How A Buddhist Neo-Nazi I Know Tried To Use Elie Wiesel’s Witness To Disprove The Holocaust

Note: the original Buddhist swastika is a symbol of blessing, not Nazism, and Buddhist teachings oppose racism and violence.

Last year I was shocked to discover that a long time Buddhist teacher who I was friendly acquaintances with, and who I shared a sometimes teacher with, was a neo-Nazi holocaust denier.

It happened through Facebook, that window into other people’s personas and, on occasion, souls. I was on a scroll one day when I saw that an old friend, Trent Red (not his real name), had posted a strange blurb from a site called “Militant Atheist” which referred to the Holocaust as the “Holohoax”. What?! I thought, doing an existential double take. This kind of thing is always wrenching to the gut, but here it was being posted by Red, a Buddhist teacher who I had known of for two decades or more, who I had shared a sometimes teacher with, and who I had had tea with a few weeks before. At the time of the tea Red, who spoke genteelly of Buddhist philosophy and seemed a little high strung but sane enough, had expressed enthusiasm about meeting with me because of my Jewishness.

Without doing any further research I fired off a message to him. I expressed concern and asked him about the material he had posted. I then took a look at his…