Joseph Sobran and Historical Revisionism

by Mark Weber

One of America's best conservative writers, Joseph Sobran, is currently under fire for his outspoken criticisms of Zionism and, in part, for an implied sympathy for historical Revisionism. Sobran writes a twice-weekly syndicated column that is distributed to about 70 newspapers in the United States. He is also a senior editor of National Review magazine.

Sobran's first "thoughtcrime" column, which vigorously defended President Reagan's decision to honor German soldiers buried at Bitburg, appeared in April 1985. In one essay he wrote: "Imputing diabolism to Hitler can be a strategy of pretending that his was a peculiar aberration. This allows us to evade the gross fact that communism has proved a far more potent and persistent evil than Nazism, which was a brief flare-up by comparison." Thus, he wrote, "it strikes me as misleading to speak of Hitler's crimes as 'the Holocaust.' This has been a century of holocausts. There is no 'the' holocaust. We are kidding ourselves if we tall as if there were anything 'unique' about what the Nazis did." Therefore, we "have no right to denounce 'the Holocaust' as long as we shut our eyes to the (communist) holocaust in progress."

In another column a few days later, Sobran wrote: "Along with those who care deeply about what Hitler did to the Jews, there are the Elmer Gantrys who inevitably attach themselves to every legitimate cause. In the '60s we were manipulated by people who used the memory of slave ships to extort moral deference and expressions of white guilt, which were parlayed into political power and-the bottom line-money. The same thing is now being done with Hitler's mass murders. If you don't condemn them in the prescribed ritual ways, the guilt-mongers will find a way to lump you with Hitler himself." Sobran jokingly added that, because of its obsession with one particular chapter of history, The New York Times, "really ought to change its name to Holocaust Update." More