On the solemn anniversary marking eight decades since Auschwitz’s liberation, the ceremony still cannot quiet the wave of antisemitism that reaches even the world’s largest universities. The drafting of the ‘Final Solution’ to the supposed Jewish problem — a shift from deportation to extermination — occurred in a tidy villa by Wannsee Lake on the edge of Berlin. It was January 20, 1942, and a small circle of Nazi leaders gathered there. They were as much opportunists as ideologues, fifteen men determined to end the threat they claimed the Jewish race posed to the Aryan future. At the sessions’ end, beside the fireplace, they shared a cognac, feeling calm, confident, and satisfied with the path they had chosen. In hindsight, those minutes reveal how bureaucratic rationality can mask catastrophic intent and how memory must stay vigilant against complacency.
Eight decades later, the denial of the Holocaust has resurfaced its arguments in new guises. Holocaust denial has never truly disappeared from regional discourse; it has persisted in the Middle East since the era of the grand mufti of Jerusalem, a noted admirer of Hitler, as well as in bloc politics at the United Nations and in the rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood. Following Hamas’s brutal assault on Israel, the Israeli government’s military response has been subjected to sweeping comparisons with the systematic extermination outlined in Wannsee. Such analogies often blur the line between critique and denial, hindering reasoned analysis of military actions and policy decisions in real time. The refrain that Israel is the new Nazi state recurs in some corners of public discourse, sometimes without careful examination. Against this backdrop, some voices even frame extremist aims as part of a broader global struggle, implying a sanctified narrative that transcends evidence or context. In this climate, the notion that Osama bin Laden’s aims were directed at both the United States and Israel has circulated as part of a larger set of conspiracy claims that complicate understanding of the conflict.
In a post-Auschwitz world, the persistent threat of self-destruction has endured, even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when some believed that Babel-like illusions had collapsed. It has become evident how new antisemitism questions Israel’s right to exist, beyond internal critiques and the separation of powers that characterize Israeli society, with its missteps and documented military disproportions. This is not about the old ethnic antisemitism alone; the levers are broader. Those who emphasize Israel as undeserving of existence do so because, in the critics’ view, it stands as a Western stronghold in the Middle East, a relic of colonialism, capitalist rot, and technological dominance facing an unarmed Palestinian population. It is an unforgivable oversimplification to suggest that the ills of Zionism equate with the disasters of pan-Arabism, yet that reduction of complexity has repeatedly appeared in opinion forums and debates.
Pierre-André Taguieff has written that in the dominant anti-Jewish narrative the Rothschild archetype and the Jewish plutocracy have moved into the background; the enemy is no longer just an ethnic group but the State of Israel, seen as colonialist, racist, and genocidal. This shift is visible on newscasts, editorials, and talk shows, and the idea of a capitalist conspiracy that would end only with the dissolution of Israel keeps resonating. In this frame, extremes of left and right often converge, with Iran appearing as a logistical actor. Debunked claims that Anne Frank’s diary is a forgery and that Auschwitz was merely a prisoners’ camp with high casualties have circulated. Accusations linking Nazism and Zionism have appeared, as has denial of the scale of events such as the September 11 attacks. These narratives, even when presented as academic theses or journalistic analyses, cultivate distrust and dehumanization that erode public debate and civil coexistence.