Holocaust denial is back with a vengeance

Scratch the surface of the Fuentes inspired (highly plausible) narratives about Jewish influence, and you tend to find classic Jew hate up to and including holocaust denial - and we can expect this to be a new battleground in politics. And there’s a reason for this. The entire post-war institutional architecture is built around the premise of “Never again”.

This is known as the post-war peace architecture which comprises of the UN, ECHR, all the offshoot international organisations (arguably including the WTO), and even the EU (to a point). The UN is the especially relevant component and the creation of an international human rights framework. The architects were people who had seen the holocaust with their own eyes. Britain was at the forefront of their creation. Major Sir Brian Urquhart, later Under Secretary-General of the United Nations, played a significant role in the founding of the UN - was the first allied officer to enter the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. It inspired his entire post-war career.

Under the aegis of “never again”, Britain saw it as pivotal to its own international influence to bolster the emergent international rules based order, particularly as it declined as a military power.

Fast forward to today and you have a sprawling galaxy of global governance instruments and international laws underpinned by treaties, courts, bilateral agreements and trade deals. The legal and intellectual engine of globalisation. It remains central to Britain’s soft power. (for what that’s worth)

What we have for our troubles now, though, is a lumbering and corrupt system, long past its time, and increasingly ignored by the “international community”. This is the pivot to multipolarity, with China even looking to build its own rival institutional frameworks. The postwar international order is collapsing at pace.

As such, it has long faced a reform or die dilemma, and any bureaucracy when faced with this dilemma, usually chooses the latter - because all bureaucracies resist reform. The old guard always fears change.

The existence of this “rules based order” has been central to the British establishment psyche for the last seventy years. The rule of international law is central to the thinking of our establishment - be it the NGOcracy, the civil service, universities, Parliament and even the Tory party itself (and later Blairite neoliberals).

Upholding the international rules based order is, in their view, paramount to the national interest - and in their defence, for a long time, it was. But now it is so deeply ingrained, it now subordinates the national interest and the democratic will. Increasingly, it is the object of populist ire. It started with Brexit, and now extends to the ECHR and the UN. ECHR is seen as unacceptable interference on matters of immigration and justice, while UN climate treaties come under attack for dampening economic growth.

In this time, our politicians have failed to notice the pivot to multipolarity, and the refusal to reform these institutions has led to their increasing irrelevance. We remain bound by them owing to our devotion to them as an instrument of international influence, and we’ll be the very last to admit their time is over.

This is the new battleground of politics as populist movements challenge the incumbency of not only legacy parties (one nation Tories etc) but also the incumbency of the institutions (not least ECHR). We see this in the restorationist designs of the dissident right - which seek to remove everything from the ECHR to the Paris climate accords. It’s a revolution waiting in the wings, but not one that will go unopposed.

The opposition will fiercely defend this old order - not least because they control it. Over the years they’ve captured the institutions to implement their agendas from climate communism to transgender politics.

The populist right (elements of the Tory party, Reform (and its offshoots) fight the many heads of the serpent, and the left and the establishment will invoke the spectre of fascism. That’s why we’re seeing a new wave of antisemitism and holocaust denial on the right. “Never again” is the root command of the entire international order.

As such, with the passage of time, and younger generations having no living link to the holocaust, it is diminished in its historical and emotional significance and the narratives of yore are ever more prone to challenges. There are degrees of this, but some are going the whole hog to deny the holocaust ever happened. If it never happened then there is every justification for tearing down the entire post-war peace architecture.

This is something we should pay close attention to. I am no defender of liberal internationalism, but the rising strain of nationalism is no antidote because it seeks to chuck out the baby with the bathwater - destroying the West’s instruments of power, promoting solipsistic islationaism and disengagement from international affairs.

This, I think, is dangerous. Our domestic security is not improved by retreating from the world and if we fatally undermine the institutions created in our own image they will be replaced by those beholden to China. Moreover, nothing good ever good comes from rewriting history - and nothing good comes from scapegoating Jews. The intellectual and political stagnation we’re experiencing is a mess of our own making. The mess we’ve made of immigration was not created by “the Jewish lobby”. It’s the result of decades of policy neglect and obsolete assumptions, and a hollowed out parliament that no longer understands the nature of its own power - and no longer has a functioning idea of the national interest.

This has very much influenced my own thinking on ECHR withdrawal. We don’t need to leave the ECHR to deport illegals and fix our asylum system. We don’t need to trash the entire post-war system of human rights law just to assert our right to control our borders. Parliament could if it chose to. It just chooses not to. Britain’s dysfunction has many causes, over many years, and reductive and mendacious conspiracy theories about Jews is not how we fix it. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.