Left-Extremist Endeavours

VII. Revisionism
In right-wing extremism, the notion of revisionism is linked to a
politically motivated re-interpretation of the past, especially as
regards the era of National-Socialism. This is intended to bring
about rehabilitation, or minimization of the wrongs, of the Third
Reich and of Nazi ideology. Thus, the term of revisionism is given
a totally different meaning than in scholarly discussion and research
where it is understood as a correction of traditionally held
views on the basis of new findings and interpretations. Here, an
objective-scientific view confronts a political-ideological view. In
their publications, authors deliberately try to blur this fundamental
difference. In this way they want to convey the wrong impression
that right-extremist revisionists actually are serious scholars who
merely hold different views. This, for instance, is the approach
taken by the publicist NORDBRUCH who, in the right-extremist
journal "Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart" ["Germany in
History and in Our Times"], insinuated that the term of "revisionist"
was used for generalized defamation of respectable scholars as
right-wing extremists 87) . Actually, the persons defended by
NORDBRUCH are right-wing extremists who are trying to rehabilitate
the Nazi system, for instance by casting generalized doubts on
the crimes committed in German concentration camps.
The "war guilt" issue On the occasion of the 60 th anniversary of the outbreak of World
War II on 1 September, various right-extremist publications
questioned that the Nazi regime was chiefly to blame for the
outbreak of World War II. "Deutsche National-Zeitung" (DNZ) and
"National-Zeitung/Deutsche Wochen-Zeitung" (NZ) (cf. Chapter
V, section 2, above) published a series on "What Reasons led to
World War II?" 88) . This was a deliberate juxtaposition of selected
documents with the aim of conveying the impression to the
reader that the outbreak of the war had been a settled matter in
the United Kingdom and the United States; Hitler had been
forced to respond with war to the murderous persecution of
Germans. Since this series, in particular, reprinted public
statements by the Hitler Government, DNZ conveys the ideas of
Nazi propaganda. The legend under a photo read: "The
hazardous venture with which Hitler directly ran into the naked
blade held out by the warring party was madness" 89) . Here DNZ
does not shrink away from presenting Hitler as a peace-loving
victim of his war-mongering enemies.
A similar tone was struck in other publications of right-extremist
publishing houses, such as the journal "Deutsche Geschichte"
["German History"] published by "Verlagsgesellschaft Berg", which
published an issue with the key subject of the "1939 Poland
Campaign". It carries an article by the revisionist journalist Dank-
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