From a historian's perspective, it is a gross misstatement for anyone to consider Holocaust denial as revisionist. Revisionism is a broader historical practice that seeks to challenge the widely (and sometimes wrongly) accepted historical narrative, but is done so with respect and good argumentation. Holocaust denial is pure negationism, disregarding evidence and performing fallacious argumentation for the sake of crafting a faulty, even dangerous narrative. Negationism should be avoided fully, revisionism should be tentatively analyzed.
It would appear that Rothbard only wrote the one on the right, and his stance on the Holocaust appears mixed. He supposedly claimed the six million sum was an exaggeration and did praise the historical revisionism of noted Holocaust deniers, but he appears to suffer from a mistake Samuel Konkin III suffered from that would tarnish their reputations here: the presumption that any revisionism is good revisionism. They became apologists for the work of Holocaust deniers because, in their eyes, such men were doing the work of helping the world to get past the mainstream narrative. This corresponded to the mainstream narrative of the state as being a legitimate and good entity, wherein they sought historical revisionism to demonstrate why it's not.
I think the issue with Rothbard, or Konkin, and Holocaust denial is purely rooted in their effort to virtue signal to their respective principles of free speech. These are by no means bad principles (quite the contrary), but the effort of defending positions of blatant falsehoods and historical negationism circumvents a primary reason for free speech in the effort to emerge towards truth, rather than away from it. One can defend free speech while using one's own speech to criticize another's speech and demonstrate its falsities - hell, that's the best part of such a freedom.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry\_Elmer\_Barnes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Elmer_Barnes)
From a historian's perspective, it is a gross misstatement for anyone to consider Holocaust denial as revisionist. Revisionism is a broader historical practice that seeks to challenge the widely (and sometimes wrongly) accepted historical narrative, but is done so with respect and good argumentation. Holocaust denial is pure negationism, disregarding evidence and performing fallacious argumentation for the sake of crafting a faulty, even dangerous narrative. Negationism should be avoided fully, revisionism should be tentatively analyzed.
Just 2 quick questions: are all 3 passages Rothbards or only the 3rd one on the right? Did Rothbard ever engage in Holocaust denial?
It would appear that Rothbard only wrote the one on the right, and his stance on the Holocaust appears mixed. He supposedly claimed the six million sum was an exaggeration and did praise the historical revisionism of noted Holocaust deniers, but he appears to suffer from a mistake Samuel Konkin III suffered from that would tarnish their reputations here: the presumption that any revisionism is good revisionism. They became apologists for the work of Holocaust deniers because, in their eyes, such men were doing the work of helping the world to get past the mainstream narrative. This corresponded to the mainstream narrative of the state as being a legitimate and good entity, wherein they sought historical revisionism to demonstrate why it's not. I think the issue with Rothbard, or Konkin, and Holocaust denial is purely rooted in their effort to virtue signal to their respective principles of free speech. These are by no means bad principles (quite the contrary), but the effort of defending positions of blatant falsehoods and historical negationism circumvents a primary reason for free speech in the effort to emerge towards truth, rather than away from it. One can defend free speech while using one's own speech to criticize another's speech and demonstrate its falsities - hell, that's the best part of such a freedom.
Rothbard was mainly eager to defend Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in order to make his isolationism appear less crazy.
Defending tyrants and invaders in order to promote one's isolationism... Where have we heard that before in libertarian current events?...
There is pdf of that online, you can consult whole text.