I understand that you noble bloggers are steeped in the throes of occidental despair over those Muslim-baiting cartoons, but if you can take a moment’s pause from your deep thoughts on the crisis of Western Civilization, it may interest you to know that the European Democratic State of Austria has seen fit to hand down a three year prison sentence to a 67 year old historian for publicly questioning the existence of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Or something like that.
But I’ve said enough about Mr. Irving’s travails. While his eleventh hour gesture of contrition may have a disingenuous odor, it doesn’t really interest me any more. The simple, shameful reality is that the brash British provocateur of heterodox Hitlerology is far from alone in bearing the burden of the most sustained and under-reported Western assault on free inquiry since the Inquisition.
Don’t believe me? Why not ask Siegfried Verbeke. Or Ernst Zundel. Or Robert Faurisson. Or David Cole. Or Germar Rudolf, who, lest we forget, was denied political asylum in the freedom-loving U.S.A. to be extradited to Germany where he now sits in solitary confinement awaiting trial for the "crime" of writing and publishing excruciatingly boring books.
The parade of victims goes on like a Greek buffet, but why should you care about the plight of kooks and cranks who trade in thinly veiled anti-Semitism and historical pornography? They’re wrong, wrong, wrong. And they should have known better. Right?
But those cartoonists, they’re the true exemplars of free expression.
Keep masturbating, hypocrites. While the free speech story of the century remains untold.
At this point, I see no need to rehash the principles at stake. Instead, I will take the occasion to present the unedited text of Bradley Smith and Christopher Cole’s important article, "The Campaign to Decriminalize World War II History."
So go ahead and take a dip with the serpents. You can always hit the showers if things get too unseemly.
Then decide for yourself where the crisis remains.
_____________________________________________________________________
The Campaign to
Decriminalize World War II History
By Bradley Smith and
Christopher Cole
Copyright © 2004
Throughout
the Western world people are being prosecuted for writing about World
War II and the Holocaust. Historians, researchers, authors, and
publishers are being fined, imprisoned, placed under gag orders,
expelled from their native countries, and denied entry into others.
Those who are prosecuted are routinely prevented from mounting an
effective defense, because witnesses who testify on their behalf often
find themselves arrested. In some cases, even the defense lawyers are
prosecuted!
Countries
that have laws that limit the scope and substance of World War II and
Holocaust research include France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada,
Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Poland,
and Spain.1 These laws make it a crime for anyone, regardless of their
credentials or the factual basis of their views, to question or revise
any aspect of the history of World War II or the Holocaust in a manner
that goes beyond the somewhat arbitrary standards established by the
governments of those countries.2
Although there are no laws in the United States that criminalize
Holocaust and World War II history, some of our nation’s most
prestigious legal minds have backed a proposed law intended to do just
that.
Why should you, why should any of us, be concerned that certain areas of historical research have been criminalized?
FREE SPEECH
Free speech is very much on the minds of young people today. Many who
oppose the Bush Administration’s actions since 9/11 claim that there is
now an oppressive “chill” on free speech in America. Is this “chill”
something new? Or has an ill wind that’s been blowing for quite some
time finally caught up with people who never expected to feel it?
Most
people on our college campuses today grew up during the Clinton years.
Clinton appealed to young people and reflected many of their values.
These days, however, the same people who grew up feeling empowered
during the Clinton years are now feeling like dissidents, as they
protest post 9/11 U.S. policies of an administration that many see as
hostile to civil liberties, and a news media dominated by conservative
talk radio shows, and networks like Fox.
Suddenly, a lot of people who used to feel empowered are now feeling marginalized.
The
problem is, many of those who are complaining the loudest right now
about the “chill” on free speech are the very people who laid the
groundwork for speech restrictions and muted public debate. This
includes the college professors and administrators who, throughout the
1990s, championed campus “speech codes” that restricted the expression
of views they deemed “insensitive.”
No
subject has been more vilified on college campuses over the past decade
than historical research that questions various aspects of Holocaust
history. Throughout the 1990s, as dissident Holocaust historians (often
called “revisionists”) were being prosecuted and imprisoned in Europe,
Canada, and Australia, college campuses throughout the United States
were practicing their own brand of censorship.
Revisionist
speakers were banned from campuses. Regardless of the factual basis for
their views, they were derided as insensitive “hate mongers.” Ads for
revisionist books or videos were banned from school newspapers. If,
occasionally, a revisionist ad or op ed was published in a campus
paper, the resulting outcry from students and faculty alike brought
waves of condemnation and apologies from administrators and newspaper
staff.3
Many
of the people who express outrage at the “silencing” of today’s war
critics are the same people who championed the silencing of dissident
Holocaust historians in the 1990s – just as many of those who are
screaming the loudest about the evils of the Patriot Act are the same
folks who supported the Clinton administration’s Omnibus Antiterrorism
Bill of 1995.4
But
just as you can’t understand the Patriot Act without understanding the
way in which the Clinton Omnibus Antiterrorism Bill paved the way for
it, you can’t really understand the post9/11 free speech “chill”
without understanding the way in which the rationalizations for
silencing dissent (especially on campus) were developed during the past
decade in the campaign to silence revisionist historians.
Take
this op ed from the Cornell University Daily Sun, November 22, 1991.
The author, Doreen Lee, explains why there should be no free speech
allowed for Holocaust revisionists: “Some issues are not meant to be
challenged, provoked, or critically debated. True, political
correctness can limit the First Amendment. Freedom of speech is a great
and fundamental right, but it’s also a political construct that should
be ultimately subject to the limits of humanity, sensitivity, and
respect.”5
Sound
familiar? Ms. Lee might as well be a Bush Administration official
warning protesters not to “challenge, provoke, or critically debate”
U.S. policy during times of war. After all, we must show “sensitivity”
and “respect” to the victims of terrorism, and to people in the
military and their families. Ms. Lee’s op ed is one of thousands of
similar op eds and editorials that appeared in college (and off campus)
newspapers throughout the ’90s, arguing that dissident Holocaust
historians have no right to speak. Those who allowed this cancer of
censorship to grow and flourish during the past decade should not be
surprised to now find themselves the victims of it.
Those
who protest the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism” policies want
the right to freely voice their opinions without being censored or
dismissed as “unpatriotic” or “pro terrorist.” However, to paraphrase
the Beatles,
… in the end, the free speech you get will be equal to the free speech you give.
Once
you start censoring and slandering others who are trying to have their
say, you’ve created exactly the kind of “chilled” atmosphere that will,
inevitably, end up affecting your right to speak as well.
As
simple as this notion is, it’s amazing how many people just don’t seem
to get it. Take Robert Berdahl, Chancellor of the University of
California at Berkeley. Back in 1993, when Berdahl was President of the
University of Texas at Austin, he led the charge to ban revisionist
Holocaust views from campus. When the Daily Texan, the UT Austin campus
newspaper, accepted an advertisement for a documentary film in which
the Director of the Auschwitz State Museum in Poland admitted that the
building displayed in the camp as a “gas chamber” is not genuine,
Berdahl angrily argued in an op ed that revisionist Holocaust views are
“patently unsuitable” for the paper.
Even
though the ad said nothing about Jews or any other racial or religious
group, and even though the ad’s author made it clear that he was not
denying the Holocaust, Berdahl maintained that the ad had no place on
campus because the university newspaper is “obligated to protect its
readers” from anything that might be “a source of great pain and
anguish,” or anything that “insults a community’s standards of
decency.”6
Fast
forward seven years, to the UC Berkeley class of 2000 Commencement
ceremony. Berdahl (now Chancellor of Berkeley) became furious when a
group of students angrily protested the convocation address given by
Berkeley senior Fadia Rafeedia, a Palestinian who, at that time, was an
editor for a web site called the Free Arab Voice, a site that not only
claims that the Holocaust is a “Jewish lie” but also advocates the
outright murder of Jews. Berdahl denounced the protesters, calling Ms.
Rafeedie “insightful,” and claiming that “her strong will and strong
opinions make her . . . the essence, the spirit, and the promise of
this institution.”7
Even
more recently, in March 2003, Berdahl, appearing on a Berkeley radio
show, decried those who would silence campus antiwar protesters,
worrying that “a climate of fear” might create “a lack of dissent.”8
What
Chancellor Berdahl doesn’t’t seem able or willing to acknowledge is
that he bears some responsibility for creating the very climate he is
now denouncing. In advocating the banning of dissident Holocaust
history, he made it clear that, in his view, universities are obligated
to “protect” students from unpleasant or offensive views. Why should it
now surprise him when students who find other things offensive – like
the Free Arab Voice Web site – use the same rationalizations to try and
ban what they find to be “a source of great pain and anguish”?
In
1993, when Chancellor Berdahl argued in favor of banning revisionist
Holocaust history from the campus paper, at least one local commentator
saw the potential ramifications of his views. Dallas Morning News
columnist Joe Patrick Bean predicted that Berdahl’s actions “may have
set a potentially harmful precedent that will limit discussion of
legitimate but highly controversial or sensitive views.”9
In
fact, a plan that would indeed “limit discussion of highly
controversial or sensitive views” in the name of keeping the American
public safe from dissident World War II and Holocaust history had
already been cooked up only five years earlier at one of America’s most
prestigious universities.
In
April 1988, Hofstra University in New York sponsored a three day
conference, at which dozens of the most prestigious and respected legal
minds from the worlds of academia, government, and the justice system
gathered with one goal – to find a way to copy the laws by which Canada
and Europe have criminalized Holocaust and World War II history. A
nationwide contest was held, in which law students were asked to draft
a model law that would limit the free speech of Americans in a way that
might not be ruled unconstitutional.10
As
outlined by conference director Monroe H. Freedman, Professor of Legal
Ethics at Hofstra, and Executive Director of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Council (which oversees the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, DC), the winning law would have to be “a statute
that would permit prior restraint by public officials.” First prize
would go to the law that was “as broad as constitutionally permissible,
or, at least, arguably permissible.”11
The
speakers at the closed door conference made no attempt to hide their
hostility to free speech. A professor from the University of Western
Ontario expressed displeasure with “the absolutist approach that
characterizes American thinking about freedom of speech.” The solution,
he said, was to abandon “abstract notions of individualism.”12 A
professor from the University of Baltimore argued that the U.S. needs
to restrict certain “fervently held beliefs and political thoughts,
none of which,” he added, “the First Amendment was ever intended to
protect.”13
At the end of the
conference, the participants chose what they considered to be the best
anti–free speech law, and two runner sup, from among the hundreds of
entries submitted by law students from across the country. The judges
who chose the winners included Abner Mikva, Chief Judge of the U.S.
Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, and Amalya Kearse, of the U.S.
Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The conference attendees agreed that
the law would have to be kept under wraps until a time when the Supreme
Court consists of a majority of justices who are sympathetic to its
aims.14 The conference concluded with a mock trial in which a Holocaust
revisionist was convicted and sentenced to prison under the proposed
law.15
So
what does the Hofstra Law say? The Hofstra Law would criminalize “any
oral, written, or symbolic speech” that “debases, degrades, or calls
into question the loyalties, abilities, or integrity of members of an
aggregation of people identified by a common race, religion, national
origin, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference.” The law also states
that “An agency shall be established that will review all films and
movies,” as well as all published or broadcast speech. Anyone who
publishes or broadcasts any type of material before it has been
submitted to, and reviewed by, this agency, “shall have committed a
misdemeanor.”
While
this law might sound tantalizing to those who crusade against “hate
speech” and other forms of bigotry, the devil, as they say, is in the
details. In order for this law to pass muster with the Supreme Court,
the law states that “all speech that defames a group will be equally
restricted, regardless of the group that is being defamed.” In other
words, this law does not just protect minorities or groups with a
history of being oppressed. Under the definitions established by this
law, “Americans” count as a protected group, as do “white people.”
Recently, the man who authored the runner up Hofstra Law admitted in an
interview that under the provisions of his law, a group like the Ku
Klux Klan could successfully take legal action against author and
filmmaker Michael Moore for comments he made in his book, Stupid White
Men!16
The
Hofstra Law was endorsed by some of America’s most respected legal
minds, who expressed their desire to one day see it enacted into law.
The participants in the Hofstra conference celebrated their proposed
law’s ability to criminalize dissident Holocaust and World War II
history, and this is most likely how the law would be sold to the
public.17 But the truth is, the Hofstra Law would outlaw a whole lot
more than dissident history. By its very wording, it would leave no
controversial point of view safe from prosecution.
Indeed,
the threat posed by the Hofstra Law illustrates the truth of the notion
that it’s either free speech for all, or free speech for none.
THE VALUE OF DISSIDENT HISTORY
Of
course, it’s possible to agree that revisionist Holocaust and World War
II historians should not be censored or imprisoned, while still
dismissing their views as irrelevant or unimportant. After all, why
should anyone care what revisionist historians have to say about an
event that took place over a half century ago? The answer to that
question probably helps to explain why so many people want to suppress
or outlaw this kind of research.
World
War II and the Holocaust have taken on an iconic status that people of
all political creeds and ideologies exploit for their own benefit. The
repressive laws against Holocaust and World War II research target
historians whose work challenges the myths and misconceptions
surrounding these events, myths that have the ability, even today, to
influence political events. The war in Iraq is a case in point. Both
the pro war right and the antiwar left exploit these myths in order to
justify their positions.
Both
sides in the Iraq war debate make use of the perception that World War
II was a “necessary” and “good” war, in which the Allies acted
ethically and with a supreme concern for human life, a war in which our
government didn’t lie or manipulate public opinion in order to create
popular support for the war, a war in which there was clear evidence of
crimes against humanity being committed by our enemies, and a war that
concluded with evenhanded and compassionate justice meted out to our
vanquished foes.
The
pro war right uses these myths in order to lull the public into
thinking that there can actually be such a thing as a good, clean,
“painless” war. “Iraq will be a ‘good’ war, like WWII. There will be no
unnecessary deaths, no phony war propaganda. After the war we’ll easily
create a democracy in Iraq, just as we did in Germany, using kindness
and positive reinforcement. And you can trust our President’s reasons
for going to war. Our government would never knowingly use false
information to entice Americans into supporting a war.” Many Americans
backed the war in Iraq because they believed that there was historical
precedent for the right’s fanciful vision of how the Iraq war would be
fought and won.
The
antiwar left also uses the mythical model of World War II in order to
create a phony standard of what constitutes a “good” war. A “good” war,
like WWII, is one in which no enemy civilians are intentionally
targeted or needlessly killed, no phony propaganda is used to justify
the war, and vanquished foes are treated in a fair and decent manner.
During the Afghan war, once Afghani civilians started dying in U.S. air
raids, the left declared that it was no longer a “good” war – like
WWII.
Many
Americans have protested the treatment of captured Taliban and Al Qaeda
prisoners on the grounds that these prisoners deserved a fair and
constitutionally sound hearing, “just like at Nuremberg.” Since no real
war can ever measure up to the phony standard of a “good war” generated
by the mythical version of World War II, the left can conveniently
oppose any and all military operations on the grounds that they are not
“good wars” like World War II was.
Over
the years, dissident historians have accumulated an impressive array of
facts that challenge the myths of World War II. Documents and
testimonies have been found that show that the Allies purposely
targeted German civilians during air attacks,18 that the Allies were
ready and willing to use poison gas against Germany and Japan,19 that
England and France were as responsible as Germany for the initiation of
the war,20 that the postwar period between the end of hostilities in
Europe in 1945 and the initiation of the progressive Marshall Plan in
1947 was marked by the organized murder, rape, and starvation of German
civilians,21 and that the postwar trials of captured Germans were
tainted by phony evidence and the systematic torture of the
defendants.22
In
a bid to silence war dissenters, President Roosevelt imprisoned
American antiwar authors and activists23 (ironically, many of the books
written by these imprisoned authors in the 1940s are now banned again
under the current laws that criminalize World War II and Holocaust
history24). In England, Prime Minister Churchill had antiwar authors,
activists, and even members of Parliament imprisoned in a concentration
camp on a British island.25
There
are volumes of evidence suggesting that the Allies engaged in a massive
disinformation campaign after the war in order to convince the public
that the war, and its mind numbing body count of 50,000,000 people, had
been necessary and worthwhile. After all, the initial reason for the
war – to keep Poland free – was no longer usable after Roosevelt “gave”
Poland to Stalin at the close of the war. Therefore, finding and
publicizing evidence of Nazi crimes against humanity became necessary
in order to create a new justification for the war (ironically, most
mainstream historians now believe that Hitler came up with the idea of
murdering the Jews sometime in the summer or autumn of 1941, two years
after the war began, making World War II a war with an ex post facto
reason for being26).
There
is no doubt that the Nazis committed many inexcusable crimes during the
war, but the question facing modern historians is this: did the Allies,
in their postwar haste to find evidence of Nazi “crimes against
humanity,” take major liberties with the truth? Even the most respected
figures in Holocaust history have admitted the vast extent of the
postwar disinformation campaign conducted by the Allied governments.
The Director of the Auschwitz State Museum admitted in a 1992
documentary that the building displayed at the camp as a “gas chamber”
is actually a postwar fabrication created by the Soviets and Poles.27
Similar admissions have been made about the gas chamber on display at
Dachau, which was apparently created by the U.S. Army after the war for
propaganda purposes.28 The Dachau Museum in Munich admits that the
claims made by the U.S. Army about people being gassed at Dachau were
unfounded.29
Officials of the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, admit that the
Soviet Union went to great extremes in order create false war crimes
evidence, even to the extent of staging phony footage of “Nazis”
gassing children. According to the Director of the Department of Film
and Video at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Soviet soldiers wearing German
uniforms posed as Nazis, and pretended to gas children while the
cameras rolled. This phony “gassing” film was created for use against
the Germans at the Nuremberg Trial.30
Raul
Hilberg, perhaps the most respected Holocaust author in the world,
admitted that the Nazi commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp
had been tortured by the British into signing a confession that was
totally false.31 Yehuda Bauer, Chair of Holocaust Studies at Hebrew
University, disclosed in 1989 that, after the war, Polish Communists
and nationalists, “for political purposes,” grossly inflated the number
of dead at Auschwitz, yet “sheer repetition led many Jews to accept the
numbers. It’s the historian’s task to examine myths,” Bauer said, “and,
if necessary, explode them.”32
Konrad
Heiden, a refugee from Nazi Germany and perhaps the most important anti
Nazi author of the war years, published a detailed article in Life
magazine immediately after the war, providing step-by-step details of
how the Nuremberg defendants were being tortured by the Allies into
confessing, and contrasting the Soviet methods of torture
(psychological) with the U.S. methods (physical brutality).33
The
Campaign to Decriminalize World War II History has collected over 100
quotes from the world’s most respected mainstream Holocaust historians
attesting to just how little is actually known about the central
features of the Holocaust (the gas chambers, the number of Jews killed,
and the existence of a genocide plan).34
In
fact, it wasn’t until 1989 that anyone even attempted to scientifically
prove the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz – in a book titled
Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, published by
the world renowned Holocaust education organization, the Klarsfeld
Foundation. Before publication, the book was hailed in the New York
Times as a major breakthrough in Holocaust history.35 Unfortunately,
the book’s author, Jean Claude Pressac, concluded that there is “an
absence of any ‘direct,’ i.e. palpable, indisputable, and evident proof
of homicidal gas chambers” at Auschwitz.36 The book was immediately
withdrawn from circulation.
In
light of the paucity of reliable evidence for certain aspects of
Holocaust history, some of our nation’s leading Holocaust institutions
have turned to using less-than-credible evidence. The United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum displays a cast of the door to a “gas
chamber” from the Majdanek camp in Poland. The problem is, Jean Claude
Pressac (see above) wrote in his book that this room at Majdanek was
simply a chamber for delousing clothes.37
Furthermore,
Dr. Michael Shermer, who has penned several books aimed at countering
the claims of revisionist Holocaust historians, has said that he agrees
with revisionists that this room was not a gas chamber used for killing
people.38 Amazingly, when Shermer questioned Michael Berenbaum,
Director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum,39 about the authenticity of
the Majdanek “gas chamber” door, Berenbaum replied that he had never
actually examined the door, even though it’s a central exhibit in his
own museum!40 (According to Shermer, both Berenbaum and world renowned
Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg are "remarkably ignorant" of the
"anomalous data" that might prove revisionists right.41)
The
Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles offers its
visitors “documentary footage” of the Nazis gassing children in a “gas
van” that the Nazis had deceitfully disguised as an ambulance. In
reality, this footage is actually a scene from a 1962 Polish
black-and-white fictional film, The Ambulance, directed by Janusz
Morgenstern. The Wiesenthal Center has removed the opening and closing
credits from the movie, exhibiting the altered film as authentic
“documentary” footage.42
And
in 1993, in honor of the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,
the U.S. National Archives reedited a piece of 1945 U.S. Army Signal
Corps footage of a Paris rifle range, removing the soundtrack and
changing the description in the National Archives catalog from
“Parisian firing range” to “Nazi gas chamber.” This altered footage is
prominently featured in a guide to National Archives “Holocaust
footage” that is sold in the Holocaust Museum gift shop.43
(A
warning to the reader: being in possession of the information contained
in the preceding nine paragraphs could well get you arrested or
expelled from most European countries and Canada – so be careful where
you take this information!)
The
laws that criminalize Holocaust and World War II history have the net
effect of providing legal cover for the myths that are exploited by
people of all political persuasions and ideologies during times of war
and national crisis. By suppressing research that questions these
myths, we deprive ourselves of the information we need in order to ask
our leaders, and ourselves, the kinds of hard questions that are
particularly relevant right now:
Can
there be such a thing as a “good” war? Can a “preemptive” war ever be
necessary? If it was right to declare war against one brutal dictator
(Hitler) before he committed the crimes that would later be used as the
very reason for that war, is it right to preemptively strike other
brutal dictators before they become greater menaces?
Can
a war, and can a postwar occupation, be conducted successfully without
resorting to brutality? Is brutality ever warranted? If it was
justifiable to torture captured Nazis after the war in order to obtain
evidence of Nazi war crimes, is it okay to use torture to gain
information from captured Al Qaeda fighters? If it was acceptable to
try Nazis in front of military tribunals in which they had limited
rights of defense, and in which false evidence was used to convict, is
it okay to do the same to Muslim extremists – who have, after all,
murdered more U.S. civilians than the Nazis did?
Is
it ever permissible for our government to use deception in order
popularize a war? If it turns out that some of the war crimes
accusations made against the Nazis were unfounded, should we correct
the historical record? Or is it better to keep quiet, lest we risk
making the Nazis appear less evil to future generations? And if it’s
okay to continue using falsehoods against the Nazis, is it okay to use
falsehoods against Al Qaeda, or Saddam Hussein?
Those
who advocate an open and unrestrained debate over our government’s case
for going to war in Iraq say that allowing such a debate strengthens
our democracy. If that’s true, then why shouldn’t we allow an equally
open and unrestrained debate over our government’s case for going to
war against Germany and Japan?
Finally,
if it’s okay to suppress “revisionist” Holocaust views because some
people claim that they are insensitive to Holocaust survivors, should
it be okay to suppress views critical of the war on terrorism, because
they’re insensitive to the victims of terrorism and their families?
These
questions may not have easy “yes” or “no” answers, but it is simply
wrong to criminalize and suppress the historical research that prompts
us to face these necessary questions. We don’t have to agree with
dissident World War II and Holocaust researchers in order to recognize
the value and relevance of the questions their research raises. When we
deprive them of the ability do their work, we are depriving ourselves
of something valuable, as well.
And
we should not just be asking ourselves these “hard questions.” Laws
that criminalize Holocaust and World War II history have turned many of
our European “allies” into hypocrites.
In
Germany, it is legal for Germans and foreign nationals to belong to Al
Qaeda and publicly talk about murdering Americans and Jews, but German
citizens and foreign nationals who violate the German laws that
criminalize Holocaust and World War II history are immediately charged
and prosecuted.44
In
France, books claiming that 9/11 was a hoax perpetrated by the U.S. and
Israel have become bestsellers carried by almost every major French
bookstore.45 At the same time, however, authors who write critically
about World War II or Holocaust history are thrown in prison or fined
(France has Europe’s most severe anti revisionist law, prohibiting
people from questioning the version of World War II history that was
laid out immediately after the war by the Allies at the Nuremberg Trial
in 1946).
The
French government has no problem with wild conspiracy theories about
9/11, or the American war on terrorism, but it won’t allow its own
citizens to critically examine the history of France’s last war – a war
through which, it should be noted, France acquired quite a lot of
territory. The French have condemned Israel for, among other things,
acquiring territory through war, but there are no laws in Israel
prohibiting the critical examination of Israel’s past wars.46 Why won’t
the French government allow its citizens the same right?
In
2002, when the U.S. decided to conduct tighter screening procedures for
foreign visitors from countries that sponsor terrorism, the Canadian
government reacted in horror to this “human rights violation,” even
going so far as instructing its residents of Middle Eastern descent not
to visit the U.S. Yet the Canadian government supplies its own customs
agency with a veritable laundry list of World War II and Holocaust
history books that are illegal in Canada. These books cannot be
imported into Canada or possessed by Canadians. The Canadian government
thinks that the U.S. should not screen visitors from “high risk”
nations who seek to enter our country, yet the Canadians rigorously
screen every book that is brought into their country.47
Why
is the Canadian government afraid to allow its citizens to read
dissident views of World War II and the Holocaust? The criminalization
of Holocaust and World War II history is taken to such extremes in
Canada that, in 1997, a well known columnist for one of Vancouver’s
largest newspapers was prosecuted for writing a negative review of the
movie Schindler’s List!48 According to the logic of the Canadian
government, it is a “human rights violation” for the U.S. to require
foreign visitors from high risk nations traveling on guest visas to
report changes of address during their stay, but it’s not a human
rights violation to prosecute a man for writing a movie review!
OPEN DEBATE
Even
though there are not yet any laws in the United States that criminalize
Holocaust and World War II research, that doesn’t mean that there is a
free and open exchange of ideas regarding these subjects. There are
plenty of ways to suppress free speech in a free country. Apart from
the banning of dissident Holocaust views on college campuses (discussed
earlier), there is also that most reliable method of stifling free
speech – outright intimidation and threats of violence.
Irv
Rubin ran a Los Angeles–based organization called the Jewish Defense
League (JDL), a militant, paramilitary style activist group. If Mr.
Rubin’s name sounds familiar, it’s because in December 2001, three
months after 9/11, Rubin and his JDL second in command, Earl Krugel,
made headlines when they were arrested by the FBI for plotting to blow
up Muslim and Arab targets in L.A. The targets included a West L.A.
mosque, and the offices of Lebanese American congressman Darrel Issa.
The day of destruction was apparently planned for December 13, 2001,
but fortunately the FBI was able to intercept the plot before the bombs
could be planted.49 Had Rubin’s plan been carried out, hundreds,
possibly thousands, of innocent people would have been killed. Rubin
committed suicide on November 4, 2002, while in prison awaiting trial.
Soon afterwards, Krugel pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and hate
crime charges.
What
no one in the press or in law enforcement seemed eager to discuss in
the wake of Rubin’s arrest was that, for the past twenty years, Rubin
and the JDL had routinely terrorized dissident Holocaust and World War
II scholars and researchers, and the authorities did nothing about it.
In May 1982, the JDL firebombed the Los Angeles home of history teacher
Dr. George Ashley.50 In December of that year, Dr. Ashley’s home was
ransacked, and a note left behind by the JDL warned Ashley to stop
espousing revisionist Holocaust views.51 Finally, in May 1985, Dr.
Ashley’s home was firebombed and burned to the ground.52
In
1982 and 1983, the JDL physically assaulted Cal State Long Beach
professor Reinhard Buchner, who served on the editorial board of a
publishing house that published revisionist books.53 In September 1982,
the offices of that publishing house were riddled with bullets and
burned by an arson device.54 On July 4, 1984, that same publishing
house was completely burned to the ground by the JDL, causing over
$400,000 in damage and destroying over 10,000 books.55
In
June 1985 the JDL firebombed the offices of a Santa Monica, CA, German
American organization that had published revisionist Holocaust views in
its newsletter.56 And in April 1985, the JDL trashed the car of
University of Tulsa professor Charles Weber because of his Holocaust
research. A note left on Dr. Weber’s windshield brazenly identified the
attack as the work of the JDL, and threatened Dr. Weber with further
violence should he continue writing about the Holocaust.57
In
February 1989, the JDL threatened the Red Lion hotel chain with
violence unless it cancelled a conference of Holocaust and World War II
revisionists that was scheduled to take place at one of the chain’s
Orange County, CA, locations. Red Lion cancelled the event, which was
moved to a nearby Holiday Inn. When the Holiday Inn received similar
threats from the JDL, it, too, cancelled the event.58
The
JDL’s attacks on dissident Holocaust researchers reached its peak in
1994, when Irv Rubin, now making use of the information superhighway,
posted a notice in the Internet calling for the murder of documentary
filmmaker and Holocaust researcher David Cole, who had produced the
film in which the Director of the Auschwitz State Museum in Poland
admitted that the “gas chamber” there was a postwar fake. Rubin had
previously assaulted Cole (who, it should be noted, is a Jew) in 1991,
when Cole was invited to speak at UCLA, beating Cole on stage, in front
of hundreds of people, and as cameras for the CBS news program 48 Hours
were rolling.59 The notice that Rubin circulated on the Internet in
1994 was titled Who Is David Cole and Why Must He Die? It referred to
Cole as a “Jewish traitor” who had to be “taken out,” and it featured a
photo of Cole.60
In
November 1994, three months after Rubin’s “death warrant” for Cole was
put on the Internet, Cole was beaten by unknown assailants in his
Culver City, CA, neighborhood.61 Several months before that attack,
Rubin and Earl Krugel – Rubin’s coconspirator in the thwarted 2001
bombings – were interviewed by a freelance journalist in L.A. During
the videotaped interview, Krugel unambiguously expressed his desire to
see Cole dead.62 After 1994, Cole went into hiding, prompting Rubin to
offer a “large monetary reward” to anyone who could divulge Cole’s
location, adding that he was now ready to take “immediate action” to
“eliminate” Cole.63
In
December 1997, Irv Rubin and David Cole reached an agreement, in which
Cole publicly recanted his Holocaust views, and Rubin removed the death
warrant and the “reward” from the JDL web site. After receiving Cole’s
recantation, Rubin bragged on his web site that this is “evidence of
the power of the Jewish Defense League.”64 Cole has not spoken a word
publicly since then.
At
no time during this twenty year history of threats and attacks against
revisionist researchers and historians did the local police, the FBI,
or the press express any real interest in the JDL’s terrorist
activities. As long as the targets of Mr. Rubin’s wrath were dissident
historians and filmmakers, no one seemed to care. It was only when
Rubin tried to mount an attack against other targets that the
authorities started paying attention.
Fortunately, the FBI was able to prevent a massacre in 2001, but it’s
not unreasonable to suggest that if the JDL’s earlier attacks against
dissident historians had been taken seriously, if people had cared that
these beatings, bombings, and threats were taking place, Rubin might
not have been in a position to mount the December 2001 attacks, and
hundreds of innocent Arab and Muslim Americans wouldn’t have come so
close to meeting a violent death.
Of
course, it doesn’t always take something as extreme as a firebomb or a
death warrant to intimidate people. Across the U.S., dozens of
teachers, at the grade school, high school, and college level, have
been fired, suspended, or reprimanded for voicing alternative
viewpoints regarding the Holocaust and World War II.65 Dissident
historians have been unable to find publishers for their books, or have
been unceremoniously dropped by their publishers.66 Even without formal
laws criminalizing Holocaust and World War II history, the private
sector has, in its own way, been able to stifle free speech through job
reprisals. Reprisals such as these can be just as effective as state
sponsored censorship.
A
case in point: In Japan, as in the U.S., there are not as of yet any
laws that criminalize Holocaust and World War II history. In 1995, the
Japanese magazine Marco Polo (a Vanity Fair–type mixture of pop culture
and politics) published an article by a Tokyo neurosurgeon detailing
his trip to Auschwitz, and the questions he came away with concerning
the accuracy of some of the exhibits. Immediately, there was an
international outcry, and Marco Polo’s publisher, Japan’s powerful
Bungei Shunju publishing house, responded by completely dissolving the
magazine and firing its entire staff, from the editors right down to
the receptionists.67 This sent a message that was just as powerful as
any governmental law. In the nine years since the Marco Polo incident,
no other Japanese publication has dared to revisit the subject.
The fear of losing one’s job can be just as strong as the fear of going to jail, or the fear of violence.
And
there are other ways of stifling open debate in a free country. If the
mass media decide not to play fair, and if journalists abandon all
basic standards of journalistic ethics, the public can be kept in the
dark about a controversial issue just as surely as if there were laws
prohibiting discussion of that subject.
Of
course, media bias can be a difficult thing to prove. Advocates for
every political and ideological cause claim that some segment of the
media is biased against them, and it’s the standard response of every
media outlet, from CNN to Fox, to deny that their coverage is slanted
or biased.
As
difficult as it may be to pin down exactly what constitutes bias, most
in the media would certainly agree that it is unethical for a reporter
to invent a quote and falsely attribute it to an interview subject.
Understanding
that, let’s revisit the case of Jewish documentary filmmaker and
Holocaust researcher David Cole (mentioned above). Mr. Cole’s
experiences with the media provide an excellent example of the manner
in which dissident Holocaust and World War II researchers are treated
by the press. Whenever he was interviewed, Cole always went to great
lengths to say that he did not deny the Holocaust. Let’s take a look at
a few examples of the media’s accuracy when reporting about Cole:
In
March 1993, when the Daily Texan, the University of Texas at Austin
campus newspaper, decided to ban an advertisement for one of David
Cole’s documentaries (this is the incident mentioned earlier in which
UT Austin Chancellor Robert Berdahl argued in favor of the banning),
Cole wrote an op ed in defense of his film, which the Daily Texan
printed. This caused a major controversy that was covered by the
Associated Press (the world’s largest news organization). The March 9
AP dispatch, written by AP Southwest Bureau writer Pauline Arrillaga,
quoted Cole’s oped as stating that “The Holocaust was a hoax,
fabricated to drum up support for Jewish causes.”68
The
problem was, that quote didn’t appear in Cole’s oped (or in anything
else Cole had ever written), and the sentiments expressed in the phony
quote were actually the complete opposite of Cole’s position, that it
was primarily the Allied governments, not Jewish organizations, that
exaggerated war crimes evidence for military and political reasons. As
Cole pointed out, if the Allies had cared about “Jewish causes,” they
would have expressed more concern about the plight of the Jews during
the war.
Cole
sent a letter to Ms. Arrillaga asking about the origin of the phony
quote. Ms. Arrillaga replied with this response: “Yes, the ‘hoax’ line
did not actually appear in your oped [emphasis ours]. We mistakenly
attributed it to you due to faulty background information.”69 Ms.
Arrillaga, who did not explain what she meant by “faulty background
information,” went on to say that if Cole wanted the false quote
corrected, it would be up to him to contact each one of the hundreds of
newspapers that carried the AP story!
When
Cole was interviewed for the Jerusalem Report, Israel’s leading English
language newsmagazine, Cole made certain that the interview was audio
taped, to ensure accuracy. When the interview was published in October
1993, Cole was quoted as saying that the Holocaust was a “fantasy.”70
Once again, this was the exact opposite of Cole’s position. Cole
contacted Sheldon Teitelbaum, the Jerusalem Report senior reporter who
had interviewed him, and demanded to know where the “fantasy” quote
came from, as Cole had never said it, and it was not on the audiotape
of the interview.
Mr. Teitelbaum was brazen enough to send Cole a faxed response with the following admission:
The word “fantasy,” I suspect, may have been chosen by a copy editor who interpreted reality in this fashion. The quotation marks were not intended to signify a quote from you
[emphasis ours]. This offending phrase works as a transgression against
Strunk & White, who warn against using quotation marks to signify
sardonic word usage.71
In
other words, this quote did not represent something that Cole had
actually said, but instead represented a copy editor’s “interpretation
of reality.” This copy editor used the phony quote in a “sardonic”
(defined by Webster’s as “a disdainfully or derisively mocking”) way
against Cole. When Cole asked the editors of the Jerusalem Report to
print a clarification to let their readers know that he never said that
the Holocaust was a “fantasy,” they refused. Reporter Teitelbaum
cynically told Cole that the editors don’t have to worry about libel or
slander laws because “they are not in U.S. jurisdiction anyway.”72
In
July 1994, Cole was interviewed by Dr. Michael Shermer, a leading
critic of Holocaust revisionism. Shermer has penned several books
attacking revisionists, including Denying History and Why People
Believe Weird Things. Shermer’s interview with Cole was part of an
article about revisionism that appeared in Shermer’s magazine
Skeptic,73 and later, in expanded form, in Why People Believe Weird
Things. In the article, Shermer included Cole’s name in a list of
revisionist “racists,” right alongside the names of neo Nazis and
skinheads. Shermer provided no evidence to back up this very serious
charge, and when Cole, who strenuously denied that he was in any way
racist, asked Shermer to issue a retraction, Shermer flat out refused.
However,
in February 1995, Shermer was interviewed by Daniel Berman, a graduate
student researching Holocaust revisionism. The interview was not
intended for public distribution, but Shermer allowed it to be
recorded. The following has been transcribed directly from the tape of
the interview:74
BERMAN: “Well, David Cole is not racist, is he?”
SHERMER: “No. And I didn’t say that about David. He’s not the least bit racist….”
BERMAN: “But in your article you listed a bunch of….”
SHERMER:
“Yeah, I’d already listed a bunch of racists, a bunch of them together,
and I threw Cole into that bunch because I was listing everybody I had
interviewed, and that was probably the biggest, uh, misleading, the
most misleading thing I said in my article. I should have left Cole out
of that.”
Dr.
Shermer admitted that he “misled” his readers regarding Cole being a
racist. Nevertheless, to this day, he refuses to print a retraction in
his magazine.
Shermer also made a few candid admissions about Cole’s work:
SHERMER:
“Maybe Cole’s right. I think the whole gas chamber story is probably,
in terms of physical evidence, the weakest link in the whole story. To
me, it doesn’t matter whether the gas chamber story is completely true
or not. Maybe it could be modified, for all I know.”
In
January 1994, Cole was asked by veteran CBS newsman Mike Wallace to be
interviewed for 60 Minutes. Cole refused, citing concerns about how his
comments might be reedited in post production to change their meaning.
60 Minutes went ahead and profiled Cole anyway. For footage of Cole, 60
Minutes relied on using clips from other talk shows he had done,
including a clip from Cole’s 1992 appearance on The Montel Williams
Show. In the clip of The Montel Williams Show that was used in the 60
Minutes profile of Cole, Montel looks at the camera and asks if the
Holocaust is “a myth.” The camera then immediately cuts to Cole nodding
in agreement. To the millions of 60 Minutes viewers, it clearly looked
as though Cole nodded in agreement after Montel asked if the Holocaust
was a myth. The clip had been altered.
The
April 1992 episode of The Montel Williams Show in which Cole appeared,
and the March 1994 episode of 60 Minutes in which Cole was profiled,
are both available from Burrelle’s Transcripts. A comparison of the two
tapes shows that the producers of 60 Minutes took a “nod” that David
Cole gave at the very beginning of the show, as Montel was reading a
list of his credits, and reedited the nod so that it followed Montel’s
question about the Holocaust being a “myth.”
Using
a real time counter, the “nod” appears at exactly 0:00:56 (fifty six
seconds) into the show. Nearly eleven minutes later, at 0:11:36 into
the show, Montel looks at the camera and asks if the Holocaust is a
myth “or is it truth? We’ll find out when we come back.” The camera
then pans the audience as the show breaks for a commercial; Cole is not
shown nodding or doing anything else. When the show returns from the
break, Montel starts taking questions from the studio audience; the
“myth” question is not put to Cole, or to anyone else on the panel.
The
producers of 60 Minutes took Cole’s “nod” from the beginning of the
show and placed it after Montel’s “myth” question, which was truncated
to remove the rest of the sentence, in which Montel throws to
commercial break. To 60 Minutes viewers, it appeared as though Montel
asked the “myth” question to Cole, who then nodded in agreement. A
total fabrication, courtesy of America’s number one prime time news
program.
In
six years of public appearances and lectures, David Cole, a self
described political liberal, never once denied the Holocaust or the
mass killing of Jews, but that didn’t stop major media outlets from
inventing quotes and fabricating footage in order to completely
misrepresent his views. And these are not isolated incidents. Most
revisionists have similar stories to tell.
The
problem of media bias regarding dissident Holocaust and World War II
historians has become even harder to deny in the past few years. The
New York Times has, since 2000, sponsored yearly seminars at the Times
building in New York City with the express purpose of convincing
journalists and journalism students to censor revisionist Holocaust and
World War II views.75 At the February 2003 seminar, New York Times
publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. argued against allowing any
“intellectual exchange” with revisionist Holocaust historians, and
Emory University journalism professor (and former NYT reporter)
Catherine Manegold said that bias in this area is not only acceptable
but desirable.76
Sometimes it can be difficult to prove media bias. Sometimes it can be surprisingly easy.
Recently,
The Campaign to Decriminalize Holocaust History tracked down David
Cole, who has refused to make any public comment since 1997, when Irv
Rubin removed the “death warrant” from Cole’s head. With Rubin dead,
Cole felt comfortable enough to provide us with a statement about the
net effects of violence, intimidation, and media bias on Holocaust
history:
"When
Rubin put the “hit” on me, I realized I had to get out. In the end,
regardless of my love of history, I didn’t want to die. It was just
that simple. And that’s what happens when violence and intimidation, or
the threat of prosecution, like in Europe and Canada, are introduced
into a debate. Anyone who has anything to lose shuts the hell up, or
gets the hell out.
"Criminalizing
Holocaust history hasn’t made the field safe from the lunatic fringe –
the anti Semites, the “Holocaust deniers,” the people who have nothing
to lose anyway. All it’s done is make serious researchers too
frightened to say anything that might get them in trouble. And frankly,
it’s irrelevant to me whether the historians who’ve been fined or
thrown in prison are right or wrong in their theories and conclusions.
Historians should have the right to be wrong. To me, this is a
fundamental right that applies to people in every discipline.
"What’s
needed now is what I call a “post hysteria cleanup.” Whenever society
has one of its episodes of mass hysteria, like the “Communist menace”
scare of the ’50s, or the “satanic child molestation” hysteria of the
’80s, the media and the politicians jump on the bandwagon and people’s
rights get trampled. But after the hysteria inevitably comes the
“cleanup,” when we have to clean up the mess we made when we thought
the sky was falling.
During
the 1990s, there was a hysteria, especially in Europe and Canada, about
“Holocaust denial,” and one country after another passed laws aimed at
punishing historians, writers, and publishers who step out of line.
Well, the hysteria’s over now. It’s time for a cleanup; time to repeal
those laws. There are a lot of good reasons to do so, but for me, the
number one reason comes down to a basic, simple principle: no one
should be thrown in prison for writing a book."
CONCLUSION
If
there is a common thread running through each section of this booklet,
it is that there is an inextricable connection between our own freedoms
and the freedoms we allow to others. When we allow views we disagree
with to be suppressed, we are, in the end, laying the groundwork for
those who disagree with us to suppress our views. When we allow people
we disagree with to be beaten and threatened with death for speaking
out, eventually we will encounter the same threats when we try to speak
out. And if we allow the press to lower its standards of fairness and
accuracy when dealing with “unpopular” views, we may one day find
ourselves the target of media bias for expressing views that others
find “unpopular.”
There
is also a connection between the laws that criminalize Holocaust and
World War II history abroad, and the quality of Holocaust and World War
II history in this country. With so many of the world’s major Holocaust
research institutions and archives located in Europe, the laws that
restrict Holocaust and World War II research in Europe significantly
affect the quality of Holocaust historiography in America and the rest
of the world.
However,
as important as it is to protect free speech and open debate, a
somewhat more provocative, but no less important, assertion is that
dissident views deserve to be heard; that we profit from being exposed
to them, whether we agree with them or not. We need to challenge our
beliefs by listening to those who believe differently. When we expose
ourselves to views that challenge our preconceived notions, we will
either become more secure in the correctness of our own beliefs, or we
will learn something new and revise our beliefs accordingly. Either
way, we will have profited from the experience.
This
point was never better made than during the criminal trial of Ernst
Zundel, a publisher who was tried and convicted by the Canadian
government twice, in 1985 and 1988, for publishing revisionist books
about the Holocaust. Both convictions were overturned by the Canadian
courts, and Zundel fled to the U.S. with his American wife to escape a
third trial in Canada. After 9/11, the U.S. shipped Zundel back to
Canada, where the Canadian government, using its new post9/11
“security” laws, decided to skip the inconvenience of having another
trial, and simply threw Zundel in prison without trial. Zundel has been
held in solitary confinement, in a small, bare, concrete “isolation
cell,” since February 2003, even though he’s been convicted of no
crime, and even though the only “crime” the Canadian government has
ever charged him with was publishing a book.77
Appearing
for the prosecution at Zundel’s 1985 trial was Raul Hilberg (the man
who is considered the father of Holocaust history). During cross
examination, Hilberg was asked by Zundel’s attorney, Doug Christie,
whether people like Zundel actually perform a service by questioning
the views of mainstream Holocaust historians. The resulting exchange is
taken directly from the trial transcript:78
HILBERG:
“Holocaust revisionists, without having wanted to do so in the first
place, have rendered us a good service. They have come up with
questions which have the effect of engaging the historians in fresh
research work. The historians are obliged to come forward with more
information, to scrutinize the documents once again, and to go much
further in the understanding of what really happened.”
CHRISTIE:
“So in fact people questioning these types of situations can be of use
to you and to others in stimulating further research.”
HILBERG: “Obviously.”
In
1995, Hilberg reiterated those views in an interview in Vanity Fair, in
which he expressed his disdain for laws that punish revisionist
historians: “If these people want to speak, let them. It only leads
those of us who do research to reexamine what we might have considered
as obvious. And that’s useful to us. I am not for taboos, and I am not
for repression.”79
Raul
Hilberg, the world’s most respected Holocaust author, freely admits
that revisionists perform a valuable service by challenging the views
of mainstream historians.
And
that’s what dissent does. It challenges the status quo. Permitting
dissent keeps things open and honest. Banning dissent encourages deceit
and intellectual laziness. World War II and Holocaust history do not
need to be “protected” by laws. No science or discipline has ever been
improved by government imposed limits on research and debate. Only
those “experts” who don’t have the factual ammunition to defend their
theories are served by laws that shield them from criticism.
As
President John F. Kennedy said, “We are not afraid to entrust the
American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien
philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to
let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a
nation that is afraid of its people.”80
The
Campaign to Decriminalize Holocaust History is fighting to overturn the
laws that criminalize historical research into the Holocaust and World
War II, and to obtain freedom for anyone who has been imprisoned under
those laws. We also seek to prevent similar laws from being passed in
the United States. We feel that an organization such as ours is
necessary because other, more traditional “free speech” organizations
have steadfastly refused to protest the prosecution and imprisonment of
revisionist historians. In the face of this silence, we feel that a
new, focused effort is needed to fight the criminalization of Holocaust
and World War II history.
NOTES
1
Technically, the laws that criminalize Holocaust and WWII history apply
to all 25 European Union nations, because EU regulations allow cross
border prosecutions. Citizens of any EU nation can be held accountable
for breaking the laws of any other EU nation. Before Belgium outlawed
dissident Holocaust and World War II history, dissident Belgian
publishers and historians would be prosecuted under the laws of
Belgium’s neighbor, the Netherlands (Jewish Press, October 30, 1992).
2
To see the exact wording of the laws that criminalize Holocaust and
WWII history in each of the above nations, see links on this site.
3 For more details regarding revisionists and college campuses, see www.CODOH.com.
4
The similarities between the Clinton Omnibus Antiterrorism Act and the
Patriot Act are spelled out in detail in a Center for National Security
Studies report available on the Web site of the Center for Democracy
and Technology, www.cdt.org/policy/terrorism/cnss.cti.anal.html. The Clinton law expanded the government’s wiretapping powers and
allowed for the use of secret and illegally obtained evidence to deport
aliens and for the permanent detention of aliens. As long as these
provisions were promoted by a liberal Democratic president for use
against right wing, antigovernment militias made up of “angry white
men,” most “civil rights” and “human rights” advocates were willing to
remain silent, not realizing that one day those same provisions might
be used by a different administration against different targets.
5 “Respecting History,” Cornell Daily Sun, November 22, 1991.
6 Robert Berdahl, “Holocaust Ad Violates TSP’s Own Standard,” Daily Texan, February 22, 1993.
7 Transcription from videotape of 2000 Berkeley Commencement Ceremony.
8 Bear in Mind (radio program), March 18, 2003.
9 “Expose Holocaust Revisionism to Rebuttal,” Dallas Morning News, January 4, 1992.
10
The conference was detailed in Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech,
ed. Monroe H. Freedman and Eric M. Freedman (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1995).
11 Letter from Professor Monroe H. Freedman to contest entrants. Original copy in author’s possession.
12 Professor Robert Martin, quoted in Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech, p. 213.
13 Professor Kenneth Lasson, quoted in Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech, p. 287.
14 Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech, p. 286
15 Ibid., p. 323
16
Interview with Devin House from the January 2004 issue of Mission to
Remember, the bimonthly newsletter of The Tinbergen Archives, a Beverly
Hills–based Holocaust education institute.
17
Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech, pp. 198, 279; keynote address
delivered at Hofstra Conference by Elie Wiesel (unpublished).
18 Caleb Tinbergen, “The Rarely Told Story of World War Two,” Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2001.
19
On Prime Minister Churchill’s desire to “drench Germany with poison
gas,” see Professor Barton J. Bernstein, “Why We Didn’t Use Gas in
WWII,” American Heritage, August September 1985. On the U.S. plan to
initiate poison gas attack against Japan, see “Poisonous Invasion
Prelude,” Pittsburgh Post Gazette, August 4, 1995; Thomas B. Allen and
Norman Polmar, Code Name Downfall: The Secret Plan to Invade Japan and
Why Truman Dropped the Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
20
F.J.P. Veale, Advance to Barbarism (Appleton, WI: C.C. Nelson, 1953);
A.J.P. Taylor, Origins of the Second World War (New York: Atheneum,
1961); David Irving, Churchill’s War (Bullsbrook, Western Australia:
Veritas, 1987).
21
James Bacque, Crimes and Mercies (Toronto: Little, Brown, 1997);
Franklin Keeling, Gruesome Harvest (Chicago: Institute of American
Economics, 1947); Dr. Atina Grossman, Columbia University, “Liberation
and Mass Rape,” unpublished 2001 essay (Grossman cites estimates that
put the number of German women raped by Allied soldiers at war’s end at
1.9 million; Grossman estimates that at least one out of three women in
Berlin was raped by the liberating Allies).
22
Konrad Heiden, “Why They Confess,” Life, June 20, 1949; “Nazi Trial
Judge Rips ‘Injustice,’” Chicago Tribune, February 23, 1948; Carlos
Porter, Made in Russia: The Holocaust (n.p.: Historical Review Press,
1988); “The Use of Torture and Coercive Interrogation in World War II,”
Mission to Remember {yellow highlighted citation needs clarification
and/or expansion}.
23
Lawrence Dennis and Maximilian St. George, A Trial on Trial: The Great
Sedition Trial of 1944 (Torrance, CA: Institute for Historical Review,
1984).
24 John Bennett, “Was Orwell Right?,” paper presented at the Sixth International Revisionist Conference.
25 Ray Bearse and Anthony Read, Conspirator: The Untold Story of Tyler Kent (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1991).
26
Christopher Browning, The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the
Final Solution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
Christopher Browning, Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the
Final Solution (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985).
27 “David Cole Interviews Dr. Franciszek Piper.” Available at CODOH.com.
28 Die Zeit, August 12, 1960.
29
The official United States Government–filmed record of Nazi camps, Nazi
Concentration Camps (1945; directed by George Stevens), claimed that
inmates were gassed at Dachau. The same claim was made in the official
British–filmed record of Nazi camps, Memory of the Camps (1945;
directed by Alfred Hitchcock). A plaque currently on display at the
Dachau camp states plainly that no inmates were gassed at Dachau.
30
Letters from Raye Farr, Director, Department of Film and Video, United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum, to Holocaust survivor Josef Klein,
April 29, 1996, and August 30, 1996. From the private collection of the
late Josef Klein.
31
“Beyond Doubt: Understanding the Holocaust: An Interview with Raul
Hilberg,” by Dr. Michael Shermer, April 10, 1994; {Where does this
article/interview appear?} for confirmation that Rudolf Hoess,
commandant of Auschwitz, was tortured by the British, see the testimony
of Hoess’ captors in Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (Feltham, Eng.:
Hamlyn, 1983).
32 “Auschwitz Revisionism: An Israeli Scholar’s Case,” New York Times, November 12, 1989.
33 Heiden, “Why They Confess” (above, note 22).
34 “100 Reasons to Decriminalize Holocaust History,” 2004, published by The Campaign to Decriminalize Holocaust History.
35
Richard Bernstein, “A New Book Is Said to Refute Revisionist View of
the Holocaust,” New York Times, December 18, 1989; Richard Bernstein,
“Verifying the Horror,” Los Angeles Jewish Journal, December 22, 1989.
36
Jean Claude Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas
Chambers (New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989), p. 429.
37 Ibid., p. 555.
38
The Holocaust Story in the Crossfire: The Weber Shermer Debate, VHS
(Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1995). This
videotape of a July 22, 1995, debate between Dr. Shermer and Institute
for Historical Review director Mark Weber, Shermer states that he is
“certain” that the room displayed as a gas chamber at the Majdanek camp
in Poland is “not a homicidal gas chamber.”
39 Dr. Michael Shermer interview of Michael Berenbaum, April 13, 1994.
40
In 1997 Berenbaum left the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to
serve as director of Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah
Foundation.
41
Dr. Michael Shermer, interview by Daniel Berman, February 23, 1995.
{Transcript available?} In the interview, Shermer goes so far as to
suggest that the revisionists might have created a “paradigm shift” in
Holocaust history by asking questions that no one has ever thought to
ask.
42
The Ambulance (1962; directed by Janusz Morgenstern), is distributed in
the U.S. by The National Center for Jewish Film, Brandeis University,
Waltham, MA. The Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance allows
no photographic reproduction of any of its exhibits, and visitors are
searched for cameras upon entering. However, footage taken by
revisionist activists inside the Museum of Tolerance with a hidden
camera in 2002 shows the museum’s interactive video monitors playing
what is described as “documentary footage” of Jewish children being
killed in a “gas van” disguised as an ambulance. A comparison of this
“documentary footage” with a scene from The Ambulance shows that the
Museum of Tolerance footage has been lifted directly from the 1962
fictional film.
43
The Holocaust, Israel, and the Jews: Motion Pictures in the National
Archives, comp. Charles Lawrence Gellert (Washington, DC: National
Archives and Records Administration, 1989). Page 34 lists a reel of
film described only as “Army Signal Corps Stock Film, 9.6 minutes,
silent, b&w, Interior of a gas chamber, including hand prints dug
into the cement wall by the victims.” This “silent” footage of a “gas
chamber” is actually taken from a narrated U.S. Army Signal Corps film,
National Archives catalog number 111 M 1190, 48 minutes, sound,
b&w. This film establishes that the footage described in The
Holocaust, Israel, and the Jews as showing a “German gas chamber” is
actually footage of a Parisian rifle range.
44
On December 11, 2003, a judge in Hamburg, Germany, freed Moroccan Al
Qaeda member Aldelghani Mzoudi from custody, on the grounds that he was
not a member of the specific Al Qaeda cell that plotted the 9/11
attacks. The judge ruled that Mzoudi could not be held in custody
simply for being a member of Al Qaeda. In Germany, being a member of Al
Qaeda is legal, even though the organization’s stated aim is the murder
of Americans and Jews.
45
A good overview of the popularity of 9/11 conspiracy books in France
(and elsewhere in Europe) can be found in John A. McCurdy, “Making a
Case for 9/11 Skepticism,” Global Research, November 20, 2003.
46
The best, most brutally critical revisionist history regarding Israeli
wars comes from Israeli scholars. The French government should take a
page out of Israel’s book and allow its own scholars the right to
brutally examine and, if necessary, revise, the history of World War II.
47
Canadian Customs’ list of banned history books is provided in “20 Years
of Revisionist Oppression,” available at CODOH.com. For a fascinating
article detailing the ease with which private organizations can lobby
the Canadian government to ban a particular book from the entire
country of Canada, see “Wiesenthal Center Wants Book Banned,” Canadian
Jewish News, January 14, 1988.
48 Noel Wright, “Battling the Tyrants of the Mind,” North Shore News, May 12, 1997.
49 Greg Krikorian and Richard Winton, “JDL Leader Accused in Mosque Bomb Plot,” Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2001.
50 Los Angeles Daily News, December 9, 1982, p. 10.
51
Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA), September 1, 1984; R. Varenchik, “Man Who
Calls Holocaust a Lie Reports Threat; JDL Figure Held,” Los Angeles
Daily News, August 21, 1984, pp. 1, 8.
52 A. Jalon, “Bomb Hits Home of Holocaust Doubter,” Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1985.
53 IHR Newsletter, June 1981, p. 4; IHR Newsletter, May 1983, p. 6.
54 “Arsonists Hit Institute for Historical Review Office,” Daily Breeze
(Torrance, CA), July 5, 1984, p. A3; “Nazi Holocaust Doubters Target of
Jewish Group,” Los Angeles Times, August 1, 1985, p. B1.
55 “Arsonists Hit Institute for Historical Review Office,” Daily Breeze
(Torrance, CA), July 5, 1984, p. A3; “JDL Applauds Blaze at Torrance
Institute,” Daily Breeze (Torrance, CA), July 7, 1984, pp. Al, A6.
56 Bruce Hoffman, Terrorism in the United States and the Potential
Threat to Nuclear Facilities, prepared for the U.S. Dept. of Energy,
R?3351?DOE, January 1986 (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1986),
pp. 1–16.
57 Tulsa Tribune, April 12, 1985.
58 “Truth, Democracy Lose as JDL Bullies Revisionists,” Daily Pilot (Costa Mesa, CA), February 21, 1989.
59
Daily Bruin, January 23, 1992. Along with the crew from CBS News’ 48
Hours, the lecture/assault was also covered by the local Fox affiliate,
KTTV Channel 11.
60 “Who Is David Cole and Why Must He Die?” Copy in author’s possession.
61
Cole was assaulted by three men who followed him as he walked home from
his neighborhood supermarket on the night of November 22, 1994, at
approximately 11:40 PM. Cole suffered a broken nose and cut eye. Cole
did not recognize the men, and police made no arrests. The interview
has not been broadcast.
62
From an interview with Irv Rubin and Earl Krugel, September 1994,
conducted and videotaped by Adam Parfrey, owner of Feral House
Publishing and, at that time, a columnist for the San Diego Weekly.
63 Anti Defamation League Web site, “David Cole and Roger Garaudy,” 2001.
64 Jewish Defense League Web site, “Jewish Holocaust Denier Asks for Forgiveness,” 1998.
65 “20 Years of Revisionist Oppression” (above, note 47).
66
Christopher Hitchens, “Hitler’s Ghosts,” Vanity Fair, June 1996;
Christopher Hitchens, “Where Historical Revisionism Is Concerned,
Nothing’s Sacred, and That’s Not a Bad Thing,” Vanity Fair, December
1993; Richard Cohen, “Controversial Goebbels Bio Deserves to Be Read,”
New York Post, June 5, 1996.
67
Teresa Watanabe, “Japanese Firm Offers Class on Holocaust,” Los Angeles
Times, May 27, 1995. The article in the Times applauded Bungei Shunju
for closing down the “offending publication” (Marco Polo) and firing
its staff, and for forcing all other employees to attend a Simon
Wiesenthal Center–sponsored seminar on anti Semitism, “in contrition
for the (revisionist) article.”
68
Pauline Arrillaga, “Ad Denying Holocaust Sparks Protest at UT,”
Associated Press, March 9, 1993. Arrillaga’s false quote was widely
quoted in the weeks following her AP story. For one example, see Debbie
M. Price, “Ignorance Is Soil for Insidiously Sown Lies about
Holocaust,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, April 25, 1993. Believing the
phony quote to be real, columnist Price denounced Cole as “a voice of
pure evil.”
69 Audiotape of conversation between David Cole and Pauline Arrillaga, March 12, 1993.
70 Sheldon Teitelbaum, “Who Needs Enemies?,” Jerusalem Report, October 21, 1993.
71 Fax from Sheldon Teitelbaum to David Cole, October 8, 1993.
72 Ibid.
73 Dr. Michael Shermer, “Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened?,” Skeptic, vol. 2, no. 4 (1994).
74
Transcribed directly from audiotape of interview with Dr. Michael
Shermer, conducted by graduate student Daniel Berman on February 23,
1995.
75
Anti Defamation League, “Interpreting the First Amendment on Campus:
ADL and the New York Times Address Newspaper Acceptability Policies,
New York, N.Y.,” press release, December 1, 2000; Lewis Bauer, “NY
Times Colloquium Chips Away at Poignant Questions,” BICO News
(Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges).
76 The BICO News story mentioned in note 75.
77
James S. McCarten, “Judge Ponders Zundel Detention,” London Free Press
News, November 20, 2003; “Judge Rules in Zundel Case,” Canadian Press
(CP) wire service dispatch, November 26, 2003: “Zundel, who has no
criminal record in Canada and is not facing any charges, has been in
solitary confinement since February after being deported to Canada for
overstaying a visitor’s visa in the United States.”
78 Taken directly from court transcript of Raul Hilberg’s cross examination during the trial of Ernst Zundel, January 16, 1985.
79 Hitchens, “Hitler’s Ghosts” (above, note 66).
80 From a tribute to poet Robert Frost, delivered at Amherst College in Massachusetts, October 27, 1963.
Christopher Cole
Christopher Cole was a fixture in leftist and progressive politics in
Los Angeles in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. In 1988 he founded the
first Los Angeles chapter of the influential leftist organization
Refuse and Resist. As head of the L.A. chapter of R&R, Cole
organized benefit concerts and promotional gigs with artists such as
Sinead O’Connor, Michelle Shocked, and Fishbone. Cole was also
instrumental in organizing the network of politically and socially
conscious organizations that toured with the Lollapalooza festival.
Cole
was a founding member of the Ad Hoc Coalition for Freedom of
Expression, which was formed in 1989 to protest the Bush
Administration’s denial of NEA grant money to controversial artists.
Other members of the Coalition included officials of L.A.’s Museum of
Contemporary Art, and the legendary L.A. performance art space,
Highways. From 1989 through 1992, the Coalition organized art shows
across Southern California, showcasing the works of censored artists.
A
member of the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, the National Writers
Union, and the National Abortion Rights Action League, Cole helped
organize a pro choice concert for L.A. talk radio station KFI in 1990,
featuring Sinead O’Connor and Susan Sarandon. That same year, Cole
helped organize a concert at L.A.’s Wilshire Ebell Theatre to raise
funds for the new democratic government of Czechoslovakia.
Cole
served as head of the L.A. chapter of Refuse and Resist until 1991,
when he became troubled by what he saw as a growing desire among some
on the left to censor views they didn’t agree with, as evidenced by the
clamor for campus “speech codes” in the early ‘90s. Cole left the ACLU
in 1992 in protest of what he saw as that organization’s reluctance to
take a clear and unambiguous stand against censorship in all its forms.
Since the mid‘90s, Cole has been an occasional oped contributor to the
Los Angeles Times, writing on free speech issues.
Cole
co founded the Campaign to Decriminalize World War II History because,
as he puts it, “This issue is the test of one’s commitment to free
speech. Liberals cried ‘censorship’ when CBS moved the Ronald Reagan TV
movie to the Show time cable network, and when an appearance by Tim
Robbins at the Baseball Hall of Fame was cancelled because of the
actor’s views on the Iraq war. None of these examples of so called
censorship compare to the draconian measures being carried out by the
nations of the West against Holocaust revisionists. Yet who has the
courage to stand up for the rights of these people? Anyone who is truly
against censorship should feel impelled to speak out on this issue. So
called‘anti censorship’ activists who confine their righteous
indignation to safe and comfortable controversies are cowards, pure and
simple.”
Bradley R. Smith
Bradley
R. Smith is an author, playwright, and free speech activist. He has
been interviewed by hundreds of time by the print press, radio, and
television where he argues, simply, that the Holocaust question should
be examined in the routine manner that all other historical questions
are examined. He asks: “Why should it not be?
Smith
is a combat veteran (Korea, 7th Cavalry), has been a deputy sheriff
(Los Angeles County), a merchant seaman, a bookseller on Hollywood
Boulevard, a freelance writer in Vietnam (1968), and a longtime
activist for free speech. As a bookseller in the 1960s he refused to
stop selling a book that was banned by the U.S. Government—Henry
Miller’s Tropic of Cancer—and was prosecuted for breaking the law.
During
the 1990s Smith ran essay advertisements in student newspapers at
colleges and universities around the country calling for intellectual
freedom with regard to the Holocaust question. One result was that he
became the most widely recognized revisionist activist in America.
Pursuing this American ideal of free inquiry and open debate has earned
him the enmity of those who represent what Norman Finkelstein has so
aptly termed, the "Holocaust Industry."
Rabbi Carlos C. Huerta has written:
"Bradley
Smith is doing the community a service. He is beginning to make many
Americans, both Jewish and non Jewish, realize that the traditional
method of dealing with Holocaust revisionism by ignoring it will no
longer suffice."
Carlos C. Huerta, Midstream: A Monthly Jewish Review.
[Major Huerta is a military chaplain serving (March 2004) in Iraq.]
Carlos
Huerta was prescient, if not clairvoyant, with his suggestion that
“ignoring” revisionism would not suffice for those who want it to go
away. Those who own and administer the Holocaust Industry have been
able to make the expression of doubt about the “gas chambers” a
criminal offense in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and
Austria, (up to 20 years (!) in prison for saying what we say here),
and of course, in Israel. At this writing Holocaust revisionist Ernst
Zundel has been in a Canadian prison since February 2003, in solitary
confinement, for reprinting a booklet that questions the gas-chamber
stories. That is not only unjust, but morally wrong.
Smith
asks: If it is right to imprison you for writing a book, right to
imprison you for printing a book, right to imprison you for selling a
book, would it not be right to imprison you for reading a forbidden
book? Isn’t that the logic of the matter when you follow it out? It’s
really too stupid (as Proust would have it), but there it is. The
author, the printer, the seller, the reader. Will we play the role of
mere bystanders? Will we do nothing?
