For decades, the academic establishment and its echo chamber in the media have responded to historical revisionism by an almost uniform refusal to engage in any form of debate or discussion. In most European countries, the reply to revisionist challenges has instead been to throw heretical critics into jail, fine them heavily, and/or unleash physical violence against them.
Europe’s foremost revisionist scholar, Professor Robert Faurisson, was repeatedly prosecuted and subjected to especially serious physical assaults, notably in his own home town of Vichy. At the age of 89, Faurisson’s final conference in Shepperton was targeted by violent “anti-fascist” threats and curtailed by hotel management (though fortunately the Professor had completed his speech before this intervention).
Even after his death, the debate-deniers seek to silence Faurisson and obstruct public access to his work (the “great intellectual adventure”, as he described revisionism).
Four months ago the online archive of Faurisson’s work was removed from the Internet by such censors, but is in the process of being restored at a new address and with important additions – most recently one of the rare exchanges between Faurisson and an academic critic.
Pierre Vidal-Naquet was a specialist in ancient history, born into a Jewish family and closely associated with the Marxist left (both in his academic work and in political activism). Nevertheless, he was one of the very few anti-revisionists to attempt a serious rebuttal of Faurisson’s arguments, rather than resorting to censorship and violence.
Readers might find that Vidal-Naquet’s arguments descend into hyperbole and tautology – typified by the title of his anti-Faurisson monograph, Un Eichmann de Papier (‘A Paper Eichmann’), and by the concluding paragraph of an anti-revisionist manifesto which he signed, along with 33 fellow historians, published in Le Monde in February 1979:
“One must not ask oneself how, technically, such a mass murder was possible. It was possible technically, since it happened. That is the compulsory point of departure for any historical inquiry on this subject. It was our responsibility to recall this truth in simple terms: there is not, there cannot be any debate about the existence of the gas chambers.”
Interviewed in 1992 by an American broadcaster, Vidal-Naquet stated (in English): “I hate Faurisson. If I could, I would kill him personally.”
Nevertheless, Vidal-Naquet (unlike most of his ilk) at least made an attempt to rebut the revisionist case. His monograph was published in September 1980, and Faurisson’s detailed reply appeared in 1982 under the title Réponse à un historien de papier (‘Reply to a Paper Historian’).
This now appears online, in proper English translation for the first time. The Faurisson Archive is bringing the great intellectual adventure to new audiences. Robert Faurisson would have been 94 years old last month: his clear perception of historical exactitude now reaches a new generation of readers.
NB: An English translation of Robert Faurisson’s selected writings and commentaries on the ‘Holocaust’ is available from Historical Review Press – click here for details. HRP also publishes two other important books by Faurisson – Is the Diary of Anne Frank Genuine? and Pope Pius XII’s Revisionism.
