IIa. The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy

“People are easily fooled. But there are tests for reality. If a thing is burned up, then there will be a residue of ashes and gasses. But if there is not such a residue, and the things appears to be unchanged, then it is not acting as if it were burned up.” — The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny, p. 357

“But if indeed six million Jews were killed (between a third and a half of the Jews in the World, and more Jews than were in the maximum area ever controlled by the Germans) then they should have left a big hole in the total Jewish World Population, but they didn’t.”— Lafferty, Letter, January 24, 1990

The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny is one of Lafferty’s major works, and if he ever receives the scholarly attention he deserves, it will be studied closely. There is far more to the book than its homologies to the paralogical fantasies of Holocaust denial. Still, the book cannot be adequately understood until that issue is addressed. This is an interpretive post, not one that I particularly wanted to write. Its purpose is to limn a series of parallels, each open to quibble, while pursuing a line of inquiry whose relevance to the structure of Lafferty’s thought is hard to dismiss.

In his dissertation, Glyn Morgan remarks that "almost the only thing certain about 'The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny' is that it is the story of its titular character." Even setting aside Lafferty’s Holocaust denial, I would disagree. Too often, Lafferty readers abandon puzzles in his work that, while difficult, nevertheless incline toward resolution. What follows is not intended as a formal academic argument, though it carries academic implications. I encourage readers interested in this issue to at least consider it through the concept of family resemblance.

Lafferty’s novella creates a world in which wars and genocides become variants that never cohere into settled public facts. Archives and testimony are downgraded to a secondary status. Canons of the historical method are displaced by a behavioral litmus test (“if it had happened, people would act differently”). Records become games, maneuvers, or bureaucratic residues. Holocaust imagery, including that of ovens and cremation, appears as present-tense spectacle. At the same time, Jewish victims are transfigured into allegory, and Hitler is cataloged mainly as an artist within the chronology.

The cumulative effect, though certainly not the novella's only one, is to reduplicate within the fiction strategies that real-world denial employs to make twentieth-century atrocities, including the Holocaust, disappear. One of the most important sections in this regard is 10.2: “A Square-Headed Answer” by Brig. General George Dredgefellow, in the Deactivated Army Review, June, 1970, which is worth rereading for any Lafferty fan.

The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny is a complicated book, but in essence, Enniscorthy Sweeny uses his genius to create a fictional account—Armageddon II—of a devastating conflict, World-Wide War Two, with the specific intent of preventing it from ever having happened. By trapping the catastrophe within an art form and convincing billions that such wars simply did not occur, he generates a vast, pervasive ambiguity about the war’s reality. This provides a context for considering its inverse: what Lafferty saw as the creation of the Jewish Holocaust—an artistic (propagandistic) fabrication of an “Armageddon” that most people believe did happen, but which Lafferty denied.

Someone might argue that the novel’s homologies can be read as sophisticated irony apart from Holocaust denial. I call this secular quarantine because I believe it misinterprets Lafferty's religious motivation while making him more palatable to secular readers. How might this work?

The argument might say that World War II did happen, that Lafferty knew it happened, and therefore the homologies undermine denialism because Lafferty is simply pointing them up. I find this weak with the external context of Lafferty’s real-world Holocaust denial.

In my reading, the book is a masterclass in ideological self-sabotage, showing how one can construct a gnostic world of falsified history by carefully deploying its strategies. In other words, Lafferty shoots himself in the foot.

The key to this reading is the deep-seated paranoia inherent in denialism; it operates through projection. The tactics the narrative embodies—downgrading evidence, shifting burdens of proof, reframing archives—are the same ones real-world denialists accuse mainstream historians of using to manufacture the Jewish Holocaust but use themselves. Lafferty, then, is not just being ironic, though irony is the dominant mode. Just as real events can be erased, false ones can be manufactured. That is the bridge between the fictionally gnostic Enniscorthy Sweeny and the Holocaust-denying Lafferty.

What follows are provocations for additional thought:

“Second-class evidence . . . minority reports… newspaper… army records… survivor pensions… nine million affidavits… ‘my own memories.’” (354-355)

This re-labels the entire documentary record as inherently weaker.

Denialist homology: Evidence, demotion, and taxonomy fog.  Actual archives and witness memory are downgraded so they can be set aside.

“Some of the evidence is very ‘convincing’ . . . there are ways to bury it . . . lack of popular interest indicates they are not valid.” (356)

This grants strength, then nullifies it by appeal to public indifference.

Denialist homology: Social-proof dodge. In other words, if the crowd doesn’t care, it didn’t happen.

“If a thing is burned up . . . people of the world do not act as if there had been wars . . . That is the test.” (357)

This substitutes a behavior test for historical method.

Denialist homology: Impossible standard & burden shift. Demand a civilizational behavior change as proof. When absent, negate events.

“So, on all counts, we come down to the straight hard-headed answer: the wars did not happen.” (358)

This is a flat verdict after redefining the evidentiary game.

Denialist homology: Certainty theater. ‘Just Asking Questions’ ->  categorical denial.

“Names of the five hundred battles . . . were only the names of army games and maneuvers. I named some of them myself.” (356)

This reinterprets battle records as titles for games.

Denialist homology: Reframing archives as play-acting/hoax.

Lists WWI sites, then: “why is there pretense that the battles were real?” (297)

This performs incredulity in the face of the archive.

Denialist homology: This is motivated incredulity posing as critique.

“Nothing of the Armageddon Variant is given . . . it does not appear

anywhere as facts or events . . . They are not removed. They simply are not available to be put in.”  (281)

This builds erasure into the ‘history’ section itself.

Denialist homology: Archive gating/record erasure via editorial frame.

Chronology item: “‘The Brown Danube,’ oil painting, A. Hitler. Hung in Alte Pinakothek, Munich.”  (285)

This recasts Hitler principally as an artist in the official timeline.

Denialist homology: Deflection & normalization. It minimizes the importance of a principal perpetrator.

“To the second of the beasts they offered the flesh of Gypsies and Jews.” (355)

This substitutes mythic bestiary for concrete genocide.

Denialist homology: Mythic displacement. As Lafferty does in his Holocaust denial letter, atrocity is abstracted into allegory.

“Assassinations and Group Exterminations were all on TV” . . . permits . . . “consensus leaders.” (370)

This turns mass killing into omnipresent spectacle and bureaucracy.

Denialist homology: Spectacularization that trivializes/commodifies violence.

“There were furnaces on every corner . . . ‘Let’s decide this at the Furnace’s Mouth’ . . . toss the weaker in.”  (371)

This shifts cremation imagery into present-tense street sport.

Denialist tactic mirrored: Grotesque relocation. Here we have atrocity signs displaced from WWII to deny their historical referent.

 “We lived those war games . . . they seemed more than games . . . paper army.” (357)

Here, experience is admitted, then reclassified as game.

Denialist homology: Retroactive neutralization of testimony.