Revision 101282326 of "Alt.revisionism" on enwiki

{{lowercase|title=alt.revisionism}}

alt.revisionism is a Usenet newsgroup intended for discussion of the controversial topic of Holocaust denial. Although the name of the newsgroup suggests that all forms of historical revisionism can be discussed there, the vast majority of discussion (and flame wars) centers on the Holocaust.

The newsgroup is noteworthy for sparking one of the most successful and well-known campaigns of censorship on the Internet. Because the topic of Holocaust denial is so controversial (in fact, it is illegal in several countries), a number of organizations (such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center) have made attempts to stop Holocaust denial by suppressing it. This campaign has spread to the Internet, where numerous denier and white nationalist Web sites have been shut down because of their content.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the members of alt.revisionism took this approach to Usenet. Ken McVay, Jamie McCarthy and a number of their associates, mostly from Canada and the United States, adopted a variety of techniques to silence revisionist posters. They organized a team of 'trolls' to provoke flame wars, seriously reducing the amount and quality of serious historical and philosophical argument in the newsgroup. They published personal information about the revisionists on Ken McVay's Web site and one Canadian participant, using the nym 'Nazihunter', took to posting addresses and details of participants' places of employment. This drove large numbers of revisionists away from the group.

The newsgroup has been the target of several denial of service attacks, spam floods, and other hacking attempts.

The information content of alt.revisionism has dissolved to nearly nil since the advent of the Ken McVay's campaign. Critics of Holocaust denial cite alt.revisionism as an expression of its true face. The revisionists cite it as yet another example of their opponents' hypocrisy and unwillingness to engage in serious historical discussion.

[[Category:Newsgroups]]
[[Category:Holocaust denial]]
[[Category:Historical revisionism (political)]]