With the conference in Tehran, Holocaust denial has come of age.

No longer does it appeal only to neo-Nazis, who have traditionally denied the Holocaust in order to whitewash Hitler and rehabilitate fascism.  It is now the overarching anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of the new century, a common language linking diverse groups of anti-Semites.

Until recently, Jew-haters of different stripes each had their own anti-Semitic ideas.  Islamic fundamentalists believed that Jews betrayed the Prophet, while neo-Nazis claimed that Jews were intent on race-mixing and corrupting the Aryan genome.  Traditionalist Catholics insisted that Jews were responsible for killing Christ, and crazed conspiracy theorists argued that Jews were behind everything from the French Revolution to the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the decline of the dollar.  Differing vocabularies and interests, and the lack of a shared social network made it difficult for these groups of anti-Semites to work together.

The growth of the Internet in the 1990s made it suddenly possible for diverse anti-Semites to interact, and Holocaust denial became the universal anti-Jewish idea to which they came to subscribe.  This is most dramatically demonstrated in the Iranian-sponsored conference devoted to Holocaust denial, which drew anti-Semites of various stripes from all over the world.

These disparate groups of Jew-haters are able to agree on Holocaust denial because at its core, Holocaust denial is an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory that contains in itself all of the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes that have afflicted the world.

Any theory of Holocaust denial is based on characterizations of Jews as greedy liars who devised a monstrous tale of their own destruction in order to obtain monetary or political benefits. To a Holocaust denier, Jews have proven themselves to be the ultimate forgers of documents, manipulators of the media, and controllers of governments.  Caring only about themselves, they are alleged to have swindled the entire world, demonized the entire German nation, stolen a land and displaced its native inhabitants.

Holocaust denial truly is the latest version of the World Jewish Conspiracy, a modern-day retelling of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.