AntizionismFabricationText1996–present⊙ View in graph

Garaudy's 'Founding Myths of Israeli Policy' (1996)

The claim

“Israel's legitimacy rests on fabricated 'founding myths' — above all the 'myth of the six million' — exploited to justify its policy toward the Palestinians.”

Demonstrably invented: a forged document, a fictitious event, an accusation refuted by direct evidence.

Historical context

Roger Garaudy, a former French Communist Party philosopher who had converted to Islam, published 'Les Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne' in 1995–96, initially through La Vieille Taupe — the far-left negationist imprint of Pierre Guillaume that also published Robert Faurisson — completing the documented chain Bardèche → Rassinier → Faurisson/La Vieille Taupe → Garaudy (Igounet). The book repackaged Holocaust denial ('the myth of the six million') as antizionism, presenting the genocide as a political instrument of Zionism. French courts convicted Garaudy in 1998 for contesting crimes against humanity, racial defamation, and incitement to hatred. The affair made him a celebrity in parts of the Arab-Islamic world, where the denial-antizionism fusion the book embodied circulated widely.

The debunking

The factual core was settled in court and at Strasbourg. Garaudy's chapters were found to contest the legally and historically established Nazi genocide, reproducing Faurisson's long-refuted arguments rather than any new research (Igounet). In Garaudy v. France (application no. 65831/01, decision of 24 June 2003), the European Court of Human Rights declared his complaint inadmissible under Article 17 of the Convention, holding that disputing clearly established historical facts such as the Holocaust does not constitute historical research akin to a quest for truth, and that the real purpose of such writing is 'to rehabilitate the National-Socialist regime and, as a consequence, accuse the victims themselves of falsifying history' — denial as one of the most serious forms of racial defamation of Jews and incitement to hatred. Paolo Lobba's study in the European Journal of International Law traces how the case fixed the European legal consensus that Holocaust denial is an abuse of rights, not protected speech. The node's significance for this database is genealogical: it is the documented junction where far-right negationism, laundered through a far-left publisher, was welded onto the antizionist narrative and exported to new audiences.

Descends from

  • descends fromHolocaust Denial (Negationism)Antisemitism1948–present

    Direct lineage: published by La Vieille Taupe, Faurisson's own imprint, and reproducing the arguments of the Bardèche–Rassinier–Faurisson corpus; Igounet documents the chain link by link.

Lives on as

  • The Reflexive Genocide AccusationAntizionism1960s–present

    The negationist fusion — Faurisson's 1980 'historical lie' formula and Garaudy's 1996 book, published by the far-left La Vieille Taupe — welded 'the Holocaust is a myth' to 'the real genocide is of the Palestinians', carrying the charge across far-right, far-left and Islamist circuits; the ECtHR upheld Garaudy's conviction in 2003.

Full lineage

  1. Deicide Charge ("Christ-Killers")
  2. →Blood Libel (Ritual Murder Accusation)
  3. →Well-Poisoning Accusation
  4. →The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy
  5. →The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
  6. →The 'Jews Control the Media' Myth
  7. →Holocaust Denial (Negationism)
  8. →Garaudy's 'Founding Myths of Israeli Policy' (1996)

Sources