Lying About Me: Origin and Impact of a Phony Quote
By Mark Weber
Over the years many malicious and untrue things have been said about me by people who don’t like my views. Perhaps the most widely circulated example is the lie that I said or wrote the following:
“The Holocaust hoax is a religion. Its underpinnings in the realm of historical fact are non-existent — no Hitler order, no plan, no budget, no gas chambers, no autopsies of gassed victims, no bones, no ashes, no skulls, no nothing.”
In fact, I never wrote or uttered those words. They do not represent what I think or believe.
This quotation has been cited to justify calling me a “Holocaust denier,” a label that’s malicious and inaccurate. As I have repeatedly made clear, I do not “deny the Holocaust.” (My views on this matter are laid out, for example, in an essay I wrote in 2009.) Similarly, the Institute for Historical Review, of which I am the director, does not “deny the Holocaust.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an influential Jewish-Zionist organization, seems to have been the first to attribute that quote to me. In the book Danger: Extremism, “prepared and written” by ADL staff members and published in 1996, it is cited as an example of my allegedly “full vent bigotry.” Over the years this quote, or some version of it, has been attributed to me in prominent media outlets, including Israel’s daily Jerusalem Post, as well as it at least one Wikipedia entry.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) , an influential but controversial leftist organization, has attributed to me a similarly bogus quote. A maliciously inaccurate SPLC website item about me claims – citing the ADL as a source – that I wrote: “The Holocaust hoax is a religion … The rise of religions such as this generally coincides with the decline and fall of nations which tolerate them.” In fact, I never wrote or said those words. I have never referred to the Holocaust as a hoax.
In a hostile news report of Jan. 17, 2018, Newsweek told readers that I “once wrote ‘the Holocaust hoax is a religion’.” Even after this error was pointed out to the writer of the item, nothing was done to correct it.
Generally I ignore slanderous remarks about me. I made an exception in April 2015 after a major British newspaper, the Mail on Sunday, pinned the spurious “no nothing” quote on me in a sensational article about a meeting in London at which I had spoken. I wrote to the paper’s managing editor, John Wellington, to point out errors and misrepresentations in the article, and to request a correction. I also met in person with Peter Sheridan, the paper’s correspondent in California, to gain his help in correcting the errors.
After that face-to-face meeting and several exchanges of e-mail messages with both Wellington and Sheridan, the Mail on Sunday added a “correction” footnote to its posted report acknowledging that it had inaccurately attributed that quote, along with another one, to me. Then in early January 2018 I learned that Britain’s Home Office had cited the bogus “no nothing” quote to justify its decision in April 2015 to ban me from the country. Unfortunately, the online Mail on Sunday correction was issued only after the Home Office had decided to exclude me from the UK.
It’s understandable that many casual Internet browsers readily accept as valid spurious quotes attributed to me. What’s less excusable is the readiness of some professional journalists to uncritically accept them, merely on the say-so of an organization, such as the ADL or SPLC, which has an easily verifiable record of distortion and partisan bias.
– Written Jan. 31, 2018. First published Feb. 2, 2018. Revised, updated: March 12, 2018, and Aug. 29, 2018, and Jan. 24, 2020