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Extrapolation, Exaggeration, or Exculpation?
Herbert L. Rosedale
It has always struck me that the issues at the forefront in
dealing with cults have broad scale application and can be fruitfully considered
in analogical contexts with those raised in other areas. This was most recently
driven home to me by reading a number of books analyzing the works of Holocaust
deniers. Professionals and academics often write these works, which are
sometimes supported by well-financed “institutes,” propounded in conferences run
by alleged scholars, and published in widely circulated books and pamphlets.
A recent work, Denying History, by Michael Schermer
and Alex Grobman and published by the University of California Press, has a very
enlightening analysis of some of the issues raised in an inquiry seeking to
determine how and why those claiming that the Holocaust never took place or that
its horrors have been deliberately exaggerated reached those conclusions.
Reading this work, I was struck by how many parallels exist
to criticisms of the “anticult movement” or of scholars or professionals who
describe the harms related to cult activities. In this piece, I would like to
deliberate provocatively and cite some of the issues the authors of this work
address and invite readers to recognize the analogies to the field of cults. I
believe that the analogies may go both ways, relating sometimes to cult critics
and sometimes to cult defenders.
What stands out to me in this book’s analysis is the strong
propensity of Holocaust deniers to avoid intellectually honest discussion of
differences and instead use numerous devices to denigrate the views or character
of those with whom one disagrees. Holocaust deniers, for example, call
Holocaust scholars “extremists,” “Holocaust hobbyists,” and assorted other names
(p. xv). Does that remind you of the characterization of cult critics as
“religious bigots” or even, in at least one article, “terrorists”?
Second, the Holocaust deniers rely on the incredulous
nature of the asserted horrors in order to reject the personal reports of
survivors and affirm the cynical assurance of perpetrators of atrocities that if
the victims survived and told of the experience, “the rest of the world would
not believe what happened – and people would conclude that evil on such a scale
was just not possible” (Terrence Despres, The Survivor in Denying History,
p. 49). Does this sound like the denigration of ex-member reports by calling
them “atrocity tales”?
Holocaust deniers point to “engineering studies” that claim
it was impossible to construct crematories using poison gas, even though these
‘studies” were authored by persons having no qualifications. Does this not
recall claims that Aum Shinrikyo could not have had the technical capability to
produce Sarin gas?
In analyzing why academics might be led to conclusions
supporting Holocaust deniers, the authors of Denying History cite the
studies of cult researchers Stephen Kent and Theresa Krebbs, noting that
professionals might have found “themselves the unwitting tools of religious
groups striving for social acceptance and in need of an imprimatur of an
academic” and showing how scholars’ “deception becomes self-deception” (p. 57).
Schermer and Grobman also criticize the relativistic
approach of historians who, for example, assert an afrocentric view of the
origination of Aristotle’s ideas in the face of fact errors (pp. 237-240) or
that paleontologists and archeologists conspired to cover up evidence that
humans lived in a civilized state tens or hundreds of millions of years ago (pp.
240-241). There are other examples of pseudo-historical views propounded merely
to support political or ideological conclusions.
Do these unexpressed biases in evaluations of factual
material sound familiar? And what about the motivation? Schermer and Grobman
discuss a number of motivations unearthed in their analyses of the backgrounds
of Holocaust deniers, including anti-Semitism, a “germanophile” view of history,
and religious zealotry associated with the Aryan Identity movement. Indeed, the
authors maintain that a primary reason for the acceptance of such ideologically
dependent views of history and the rejection of contrary views is the
proponent’s commitment to “religion to anchor the belief system in a meaningful
and significant history of faith” in support of which a useful lie might be
accepted for the sake of the greater good.
The authors discuss one of the most commonly used
techniques of Holocaust deniers, namely, “that these revisionists rarely say
anything definitive about their own position and instead attack their opponents’
weak spots or mistakes…they find errors made by scholars and historians and
exploit these as if all historians’ conclusions are wrong…they quote usually out
of context leading mainstream figures to buttress their own position…they
consciously turn debates on scholars on specific issues into debate of veracity
of the entire field…and they focus on what is not known and ignore what is
known, carefully selecting data to fit and ignoring data that do not fit their
preconceived ideas” (p. 103).
I’m confident that cult critics can relate to this
description of the means used to avoid genuine debate about issues such as the
existence of undue influence or mind control, the harm cult zealots cause, and
the need to balance freedom of religion with the rights of individuals to assert
and carry out their own beliefs and not to impinge on others’ freedom and well
being.
It may be that there are common dynamics influencing
Holocaust deniers and certain scholars who seem never to see in new religious
movements anything warranting criticism. Or it may be that, as Carl Popper
suggested many years ago, the biases so blatantly demonstrated in these two
fields reflect the influence that beliefs and backgrounds can have on the
conclusions of all scientists. Hence, when we hear or read attacks on cult
critics, we should pause and consider the personal biases and motivations that
may drive the attacker so that we may disentangle what might be legitimate
criticism from the distortions produced by ideological or other motives.
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