Willis Carto, a reclusive behind-the-scenes wizard of the far-right fringe of American politics who used lobbying and publishing to denigrate Jews and other minorities and galvanize the movement to deny the Holocaust, died last Monday at his home in Virginia. He was 89.

His death was announced by The American Free Press, a newspaper he helped found.

Mr. Carto raised funds to finance a right-wing military dictatorship in the United States, campaigned to persuade blacks to voluntarily return to Africa and, most influentially, started newsletters, a journal and conferences of academics and others to deny the scale, and even the existence, of the Holocaust.