The period in which this article is produced is also essential to understanding the magnitude of this argument. Lau's article written at the end of the Cold War was a period that Holocaust deniers were on the rise. While Brigitte Lau’s work was intended to give agency to the Herero people, her work instead became a work of reference to genocide deniers. It also became a frequently referenced article for scholars to critique. Historians such as Tilman Dedering and Werner Hillebrecht categorize this debate into two fractions of thought. The “leftist,” those who are viewed in this debate as liberal, are critiqued as Eurocentric and argue that it was genocide. Compared to the “rightest” or “revisionist” of history who are critiqued as colonial
