“Purism Won’t Get the Job Done”: Impression Management, Political Strategy, and Holocaust Denial Discourse in Instauration Magazine, 1984–89

Instauration Magazine was a white supremacist periodical based out of Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was published between 1975 and the year 2000 and featured what sociologist Mitch Berbrier has called an intellectualized rhetoric of white supremacy. Presenting itself as a heavily theoretical, pseudo-intellectual, meticulously edited publication, it was meant to appeal to those white supremacists who saw themselves as critical thinkers and possible legitimate political actors. As such, much of the discourse employed by the Magazine was centered on creating a sustained white supremacist movement and moderating the general public’s negative perception of racist ideas.

The poster is part of a larger research project analyzing the broader role of Holocaust denial in Instauration’s narrative. It will draw on numerous examples of the Magazine’s contributors discussing denial as a political strategy and how to modify it in order to achieve better results. Denial of the Shoah will be analyzed as a political tool of the extreme right, meant to rehabilitate the Nazis in the eyes of the public and therefore make fascism seem like a palatable alternative to liberal democracy. The poster will draw on Erving Goffman’s ideas of impression management, already previously applied to the study of Instauration Magazine by Berbrier, 1999. The analysis will include examples of arguments made both by contributors and readers (who could send in their comments through the “Safety Valve” section at the beginning of each issue), taking special notice of the intra-movement conflicts over denial rhetoric, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The purpose of the poster is to answer the following questions:

1. What role was assigned to Holocaust denial by Instauration in the context of creating a sustainable white supremacist movement and improving its public image?
2. What arguments were used by contributors and readers to advocate for specific tactics and long-term strategies of Holocaust denial? How did they respond to contemporary developments in American society?
3. What conflicts, if any, erupted over the issue of denial?

These questions will be answered using the methodologies of critical content analysis and discourse analysis.

The chosen time period, 1984-1989, coincided with several major developments on the Holocaust denial scene. The 1980s marked a major turning point in the American public’s perception of the Shoah, increasing both interest in and knowledge of the topic. The latter half of the decade also coincided with the trials of two Canadian deniers, James Keegstra and Ernst Zundel, which were commented on extensively by Instauration and often served as a jumping-off point for more detailed discussions of denial. By the end of the 1980s, the terminology used to designate deniers also began to shift from “revisionists” to the more modern terms of “negationists” or “deniers,” which is a development that the Magazine also noticed and commented on.