A few days ago, Jewish comedian David Baddiel aired a documentary on Holocaust denial on the BBC. Baddiel visited the sites of the many Nazi atrocities against the Jewish people, including the remains of the little-known extermination site at Chelmno, where he encountered a man who lived nearby at the time and spoke of the dreadful screams coming from the camp. He also spoke to Deborah Lipstadt and her lawyer Anthony Julius, who prevailed when David Irving sued Lipstadt for (correctly) calling him a Holocaust denier.
Throughout the documentary, Baddiel debated with himself whether his documentary would be complete without talking to a Holocaust denier in person. Baddiel's reticence was clear and understandable. When he posed the question to Anthony Julius, Julius was unequivocal in stating that such people should not be given airtime on the grounds that addressing deniers is simply giving them exposure, even if it is to refute them. Lipstadt believed it was sufficient to lay out their lies and destroy them, without going to the individuals responsible for them. In the end, Baddiel chose to speak to a denier, an man named Dermot Mulqueen who had trolled Baddiel's Facebook account earlier in the documentary. The result demonstrated why Baddiel's instincts were absolutely correct.
Throughout the documentary, Baddiel debated with himself whether his documentary would be complete without talking to a Holocaust denier in person. Baddiel's reticence was clear and understandable. When he posed the question to Anthony Julius, Julius was unequivocal in stating that such people should not be given airtime on the grounds that addressing deniers is simply giving them exposure, even if it is to refute them. Lipstadt believed it was sufficient to lay out their lies and destroy them, without going to the individuals responsible for them. In the end, Baddiel chose to speak to a denier, an man named Dermot Mulqueen who had trolled Baddiel's Facebook account earlier in the documentary. The result demonstrated why Baddiel's instincts were absolutely correct.
Baddiel, to his credit, examined the full scope of contexts from which Holocaust denial can take shape, including those presenting a greater degree of ethical complexity than one might assume. These included a trip to Vilnius, where Jonas Norieka, a Lithuanian national hero, was proven to have been a collaborator with the Nazis before becoming a resistance fighter against the Soviet occupation. For Lithuanians, whose history had for so long been defined by Soviet rule, celebrating Norieka as a national hero was part of reclaiming their history for themselves. Accepting his earlier complicity in Jewish exterminations was, to their eyes, muddying the water of their moral and historic right to self-determination. Baddiel also spoke to a Facebook representative - another former Lib-Dem, one notes, to add to Nick Clegg's appointment in 2018 as Vice-President of Global Affairs and Communications - about the line between the freedom to express incorrect or dishonest views and making a direct attack against an individual and a group.
An increasingly common argument against such an approach is that by presenting these complexities, Baddiel was 'humanising' the act of Holocaust denial. In other words, he was making it easier to understand denial on a human level rather than simply presenting it as an innate, one-dimensional evil. In doing so, though, Baddiel was also showing how evil does not exist in the distant abstract, perpetrated by monsters barely of the same species as you and me. Rather, if we are to confront and defeat evil, we must be aware that it comes from a place which exists in all of us.
An increasingly common argument against such an approach is that by presenting these complexities, Baddiel was 'humanising' the act of Holocaust denial. In other words, he was making it easier to understand denial on a human level rather than simply presenting it as an innate, one-dimensional evil. In doing so, though, Baddiel was also showing how evil does not exist in the distant abstract, perpetrated by monsters barely of the same species as you and me. Rather, if we are to confront and defeat evil, we must be aware that it comes from a place which exists in all of us.
We all like to think of ourselves as heroes, who would have been part of the Resistance during WW2 and protected as many Jews (and anyone else not conforming to the Nazi's code of supposed Aryan perfection) from extermination as possible. The reality is that for a considerable number of us, that would not have been true. If it were, none of history's most abhorrent atrocities would have happened at all. The people who sent millions of Jews to their extermination and used their ashes as fertilizer are the same people as you and me. There is nothing more dangerous than to view oneself as a 'good' person, because from there all one's actions are justified (one cannot be a good person who does bad things). One can be as sure that those on the Republican right who make excuses for Trump's xenophobia view themselves as just as righteous as those on the Corbynite left in the UK who shrug off Corbyn's persistent proximity to anti-Jewish prejudice and history of terrorist sympathising, all while spreading prejudicial stereotypes themselves.
Placing humanity at the core of Baddiel's documentary was essential not only in rebuking the evil of Holocaust denial, but removing the Holocaust itself from the abstraction of textbooks and black-and-white television footage. Listening to an Auschwitz survivor recount her memories of being separated from her family, and being told that the building with smoke pouring from the chimney was where her mother and siblings had been taken, never to be seen again, personalised the soul-hollowing depths of the horror in a way facts and figures in a schoolbook, or grainy footage made ancient by its lack of colour and clarity, never can.
To that end, Baddiel's interview with the denier Dermot Mulqueen served a deeper purpose than simply defeating his arguments. It showed Holocaust denial from a human mouth, that of a man who described himself as a moderate and sung surreal ditties about the 'perks' of concentration camp life. In an earlier part of the documentary, Baddiel came across an online document by racist website, The Daily Stormer, detailing the ways in which irony could be used to get around people's disgust at obvious expressions of hatred. These evolving methods of hate expression are unsettling both in using humour to make people unwitting participants in its distribution and showing how easily technological advances can be hijacked to spread old evils: is Arbeit Macht Frei (labour will set you free) above the gates of Auschwitz not history's sickest joke? The unspoken note of encouragement, though, is the note that the vast majority of people are repelled these days when presented directly with such horrible views. To witness those views spoken aloud by Mulqueen in his interview was essential in making Holocaust denial a human problem, not just words and images behind a screen.
To that end, Baddiel's interview with the denier Dermot Mulqueen served a deeper purpose than simply defeating his arguments. It showed Holocaust denial from a human mouth, that of a man who described himself as a moderate and sung surreal ditties about the 'perks' of concentration camp life. In an earlier part of the documentary, Baddiel came across an online document by racist website, The Daily Stormer, detailing the ways in which irony could be used to get around people's disgust at obvious expressions of hatred. These evolving methods of hate expression are unsettling both in using humour to make people unwitting participants in its distribution and showing how easily technological advances can be hijacked to spread old evils: is Arbeit Macht Frei (labour will set you free) above the gates of Auschwitz not history's sickest joke? The unspoken note of encouragement, though, is the note that the vast majority of people are repelled these days when presented directly with such horrible views. To witness those views spoken aloud by Mulqueen in his interview was essential in making Holocaust denial a human problem, not just words and images behind a screen.
Making visible and confronting the views of people like Mulqueen may be uncomfortable and revealing of a part of humanity most would rather imagine as separate from ourselves, but it is also the only way to destroy any pretence of credibility or image of victimised iconoclasm their proponents may cultivate. In 2009, there was a huge furore when Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, a far-right nationalist party which had won two seats at the recent European Parliamentary election, was invited on Question Time, the BBC's flagship political debate programme. Far from inciting violence or widening the party's support base, Griffin's obvious and incoherent attempts to disguise his prejudice under a veneer of respectability backfired spectacularly, leading to a total collapse of his poll numbers and party.
Contrary to the opinions of those who would hide such unpleasant characters from view, people know real hate when they are presented with it. Visibility did not empower Griffin and his views, it destroyed them, just as it did when Mulqueen was reduced to claiming Jewish people owning German cars was proof that the Holocaust was a hoax. Anti-semitism is far from the only form of prejudice, but the length and virulence of its history make it a bellwether for when hatred as a whole is once again beginning to gain a grip on legitimacy. With the far-right and far-left having increasing success in convincing its disciples of identity as a credible metric for human worth, Baddiel's documentary serves not just to expose the lies and deviousness of Holocaust denial, but demonstrates the importance of exhibiting the ugly humanity at the root of all hatred rather than letting it grow behind the safe remove of words and memes.
David Baddiel's documentary, Confronting Anti-Semitism, is on the BBC iPlayer now. Hopefully it will soon be uploaded elsewhere for everyone to watch.
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