theory of the world which is worthy of note, based upon a belief that "establishment big lies" emanate overwhelmingly from the United States, controller of the world's media.

Faurisson, who was born in England in 1929, holds a doctorate from the Sorbonne and teaches French literature at the University of Lyon. In his own words, he "specializes in the appraisal and evaluation of texts and documents". He has repeatedly claimed to be a liberal and an opponent of totalitarianism in all forms, although some Frenchmen have claimed otherwise. There can be no doubt that he is an active and committed member of the "Institute" and a vocal proponent of the notion that the Holocaust is a "Zionist hoax". Apart from his membership of the editorial committee of the Journal, Faurisson is the author of the leading article in its second issue, "The 'Problem of the Gas Chambers' "—the "problem" being that they did not exist—in which "after thirty years of research" he concludes that "the Hitler 'gas chambers' never existed … the 'genocide' … of the Jews never took place … This lie is largely of Zionist origin … whose chief beneficiary is the State of Israel. The principal victims of this fraud are the German people (but not the German rulers) and the entire Palestinian people." He has twice spoken at annual "conventions" organised by the "Institute" to denounce the Holocaust as a "Zionist hoax".

When Faurisson's activities became known in France, a considerable storm erupted, and he was the subject of great student hostility at his university. In early 1979 he was temporarily suspended from his teaching position, and his case has attracted great interest and notoriety in the French press. He has also been sued for defamation by Auschwitz survivors, a case which is proceeding as I write. Faurisson's case has also been taken up by ultra left French radicals, whose hatred of Israel exceeds their sense of shame, and another curious French leftist publishing house, La Vieille Taupe, has published two volumes by Faurisson. We shall return to these shortly.

I have devoted far more time to this verminous movement than it deserves. One other point, however, needs to be made clear: its effect on Jews. I have frequently heard the claim that the Holocaust was a "Zionist hoax" described by Jews as the "ultimate obscenity", and its impact upon many Jews, particularly those whose relatives were murdered by the Nazis, is certainly far in excess of its intrinsic importance. After reading one local outburst of this madness, a Melbourne Jew [Yehuda Svoray, "A Letter to the Age," Australia-Israel Review, March 28,1979] wrote that "My grandmother, my aunt, my uncle and dozens of my friends and acquaintances were killed in Nazi extermination camps … I feel personally affronted, slapped in the face, spat upon …" and such reactions are common throughout the Jewish community. It seems difficult to believe that any Jew, or any sensitive human being, could react differently.

Let us turn now to Chomsky. To paraphrase what James Kenneth Stephen once wrote about Wordsworth

Two voices are there: one is of the deep
And one is of an old half-witted sheep
Which bleats articulate inanity,
And Chomsky both are thine!

Chomsky is, on the one hand, the "Einstein of linguistics", whose discoveries about the nature of language have made him one of the few social scientists to have become genuine celebrities, a man known and read throughout the world, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he holds the Ferrari Ward Professorship of Linguistics at M.I.T., to Paris and Australia. Chomsky is on the other hand a longstanding, comprehensive, and total opponent of American "imperialism" and militarism in all parts of the world. He was a major figure in the academic movement against the Vietnam War, and is a prolific writer on America's foreign policy, particularly in south-east Asia and Latin America.

Chomsky describes himself as a "libertarian socialist", or an "anarcho-socialist". He is a Jew, the son of a teacher of Hebrew at Jewish colleges in the United States. Indeed, Chomsky's M.A. thesis was on the linguistics of modern Hebrew, and he has many continuing contacts on the Israeli left. His knowledge of Israel and Zionism is extensive. In 1974 he published Peace in the Middle East? (in which he described the Nazi Holocaust as "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history"), an extensive discussion of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Chomsky is, naturally, a committed anti-Zionist, but this is the least tendentious of his political works. Admittedly he does call for the destruction of Israel in its present form and its replacement by a utopian dream, a bi-national State in Palestine. But among anti-Zionists, whose writings are often thinly-disguised anti-semitism of the most vicious kind, Chomsky stands out as a critic of Israel of some sensitivity and perspicacity. Chomsky praises the Kibbutzim in glowing terms, for example, whereas many anti-Zionists condemn them out of hand as instruments of neo-colonialism.

Within the past three years Chomsky has attracted wide adverse publicity for his lengthy attack on the veracity of accounts of the Kampuchean auto-genocide. Much of the second volume of The Political Economy of Human Rights (1980) is devoted to this attack, which questions, at immense length, whether any of the sources upon which our knowledge of the Pol Pot atrocities is based are in fact reliable. Chomsky has had practice at the denial of genocide. But the evidence for genocide in Kampuchea had, by the time their volume neared publication, became so undeniable, that Chomsky and his co-author, after penning a hundred and sixty pages of text with forty pages of footnote references to prove that no massacres occurred in Kampuchea, added what must surely be one of the most blatant examples of intellectual dishonesty in the contemporary period. "When the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct". I do not often quote Albert Langer with approval, but he was surely right when he asked (of another leftist who denied that Pol Pot committed genocide and then was forced to admit that—in Langer's terms—the original reports were "by sheer coincidence" correct all along): "How did the malicious propagandists manage to fantasize the truth? By ESP?" Chomsky's attribution of supernatural powers to those who "were in fact correct" is patently designed for one purpose: to be quoted and requoted—sans his hundred and sixty page denial of Pol Pot genocide—to those who chastise him for his universally-discredited, and shameful, stance on Kampuchea.

Such tactics are typical of Chomsky's method of debate. The common feature of Chomsky's political writings is their tone of extreme self-righteousness. Chomsky's opponents are not merely mistaken. Nor are they even knaves and fools. They are, simultaneously, agents of Satan and complete imbeciles. Conversely, Chomsky and his handful of supporters are virtually alone among the Western intelligentsia in perceiving the truth: because of near-total "brainwashing under freedom", according to Chomsky, "what enters history in the United States (and, we believe, the West generally…) is a version of the facts that suits the ideological requirements of the dominant social groups", by which he means the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, the multi-nationals, and the east coast media establishment. Enunciated most fully in his recent works, Chomsky's world-view has become extreme and complete with time, and extremely and completely self-righteous. Chomsky's world-view is not the usual one of Western left-liberals, nor even of Marxists, of whatever school. It combines a deep mistrust for all "established" and widely accepted sources of information with what might fairly be termed a left-wing conspiracy theory of history, albeit one of considerable subtlety.

What then, do neo-Nazis and Professor Chomsky have to do with each other? Just this: in 1980 Chomsky wrote an introduction to Faurisson's book, in which Faurisson defended himself "against those who accuse me of falsifying history". Chomsky had previously signed a petition protesting against Faurisson's suspension from his University, an action which aroused great controversy as well as surprise in France, and which had alerted a great many people to Chomsky's interest in the case. Chomsky here says little about Faurisson, but aggressively defends his right to publish, on civil libertarian grounds, and denounces the French intelligentsia which "loves to line up and march in step" because of its deep-seated guilt and inadequacy. It is not every week that a world-famous Jewish socialist intellectual writes an introduction to a work whitewashing the Nazis and their crimes; its publication led to a major storm which quickly spread to the English-speaking world.

Perhaps it is appropriate here to explain my own position in this matter. A group of five or six of us in Melbourne had been closely following the "no-Holocaust" movement for some time, especially in its Australian manifestation. Through the main progenitor of this line here, in mid-1980 we had obtained some unpublished letters addressed to the New Statesman, the left-wing English weekly, in reply to an article on this movement by Gitta Sereny (2 November 1979). One of these was dynamite. It was by Faurisson and began:

Noam Chomsky … is aware of the research work I do on what (I) call the 'gas chambers and genocide hoax'. He informed me that Gitta Sereny had mentioned my name in an article in your journal. He told me I had been referred to 'in an extraordinarily unfair way'.

At this point, I had known nothing about Chomsky's connection with Faurisson; nor, I think, did anyone in the English-speaking world: certainly I had never seen it mentioned. Unless Faurisson was flatly lying, it seemed clear that Chomsky—against all apparent likelihood—was not only "aware" of this movement, but was in active and direct contact with one of its main spokesmen ("He told me … "), and furthermore had read Gitta Sereny's unusually informative and comprehensive article. Chomsky, furthermore, had evidently been in contact with Faurisson after reading Sereny's article. These are all important matters, as we shall see.

So extraordinary did this connection seem, that I wrote to Chomsky asking him whether this connection was true and what it signified. I did this with some misgiving, for I had been warned by several persons that Chomsky was, notoriously, a most vituperative correspondent, especially where he perceived a slight to himself, and that the self-righteous, self-destructive elements in Chomsky's published writings were in private magnified a dozen times. They certainly did not exaggerate, as I was to find out.

My correspondence with Chomsky lasted several months in the middle of 1980. Because Chomsky is Chomsky, and the issues are serious, I have little hesitation in sharing his thoughts with a wider audience.

Chomsky's first reply to me restated his civil liberatarian belief in free speech, even for neo-Nazis. It did not go further and condemn Faurisson and the "no-Holocaust" school, nor did it comment upon the monstrous anti-semitic libel implicit or explicit in the claim that the Holocaust was a "Zionist hoax" invented for monetary and political gain.

This [i.e. his previous reply] you find 'puzzling and unsatisfactory'. As I noted to you in my letter, it would indeed be 'puzzling and unsatisfactory' to someone with a deeply totalitarian mentality. To such people, it may seem incomprehensible, even immoral, to believe that those who disagree with one's convictions should have the right of free inquiry and expression. This is a standard view among Nazis and Stalinists, for example. On grounds of simple logic, your letter reveals that you share in these attitudes.

[In a footnote, the critic writes: "Needless to say, this is not the issue at all. No one, so far as I know, questions Faurisson's right to believe that the Holocaust was a hoax, or that the world is shaped like a pancake. The issue is whether Chomsky should write an introduction to a book claiming that my dead relatives in Warsaw are not only still alive, but are milking the German government of millions by fraud."]

Stalinist and Nazi that I am, more was to follow.

You ask whether I believe that Faurisson's claims are valid or not. Which claims? You give exactly one example, namely Faurisson's claim that 'the Holocaust was a "historic lie"' (Here quoting you, not him). Perhaps Faurisson holds this view, but it is interesting to see your basis for attributing it to him. Your source is the Le Monde article that you sent me, where Faurisson happens to say nothing of the kind. Rather, what he calls a 'historic lie' is the claim that there were 'wholesale massacres in gas chambers', or that there were gas chambers at all. Someone might well believe that there were no gas chambers but there was a Holocaust, obviously.

The learned linguist warms to the task, as William James put it.

You find his [i.e. Faurisson's] assertions 'contrary to common sense, established history', etc.—again, an interesting reflection of the totalitarian mentality, or more properly in this case, the mentality of the religious fanatic.

Chomsky had never heard of me, my letter contained not one word about religion—but already I not only possess a totalitarian mentality but am a 'religious fanatic'! What, incidentally, is one to make of a world famous scholar and 'socialist' who in all seriousness claims that opposition to Nazism is religious fanaticism? But let us proceed.

I see no anti-semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the holocaust. Nor would there be anti-semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence. I see no hint of anti-semitic implications in Faurisson's work, and find your argument to the contrary 'puzzling and unsatisfactory' to put it in mildest terms.

Chomsky's letters to me are each over 1500 words long, and became increasingly malevolent, truculent, and hostile. One final illustrative quote is perhaps in order. When I put it to him that his remark that "someone might well believe that there were no gas chambers but there was a Holocaust," was "absurd", I received the following reply:

Again that reveals your complete incapacity to follow the most elementary logical reasoning—quite on a par, and a natural concomitant, of your gross falsification of documentary evidence, which I pointed out to you in my last letter … evidently taking falsification to be as much your privilege as gratuitous insult[!]. A person might well believe that there was a Holocaust—that, say, the Nazis followed a policy of slave labour under conditions so awful that millions of people died and were shovelled into crematoria—and yet believe that there were no gas chambers. If you cannot comprehend this, I suggest that you begin your education again at the kindergarten level.

And so forth, for many a paragraph. This matter had, evidently got deeply under Chomsky's skin. "At least", a friend remarked to me, "we ruined his summer holiday."

What, precisely, has Chomsky done wrong? His iniquity is serious for two main reasons. First, and most obviously, he had lent his reputation and name to an evil crew who are, plainly, happy to exploit it at every turn. It is difficult to believe that Chomsky (or anyone else) would be so naïve as not to see that this would occur. Revealingly, Chomsky's introduction to Faurisson's book does not even state, as does his more recent discussion of this affair in Nation, that "Faurisson's views are diametrically opposed to views I hold and frequently expressed (on the reality of the Holocaust)"; it says nothing of the accuracy of Faurisson's claims, nor, of the movement to which Faurisson belongs. Chomsky ingenuously notes in his Nation article that parts of his introduction "appeared in the French press and have been widely quoted and misquoted", as if this should occasion the slightest surprise.

More revealingly still, Chomsky's petition, signature and introduction are diametrically opposed to his explicit statements on these matters in The Political Economy of Human Rights (Vol I), where he presents his reasons for not raising his voice on civil liberties violations in the Soviet Union, while concentrating exclusively on such violations in countries in the American orbit.

Suppose that the purpose of protest is to relieve human suffering or defend human rights. Then more complex considerations arise. One must consider the plausible consequences for the victims of oppression … People with a genuine concern for human rights would … give serious consideration to the likely effects on the victims… Such persons will also consider how their finite energies can be distributed most efficaciously. It is a cheap and cynical evasion to plead that "we must raise our voices" whenever human rights are violated. Even a saint would not meet this demand. A serious person will try to concentrate protest efforts where they are most likely to ameliorate conditions for the victims of oppression. The emphasis should, in general, be close to home … for privileged Western intellectuals, the proper focus for their protest is at home.

For Chomsky, then, the standard seems to be: Faurisson, si, Sakharov, non.

So far as I am aware, Chomsky is the first intellectual of international stature to give the slightest support, explicit or implicit, to Faurisson and his allies. The normal reaction of decent people is, surely, to have absolutely no truck with Faurisson and his school, to ignore them or fight them. Chomsky has unquestionably given them far more publicity, at an international level, than they would otherwise have secured. He has also given them a patina of legitimacy, which they have willingly worn. If the movement thereby grows in significance, Chomsky must share part of the blame.

Chomsky's writings on the matter are not without a fair share of disingenuousness. Chomsky claims, for example, to know nothing about Faurisson's political connections, describing him in his introduction as "a sort of relatively apolitical liberal", although I and others had sent him evidence of Faurisson's right-wing connections months before his introduction was written. The same applies to Chomsky's much touted devotion to free speech. When Dr Kissinger was being considered for an appointment at Columbia University in 1977, according to Stephen Morris (New Republic, April 11, 1981) groups of left-wing extremists organised a campaign against the appointment on the grounds that Kissinger was a "war criminal". Chomsky was the principal speaker at one such meeting, held on April 26, 1977 at Columbia.

Is it any coincidence that Chomsky, ostensible first citizen of the left, should find something so attractive in Faurisson and his allies as to violate his own pious pronouncements on the duties of intellectuals to protest? I would suggest that the answer is no. I submit that the worldviews of Chomsky, and of Faurisson and his allies, are to a remarkable degree identical. From seemingly opposite perspectives, their visions of truth have converged. The views of Chomsky, as expressed in The Political Economy of Human Rights and elsewhere, and those of Faurisson and his allies in the "Institute of Historical Review" are manifestly similar in ways which go far beyond coincidence. I submit—and I am certain that any reader of both will confirm this—that both consider the following points as basic to a true understanding of the world:

1. The universally accepted sources of true knowledge, news, and history in the Western world are systematically and intentionally false. They are, instead, purveyors of deceit and distortion on so grand a scale that virtually no one in the Western world is aware of it.
2. These sources overwhelmingly emanate from the United States and a few like-minded European countries.
3. The ruling elite these sources plainly represent, and on whose behalf they continuously propagandise, are demonically evil and all-pervasively wicked. They are, in fact, the source of most of the evil in today's world. Mass murder, the systematic distortion of news and history, the enslavement of nations and peoples, are their everyday, routine activities, and they control most of the world. Their overthrow would usher in an era of peace and social justice.
4. The power of these sources largely derives from their alliance with the ruling economic interests of the United States and the American power structure. Apart from the direct economic influence which large corporations and the big banks hold over the mass media, there is an equally insidious process of self-censorship or quasi-censorship by the media whereby events or interpretations not acceptable to America's ruling elite are eliminated from the mass media and are restricted to fringe publications of limited circulation.
5. So universal is this process, that it is known only to a handful of illuminati, who, by virtue of their knowledge, are perceived by the ruling elite as extremely dangerous, and are tolerated only if they remain in obscurity. "This information" (the truth of the "criminal programs of the state", etc.), according to Chomsky (Language and Responsibility) "is accessible, but only for fanatics: in order to unearth it, you have to devote much of your life to the search … Everyone is led to think that what he knows represents a local exception. But the overall pattern remains hidden … What you face here is a very effective kind of ideological control, because one can remain under the impression that censorship does not exist…" (Original italics). According to Australia's best-known member of the "Institute of Historical Review", books advocating anti-establishment ideas are subject to "unofficial trade boycott" or openly suppressed.
6. The small group of illuminati to whom alone the truth is known form a kind of secular sainthood, well-entitled to moral outrage (and righteousness). Comparisons with the persecution of Galileo are commonly made by the "Institute", while Chomsky sees himself as fighting a brave lone battle. "The volume of the chorus proclaiming 'genocide' (in Cambodia)", according to Chomsky, "… made the occasional expression of scepticism appear pathological, as if someone were to proclaim that the earth is flat." (The Political Economy of Human Rights), a view echoed in almost identical terms by Arthur Butz in denying the Jewish Holocaust.
7. Both Chomsky and the ultra-right attach great, indeed central, importance to a non-existent holocaust which, in its alleged singular evil, serves the ruling elite by creating universal condemnation of regimes and ideologies which that elite wishes the masses to hate and fear. To the ultra-right the non-existent holocaust was, of course, that allegedly carried out by the Nazis against the Jews, (but invented by 'Zionists'); to Chomsky, it is the Cambodian "autogenocide" which the Western media "have latched on to … as a drowning man seizes a lifebuoy", in the absence of a Communist "bloodbath" in Vietnam. "If Cambodian terror did not exist, the Western propaganda systems would have to invent it, and in certain respects they did … ", Chomsky states, and then goes on to devote a hundred and sixty pages to showing how it was invented in all respects.
8. While fabricating these imaginary holocausts, the ruling elite carefully censors or ignores the true massacres which involved the "wrong" group of persons. To the ultra-right, this was the death of 8-10 million Germans during the war, "the people who suffered the most"; to Chomsky, these are what he describes as "benign" or even "constructive" massacres, with which the ruling elite is unconcerned or actively encourages.

To be sure, there are some differences between the two viewpoints. The position of the "Zionists", obviously central to the neo-Nazis, is not central to Chomsky, though his dislike of Israel is great. More generally, Chomsky's interest is mainly in East Asia, the "Institute's" in Europe.

At the basis of their identity of views is their common grounding, I believe, not in totalitarianism (though obviously this is the bottom line for most of the neo-Nazis) but in an exaggerated, utterly unrealistic notion of "civil liberties" bordering on anarchy and questioning any form of established authority over political power and history, no matter how well-established, and no matter to whom such doubt does harm. Like many others, I have always believed that the most evil men in the modern world were totalitarian system-builders, and especially the "terrible simplifiers", thereof, from Himmler to Pol Pot. I am no longer sure if that is true.

In July 1981 in a Paris court Faurisson was found guilty of libel against the eminent French historian Lev Poliakev (whose works on the Holocaust he had said, in effect, were untrue) and a number of Auschwitz survivors who had sued him. He was given a three-month suspended sentence and fined a substantial sum, to be donated to anti-racialist societies. "To claim the Holocaust is untrue is to kill its victims twice", the prosecutor declared. Chomsky's remarks on the verdict are not on record.