Facebook Promotes Holocaust Denial

by John Richardson
September 22, 2020 at 4:00 am

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16444/facebook-holocaust-denial

Researchers say that as they viewed Holocaust-denying pages and posts on Facebook, the social media site's algorithm promoted even more Holocaust denial content to them....
Facebook takes down such posts only in countries such as Germany, France and Poland where Holocaust denial is illegal.
As the Institute for Strategic Dialogue out in its report, however, Holocaust denial is not about people getting history "wrong": "This speech seeks not only to minimise the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust, but to mitigate criticism of Nazism, and justify ongoing attacks against the Jewish people. Due to the intimate intersection between Holocaust denial and hate targeting Jews, such content should be regarded as inherently anti-Semitic".
Given Facebook's public commitment to fighting "hate speech" on its site, Facebook's refusal to acknowledge international guidelines on anti-Semitic hate speech by reducing Holocaust denial to a mere instance of "getting things wrong" -- while using its algorithms to promote Holocaust denial -- is clearly unacceptable.
Holocaust survivors have now launched an online campaign, #NoDenyingIt, calling on Facebook to remove Holocaust denying material from its website. "How can somebody really doubt it?" asked Eva Schloss, a Holocaust survivor. "Where are the six million people? There are tens of thousands of photos taken by the Nazis themselves. They were proud of what they were doing."

Facebook has been promoting Holocaust denial on its platform, according to a recent report by The Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Holocaust survivors have launched an online campaign, #NoDenyingIt, calling on Facebook to remove Holocaust-denying material from its website. "How can somebody really doubt it?" asked Eva Schloss (pictured), a Holocaust survivor. "There are tens of thousands of photos taken by the Nazis themselves. They were proud of what they were doing." (Photo by Evert Elzinga/AFP via Getty Images)

Facebook has been promoting Holocaust denial on its platform, according to a recent report by The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), "Hosting the 'Holohoax': A Snapshot of Holocaust Denial Across Social Media".

"Holocaust denial has long been one of the most insidious conspiracy theories targeting Jewish communities, with its extremist proponents drawn from across the ideological spectrum, from extreme right-wing to hard left to Islamist", the report states. "Research has shown that digital platforms have only served to amplify and mainstream this warped strain of thinking in recent years".

Researchers from ISD gathered posts using the keyword "holohoax" from between June 1, 2018 and July 22, 2020 on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube. According to ISD:

"The term 'holohoax' is popular among Holocaust deniers. It was selected as it is a particularly explicit means of denying the Holocaust. A significant amount of Holocaust denial content is couched in careful language, codes and tropes, and thus it is highly likely that this analysis only shows the tip of the iceberg of the true extent to which such content is able to spread on social media".

ISD's researchers identified at least 36 Facebook pages and groups that were either specifically dedicated to Holocaust denial or that host Holocaust denial content. The Facebook pages and groups had a combined number of followers of 366,068 and an average number of members of 10,168.

The researchers said that as they viewed the Holocaust-denying pages and posts on Facebook, the social media site's algorithm promoted even more Holocaust denial content to them, such as pages about the Holocaust denier David Irving and sites selling Holocaust denial literature. According to ISD:

"The entities investigated were ideologically diverse. ISD researchers classified 9 of them as far-right, 7 as anti-Zionist, 13 as conspiracy theorists, 5 as pro-Palestine, 1 as Christian right and 1 as Islamist".

In addition, the researchers found 19,000 pieces of "holohoax" content on Twitter, 2,300 pieces of content on social media site Reddit and 9,500 pieces of content on YouTube. Facebook takes down such posts only in countries such as Germany, France and Poland where Holocaust denial is illegal.

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg had already said in an interview in July 2018, that Facebook would not block Holocaust deniers:

"I'm Jewish, and there's a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don't believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong".

According to ISD:

"Facebook executives... have explicitly rationalised allowing Holocaust denial on their platform. This was explained by Vice President for Global Public Policy at Facebook Joel Kaplan in a 2019 letter to the chairman of the US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. The letter explained that Facebook would not remove 'lies or content that is inaccurate – whether it's denying the Holocaust, the Armenian massacre, or the fact that the Syrian government has killed hundreds of thousands of its own people'. Kaplan explained that 'this is because we do believe that people should be able to say things on Facebook that are wrong or inaccurate, even when they are offensive'".

As the ISD points out in its report, however, Holocaust denial is not about people getting history "wrong":

"Holocaust denial is discourse which seeks to deny the reality and extent of the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis in World War II. Such discourse has been used since the 1940s as a means of attacking Jews. Contemporary Holocaust denial is propagated by individuals adhering to a range of extremist world views including the extreme right and hard left, and has become interwoven with a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories. This speech seeks not only to minimise the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust, but to mitigate criticism of Nazism, and justify ongoing attacks against the Jewish people. Due to the intimate intersection between Holocaust denial and hate targeting Jews, such content should be regarded as inherently anti-Semitic".

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), an intergovernmental organization consisting of 31 member states, including the US, and that was founded in 1998, adopted a non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism on May 26, 2016. According to its definition, one example of antisemitism is:

"Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)".

Given Facebook's public commitment to fighting "hate speech" on its site, Facebook's refusal to acknowledge international guidelines on anti-Semitic hate speech by reducing Holocaust denial to a mere instance of "getting things wrong" -- while using its algorithms to promote Holocaust denial -- is clearly unacceptable.

The effort that Facebook makes regarding all other forms of hate speech can be seen by contrasting it to their attitude to Holocaust denial. In the second quarter of 2020 (April-June), Facebook removed a record number of "hate speech" posts from its pages -- 22.5 million compared to 9.6 million in the first quarter of 2020. Facebook even now proactively removes most hate speech content (94.5%) before users even report it.

In its Community Standards, Facebook claims it does not allow hate speech on Facebook "because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion". Facebook seems to have notably less concern for the "intimidation and exclusion" that elderly Holocaust survivors might experience on its site.

Holocaust survivors have now launched an online campaign, #NoDenyingIt, calling on Facebook to remove Holocaust-denying material from its website. "How can somebody really doubt it?" asked Eva Schloss, a Holocaust survivor. "Where are the six million people? There are tens of thousands of photos taken by the Nazis themselves. They were proud of what they were doing."

John Richardson is a researcher based in the United States.

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Comment on this item

10 Reader Comments

Alex B. • Sep 22, 2020 at 22:21

First let me state that, putting it mildly, I have no sympathy to any of the holocaust deniers. But having said that, I think that the way to deal with those creatures is to confront their material on merit. Blocking their stuff is not really possible and even if it was it would create an impression that they do not exist but they do, they are part of our reality. Putting this aside, there is that one argument on their side that I wish not to give them. It goes like this:"Why can't we question what happened there? Why are we banned from the MSM? You must be afraid of the truth and it only proves that you, J00z, control the media."

The problem with their venomous readily available material is that it is sophistic and on the face of it, it looks too convincing. Unless confronted on substance, it will not go away.

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Bull Herman • Sep 22, 2020 at 14:50

About time somebody called out Mark Zuckerberg over his spineless efforts to protect the First Amendment. The Holocaust denial is just another warped progressive condom placed over our brains.
Joel Kaplan's words explaining how Facebook won't remove inaccurate data? More BS. Factually speaking, Facebook allows the left open latitude while anything remotely conservative or anti establishment is wiped.
If you hate Trump, no sweat, whatever you say will be allowed.
But if you're pro gun, anti abortion, anti illegal immigration, anti BLM, pro Trump, pro Rush Limbaugh,and anti vaccination? Forget it. You'll get more publicity by writing on bathroom walls.
When you depend on racist organizations such as Southern Poverty Law Center to direct your policies, when Facebook's biased censors decide for us what we're allowed to think, Facebook is empowering anti-Semitism, anti Americanism, the daily martyring of Christians, and the replacement of American culture with radical Communist dogma.

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Ray Jarman • Sep 22, 2020 at 13:48

Someone should ask Mark Zuckerberg why is it permissible for people to be perfidious: "I'm Jewish, and there's a set of people who deny that the Holocaust happened. I find that deeply offensive. But at the end of the day, I don't believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong."

While those who relate truthful facts are banned. For instance, Facebook has closed many accounts of people like Robert Spencer and Pam Geller for stating facts about Islam and even for quoting from the Qur'an and Islamic accepted Hadith itself as well as reporting or writing about the genocide going on in the Hausa parts of Nigeria. I have a friend whose account was closed because he reported some of the unwanted facts to be aired concerning Hunter Biden. Zuckerberg is a lying incubus who is attempting to abrade the American public.

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Harvey L • Sep 22, 2020 at 11:13

I wonder how fast politically incorrect posts regarding Muslims are removed from Facebook. I have never had an account and would never consider having one either.

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Russell • Sep 22, 2020 at 08:30

I can hardly see the "Socialist-Democrat" Party-supporting-Facebook ever altering their awful, yet obvious anti-semitic stance. They are now open about their socialist ideology and out of the communist/globalist closet, happily supporting the Marxist BLM and the Facist thug group Antifa that burn cities, loot, kill and destroy. While they are censoring conservative views as hate speech.

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william a carr • Sep 22, 2020 at 06:06

Nobody can deny the holocaust except for people promoting evil. The Germans were meticulous record-keepers. They tried to destroy the camps before the Russians arrived and failed. The ample photographic and written evidence cannot be dismissed. The memories of the survivors and the descendants of the families of the lost ones cannot be dismissed. The Germans were so obsessed with destroying Jews that they even used valuable trains needed for the supply of their troops in the East to transport Jews to the extermination camps

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Blanche Pinson

william a carr • Sep 22, 2020 at 09:14

This is one reason why parents need to acknowledge the good and evil events in history and discuss them with their children from the time they are young. I believe that the Bible Old Testament absolutely teaches parents to do this. Every major event in Jewish history is memorialized with instructions to verbally pass the information to the young people with a remembrance of the historical date. I hold an awareness of world history because my parents discussed the events with nuances of "right" or "wrong" as they became aware of what we were learning in school.

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Hamish MacDonald • Sep 22, 2020 at 04:33

Would someone please explain why the Polish who lost six million people under Nazi Germany don't seem to get as much coverage?
The Polish were Catholic against a predominantly Lutheran Germany.
Why also do the Armenians who lost 1.4 million to the Turkish genocide that did not get a rebuke except recently, have to take a back seat on genocide lists? Why also do China's purges miss out? Why also do the people of the Ukraine miss out? Stalin with forced famine- 25,000 starved to death each day does not get into the limelight. Nor does Tamerlane, who butchered 90,000 in one day. How does that compare with Auschwitz?
And dare it be said, how is it that abortion which takes the lives of unborn many of whom would survive with medical attention?

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Avi Boham

Hamish MacDonald • Sep 22, 2020 at 13:37

Half of the six million Poles you mentioned, were Jews.
The evil done by Russia/China/Turkey/... should not be ignored but exposed. I do not understand your point though. Are you suggesting that the holocaust should be denied? or just put it in proportion? If so, there is a lot of material out there, you can educate yourself and see how those compare or differ from Auschwitz.

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Hamish MacDonald

Avi Boham • Sep 23, 2020 at 03:50

Hardly. The holocaust and all the rest are manifestations of a patriarchal influence. The more patriarchal the greater the influence. What has to happen is equality of the sexes. The facebook business is about an electronic culture, and its influence is like the mobile phone. TV is another influence, and causes grief.

However the insidious influences that underpin crowd reaction often uses racism as a means to an end. The actual issue is that a huge commercial enterprise can become a stooge for the political left - Macron for instance will use whoever he can for leverage and the big companies will take up the profile to appear "credible" or "respectable" when in fact their primary aim is making money- the tactic was used ad nauseum with the UK commerce which had a "royal" added to its covering.

Racism is a means to an end for those who want to appear more mindful of their brothers and sisters and so promote Catholicism (other denominations likewise), because funding will come along.

Real Copts, not imaginary TV shows, are seen on the internet and elsewhere in photographs about to be beheaded in orange clothing. The Middle East is full of persecution, as is Pakistan. It doesn't matter if you are Sikh, Hindu or something else- Jews, you cop it.
Merkel adopted a profile of antiracist sentiment at a time when it became necessary. But she also let in migrants (some who intensely dislike Jews). Now she has a major problem.
Yes, the Polish had Jews and Catholics persecuted by Nazi Germany. Pope Saint John Paul II knew this was happening inside his native Poland. But often these suffering Poles rarely get a mention, nor do others mentioned in the original comment.
The hate is a characteristic generally of the male. That is the bottom line. Thanks for your comment.

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