https://slate.com/technology/2018/07/th ... d-too.htmlThere can be no debate with Holocaust deniers." That is a core principle of moderating the AskHistorians subreddit, one of the largest history forums on the internet
Conversation is impossible if one side refuses to acknowledge the basic premise that facts are facts. This is why engaging deniers in such an effort means having already lost. And it is why AskHistorians, where I am one of the volunteer moderators, takes a strict stance on Holocaust denial.
"We ban it immediately"
Deniers need a public forum to spread their lies and to sow doubt among readers not well-informed about history. By convincing people that they might have a point or two, they open the door for further radicalization in pursuit of their ultimate goal: to rehabilitate Nazism as an ideology in public discourse by distancing it from the key elements that make it so rightfully reviled—the genocide against Jews, Roma, Sinti, and others.
We remove content that is racist, sexist, or anti-Semitic in nature and ban the offending users from commenting in our forum on a daily basis.
Taken together or separately, these beliefs serve one goal: to make the ideas of the Nazis socially acceptable. The Holocaust is the obvious proof that the ideology of National Socialism is, at its core, racist, anti-Semitic, and genocidal.
Actual historians engage in interpretation of historical events and phenomena based on the facts found in sources. When new information, or a new interpretation, emerges and is considered in light of existing knowledge, that is revising earlier thought. “Revisionist” Holocaust deniers do not revise; they twist the truth and peddle lies to advance their political agenda.
This place would be far less toxic if this was done here as well.
