"Not six million nor thirty thousand". From "Holocaust revisionism" to State terrorism denial in Argentina, 1945-1991

BORIS MATÍAS GRINCHPUN

Worcester

Conferencia; Fourth International Conference on Holocaust and Genocide Studies; 2018

Clark University

Doubts about the veracity of the Holocaust have been a perennial trope of Argentinean far-right groups. Since Justo Pacifico´s El Gobierno Mundial (1945), nationalists, anti-Semites and self-proclaimed "revisionist historians" have stated that the stories of death camps and mass killings are "wild exaggerations" or downright inventions. The early and fast success of this perspective could be explained by the affinity these figures felt for the Axis powers and their ideology, and also by their own quest for "historical truth". Since the 1930s, "revisionists" tried to rehabilitate "great men" who, they claimed, had been silenced or even distorted by anti-national liberals. Distrust of "official" versions of history and nostalgia for fascisms proved to be a fertile ground for negationism, as the books by Maurice Bardèche and Paul Rassinier were quickly translated, while dismissal of the Shoa as "Allied forgery" become commonplace in organizations such as Tacuara and Guardia de Hierro.This paper aims to show how denialism evolved in Argentina during the 1970s and 1980s, paying close attention to how the topoi, methodology and mindset of "Holocaust revisionism" influenced the opinions local far-right organizations held on State terrorism in the country during its last military dictatorship (1976-83). Stories of detention centers, widespread torture and murders were labeled, like the accounts of the Shoa, as lies, forged to destroy the prestige of the Armed Forces like the Nuremberg trials had done with Germany. "Holocaust revisionism" could have been, therefore, one of the roots of a heated debate on the recent past that is still ongoing in Argentinean society. To trace this evolution, this paper traces articles which appeared in nationalist and integralist publications of the era, such as Cabildo, Mikael, Glaudius, Verbo (Verb) and Alerta Nacional (National Alert).