Norberto Ceresole: La Falsificación de la Realidad

by M. H.

A student essay from Dr. Elliot Neaman's History 210 class (historical methods - fall 2000)

  Norberto Ceresole's 1998 book La Falsificación de la Realidad (The Falsification of Reality) is ironically titled.  Although he intended to refer to the topic of his book, the title more aptly describes Ceresole's deceptive historiography and analysis of modern geopolitics. On the surface, Ceresole is a legitimate social scientist with an "unconventional" view of modern politics.  However, his writings are not "unconventional," but misleading and dangerous.  After a careful study of The Falsification of Reality, its claims and warrants, I have no doubt that the only "falsification of reality" is that which Ceresole creates in his books and editorials.

  All of Ceresole's work since 1996 is based on the premise that the Holocaust is a lie.  In the introduction of Falsification, he describes how he came to that conclusion.  In 1994, there was a terrorist bombing of the AMIA headquarters in Buenos Aires, the second terrorist bombing against Argentine Jews in as many years.  According to Ceresole, the bombing led him to investigate for himself the true perpetrators of the crime.  In the investigation he discovered not only that there exists a giant conspiracy to cover up the fact that the bombing was the product of Jewish infighting, but that Jews control most of the world through the myth of the holocaust.  The implications of this worldview are expanded upon in his subsequent four books (a total of 1,100 pages)..

The origins of Norberto Ceresole are obscure.  He comes from Argentina, the country with the largest population of Jews in Latin America, about 200,000.  Most of the Jewish population lives in Buenos Aires, where there has been a significant occurrence of anti-Semitic violence, including the desecration of cemeteries.  (see the Tel Aviv University page http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw99-2000/argentina.htm)  As a youth, he was active in a socialist organization.  He lived with a tribe of indigenous people in the mountains of Peru, teaching them about socialism and helping them to combat their capitalist oppressors. (Falsificación 181 - 186)  He later would come to believe that the true oppressors were not the bourgeoisie but the Jews..

Ceresole was and is a strong supporter of Juan Perón, Argentina's populist president from 1946 to 1955.  Perón was overthrown in 1955 because he was beginning to lean towards fascist politics.  This could likely be the vital connection between Ceresole and Holocaust denial. He says, "If Germany is not "absolute evil," then the "Nazi-fascist criollo," Peronism, which is a direct consequence of the "second world war," could be something very different from the sinister image that has been constructed around it."  (Falsificación 422)  (Ceresole frequently uses quotation marks within his writings, giving his words a sarcastic tone.)  It is clear from his writings that Ceresole had connections with the Peron administration, and admires it greatly.  It seems that he, like many other modern holocaust deniers, seeks to deny the holocaust because it discredits fascism as a viable political system.  .

He also has connections with the dirty war in Argentina.  He writes, "I was one of the actors of the "irregular forces" that in the 70's helped to devastate Argentina…" (Falsificación 113 - 114)  Before he wrote about Holocaust denial, Ceresole was known as a specialist on military sociology and Peronism.  Both Stanford and Berkeley have collections of his books, which oddly include his more recent anti-Semitic writings. It is this reputation as a legitimate social scientist which has helped him to become an advisor and friend to current Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.  This connection has caused a lot of controversy in Venezuela and Argentina and, as will be shown, it is certainly cause for concern..

This paper will focus on one of his most unique and dangerous theories: the Holocaust is connected to the Leyenda Negra in two ways.  The Leyenda Negra, in English the "Black Legend," is a term commonly used to describe a historical perspective of sixteenth through eighteenth century Spain.  The Catholic monarchs Fernando and Isabella unified Spain in the late 1400's after centuries of chipping away at Moor dominance.  After attaining power, the monarchs enacted some policies that, to us, seem cruel: the 1492 Expulsion of all the Jews from Spain, the revival and empowerment of the Inquisition, the conquest of the New World and the brutal treatment of its indigenous inhabitants.  The Leyenda Negra is both a criticism of these policies and a prejudiced generalization that overlooks some of the positive changes, like the Consejo de Indias, that they enacted.  The validity of the Leyenda is still being debated..

Ceresole has two theories about the Leyenda Negra in connection with the Holocaust.  The first is that the Leyenda Negra and the "myth" of the holocaust are lies made by Jewish historians to justify the existence of the state of Israel.  The second, that the Expulsion of the Jews and the German "expulsion" of the Jews took place for the same reasons and in a similar manner.  Both theories are based on Ceresole's anti-Semitic worldview and extensive use of other deniers as references.  I will in not evaluate all of Ceresole's theories and work.  My aim is to bring to light his arguments so that there can be no confusion about what he believes.  Then I will show how he manipulates history and historiography to seemingly prove what is false and instigate in his readers a psuedo-intellectual anti-Semitism similar to his own..

Ceresole's concern with Jews is chiefly how they function as a political body.  He uses "Israeli State" to mean all Jews.  Throughout his writings, he describes the Jews as a body politic with a "chosen people" mentality.  This mentality has driven them to seek economic and political dominance over the gentiles with no concern for their well-being.  He traces the conspiratorial nature of the Jews back to the Old Testament, using the stories of Exodus to show how they are an innately terrorist people.  Through the ages they have been covertly fighting against the non-Jews, a fight that continues to this day.  The Shin Beth, according to Ceresole, is the terrorist arm of the Israeli state, which tortures Muslims, Jewish dissidents, and anyone else who attempts to get in the way of their plans..

The Dirty War was a product of the Jews, writes Ceresole.  He describes in detail the different methods of torture that the Shin Beth uses, all unreferenced and unsubstantiated, which are exactly the same techniques used by the Alianza Argentina Anti-comunista and other Argentine institutions of terror.  He explains the reason why he believes the tortures were Jews: "We look ourselves in the face and comment:  we don't know anyone who could have done it.  Many, not all, of those who were out enemies in the "small" civil war, that is, those who practiced the "terrorism of the State" were admirers, clients, and allies of Israel against "communism."   Where else would they have otherwise learned their methods!  It's curious that, in the end, they, too, don't know who else could have done it."  (19).

       The Dirty War is merely one example, according to Ceresole, of the covert terrorism which has been on going since Moses.  Two other examples are the Expulsion of 1492 and the German Holocaust.  He devotes a good deal of space to discussing these relationship between these Germany and Spain, not only in Falsification but also in his other books, particularly España y los judíos (1997).  His theory is this: the Spanish "expulsion" and Germany "Holocaust" are historical parallels. Through looking at the similarities between the two, we are better able to understand the present threats of the Jewish nation against the non-Jews.  He writes, "The concept of expulsion applied to the recent history of Germany not only connects us to the birth of Universal Spain, which was born in 1492.  It connects us as well to present-day conflicts, created by Jewish communities infiltrated in societies which, in their day, accepted them hospitably."  (43)  .

Ceresole argues that in both Germany and Spain, Jews were trying to undermine the societal order and exploit the common-people.  "Our analysis of two concrete processes of the expulsion of human groups (Spain, 15th century; Germany, 20th century) is based in the absolutely verifiable fact that the social group that expelled…was aware that through expulsion they were preserving their "own existence."  This social majority perceived the expelled group as a very large danger to the continuity of their own existence."   (46)  .

Regarding Spain, Ceresole claims that for the Catholic monarchs to consolidate their power, they needed to remove the 'social discontinuities' within their realm, which were solely a result of the Jewish population.  The Jews were an "oppressive and conspiratorial" people who were perpetually "outsiders."  (228)  "Social discontinuity" was the periodic conflict between the people and the Jews.  "The root of these persecutions [of Jews] was strictly popular."  (224)  The Inquisition also was the product of the war against subversive Judaism: "Both [the Inquisition and the Expulsion] were two instruments, successful from the point of view of Christian Spain, of a political fight between two antagonistic "classes" within the same nation: the monarchy allied with the people, on one side, and the Jewish "bourgeoisie" allied with sectors of the aristocracy and the Church, on the other.  Many of the processes of the Inquisition can be analyzed from this angle."  (240).

Ceresole argues that the Expulsion was not only necessary, but very beneficial to Spain.  "The grandeur of Spain was born precisely in the year 1492.  With the same precision, it is possible to determine the causes of this grandeur.  The State was able to consolidate, in practical terms, that is to say, on the level of pragmatic policy, for the first time in European history, the concept of national homogeny."  (221)  Spain became great because it became homogenous, according to Ceresole, implying that Germany did the same..

Expulsion was, according to Ceresole, also the goal of National Socialism.  He refers to the Holocaust as "…an undesired genocide, which was the result of a much-desired expulsion."  (334)  Chapter 7 of Falsification is solely about the "myth" of the Holocaust.  He covers the full spectrum of denier's arguments, from the injustice at Nuremberg to Faurisson's challenge of the figure of six million, from the gas chambers to the affirmation that the Jews voluntarily moved into the ghettos.  The myth, he writes, has been created to cover up and justify the crimes of the Israeli state.  "The nefarious image of Germany, as a "criminal people by nature," was and is used by the messianic/apocalyptic Judaism to justify the most horrendous criminal acts of the State of Israel, committed not just against Palestine but against the entire world."  (43).

All of his sources are other deniers, particularly Robert Faurisson (the "anexo documental", pg. 389 to 415 is reproduction of Faurisson's arguments regarding gas chambers and numbers, from "How many died in Auschwitz?" and "Auschwitz: the facts and the legend.")  He also extensively refers to the work of Richard Garaudy, who wrote the preface to España y los judíos.  Ceresole includes an interview between him and Ernst Nolte, a German historian known for his arguments that border on Holocaust denial, particularly regarding how German atrocities are just as bad as Russian atrocities during World War II.  He considers these "revisionist" holocaust-deniers to be legitimate historians: "Alternatively, the reasoning of the German and north American, and that of the French "deniers" (as they are assessed by the Jewish-French establishment) have a clear and explicit documentary base, completely in concordance with historical science."  (Falsificación 369).

The Holocaust and the Leyenda Negra are similar in another way: both are myths perpetuated by the Jewish historical establishment.  One reason is the Expulsion serves as a predecessor for the Holocaust, and thus gives the "myth" legitimacy.  "Both historical conjectures should be accepted or rejected without trying to isolate one from the other. In the first case, we are legitimizing the existence of the State of Israel, affirming: the present suffering of Arabs and Palestinians is necessary-or justifiable, which is the same-given the enormous previous suffering of the Jewish people (basic elements: Spanish Expulsion + German "Holocaust.")"  (255)  The Holocaust is built on the foundation of the Expulsion, claims Ceresole, and by creating the Expulsion, Jewish historians are able to show a predecessor to the Holocaust, which is the justification for the existence of the state of Israel.  With Ceresole, it seems that everything relates to the conspiracy surrounding the existence of the state of Israel..

The other reason the Jewish historical establishment has created and connected is to cripple the Spanish and German people.  One way this is done is, ironically, denying their history.  Regarding Spain, he writes, "Over centuries, the Anglo-Jewish world attempted to create the Spanish Leyenda Negra (another of the large falsifications/ replacements of reality) in order to annul, to the benefit of capitalism, the great cultural advancements the Castilian-catholic culture has realized." (42)  These historians also work to cause the Spanish and German people to feel guilty.  "At the base of the bloody myth of the Inquisition, the Jewish historiography attempts to establish a relation between España negra and German National Socialism.  España negra is an image destined to make all Spaniards eternally guilty, generation through generation, because of the fact that the Catholic Kings won the political fight against a Judaism and crypto-Judaism that forced the transformation of Spain, through financial control (usury) and successive conspiracies… The so-called "Holocaust" supposedly committed by the Third Reich, is similarly another image built for a specific end: justify the bloody way the Israeli state was created…"  (231).

By drawing on a lesser-known historical event-the Expulsion-Ceresole is able to supposedly show the true nature of a very similar event-the Holocaust.  Through comparison, Ceresole attempts to show that the Germans and Spanish used the same solution to the same problem.  In addition, modern Jewish historians (all historians who are not revisionists are Jews) have built myths around both countries in order to villainize them.  At the same time, he shows that the Holocaust is not a unique event in history, not the product of nationalistic fascism.  This leads the reader to conclude that fascism is perhaps a legitimate political system, something Ceresole, an adamant supporter of Juan Perón and Peronism, would probably like..

Ceresole offers few legitimate references to support his claims.  His books have a plethora of footnotes-upwards of 30 a chapter-but most footnotes merely expand upon his points without offering proof.  Many of his references are denier or anti-Semitic sources, or his own previous books.  Even when he writes that the expulsions were based in the "…absolutely verifiable fact that the social group that expelled…was aware that through expulsion they were preserving their "own existence."" (46) he offers no references so that the reader can verify the "fact" for themselves.  This is because the historical record, including the edict of expulsion itself, indicates otherwise..

The Catholic monarch's problem with the Jews was not their politics-it was not that they had infiltrated the aristocracy and were maneuvering to destroy all Castilian-Catholic culture.  The problem was their religion, not their race.  This is clear in the edict of expulsion.  …We are informed by the Inquisition and others that the great harm done to the Christians persists, and it continues because of the conversations and communications that they have with the Jews, such Jews trying by whatever manner to subvert our holy Catholic faith and trying to draw faithful Christians away from their beliefs.  These Jews instruct these Christians in the ceremonies and observances of their Law, circumcising their children, and giving them books with which to pray, and declaring unto them the days of fasting, and meeting with them to teach them the histories of their Law… it is left for this Holy Mother Church to mend and reduce the matter to its previous state inasmuch as, because of our frailty of humanity, it could occur that we could succumb to the diabolical temptation that continually wars against us so easily if its principal cause were not removed, which would be to expel the said Jews from the kingdom..

The conflict is clearly Christians against Jews.  Nowhere in this document is there any indication that it is the conflict is, "…a political fight between two antagonistic "classes" within the same nation: the monarchy allied with the people, on one side, and the Jewish "bourgeoisie" allied with sectors of the aristocracy and the Church, on the other."  (Falsificación 240)  .

Furthermore, Jews who converted were allowed to stay in Spain and retain all their possessions, creating even more false converts in the country.  "At one stroke the Catholic kings had more than doubled the number of false converts in their realms."  (Kamen 42)  Ceresole's argument that Spain achieved "national homogeny" through the expulsion is absurd.  Besides encouraging meaningless conversions, it also brought large numbers of foreign immigrants into the country to take the business that Jews had abandoned.  "The year 1492 saw the disappearance from Spain of a dynamic community, whose capital and skill had helped enrich Castile.  The gap left by the Jews was not easily filled, and many of them were replaced not by native Castilians, but by colonies of foreign immigrants-Flemings, Germans, Genoese-who would use their new opportunity to exploit rather than to enrich the resources of Spain." (Elliott 99)  .

It's also notable that Jews had been in Spain for just as long, if not longer than the Moors, who took power in the year 711.  The Catholic monarchs had just finished a centuries-old war with the Moors-yet, according to Ceresole, the Moorish presence within the Spanish empire was not a "social discontinuity."  The strongest and solitary threat was the Jews, he claims.  The Jews and false converts were indeed a discontinuity within Catholic society, but not the solitary discontinuity.  Nor, as is demonstrated by the Edict of Expulsion, did the solution serve to remove the Jewish divergence from Catholic norms, but instead further diversified Spanish society.  Ceresole's claim that the "grandeur of Spain" came "precisely" from the 1492 Expulsion of the Jews is an anti-Semitic lie..

As is his claim that Germany aimed not to kill the Jews but relocate them.  His sources for this assertion, though, are questionable at best.  His chief source is Robert Faurisson, one of the first Holocaust deniers.  According to Deborah Lipstadt, who has made an extensive study of Holocaust denial, Robert Faurisson "regularly creates facts where none exist and dismisses as false an information inconsistent with his preconceived conclusions."  (Lipstadt 9)  Lipstadt convincingly shows in Denying the Holocaust the problems with Faurisson's methodology and arguments.  As a source, he is unreliable.  .

Roger Garaudy is, similarly, unreliable.  His work is based chiefly on Faurisson's-even Ceresole admits this.  "…Roger Garaudy exposes the mythological nature of the "Holocaust," defending himself with Paul Rassinier and Robert Faurisson, although without citing them."  (338) Denying the Holocaust was published two years before Garaudy's best known 1996 book, so Garaudy remains unmentioned in Lipstadt's book. Since the publication of The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, Garaudy has become well known among holocaust deniers-a search for his name on the internet will confirm this.  In 1998, a French court fined him F280,000 for disputing crimes against humanity (i.e., the Holocaust) and for racial defamation under the French Gayssot Law.  Ceresole and Garaudy are associates, if not friends.  Garaudy even wrote the introduction to España y los judíos.  Garaudy is widely supported by Palestinians, who rallied for his cause during his trial.  (see Ester Webman's 1999 article for the Stephen Roth Institute "Rethinking The Holocaust: An Open Debate In The Arab World" at http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw98-9/webman.html).

Ceresole's sources for Holocaust history are dubious, as is his assertion that the German plan was not genocide, but an expulsion.  The first mention of the Madagascar plan comes in 1938, after Hitler had been in power for five years.  This mention came at the Evian conference. Leni Yahil writes in Jews and non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918 - 1945, regarding the conference: "It is extremely doubtful whether at that time Hitler really contemplated a Jewish exodus to Madagascar; but this was the first occasion on which the place was officially connected with the solution of the Jewish problem as seen by the leading Nazis."  (322)  .

Yahil goes on to explain how documentary evidence suggests that the German exportation plans were not a means to help Jews, or not even a simple relocation, but a means to achieve a disguised genocide.  He demonstrates that, contrary to Ceresole's arguments, the Holocaust was not  "…an undesired genocide, which was the result of a much-desired expulsion."  (Falsificación 334)  Genocide and expulsion were inseparable in the Madagascar plan.  Other European nations had explored the possibility of Jewish relocation in the decade before the Second World War, but as a means to protect the Jews, not kill them.  In 1937, a Polish team of 1 Pole and 2 Jews was sent to Madagascar to see how viable it would be as a place for resettlement-the Pole (Major Mieczyslav Lepecky) concluded 5,000 to 7,000 families could be settled on the island, an estimate about 10 times greater than that of the Jewish members.  (317)  The Germans had access to this report and used it in their drafting of the Madagascar Plan.  Writes Yahil: "He [Eichmann] certainly knew that 4 million, mostly urban, Jews would never be able to earn a livelihood on the island.  They would perish, but very far away from Europe."  (326).

There is a contradiction in Ceresole's argument on this point.  From the very start of The Falsification of Reality, he argues that the Jews are a threat to all non-Jews due to their "chosen people" mentality. Ceresole does not deny that he is an anti-Semite (at least in Falsificación) and sees anti-Semitism as a logical reaction to the reality of the Jewish nation.  Yet if the Jews are as dangerous as he claims they are, why shouldn't the Germans, or anyone, attempt to take a decisive solution to end a problem which has no foreseeable end?  How is it that Ceresole can advocate the final solution for Argentina but feels obliged to argue that the Germans only caused a genocide by accident-albeit of a much smaller scale than that accepted by modern historians?.

Ceresole "proves" to the reader that the Holocaust is a myth designed to make all Germans feel guilty by quoting and paraphrasing from Daniel Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners.  He claims that Goldhagen states that Germans are "…an "anthropologically distinct race," inclined to mass crime."  (367)  One would think that in the prologue to the German edition of Hitler's Willing Executioners, Goldhagen would particularly emphasize this idea, if there were indeed a Jewish conspiracy to debilitate the Germans through guilt.  But this is not the case:  "I reject categorically the notion of collective guilt…. Not collective groups but only individuals are to be deemed guilty and only for their own individual deeds….Because the analysis of this book emphasizes that every individual made choices about how to treat Jews, its entire mode of analysis runs directly contrary to, and provides powerful argument against any notion of collective guilt."  (481 - 482) According to Ceresole, Goldhagen, a Jew, should be the forerunner of the notion of collective guilt.  This is a case of distorting the truth to fit preconceived notions, or to prove what cannot be proven..

By making a honest and just comparison of the Spanish Expulsion of 1492 and the Holocaust, one can gain insight into what makes the Holocaust a unique event in our history.  Ceresole attempts to show how they are part of a larger pattern of Jewish subversion and the non-Jew response. It is essential to show how Ceresole's projection is fallacious, so that those who are unaware may not be mislead into hate..

Fifteenth-century Spain and twentieth-century Germany were under the influence of distinctly different forms of anti-Semitism.  In Spain, anti-Semitism was religious, not political.  The Spanish Church and the Catholic monarchs did not want Jews to die but to convert to Christianity.  The policies they enacted to bring about conversion-like the Expulsion-were coercive and resulted in many false converts, but the blame for these half-hearted Christians was given solely to the un-converted Jews.  Gitlitz's book Secrecy and Deceit: the Religion of the Crypto-Jews, is a highly detailed and carefully documented study of the society of the false converts following the Expulsion.  He writes, "The text of the Expulsion order says straightforwardly that the purpose was to prevent Jews from further impeding the Christianization of Spain's converso [Jewish converts to Christianity] community.  … But in this watershed attempt at social engineering the principle causes were religious: to banish the Jews, whose presence was increasingly deemed an insult to practicing Christians, and thus to respond to the demands of popular anti-Semitism, some of it carefully orchestrated, which had brought hatred of the Jews to a fever pitch; to separate Jews from conversos; and, in accord with the philosophy of conversionism that had run strongly through Spanish policy since the late fourteenth century, to encourage more Jews to become Catholic."  (Gitlitz 25-26).

In Germany, unlike in Spain, the Jews were not a religion but a race. This fact is plainly evident in Nazi policies-for example, the Nuremberg Laws, which defined precisely who was a Jew by their ancestry, not their religion.  Even Christians of Jewish heritage were considered Jews, in line with the Nazi's biological/ social Darwinist ideology.  Thus there was no possibility for a Jew to be reformed or saved.  Goldhagen argues this change in the definition of the Jew occurred in the mid-nineteenth century.  "German anti-Semitism in the later part of the [nineteenth] century coalesced around a new master concept: race.  Race, an immutable quality, dictated that a Jew could never become a German."  (65)  Reform was not a possibility for German Jews.  They could only be "reformed" by exile or death..

This fundamental difference in the nature of Spanish and German anti-Semitism is the source of the other key differences between the Holocaust and the Expulsion, including its implementation and impact..

Anti-Semitism was never directly institutionalized in medieval Spain. The body most akin to the Gestapo was the Holy Office of the Inquisition-and even this did not have the power to directly touch the Jewish population.  (Kamen 40)  It was created in 1179, but became inactive until it was revived in 1480 to investigate the religious orthodoxy of Christians.  "The purpose of the Inquisition was solely to act against Christian heretics who were deemed to be corrupting the faith."  (Roth 203)  After it became clear to the Inquisition that the source of religious unorthodoxy within the converso community was continued contact with Jews, the Inquisition began taking steps to separate the Jews from the Christians.  A Christian was defined as anyone who professed the faith, even if they did not follow it, as is made clear by the edict of Expulsion..

It was likely the Inquisition, not the Catholic monarchs, who ordered the Expulsion.  Roth mentions a letter from the Crown to the count of Ribadeo, dated March 31, 1492, written to inform the count of the edict of expulsion, and shows how in its language we find proof that the Inquisition was the source of the Edict.   Roth writes: "This letter is important because it adds some specific information: that they were informed by the inquisitors and "from other parts" that the earlier remedies (separate juderías [Jewish-only neighborhoods], expulsions from Andalucía and Zaragoza) had been of no avail, and only expelling the Jews completely would stop the "evils and harm which come to the Christians from participating with and conversation with the said Jews," who continue to "pervert" them (words almost identical to those in the decree).  Thus, if we did not already suspect it, we here have proof that it was the Inquisitors who were responsible for the Expulsion." (Roth 285)  Other evidence that the Inquisition was responsible for the Expulsion comes from Erna Paris, author of End of Days :  A Story of Tolerance, Tyranny, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain.  She asserts that the language of the Edict of Expulsion is nearly identical to contemporaneous Inquisitorial documents.  (245).

In Germany, there was no division between "Inquisition" and "state." Members of the state were those responsible for the treatment or mistreatment of the Jews.  Authority was not given to the state to persecute the Jews-they gave the authority to themselves.  Many different branches of the Third Reich were involved in the Final Solution-Goldhagen estimates that the number of perpetrators was at least over 100,000, and "It would not be surprising if the number turned out to be five hundred thousand or more."  (167)  These people ranged through many Third Reich institutions.  There wasn't an independent body to check the power of the German's "Inquisition", which was in Spain the role of the state.  .

       The Expulsion was a "solution" to a domestic problem within Spain. Germany, on the other hand, saw the Jewish Problem as international, not domestic.  The "solution" for the German's "Jewish Problem" was thus international in scope and implemented in the territories the Germans controlled.  This international, not domestic, focus grew directly from German eliminationist anti-Semitism.  Jews in Spain were a local problem, particularly with the large number of coversos, both orthodox and unorthodox.  There was no need to think of expelling Jews from all of Europe, not that Spain had the ability to do this.  Eliminationist anti-Semitism, on the other hand, purports that the problem with Jews is not what they do, but that they exist.  It transcends national or regional boundaries..

It is crucial to keep in mind that from their inceptions, both the Inquisition and the Gestapo were both undisputedly based on a hallucinatory conception of Jews.  In Spain, the pressure for the conversion in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had led to a large population of converted Jews.  These Jews did not, of course, sever all family ties and connections to their Jewish friends and neighbors when they converted.  Medieval anti-Semitism dictated that the Jews were the tools of the devil and thus having contact with them was to contamination by evil.  Thus, converts who kept in touch with their families were suspect and subject to the Inquisition.  This directly led to the Expulsion..

German anti-Semitism was similarly irrational, based on notions foreign to us.  Goldhagen writes that in order to understand the Holocaust, we must approach pre-war Germany as if we were approaching a culture we knew nothing about.  He writes:  "Indeed, the corpus of German anti-Semitic literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-with its wild and hallucinatory accounts of the nature of Jews, their virtually limitless power, and their responsibility for nearly every harm that has befallen the world-is so divorced from reality that anyone reading it would be hard pressed to conclude that it was anything but the product of the collective scribes of an insane asylum."  (28)  If we do not remember that German and Spanish anti-Semitism were not grounded in reality, we are liable to make the same mistake Ceresole makes in assuming that they were rational responses to rational threats.  This distorts the truth and the lessons the Expulsion and the Holocaust hold for us today..

The result of the Expulsion was the exile or conversion of all of Spain's Jewish population.  Gitlintz estimates that half of Sprain's Jewish population-about 100,000-converted within the four months between the pronouncement of the Expulsion and the deadline.  (27)  Those Jews who left Spain, many of them to Italy and Turkey, were forced to sell all their property.  No gold or jewels were allowed to leave the country, and debts that could not be collected were forced to be cancelled, causing the liquidation of the majority of Jewish financial assets, to the benefit of the Crown.  The exile was so traumatic for many Jews that they accepted conversion in order to remain, causing the birth of such a large converso population.  The Inquisition grew after the Expulsion, attempting to assure the orthodoxy (through horrendous torture) of these Jews.  The Expulsion was only the beginning of the struggle for Spain's Jewish population, both the conversos and the exiled Sephardim.  (Many of the descendents of Sephardim are found in Argentina today.).

The Holocaust on the other hand, was the death of between five and six million Jews.  This is not to suggest that the Expulsion is justifiable-it was an ill-conceived solution to a problem the Spanish state had created, a conveso population who were not "ideal" Catholics. The organized hatred, social death, torture, and murder of the Jews during the Holocaust is without parallel.  The Spanish Expulsion, as a result of its domestic focus and its goal of reform not genocide, was vastly different from the Holocaust.  A predecessor, perhaps, but due to the nature of German anti-Semitism-with its international focus and racial foundation-ensures that they are not parallels..

Ceresole, by equating the Expulsion and the Holocaust, does more than simply attempt to redeem Peronist fascism as a viable political system. If the "Holocaust" is one instance in a general pattern of anti-Semitic persecutions, and anti-Semitism is a logical reaction to the presence of Jews (as Ceresole openly states) then there may be situations today that require similar action.  This is what Ceresole wants the reader to think, particularly regarding Argentina, his native land.  He sees the Dirty War and the 1992 and 1994 bombings as results of Jewish terrorism, "…which means to survive, this country [Argentina] and this society need to confront Judaism or disappear from history."  (17)  This is not the only call to action Ceresole makes in The Falsification of Reality.  "We want to recuperate our lands and our families…to construct a power with the capacity to expel those which until now have used it to degrade us as a country and as a nation.  We want to construct a new homeland with our men who come from our earth.  And we know that this will bring us into an irreversible, but absolutely necessary, conflict with the owners of a country that they manage for the benefit of foreign interests." (214)  "Until this moment, Argentine society…has not found in her heart the energy necessary to reconstruct the true meaning of the concept of "anti-Semitism," which in its origin-and in distant lands-expresses itself as a logical reaction to the posture of superiority that the Jewish world assumes over the gentile world…"  (86) It should be clear what Ceresole is proposing as the conclusion of his argument: Argentina needs to expel the Jews..

If Ceresole were far outside the boundaries of civilization, he would not be dangerous.  What makes him a threat is the fact that Ceresole is an advisor and friend of the current president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.  The media has picked up on the rumors of Ceresole's past, but he has made an effort to confuse and distort his true opinions about Jews.  In a recent interview with Analitica.com, he was asked the question, "Ceresole, are you an anti-Semite?"  His response:  "No, not absolutely.  By God, I come from the Left, from the armed left, a militant left, from Los Montoneros."  The interviewer asked him to elaborate on the myth of his anti-Semitism, and he said, "I had friends, many Jewish friends in Argentina who stopped talking to me, they simply didn't call me on the telephone and I didn't know why…For me all people are equal, for me a Jew is equal to any other person, exactly equal to any other person…But I am not an anti-Semite, naturally I am not.  Well, I am a critic of the politics of the Israeli State.".

In the introduction to the interview, analitica.com, deceived by his words, writes: "he affirms that he doesn't have anything against the Jews as a nation, but against Israel as a country…"  Perhaps Ceresole has had a drastic change of heart between the publication of The Falsification of Reality (1998) and this interview.  (June 21, 2000, http://www.analitica.com/va/entrevistas/1867848.asp)  I doubt it. He has not, however, disguised the fact that he thinks democracy is not the best way.  In his most recent book, Caudillo, ejército, pueblo (Head of State, Army, People, see analitica.com/bitblioteca/ceresole/caudillo.asp) he talks openly about his role as advisor to Chavez.  "What I always tell Chavez: have power. I always explain power to Chavez.  Power is materialized in things, in objects, in ideas, not just in missiles but also in ideas…"  .

Ceresole is in a position of influence, not only in Venezuela but in the entire Spanish-speaking world.  He has falsified reality in order to achieve these positions, denying his anti-Semitism in interviews and editorials while manipulating history to justify himself.  In order to give validity and power to Peronism he is carefully maneuvering to create a base in the elite, such as Chavez.  Building on his pre-1994 academic reputation, he is able to have an importance among the general population that other deniers can never achieve.  His books, both pre- and post-denial, are in libraries throughout the United States-Stanford, Berkeley, Georgetown.  I have to wonder and fear how many people have been deceived by his falsification of reality..

Bibliographical References

Ceresole, Norberto.  La Falsificación de la Realidad.  Madrid, Spain : Ediciones Libertarias-Prodhufi, S.A., 1998.

Elliott, J. H.  Imperial Spain 1469 - 1716.  London : Edward Arnold, 1963.

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah.  Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans And The Holocaust.  New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1996

Gitlintz, David M.  Secrecy and Deceit: the Religion of the Crypto-Jews.  Philadelphia : Jewish Publication Society, 1996.

Hilberg, Raul.  The Destruction of the European Jews.  Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1961.

Kamen, Henry.  Spain 1469 - 1714 : a Society of Conflict.  London ; New York : Longman, 1983.

Lipstadt, Deborah.  Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth And Memory. New York : Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993.

Paris, Erna.  End of Days :  A Story of Tolerance, Tyranny, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain.  Amherst, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1995.

Roth, Norman.  Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain.  Madison, WI : University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.

Vago, Bela and Mosse, George L., eds.  Jews and Non-Jews in Eastern Europe: 1918 - 1945.  New York : Wiley, 1974.

Note:  All translations from Spanish were done by the author of this paper.