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Holocaust denial and sympathy for Hitler in Chinese media


A postgraduate student in China has publicised material from Baidu News which allegedly espouses Holocaust denial, as well as promoting myths about Hitler’s life designed to evoke sympathy for the man in the Chinese public.

In one article, the author claims that only “tens of thousands of Jews” were killed by the Nazis. Such a huge underestimate of Jews murdered by the Nazis can only be described as Holocaust denial, and it is antisemitic to deny “the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)” according to the International Definition of Antisemitism.

The second article relays an apocryphal story claiming that Hitler had sympathy for the Chinese, but secretly disliked the Japanese, as he was poor and was assisted by a Chinese family in Vienna.

China has been said to have an “obsession” with Hitler, which at best comes across as in extremely bad taste in the Western World. However, deliberate attempts to deny the Holocaust go far, far beyond mere bad taste and are clearly extremely antisemitic.

Baidu is described as “effectively state media”. This is due to the extremely tight controls on information platforms in China, in which very little media is allowed without meeting the stringent censorship requirements set out by state policy.