December 10, 2023 - 5:00pm
As the last generation of Holocaust survivors begins to die out, it feels disturbing that, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll, 20% of young Americans believe that “the Holocaust is a myth”. Similarly concerning is that, if one breaks it down by race, 13% of black Americans agree with this statement (a similar number also applies to Hispanics). The statistic stands out in stark contrast to white Americans, for whom the figure is 5%.
What explains such a racial disparity? How is it that a society that commits so much to official Holocaust memorialisation can raise a generation containing a significant minority which denies the Holocaust altogether?
Such questions aren’t going to have simple answers, of course. One can look at other data, such as black Americans being more likely to endorse conspiracy theories than white counterparts; or in studies concluding that black Americans, especially those under 30, are more likely to affirm antisemitic stereotypes as partial explanations. Spillover from anti-Israel feeling, which is more prevalent among younger generations, can also lead some to engage in Holocaust denial.
The Holocaust is undoubtedly key to the establishment of the state of Israel, and Israel — for many within these demographics — is a murderous, racist settler-colonial state that is fundamentally illegitimate. To deny the Holocaust, then, is to therefore negate Israel’s raison d’être. The memory of the Holocaust, as Enzo Traverso has argued, is the “civil religion” of the modern West, with a “secular liturgy of remembering”. And as with every religion, there will be blasphemers.
There is a feeling among a slice of black Americans that the Holocaust was, in vulgar terms, a “white on white” crime, and that the only reason it is drilled into every schoolchild in modern Western societies is because it happened in Europe to “white people”. What about the genocides against the Herero and Namaqua peoples? Or the atrocities Belgium committed in the Congo? That’s not to mention the Atlantic slave trade, which, it could be argued, deserves a similar memorialisation.
These resentments have a history to them. The civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, in the prime of his political career, gave a voice to some of them during a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. He said that while Jewish suffering during the Holocaust was “atrocious”, it was “really not unique in history”, since “60 million blacks had been exterminated over the four centuries of slavery in America.”
What’s more, this “white on white” view can lead many black Americans, even among the majority who understand its gravity, to struggle to understand how the Holocaust was racist in nature. Whoopi Goldberg was raked over the coals last year for claiming the Holocaust wasn’t “about race”. Black Americans’ intimate experience of racism in the American context has been through skin colour: thus, racism becomes something white people dish out onto non-whites, because of their darker skin. American Jews are a fully integrated, flourishing and influential minority, and are “white-passing”. So the idea that Jews experience racism, and not just “prejudice”, isn’t immediately apparent.
This view, of course, misunderstands that racism isn’t just about skin colour, but also the essentialisation of a perceived difference to deem a people outside of the oneness of humanity. It also underestimates the racial nature of the “Jewish question” in Europe that formed the prehistory of the Holocaust. After all, the Nuremberg Laws were in part inspired by the Jim Crow regime.
Underlying these arguments is a squalid competition for who can claim the title of history’s most abused victim. Yet there is nothing ennobling about suffering; victimhood is something that should be abolished, not fetishised. Instead of counterposing the Holocaust and Atlantic slavery, or antisemitism and anti-black racism against each other, we should understand how they relate to one another as the common ancestor of racism. Or as Frantz Fanon put it, “the antisemite is inevitably a negrophobe”.
Ralph Leonard is a British-Nigerian writer on international politics, religion, culture and humanism.
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SubscribeMost people are steeped in ignorance as the focus of education and media has been so narrow. A startling percentage of people believe that slavery began with British involvement in the African slave trade, that only Britain and other western nations were imperial and colonialist, only whites are racist, that the only genocide was the Holocaust etc. Yes, Belgium committed vile atrocities in Africa but Africans unfortunately didn’t only suffer at the hands of whites. The Zulus were warriors who annihilated smaller tribes who stood in their way for example. Arabs enslaved Africans for several centuries before Britain involved itself in that evil. That many deny the Holocaust is shocking and telling. It reflects the deep racism that lurks in the souls of many. Perhaps time to widen the curriculum before it’s too late?
How about articles on the genocide in Darfur by Janjaweed, the harrying and burning down of villages and killing of people by the Fulani? Add the genocide of Armenians, the imperialism and expansionism of Islam? We have a multicultural population we must expand the focus and stop the grievance and hate mongering and show that the weak and vulnerable have often if not always suffered at the hands of the elites they were subject to whatever their race or creed. That divide and rule is the game we are currently being subjected to. We need to start uniting and resist the division that is being relentlessly driven.
I fear we are running out of time.
There seems to be a general belief that a crime is only a crime if a white person commits it and the victim of this said crime is a non-white (and Jews don’t count).
DEI policies are a denial of opportunity of white people in traditionally white societies, and therefore a righteous act.
I’m not surprised by these finding one bit
To me the whole project
is reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Well, our technocratic masters are very much in favour of re-educating the masses if we dare disagree with them. There is nothing more fearsome to technocrats than the will of the people.
Throughout most of history & across most societies, it was the norm for the victors in any conflict to kill the men & enslave the women & children. Most tribes/societies were wiped out, leaving no trace of ever having existed. This only fell out of fashion (and it’s open to debate how far out of fashion) when the enormous capacity for destruction offered by mechanised warfare became apparent.
This obsessive preoccupation with the transatlantic slave trade, the holocaust & a handful of other causes really is getting tedious.
…a little understated on Slavery. The Trade into the Islamic World lasted for a Millenium before any European became involved as anything but a slave (the Berber Pirates of North Africa raided the whole of the Mediterranean, and as far afield as Southern Ireland and South-West England)…all Muslim peoples participated, not just Arabs (the Qu’ran explicitly allows enslaving “infidels)…most Black African male slaves were castrated…it involved vastly more victims than the Middle Passge…which it facilitated, because Black African Rulers long accustomed to selling other Black Africans north into the Muslim World, just opened new markets on the Atlantic Coast to satisfy new European customers…trading in slaves was how they had grown rich and powerful throughout history…
…furthermore, it was the British who expended blood and treasure for over a century to both halves of the trade down…
…and as operations like ISIS demonstrate, Islamic extremists are quite keen to go back to it given a chance.
However, much in your comment I agree with…
One of my ancestors fought in Lord Exmouth’s “Bombardment of Algiers” to free Christian slaves from the Dey of Algiers in 1816
so, yes slavery was not a British invention
Yes thank you for spelling it out. I simply didn’t have the energy. Why is there such a determined effort to deny the full unedited history of slavery? What is the endgame? Reflecting on that keeps me awake at night for the answer I come up with is terrifying.
…in fairness, there is still respectable academic work being done…but it is most unlikely to become “Popular History”, because people writing that (however good they are)…are looking for big sales, not a wholesale boycott based on the precis on the dustjacket…
…which is why I try to write a paragraph or two whenever I see the opportunity, and have five minutes.
Same is true of the real status of the Crusades, which were a counter-offensive (only partially successful)… against a relentless Islamic Jihad which had started five hundred years before, and continued for five hundred years after…which extinguished an emerging Post-Roman and Christian Civilization on the Southern and Eastern Shores of the Mediterranean…nearly destroyed the West altogether…and was only finally brought to an end in 1683 when King Jan Sobieski “The Fat” of Poland led his winged hussars down the Kahlenberg and fell on the Ottoman Army besieging Vienna like the Hammer of God…
…my hope being that if just the odd person or two has their curiosity piqued, and learns a bit more…it helps hold the line for a little longer…
Good point. Very interesting to read that bit about the crusades.
That’s a very interesting point about the reason behind the Crusades. Could you identity any online sources we might access to gain further insight into this please? A bit like the Atlantic slave trade narrative of the Woke era, I suspect that the Crusades have been attributed to an aggressive, expansionist, colonialist European mindset without any balancing evidence for 500 years of Islamic Jihad and why that might have prompted the Crusader response. Thank you …
There’s much online to read about this. You’ll also find that Islam’s conquests Westward during that period is one of the reasons why southern Europeans tend to have darker skin.
…look up “Siege of Jerusalem (636-637)…and then pick up references either backwards or forwards in time, about the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the Arab Conquests.
Jerusalem was a Christian City under the Roman/Byzantine Empire for 300 years BEFORE Caliph Umar took it by force in that year…and still holds some of the most ancient and important of Christian Shrines…including the Empty Tomb of Christ…in the Church of the Holy Sepulchure…
And it is never acknowledged that white people ended slavery, passed the Civil Rights Act and today force DEI programs into their institutions. Black people did not have the power to make those things happen, only white people did. One must wonder if it will be reciprocated some day in the future. Ole Jesse must not sleep well at night knowing that we have inverted his great dream!
You make a valid point, Mrs R. Shaka the Zulu king is estimated to have killed c.1 million of his Black compatriots during his genocidal reign of terror (and who is now honoured with Durban international airport named after him on of the greatest ever mass murderers in African history!). And what about the centuries, if not millennia, of the slave trade between the East African coast and Arab nations, in which (as with the later Atlantic slave trade) Black strong men (chiefs, or whatever they called themselves) captured Blacks from other tribes from the interior and thereby sold their own kind to the foreign traders; or the white slave trade conducted by Blacks along the ‘Barbary Coast’, extending substantially South along the West African coast, that captured c. 1 million Whites from Europe (including Whites captured in raids on British coastal towns and villages) and sold them into slavery in North Africa? All these other instances/aspects of slavery are ignored in the current Woke era that focuses exclusively on the Atlantic slave trade in order to smear White history and heritage as though Europeans were the only racial group in history guilty of this crime against humanity.
The official racism of the Woke era, which is specifically targeted against Whites generally, is condoned, and continually reinforced in every sector (and is legally sanctioned in many respects), so it is ‘OK’. Hence the egregious sorts of arguments as employed by Jesse Jackson’s reported racist take on the Holocaust.
This is misguided. Many won’t like hearing this, but the modern concept of race was invented in the West during Enlightenment, and it’s a specifically Western invention. Most examples you give there aren’t racist ones – yes Arab did slavery, but it wasn’t on the basis of race, it wasn’t because some people were presumed inferior. It’s more like how Vikings did slavery (also pre-Enlightenment) on their fellow Vikings and everyone else they could get their hands on.
According to the YouGov poll 20% of people under 30 strongly agree or tend to agree that the Holocaust is a myth, compared to fewer than 1% of people 65 and older. That is more significant than what 13% of a particular minority group may believe, because that is America’s future. And that future looks terrifying.
Two ghastly post millenial trends are combining, both fed and nurtured by the Progressive New Order (which began in the 1990s). The first is the mass derangement of our State elite law media and academia and their abject surrender to the poisonous identitarian reverse race cult. Harvard Heads are now so terrified of the fists of the Mob, so brain addled and cowardly, that they are ok with the genocide of the Jews, contextually. Game Over. This mania is as pernicious and damaging as the Culture Revolution in China 68. But because our leaders and law are all captured, awareness of this totalitarian cultural horror is still limited. The second horror is the lack of proper schooling and education of our young since the 90s, interwoven with moutning evidence that perhaps 25% of this first poor generation to grow up in the social media bubble are suffering mental affliction (check out the rentention rates for young teachers, nurses and police – incredible amounts cannot cope). The anti meritocratic Herodian ‘Feed 50% to the Uni Debt Machine’ has so lowered educational standards it is no surprise that knowledge of the Holocaust has vanished. No History is taught by our leftist teachers and if it is it will only serve the White Evil Empire CRT mania. How can we ever can recover from this ongoing Revolution and its assault on Enlightened Values? It is sadly quite impossible when there is no political party opposing or even challenging it. The Proudly Woke Tories have been devoured by the Progressive System. And this time (unlike Brexit) we the People will get no vote to liberate our culture. It is permanent.
The State elite, law, media and academia have not surrendered to the cult of identity politics. They have led it.
Is it correct – as I’ve heard – that the roots of it lead back to the UN?
The roots of much of it lead back to the antisemitic propaganda the USSR pumped out in the Cold War when Israel moved into the Western sphere of influence. The Russian Empire’s history of antisemitism led to the biggest exodus from Europe up to 1914 and the USSR added to that heritage by adding the fact that Jews wanted to remain Jewish instead of only wanting to be Internationalists. And they were a convenient scapegoat, like old times
Read this book by Alan Burns. It provides a fascinating insight into the manipulation of the UN and earlier initiatives to undermine and ultimately destroy western imperialism. You will understand better how and why the UN has been such an evil force in the shaping of world politics and the ultimate evolution of the Woke era which now threatens the very existence of western civilisation.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Last-Imperialist-Burnss-Defense-British/dp/1684512174
100%. The Equality Laws of 2010 enshrined the idea of Victim Groups without thinking that that necessitates an Oppressor. So the State has been the first engine and all the Establishment quickly bowed the knee.
I posted my own comment before reading yours – you expressed far more clearly than I concerns that sometimes wake me in the middle of the night.
The holocaust is not “key to the establishment of the state of Israel”.
Jews settled and bought land in a tiny area, which was already underpopulated and underdeveloped, and happened to be their ancient homeland.
They then demanded and got an independent state because otherwise they would be subsumed by a hostile anti Jewish majority Muslim.
Incidentally, around the same time that the muslim minorities in India demanded a similar separate state, carved out of rich lands a hundred times greater and more populated than “Palestine”, and with a lot more violence and rape involved.
While Hindu India allowed the formation of Pakistan, the muslims ganged up and attacked tiny Israel.
Every bit of land that Israel won after that, was by dint of winning wars of aggression started by the fellow muslims.
And also, incidentally, Israel continues to have a substantial Arab population that are treated as equals.
Remember Pakistan?
Hindus and Sikhs are now 1%, Lahore and Karachi (both had large and prosperous non muslim communities) are now “pure”, and they have blasphemy laws, forced conversions etc
So the real question is not whether what’s the basis of Israel. Israel has the right to exist, period.
The real question is why those so enthusiastic about human rights there are so silent about Pakistan, Iran, Saudi, Qatar….
Muslims are oppressed by definition.
Jews are guilty by definition.
Both answers are embarrassed to say out loud, but fellow party members mean them (we be of one blood ye and i)
With ref to your last para-Because there is an unholy alliance of sorts between the human rights lobby, and Pakistan in particular.
Hindus and Christians are daily attacked, temples( including UNESCO Heritage ones) are destroyed, yet I hear no outcries of minorities in danger. It’s a silent ethnic cleansing being perpetrated.
I should add that one of the most heinous violence took place in Hyderabad state where the Razakar militias of the Nizam perpetrated some of the worst crimes against Hindus.
This seems to have been largely forgotten too by most in the West.
https://www.opindia.com/2022
/09/hyderabad-liberation-day-history-of-razakars-and-integration-of-hyderabad/
Oh did some black people get enslaved, or something? I’ve never heard them say anything about that before. They should invoke it more often. But perhaps I have been too cut up about my serf ancestors, and even the Slav-ic peoples, to notice…
Oh did some black people get enslaved, or something?
Many, as I understand it, by other black people.
What strange twists and turns ideologies take. Think of all the imagery in which the situation of black people in America is compared with that of the Israelites. Slavery in Egypt, exile in Babylon, Babylon as symbol of western white civilisation etc. Even leaders like MLK have more than a little of the Old Testament prophet about them.
You could almost call it cultural appropriation.
Whenever I look for informed comment on world affairs, my second thought is ‘ask an african american’ . My third thought is ‘ask an american’. My first thought, for superior intellectual insight is ‘ask the cat.’
My cat thanks you all for the upvotes…….
I think the author is barking up the wrong tree. There have already been dozens of articles written about this survey. Not only do 20% of young Americans think the Holocaust is a myth, but another 24% believe it has been exaggerated. That’s almost half the country under the age of 29. This IMO is more troubling than the racial divide.
I think the oppressor vs oppressed narrative explains a lot of this. This Marxist garbage has been drilled into their heads their entire lives. I think the racial element can be explained because more black and brown people consider themselves oppressed. They would be more inclined to perceive more sucessful cultures as enemies.
It would be interesting to see the results of the survey broken down by democrats and republicans. I haven’t seen anything like this, but I’m pretty certain what the results would be. I think it’s also fascinating that progressives are forever smearing people as deniers – a clear reference to the holocaust – while they are more likely to deny it even happened.
This is speculation on my part, of course, but I think it explains the survey results more clearly. I could be wrong.
I think the SS butchers and their victims would be equally surprised to find the holocaust being described as “white on white”.
There has long been a strain of virulent anti-semitism among the radical black nationalist and Nation of Islam tendency. Farrakhan spouted ‘elders of Zion’ level stuff for decades. Given the recent promotion of this ideology, the attendant anti-semitism should be expected.
Similarly, there are problems with any and all deaths during colonial periods being classed as white on black killings – as if warfare, famine, tribal conflict etc were unknown in the areas before being introduced by the white man.
“Yet there is nothing ennobling about suffering; victimhood is something that should be abolished, not fetishised.”
Victimhood, or at least its performance, is currency in modern discourse. To the extent that it is frequently the first claim made by a speaker to establish their credentials and authority to speak: “As a [insert category of victimhood], I know all about [insert category of social injustice].”
An odd end to an article which essentially suggests the opposite.
The Black Hebrew Israelite cult believes that American black people are the real People of Israel, and the world’s Jewish people stole being Jews from blacks.
If you watch polling then young Americans, particularly male, and minority groups often report strange or unusual results. For instance, one public poll from 2021 had one in five Americans under 30 agreeing the earth was flat. So these things need to be taken with a large pinch of salt. Part is likely to be the difficulty of reaching these groups with online surveys, but also a lot will be trolling or fake answers for a laugh. It could be true, but I wouldn’t trust it.
If Jews are not an ethnic minority but just white supremacists, you can kid yourself that it’s not racist to hate Jews.
Weird quote at the end of this article which is reporting on the higher rates of black/hispanic antisemitism than white antisemitism amongst young people in the U.S.
There are a couple of ways to improve self-esteem (and self) – pull yourself up (MLK method), or pull others down (SJW method). There are many problems with the latter, perhaps the most compelling is a point I heard Jon McWhorter making – to paraphrase: ‘if you start down that road it’s only a matter of time before the group you try to pull down will return the favour, and that is not a fight African-Americans want have’. I think he partly had in mind the adage ‘people in glass houses should not throw stones’.
I am willing to guess that most African-Americans if asked, could not provide that dates when World War II actually occurred. I say this in all seriousness.
I don’t understand why all this is so surprising. As things recede into history and become more remote, don’t we expect interest and belief to fade away?
If the poll is repeated 10 years from now, almost no young people will believe that the holocaust took place. Why should they?
On that basis almost no young people should believe that slavery was an essential part of the USA economy until 1865. Odd how that doesn’t appear to be the case!
But the flow of these memories depends on current events. The word ‘slavery’ has become more common over the last 20 years as academics have applied hermaneutics to history and BLM has become fashionable. This will die down again when they think of something else to deconstruct.
The word ‘holocaust’ has probably been used more often in the last two months than in the previous 20 years. To some of these kids it is actually new. The next generation might grow up without ever hearing of the word.
What a low bar you set for yourself and others. I didn’t even study history pst junior school and I know about the Spanish Armada. History informs the future.
Sorry, what?