Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
even more convinced that it was a felicitous choice, for the reason that the thing
really is trivial. The term “hoax” suggests something cheap and crude, and that is
precisely what I wish to suggest. A term such as “myth,” although correct and
sometimes used by me, does not convey this important description of the nature of
the evidence supporting the extermination claim.
The uncomfortable reaction to the term “hoax” merely reflects the nature of
the great popular delusion on this subject. At one time, some of the people who
are addressing you here, such as Dr. Faurisson and myself, shared not only the
popular belief in the truth of the legend but also the popular impression that its
truth was beyond question – “as established as the Great Pyramid,” as I wrote.
However, at some point we undertook an investigation and discovered, remarkably
quickly, that beneath the legend’s face of granite there stood feet of clay.
It is this focus on the feet of clay, which revisionists have seen in the historical
record, that creates a great psychological distance between the revisionists and
even many intelligent people, and sometimes causes revisionists to appear to be
crusaders of some sort. Those who have not seen the feet of clay cannot have the
degree of certainty that seems to accompany revisionists. I believe that perhaps
this contrast between the apparent dignity of the received legend and the reality of
its crude and contemptible foundations is the key point that must be developed in
the psychological reorientation of people whom you wish to inform. Once such a
psychological reorientation is accomplished, the rest is routine. The jolt that the
word “hoax” causes is a calculated initial step in this reorientation.
A Societal Problem
Another reason for the wish to focus on the controversy here is that it represents
a distinct problem. That is, there is an historical problem, treated in my
book, and there is also the problem of the societal status of the legend, the subject
of my talk today. The former, the historical problem, is relatively simple in comparison
to the latter, or perhaps I should say that I do not feel that I understand the
societal status of the hoax nearly as well as I understand the hoax itself. However,
a couple of obvious features can be safely noted. For one thing, it is a case of media
induced hysteria. For another, the political interests involved are not dead and
gone, like those of World War I, but are as contemporary as tomorrow’s headlines,
for Israel is always in trouble and will be in trouble as long as it exists as a
Jewish state.
This has put historical scholarship into a dreadful situation, which can be seen
more clearly, if we consider the manner, in which knowledge is almost always
diffused in the “hard” sciences. There it is almost always the case that trained specialists,
with appropriate credentials as professionals in the scientific area involved,
make the initial revelations of new knowledge. These revelations are
normally made first to colleagues and are formulated in the esoteric language of
the specialty. Then, over some period of time, the new knowledge filters to general
society, with the terms, in which it is described, undergoing in the process
gradual simplification and popularization.
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