James J. Martin

James J. Martin(September 18, 1916 – April 4, 2004) was an American revisionist historian and author known for espousing Holocaust denial in his works. He is known for his book, American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931–1941 (1964). Fellow Holocaust denier Harry Elmer Barnes called it "unquestionably the most formidable achievement of World War II Revisionism."

• University of New Hampshire 1942
• University of Michigan Master's degree in 1945, doctorate in history in 1949

Martin was a close associate of historian Harry Elmer Barnes. Martin's own views were market-libertarian and individualist anarchist. He was also an egoist influenced by Max Stirner and rejected the natural rights views held by some other libertarians. His work was praised by New Left historian William Appleman Williams, libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard, and others.

After a teaching career at Northern Illinois University, San Francisco State College, and Deep Springs College, he took a job teaching at Robert LeFevre's Rampart College, assuming it would be a full-time job. This was not the case as Rampart College was not yet really a college but only a series of workshop/lectures on libertarian political economy. That led to an eventual falling out between Martin and LeFevre when Rampart College went out of business three years after Martin was hired, with Martin charging LeFevre with a breach of his five-year contract.

In 1968, after Rampart College folded and Barnes had died, Martin founded the small Ralph Myles Publisher in Colorado Springs, at first to publish Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader. Ralph Myles also reprinted Men Against the State, published a new book by Lawrence Dennis, reprinted a history of American anti-militarism by Arthur Ekirch, and brought several World War I revisionist books and a series of classic anarchist writings back into print, such as No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority by Lysander Spooner and In Quest of Truth and Justice by Harry Elmer Barnes. Martin also was the author of books on anti-war subjects including Revisionist Viewpoints and The Saga of Hog Island, both of them collections of anti-World War II essays, and An American Adventure in Bookburning, a history of censorship in the United States during World War I.

From 1979, Martin began to associate with the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a Holocaust denial group, writing for the IHR journal, The Journal of Historical Review. Brian Doherty notes in Radicals for Capitalism: "Martin, in his attempt to adjust standard historical understandings of war and war guilt, shifted into questioning the veracity of standard anti-German atrocity stories, including the standard details of the Holocaust", calls it an "unfortunate shading over into Hitler apologetics", and that Martin stated as early as 1976 "I don't believe that the evidence of a planned extermination of the entire Jewish population of Europe is holding up."One of his last books was The Man Who Invented Genocide: The Public Career and Consequences of Raphael Lemkin published by IHR in 1984.

Books

• Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908. Foreword by Harry Elmer Barnes. Dekalb, Ill.: Adrian Allen Associates, 1953. Audiobook.
  • Republished by Ralph Myles (1970), the Ludwig von Mises Institute (2009), and through CreateSpace (2010).
• American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931–1941: Liberalism's Press and Spokesmen on the Road Back to War Between Mukden and Pearl Harbor. (Volumes 1 and 2). Foreword by John Chamberlain. New York: Devin-Adair, 1964.
• Revisionist Viewpoints: Essays in a Dissident Historical Tradition. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Ralph Myles, 1971.
• Watershed of Empire: Essays on New Deal Foreign Policy, edited with Leonard Liggio. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Ralph Myles, 1976.
• The Saga of Hog Island and Other Essays in Inconvenient History. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Ralph Myles, 1977.
• Beyond Pearl Harbor: Essays on Some Historical Consequences of the Crisis in the Pacific in 1941. Little Current, ON: Plowshare Press, 1981.
• The Man Who Invented 'Genocide': The Public Career and Consequences of Raphael Lemkin. Torrance, Calif.: Institute for Historical Review, 1984.
• An American Adventure in Bookburning: In the Style of 1918. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Ralph Myles, 1988.

Book reviews

• Review of National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union by Antony C. Sutton. Reason, Vol. 11, No. 1, November 1976. Archived from the original.

Articles

• "A Beginner's Manual for Apprentice Bookburners." The Amateur Book Collector, Vol. 5, No. 4, December, 1954.