Léon Degrelle. From silence to Holocaust denial

Abstract

Léon Degrelle, leader of the Belgian fascist Rex party, wrote several books with political, ideological and military content during the period between the end of the Second World War and his death in 1994, a stage he spent in Spain as a political refugee. We analyze the use of xenophobic and racist expressions, the silence, first, about the genocide committed by the Third Reich on the Jews, and, later, its denial, and the exaltation of the figure of Hitler. The article provides a reflection on whether the accusation of the Jewish community of inventing the Holocaust helps to justify neo-Nazi violence, and on the denial of Nazi crimes as a form of violence against the victims of the Third Reich.