David Cole (Holocaust Denier)

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David Cole (* 1971 in Los Angeles , California ) is an American history revisionist who denies the Holocaust . He was also active as a conservative networker and promoter in Hollywood and operated for 15 years under the pseudonym David Stein until his identity was revealed in 2013.

Life

youth

According to his own account, Cole grew up in a Jewish family. He described his mother as a secular Jew . His parents divorced and his mother remarried when Cole was four years old. His stepfather is a Jewish Briton who is more Orthodox . He attended Hamilton High School in Los Angeles, but was expelled from school after an argument with a teacher. In high school, he joined various radical groups, including the Church of the Creator . At an atheist meeting he finally got to know the neo-Nazi David McCalden , who introduced him to the anti-Semitic scene and also introduced him to the Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel .

Revisionist career

He then moved to Beverly Hills , where he lived on his parents' trust fund . From 1991 onwards he worked as a cameraman for the filmmaker Bradley Smith. Bradley Smith also advanced Cole the money for his first film project.

Together with Ernst Zündel, he made the film A German and a Jew investigate Auschwitz in 1993 ! who showed him and Ernst Zündel on a visit to Auschwitz. As an Orthodox Jew, Cole disguised himself with a kippah in order to learn the alleged truth about Auschwitz. The film peddled the rumor that the concentration camp in reality were only a labor camp. In addition, Cole denied the authenticity of eyewitness accounts. The video was indexed in Germany in 1994 by the Federal Testing Office for Writings Harmful to Young Persons .

The film was available for purchase through the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). A pamphlet was attached with a letter from David Cole stating his intention:

“I reasoned that if I went to Auschwitz as a Jew rather than as a revisionist that I would have a better chance to cut through the misinformation and lies that so distort what really happened in the German camps during the war. ... So, donning my yarmulke, and not letting anybody in Poland know where my sympathies were, I began my journey. "

“I came to the conclusion that if I went to Auschwitz as a Jew rather than a revisionist, I would have a better chance of discovering the misinformation and lies that twisted everything that really happened in the German concentration camps during the war. So I raised my kippah so that nobody in Poland would know where my sympathies were and started my journey. "

- David Cole : Brochure quoted from The Jewish Week

In 1994 he used Smith's money to shoot a similar film project in the Stutthof concentration camp , in which the revisionists Pierre Guillaume and Henri Roques were present. In the process, however, Cole was robbed and his notes were stolen. Smith posted an eight-minute video in which Cole was telling a presumably made-up story about an anti-revisionist ambush. In 1994 he also published another video with a tour of Auschwitz from the perspective of a Holocaust denier. He also sent this to various college magazines, three of which printed an uncritical summary. In 1995 he published 46 Unanswered Questions About the German Gas Chambers , which also served as advertising for his videos.

"Exit"

In 1998, Cole distanced himself from the revisionist scene in a notarized written declaration, dated January 5, 1998, in which he renounced revisionism and declared that he had already left the revisionist scene in 1994. He would now share the doctrine. Since he equaling a 1997, a death threat, articles of Jewish Defense League attacked (JDL) by Robert F. Newman verbally and was referred to as a "disease" ( 'a sickness'), assistant former comrades like Bradley Smith and Ingrid Rimland from the extreme right-wing scene that the JDL had forced the statement, which could explain why he revoked his stance in 2013 (see below).

Cole's career from 1998

In January 1998, shortly before his statement mentioned above, he took the pseudonym David Stein. Under this name he was active in political forums and began a career as a conservative blogger and networker . He also worked on various conventional documentaries about the Holocaust that he made available to schools and universities. In 2009 he took over the website "Republican Party Animal" and began to organize various events for conservative politicians. In 2013 he got into an argument with a friend to whom he had confided his true identity. She eventually outed him by showing supporters of Cole YouTube clips with his previous appearances. Cole finally admitted in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian that he continued to represent his old positions on the Holocaust, which he blocked out as stone.

reception

In the early 1990s, David Cole briefly became the star of the right-wing extremist scene. His Jewish ancestry made him popular as a reference figure among Holocaust deniers, as people tried to reject accusations of anti-Semitic resentment by referring to him. He was even interviewed on the popular newscast 48 Hours on CBS News and The Montel Williams Show . His contributions were used by David Icke , among others .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Elizabeth Applebaum: Rebel without a Cause . In: The Jewish Week of April 14, 1994. Online: Preview ( memento of the original of March 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. via HighBeam Research @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.highbeam.com
  2. ↑ a b c Michael Shermer, Alex Grobman: Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? University of California Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-520-26098-6 , pp. 70 f .
  3. ↑ Federal Gazette No. 120 of June 30, 1994
  4. ^ Anti-Semitism on Campus: Schooled in Hate - Holocaust Denial. (No longer available online.) Anti-Defamation League , archived from the original on July 11, 2012 ; Retrieved May 5, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.adl.org
  5. ↑ Holocaust Denial: David Cole and Roger Garaudy. (No longer available online.) Anti-Defamation League , archived from the original on October 4, 2014 ; Retrieved August 3, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / archive.adl.org
  6. ^ Rory Carroll: Hollywood conservative unmasked as notorious Holocaust revisionist. The Guardian , May 3, 2013, accessed June 8, 2013 .
  7. ^ David Icke: Conspiracy theory in the crocodile coat. Holocaust Reference, accessed May 5, 2012 .
personal data
SURNAME Cole, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stein, David (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American history revisionist
DATE OF BIRTH 1971
PLACE OF BIRTH Los Angeles , California