Nazis, we still hate those guys!

Abstract

In Volume 4 of the Journal of Conflict Archaeology, Professor Tony Pollard and I produced an editorial entitled ‘Nazis, We Hate Those Guys!’ (Pollard and Banks 2008). Largely the work of Tony, it was a look at the world of Holocaust denial and a consideration of the issues of free speech that arise when dealing with ideas that are morally repugnant. It serves today as a snapshot of the situation in 2008 and is interesting if for no other reason because it shows how much better things were in 2008. Holocaust denial was very much a fringe issue, albeit with a worrying upsurge of antisemitism and Holocaust denial in the Middle East, led largely by then-President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He had recently (2006) held an ‘International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust’, which was basically just a platform for deniers to present their ideas in a public forum with a veneer of respectability (Pollard and Banks 2008, vii). Despite this, there was no apparent risk that such ideas might become mainstream in 2008. Fast forward to 2022, nearly 15 years later, and we cannot be as certain that Holocaust denial is out in the far fringes. Issues of free speech have become weaponised in the febrile political climate that has developed since 2008. Since 2008, the world has changed dramatically. That was the year that finance capitalism appeared to implode, and the banking world was saved from the disasters that bankers’ follies had created by huge inputs of public money that left public finances across the world struggling to cope. In the wake of this, austerity became a part of life in Britain at least for the foreseeable future. The Middle East remained in crisis, with Israel a constant potential flashpoint; it was joined by a long and bloody civil war in Syria and the apparently unstoppable growth of the ISIS caliphate that murdered its way across Iraq and Syria, with offshoots creating havoc across the Muslim world as organised terrorism. This, along with the economic chaos that afflicted the world, caused waves of immigration as people fled starvation, economic collapse, and violent conflict. As the refugees streamed away from the Middle East and Africa, their destination tended to be Europe. Here they faced an uncertain welcome as an international game of pass the parcel meant that each nation gave lip service to the idea of taking a share of the refugees while some did everything that they could to avoid taking a share. It created tensions within the EU, especially as the Germans seemed to be taking the most refugees as Chancellor Merkel kept Germany’s borders open. Britain, in contrast, took as few as we could get away with. At the same time as all this, nationalism was becoming more and more apparent within national politics across Europe. In Ukraine, the tensions between the largely pro-Western Ukrainian population and the largely pro-Russia Russian-speaking population came to a head with the Maidan Revolution of 2014. This resulted in a government with a nationalist Ukrainian perspective that included extremists from the far-right. The result of the change in regime was a civil war with separatists in the east and the annexation of Crimea by Russia. Nationalist rhetoric was very noticeable on both sides, as were neoJOURNAL OF CONFLICT ARCHAEOLOGY 2022, VOL. 17, NO. 3, 147–154 https://doi.org/10.1080/15740773.2022.2201161