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Google ‘Did the Holocaust Happen’ — and a Neo-Nazi Site Is the Top Hit

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By Sam Kestenbaum December 13, 2016

Googling “did the Holocaust happen” returns an unsettling answer: A page from the Neo-Nazi website Stormfront titled “Top 10 reasons why the Holocaust didn’t happen.”

The page’s place on the Google search results was originally reported by the Guardian on Sunday and picked up by a slew of other sites. On Tuesday afternoon, the site was still the first result.

“Every White nationalist with a bookish bent should make himself an expert on this issue,” a user going by the name A-Train writes on the Stormfront forum. “The Holocaust Lie more than anything else keeps us down. The twin themes of White guilt and Jewish victimhood are inerwoven [sic] into this monstrous hate-religion that is now being foisted upon generations of White children around the world.”

A Google spokesperson told Fortune that the company does not intend to do anything to change the search results.

“We are saddened to see that hate organizations still exist. The fact that hate sites appear in Search results does not mean that Google endorses these views,” said the spokesperson in a statement. According to the company, a site’s ranking in search results is determined by computer algorithms, Fortune reported.

“We do not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content, malware and violations of our webmaster guidelines,” the spokesperson said.

Former Klu Klux Klan head David Duke seemed pleased with the controversy:

Oy Vey! Call the ADL…… https://t.co/frEO030PP0

— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) December 12, 2016

This comes only a week after a separate Google controversy, where the site’s auto-complete results suggested “are Jews evil” as a popular search.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected]

Sam Kestenbaum is a contributing editor and former staff writer for the Forward. Before this, he worked for The New York Times and newsrooms in Sana, Ramallah and Beijing. Contact him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum and on Instagram at @skestenbaum.

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