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What about the Holocaust-denying Republicans?

What about the Holocaust-denying Republicans?

Last updated on: January 24, 2026 at 10:56 am by Jane the Actuary

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What about the Holocaust-denying Republicans? 2026-01-24T10:56:59-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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The numbers are concerning, to say the least, in a poll released last month by the Manhattan Institute on the differences in beliefs between the GOP “old guard” and the New Entrant Republicans, who voted for the GOP for the first time only recently. Many of the questions are fairly ordinary but there are several which most decidedly are not.

When asked whether they think it is definitely or probably true, or definitely or probably false, that “The Holocaust of Jews in Nazi Germany was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe,” the following percent answered, probably true, for the total group and various subsamples:

Whole sample, 25%
Core Republicans, 26%
New Entrant GOP, 24%
Identifies as Traditional Conservative, 29%
College Graduate, 36%
Age 18 – 29, 16%
Age 30 – 49, 32%
Age 50 – 64, 32%
Age 65+, 15%
Black subsample, 54% (margin of error 5.6%), ranging from 33% for the youngest age group up to 71% for the oldest (with margins of error from 10% to 14%)
Hispanic subsample, 69% (margin of error 4.4%), ranging from 43% to 85% from youngest to oldest age range, with margins of error from 16% for the youngest down to 8% for the oldest.

As a comparison, they also asked the same questions of an overall US voter sample (37% Democrats, 30% Republicans, 33% Independent/other), where only 9% answered “definitely true.” This was a smaller sample with a higher margin of error but still small (4.4% vs 2.2% for the GOP sample). Among this group, essentially no one above age 50 agreed with the statement; 12% of young adults and 29% of 30 – 49s agreed.

And similarly for “NASA faked the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing”:

Whole sample, 19%
Core Republicans, 18%
New Entrant GOP, 20%
Identifies as Traditional Conservative, 21%
College Graduate, 27%
Age 18 – 29, 13%
Age 30 – 49, 22%
Age 50 – 64, 24%
Age 65+, 13%
Black subsample, 38% (margin of error 5.6%)
Hispanic subsample, 42% (margin of error 4.4%)

Again, as a comparison, 9% said this, among the whole US voter sample.

Now, I know that many folks will just take this as evidence that Republicans as a whole are evil and stupid. But it doesn’t make sense to me.

I had expected, when I saw the commentary on twitter, that what was happening was young adults were operating with a “post-truth” mindset, in which there are no objective “facts” on the matter but the statement “the Holocaust has been exaggerated” means “I believe that too much attention has been given to the Holocaust relative to other ways in which people have suffered (e.g., slavery, other mass killings).” But this doesn’t match up to me with the age distribution of responses – at least, these beliefs are generally attributed to young adults who feel they won’t be able to find a place in the world.

And this doesn’t match up with the polling responses to the question of whether (in a long list of various groups of people), people believe Jews have gotten “too much support and favorable treatment” — much smaller numbers agree with this: 15% in total, 19% among Black GOP, 13% among Hispanic GOP members — levels much more in line with the overall voter sample, at 12%.

Also, another question asks about views of antisemitism, and one possible response is to self-identify as antisemitic: 12% of the General GOP sample, 10% of the Black GOP sample, 6% of the Hispanic GOP sample, and 11% of the overall voter sample affirm this — so the numbers are not materially different among the groups, considering the margin of error.

So where does this leave us? Honestly, I suspect I’ve blogged about this before but wasn’t able to find the old blog posts. But I’m fairly certain that I’ve written before about the new version of “never-again-ness” and attempts to make the Holocaust “relevant” that are going to have effects quite the opposite of what was intended, and minimize the significance of the Holocaust. (I’ll probably discover that Patheos will find for me, as a “related post,” a blog post in which I lament that “Holocaust education” has now been watered down into “genocide and injustice education.) For example, opponents of the deportation of illegal immigrants imply that Trump’s actions are the same as the Nazis, either deliberately misleading others by ignoring the fact that the Nazis used the term “deportation” to hide what they were actually doing, or actually believing, themselves, that there is no difference between actual deportation and mass murder. And the phrase “never again” which used to be essentially reserved for the Holocaust, or at least for genocides in general, is now being used in other ways, such as the January 6th 2021 Capitol riot.

And add to that the fact that the message that everyone around us is promoting is that “the version of history that you have been told is false” — even if that revisionist message is coming from progressives and leftists whose objective is to sow distrust in other ways, it has an impact. “You were lied to that the 50s was a better time because women and minorities suffered then.” “You were lied to that the pioneers were carving out lives in the wilderness, because they genocided the Native Americans.” And so on. Could it be that it creates an impression that nothing in history is reliable? At any rate, it makes people vulnerable to deniers/minimalists, who do in fact plant seeds of doubt.

Now, I’m not defending anyone. In particular, I don’t know how to react to the particularly high percent of Black and Hispanic respondents, agreeing with that statement, and the fact that it is the oldest among these groups, so least likely to be among the “groypers” but perhaps most likely to be mistrustful of any sort of “official history.” And, having no real answers, I’ll leave it at that.

Holocaust memorial, Berlin, via Wikipedia

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