Behind Facebook’s Banning of the IHR

Another Stroke in the Campaign Against ‘Hate’

Mark Weber, Director
Institute for Historical Review
December 2020

On Nov. 27, 2020, Facebook removed the Institute for Historical Review from its popular social media platform. No reason was given for the abrupt measure, but it was hardly a surprise.

It came right after the publication of three widely distributed media items that complained that Facebook had still not dropped the IHR. These articles were in line with a decade-old campaign by Jewish-Zionist groups to get social media platforms to remove the IHR and other organizations they regard as harmful to their interests and agenda.

Three days before the de-platforming, The Markup, an organization based in New York City, issued a lengthy article which complained that the social media giant had not yet acted against the IHR. To support its portrayal of the IHR as a “Holocaust denial” group, the Markup article told readers that the California-based center has been “identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as ‘a pseudo-academic organization that claims to seek “truth and accuracy in history,” but whose real purpose is to promote Holocaust denial and defend Nazism’.”

Aaron Sankin, author of the article, acknowledged that he had made no independent effort to determine the accuracy of the SPLC claims. Nor, apparently, did he check out the IHR’s own website. “The Markup,” he wrote, “relied on the judgments of outside organizations that monitor hate groups to identify Holocaust denial groups.” (Later, Sankin declined my repeated request to answer a few questions about his article.)

In fact – and as the IHR’s “mission statement” posted on its website makes clear — the IHR does not “deny” the Holocaust. The Institute has no “position” on any specific event or chapter of history, except to promote greater awareness and understanding, and to encourage more objective study. Articles and reviews posted on the IHR website, and presentations given at IHR meetings and conferences, represent a wide range of views. The IHR does not necessarily agree with the content or outlook of posted, published or distributed items. Further, even a quick look at the IHR site will quickly show that the vast majority of posted items have nothing to do with the Holocaust. On that basis alone, the dismissive characterization of the IHR as a “Holocaust denial” group is inaccurate.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which clairvoyantly claims to have discerned the IHR’s “real purpose,” has garnered a good bit of attention in recent years for its misrepresentation and bias. In 2018, for example, the SPLC had to pay $3.4 million and publicly apologize to Maajid Nawaz, whom it had falsely labeled an “anti-Muslim extremist.” (He’s actually a practicing Muslim who opposes extremism.)

That episode was cited by the New York Post in an editorial that began: “It’s been a rough year for the Southern Poverty Law Center — deservedly so.” The influential paper went on the describe how the SPLC’s “overly broad definition of ‘hate’ often goes far beyond truly vile outfits to include people and groups that simply don’t toe a politically correct line.” In March 2019 former SPLC staffer Bob Mosey wrote a lengthy New Yorker piece in which he openly voiced what many SPLC staffers had been saying quietly for some time: “It was hard, for many of us, not to feel like we’d become pawns in what was, in many respects, a highly profitable scam.” A few months later, the social media platform Twitter quietly removed the SPLC from its “Trust and Safety Council,” apparently in response to numerous reports of racist and sexist misconduct within the SPLC itself.

In fact, the SPLC’s record of pretense and bias has been obvious for years. Already in 2007, the widely respected independent journalist and consistent defender of free speech, Alexander Cockburn, wrote in the New York Press: “I’ve long regarded Morris Dees and his Southern Poverty Law Center as collectively one of the greatest frauds in American life.” (Much more about the group’s dismal record can be found on the “SPLC Exposed” website. )

Sankin’s article also makes clear that, in addition to the SPLC, he “relied” on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – an influential Jewish-Zionist organization based in New York — to support his portrayal of the IHR. Like the SPLC, the ADL is a partisan organization with a record of misrepresentation and malicious hostility to the IHR. Both ADL and SPLC have, since their inceptions, sacrificed objectivity on the altar of zealotry.

Although the ADL portrays itself as a fighter against “hate” and discrimination based on ancestry or religion, for decades it has been a vehement defender of Israel and its policies of ethno-religious discrimination and oppression. While it preaches “diversity” and “tolerance” for the US, it promotes Jewish supremacy in Israel. Israel’s policies of institutionalized discrimination against and oppression of non-Jews have earned worldwide scorn – reflected, for example, in numerous United Nations resolutions critical of those policies that have been approved by overwhelmingly majorities of the world’s countries.

While the SPLC is quick to pin the “hate” label on groups and individuals that express support for past or potential policies of discrimination based on ancestry or religion, it refrains from any criticism of Zionist organizations that support Israel’s ongoing and institutionalized policies of discrimination and oppression based on ancestry and religion. If the SPLC were to act in a principled and consistent way, it would add the ADL to its roster of “hate” groups.

On the same day that Sankin’s piece appeared, Forbes published an article that seconded the Markup’s displeasure with Facebook for not dropping the IHR. And like the Markup piece, it also cited the SPLC to support its characterization of the IHR as a “Holocaust denial” group.

The next day, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), a major Zionist news and opinion outlet, published a lengthy article that echoed the Markup and Forbes pieces, likewise complaining that Facebook had still not shut out the IHR.

The JTA piece described the IHR as “a Holocaust-denying organization masquerading as an academic center.” In fact, the Institute neither denies the Holocaust, nor does it “masquerade” as anything. The IHR describes itself simply as “an independent educational center and publisher that works to promote peace, understanding and justice through greater public awareness of the past, and especially socially-politically relevant aspects of modern history.” The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has for years recognized the IHR as a 501(c)(3) public interest, educational, not-for-profit enterprise.

Like the Markup and Forbes items, the JTA article provides no link to the IHR website. Had any of them done so, open-minded readers could easily make up their own minds as to what the IHR actually is and stands for. Apparently, none of the writers bothered even to check the IHR website.

The laziness, if not hostile close-mindedness, of those responsible for the Markup, Forbes and JTA articles is not uncommon in journalism today. It’s little wonder that — as numerous public opinion polls have shown — most Americans, regardless of political orientation, now regard the “establishment” media with distrust or contempt.

The recent Facebook move against the IHR is another “victory” in the protracted campaign to suppress all organizations and websites that influential Jewish-Zionist organizations and their allies regard as hostile to their interests and agenda. Facebook is not the only media company to fall in line with this effort. YouTube, for example, has banned many videos of IHR lectures and podcasts, and Google has severely restricted access to hundreds of IHR articles and reviews. People who care about accuracy and fairness in the media should understand the methods used by those who, in the name of “fighting hate,” work to silence voices they don’t like.

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