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| Professor Deborah Lipstadt said she will address the current state of antisemitism when she speaks in Ottawa on November 10, at the launch of Holocaust Education Month. (Osnat Perelshtein) |
By
Michael Regenstreif
Editor
Deborah Lipstadt, a world-renowned professor of modern Jewish history
and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta, will be this year’s
keynote speaker for the launch event of Holocaust Education Month (HEM) in
Ottawa on Sunday, November 10, 7 pm, at Kehillat Beth Israel.
The HEM launch is being held on the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht
(the Night of Broken Glass), the antisemitic pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria
on November 9-10, 1938 that is widely seen as the beginning of the Holocaust.
Lipstadt – whose latest book is Antisemitism: Here and Now – said
she would address such topics as the current state of antisemitism in the
world; how antisemitism has changed over the years; how antisemitism emanating
from the left and from the right are different and how they are the same; how
Jews perceive themselves because of antisemitism; the dangers of antisemitism
beyond how it affects Jews – including the dangers that antisemitism poses to
democracy; and what can be done about antisemitism.
Lipstadt said contemporary antisemitism is coming from four directions:
from the right; from the left; from Islamist extremists; and from within the
Muslim community.
“I think, on some level, their sources are unique but if you look at the
language they use and the way they present themselves, they really overlap,
they’re not different,” Lipstadt said. “They all talk about Jews being
powerful, Jews being cunning, Jews being conniving, Jews being rich, Jews only
caring about their own, dual loyalty. When it comes to the expression of the
hatred it’s always the same. The same tropes, the same memes, the same
stereotypes.”
Lipstadt said that U.S. President Donald Trump on the right and British
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn on the left both “use language that emboldens
the antisemites.” As examples, she referred to Trump’s statement about “very
fine people on both sides” of the antisemitic, white supremacist march in
Charlottesville, Virginia, and Corbyn’s defence of an antisemitic mural in
London.
Lipstadt is perhaps best known for her work battling Holocaust denial
and is the author of the authoritative 1993 book, Denying the Holocaust: The
Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, in which she referred to British
Holocaust denier David Irving as “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for
Holocaust denial.”
Irving sued Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, for libel in a
British court in a case that garnered international headlines and was seen by
some as putting the facts of the Holocaust on trial.
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| Rachel Weisz as Deborah Lipstadt in the 2016 film “Denial,” which told the story of Lipstadt’s victorious court battle with David Irving, a prominent British Holocaust denier. (Laurie Sparham/Bleecker Street) |
Lipstadt won the court battle and told the story of the case in her 2005
book, History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier, which
was the basis for the 2016 film, “Denial,” in which Lipstadt was portrayed by
Rachel Weisz.
According to Lipstadt, there are two kinds of Holocaust denial: hardcore
and softcore.
“Hardcore is what I faced in the courtroom with David Irving – denying
the facts. That is not a tremendous problem right now – which is not to say
that it couldn’t reappear, but I think in part my trial helped defeat it,” she
said.
Softcore Holocaust denial, Lipstadt said, is the more pressing problem
today.
“Let me give you a couple of examples,” she said. “One example is ‘Oh,
we’ve heard enough about the Holocaust. Why do we have to keep hearing about
the Holocaust?’ Why do I call that Holocaust denial? Because it’s a form of
denigrating and dismissing what happened.
“Another kind is often used in relation to Israel: ‘The genocide of the
Palestinians – the Israelis are the new Nazis.’ Victim-perpetrated reversal. It
doesn’t mean you can’t criticize Israel’s policies. Of course you can criticize
Israel’s policies. But when you begin to use Nazi-like language or way
overstate the case and use Holocaust-related language, that’s a form of
denial,” Lipstadt said.
Lipstadt also pointed to European politicians like former London mayor
Ken Livingstone and Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, as
practitioners of forms of Holocaust denial. Livingstone for falsely portraying
Zionists as collaborators with the Nazis, and Orbán for wanting to rewrite
history “to make the claim that the Hungarians were victims just like the Jews
– and that the Hungarian militia, police, gendarmes didn’t actively participate
in the decimation of Hungarian Jewry.”
In a final question, Lipstadt was asked what it was like to see herself portrayed
on a movie screen.
“It’s a surreal, out of body experience. It’s very strange. It was
nothing I ever thought would happen,” she said, adding, “I thought they did a
really excellent job. I was very happy.”
“The Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship is honoured to host
Professor Lipstadt at the launch of HEM,” said Director Mina Cohn. “We feel
that at this time of increased antisemitism in many parts of the world – even
here in Canada – it is important to bring to the Ottawa community one of the
world’s top Holocaust scholars to share with us her ideas on how to confront
and fight it.”
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