Why do Nazis deny (or downplay) the Holocaust?

[Denkron]

My question is this, why do Nazis deny/downplay the severity/existence of the Holocaust (Jewish deaths to be specific)? Looking at the racial ideology of Nazi Germany and the extermination campaign which ran throughout WWII its blatantly obvious that they wanted to completely eradicate the Jewish people. In their pursuit to "better" the world the Nazis killed over 6 million Jews. If their mission was so "righteous" why then do the Nazis try to skew/deny the facts? Where is the logic in denying something that your ideology dictates you should be proud of?

[boofhead]

I don't believe most members of the NAZI party in the '40s were aware of the exterminations, so to say it was fundamental to their ideology would not be true for them. Death camps were not exactly advertised, nor would they serve as a draw card for NAZI ideals.

[clone]

I don't believe most members of the NAZI party in the '40s were aware of the exterminations, so to say it was fundamental to their ideology would not be true for them. Death camps were not exactly advertised, nor would they serve as a draw card for NAZI ideals.

i thing he is refering to neo nazis

[Condottiere 40K]

Because their forebears got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and the ideology they inherited and still advocate is based on xenophobia and racism.

[xcorps]

Wouldn't you try to dissimulate if the political party/ideology of your choice was responsible for some of the worst crimes against humanity in history? TWC has had it's share of holocaust deniers and wannabe Nazi sympathizers. It's good for a laugh or two, but it always ends up producing the same old tired tripe and drivel that make you want to wash your face with a wire brush.

Where is the logic in denying something that your ideology dictates you should be proud of?

Where's the logic is making the claim that you are superior to your next door neighbor because he's Black/White, Jewish/Protestant, Gay/Straight? Hatred doesn't want logical rhetoric. Hatred wants emotionally charged rhetoric couched in logic. Hatred doesn't want intellect, it wants ignorance.

When you see any ideology that bases it's positions on the blame for misfortune on others due to chance circumstances of their birth, rest assured that ideology has no logic.

[DimeBagHo]

Not a current event. Moved from the Mudpit to the Academy.

[fkizz]

Actually same bugs me. The same ideological groups that literally hates jews to death deny that their former ideological group literally hated jews to death.

Which brings about the "racism" card, and the way minorities are handled, IMO they are poorly handled nowadays, probably due to fear that things may quickly escalate to some nazi-like thing.

Racism is a curious sad issue, it's a natural evolutionary reflex to see people as quite different even amongst the same ethnicity, let alone differing ethnicities. Problem is when seeing as different evolves to something worse.

For example, you don't see many campaigns to end racism against asian imigrants, and they get discriminated too. Why does this happen? Because the discrimination does not bring about a very negative consequence, but it happens nonetheless.

In USA with Black People, and having a separate crime section when it's about black people, it's the most honest form of the government/law acknowledging black people as different from white people. They even have a different laws because of different ethnicity! Why people don't protest? Because it is a discrimination that doesn't hurt black people.

ie- discrimination is inevitable and is not racism, racism is measured by how you act towards the (inevitable) discrimination.

The western world is obsessed with a possible re-rise of racism and nazism, and therefore can't make clear policies or decisions that touch the racism issue with a 40 meters stick.

[Col. Tartleton]

No, discrimination is the problem. Racism is in your head. Discrimination is when you act upon it.

You can't do anything about racism. Educate maybe, but I'm skeptical. It's only an issue when they discriminate against people. However it's only criminal when it's harmful. If you're just a jerk to people that's not a crime.

[fkizz]

No, discrimination is the problem. Racism is in your head. Discrimination is when you act upon it.

But I agree with @Col. Tartleton that discrimination is the problem, not racism.

I guess we have same opinions but I traded the words.

exchange words racism <-> dicrimination, and my post has the same point, english is not my mother tongue so that prolly happened.

In a nutshell just meant that seeing other people as different from even amongst your family and ethnicity is a tendency, let alone people of other ethnicities.

So that the inevitable cognitive bias to see something different in people of other ethnicities (even different in people of your own ethnicity) will always be there, problem is how that is acted upon, and what policies are made to adress this, and what the cultural response should be.

Due to fear of a "discrimination epidemia" with nazi tunes (can't say if it's a valid fear or not), policy making about different ethnicities, regardless of good intentions, has been clumsy and not very clear.

For starters, each minority presents itself as a need for a different aproach for the other - you can't expect society to react the same way/ make the same policies to black people, jews, or asians.

USA does not have a "jewish history month" for example.

[Duptar]

You can't do anything about racism. Educate maybe, but I'm skeptical. It's only an issue when they discriminate against people. However it's only criminal when it's harmful. If you're just a jerk to people that's not a crime.

I'm not sure education would work either. Racism is usually brought about because it's tolerated and even encouraged by the parents of a racist. Also they are home schooled in the majority of cases.

My question is this, why do Nazis deny/downplay the severity/existence of the Holocaust (Jewish deaths to be specific)? Looking at the racial ideology of Nazi Germany and the extermination campaign which ran throughout WWII its blatantly obvious that they wanted to completely eradicate the Jewish people. In their pursuit to "better" the world the Nazis killed over 6 million Jews. If their mission was so "righteous" why then do the Nazis try to skew/deny the facts? Where is the logic in denying something that your ideology dictates you should be proud of?

Jealousy most likely. And for propaganda reasons.

[Menelik_I]

My question is this, why do Nazis deny/downplay the severity/existence of the Holocaust (Jewish deaths to be specific)? Looking at the racial ideology of Nazi Germany and the extermination campaign which ran throughout WWII its blatantly obvious that they wanted to completely eradicate the Jewish people. In their pursuit to "better" the world the Nazis killed over 6 million Jews. If their mission was so "righteous" why then do the Nazis try to skew/deny the facts? Where is the logic in denying something that your ideology dictates you should be proud of?

There is a difference in how an ideology present itself and how it actually performs when given full power to be implemented, same thing why Communists denies the Soviet and Chinese crime, because political platforms are cuddly declarations of good intention.

The Nazi Platform in part was larger than racism it self, so for Nazis who read the platform such crimes are not ''real nazism'' and so on. In a sense they are right that Nazism was greater than Racism, it was a totalitarian regime which could carry out discrimination as an afterthought with minimal effort.

But I agree with @Col. Tartleton that discrimination is the problem, not racism.

[Hakkapeliitta]

Full blown Holocaust denialism is extremely weird. It has to go through so many hoops and interconnected conspiracies that it ends up arguing that Jews are so extremely competent and intelligent that they should rule the world.

[Kitsunegari]

You mistakenly assume that Nazism has any firm morality other than the ends justify the means, in reality they were they the masters of betrayal and cloak and dagger politics, so i'm pretty sure that Himmler, Goebbels, and co wouldn't mind a strategy like denial which has the ultimate goal of rehabilitating their ideology in popular opinion.

[magpie]

Some follower,s of the late Adolf think he was right.
Other,s think its exaggerated.
Some think its just Jewish propaganda and never happened. Where is the gypsy and gay memorial and their reparation money?

Adolf kept the National bit of National socialism and dumped the socialist bit.
He purged the party for his own agenda.

[knight of virtue and valor]

Because Nazism, like any other philosophy, for it to have any chance of accomplishing anything, has to recruit people. When no one will listen to you because you did something a while back, like, lets say, killing a load of jews, than you might want to downplay it so that they at least half listen to your arguments.

[RTW Fan]

My question is this, why do Nazis deny/downplay the severity/existence of the Holocaust (Jewish deaths to be specific)? Looking at the racial ideology of Nazi Germany and the extermination campaign which ran throughout WWII its blatantly obvious that they wanted to completely eradicate the Jewish people. In their pursuit to "better" the world the Nazis killed over 6 million Jews. If their mission was so "righteous" why then do the Nazis try to skew/deny the facts? Where is the logic in denying something that your ideology dictates you should be proud of?

The problem with the Nuremberg trials is that it was "victor's peace" so to say, and the prosecution was never seriously challenged on some of the facts that they presented. These facts later became the basis for the history of the holocaust, and it is not incredible to believe that, being a trial, there was not some exagerration etc.

Why do neo-nazis challenge it? Because many of them do not hold distinctly Nazi views at all and a lot of groups are tarred with this brush who may only really be sympathisers of Nazism. They probably want to sanitise their political beliefs.

[StealthFox]

The Holocaust is a recent part of history, one that many people alive today can remember first hand. Perhaps a part of this "downplaying" or even forgetting can be attributed to shame. Shame is a powerful shaping force in the construction of memory and historical narratives. In many instances one would rather forget something shameful happened instead of continuously remembering it.

[Denny Crane!]

Surely the Holocaust was every Nazi and NeoNazis wet dream? Why would they downplay it.

[fkizz]

Surely the Holocaust was every Nazi and NeoNazis wet dream? Why would they downplay it.

either:

1- was not the wet dream of ALL nazis

2-they don't want to scare new recruits, and save holocaust when better indoctrinated

3-they want to deny holocaust so it can be repeated and denied again, sometime in history.

[boofhead]

either:

1- was not the wet dream of ALL nazis

2-they don't want to scare new recruits, and save holocaust when better indoctrinated

3-they want to deny holocaust so it can be repeated and denied again, sometime in history.

No.1 sounds about right to me. It would be quite conceivable for a Nazi or neo-Nazi just to want the untermenschen to GTFO of his territory, for example.