Robert Faurisson

"Some time ago I was asked to sign a petition in defense of Robert Faurisson’s “freedom of speech and expression.” The petition said absolutely nothing about the character, quality or validity of his research, but restricted itself quite explicitly to a defense of elementary rights that are taken for granted in democratic societies, calling upon university and government officials to “do everything possible to ensure the [Faurisson’s] safety and the free exercise of his legal rights.” I signed it without hesitation."

"I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers, or even denial of the Holocaust I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work relatively apolitical liberal of some sort"

"While some may regard Chomsky as an eminent linguist, he does not understand the most obvious meaning ofwords in context. To fail to see any "hint of anti-Semitic implications" in Faurisson's collective condemnation of the Jewish people as liars is to be either a fool or a knave. Failure to recognize the anti-Semitic implications of Holocaust denial is like saying there would be no racist implications in a claim that Blacks enjoyed slavery, or no sexist implications in a statement that women want to be raped. The Holocaust is the central historical event of modern Jewish history. Efforts to deny or minimize it are the current tools of the anti-semite and neo-Nazi. Not surprising, both Faurisson and Chomsky are frequently quoted with approval by these hatemongers."

"Faurisson, a specialist of the many forged pseudo-ancient narratives produced during the Romantic period to give a country a glorious past depicted in an epic of its own, like Ossian for Scotland or the Ura Linda Book for Frisia, started his negationist career with the claim that the Diary of Anne Frank was -- you guessed it -- a forgery..... Faurisson wanted to take it a step further, though: he denied the veracity of the diary. It was the girl’s father who, after his return in 1945 to Amsterdam, had edited the diary before publishing it, and he had left out some passages he deemed inconvenient, especially about the sexual awakening of his pubescent daughter. Even so, this petty fault-finding left the girl’s report about the persecution of the Jews entirely unchallenged. This will remain a common scenario in the negationist movement: focusing on marginal elements that are convenient and obscuring what proves the genocide. This is not uncommon among polemicists defending any cause, but the grimness of the case makes it more serious here."