To: ihrgreg@kaiwan.com, brsmith@valleynet.com, irimland@cts.com Date: Mon, 1 Jan 1996 21:54:51 -0800 (PST) From: "Jamie McCarthy" Cc: jamie@voyager.net MIME-Version: 1.0
Mr. Raven, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Zuendel, Happy New Year!
You may already be aware of Nizkor's response to the famous "66 Q&A" pamphlet, since it has been up on the net for a while: http://www.almanac.bc.ca/features/qar/ However, on this first day of 1996, I would like to take this opportunity to formally invite you
(1) to examine our response; and
(2) where it is appropriate, to cross-link to it.
My feeling is that it is appropriate to cross-link from a presentation of the Q &A to a response to those same Q&A. That seems only natural to me.
For that reason, I would request that Mr. Raven put a cross-link to our above URL on his page at: http://www.kaiwan.com/~ihrgreg/pamphlets/66questions.html
And that Mr. Zuendel put a cross-link on his page at: http://www.webcom.com/~ezundel/english/incorrect.004.html
Mr. Smith, at the moment, does not have this pamphlet on-line, so of course the second half of my invitation would not apply to him.
As I've commented to Mr. Zuendel earlier, I am available to assist you with the simple process of adding this link, if need be. For example, your webmaster need only paste this code into the existing page: A response to these Q&A is available at the Nizkor web site.
Mr. Smith, as head of the Committee for Open Debate On the Holocaust, I would hope that you would play a very special role in this operation. Your organization's goals are exactly the same as Nizkor's goals, on this particular point: we both want to get dialogue going, to open up readers' minds to the vast world of claims about the Holocaust, to get more people more educated about more viewpoints, and to let them choose from the _full_ menu of viewpoints, instead of a limited subset.
It shouldn't matter whether Nizkor's views are "orthodox," as you say, or "revisionist." All that should matter is that we have prepared a large rebuttal, packed full of informative facts about the Holocaust, and that it is a rebuttal to claims that are already on the web. Claim followed by rebuttal -- that's what open debate is all about. But it's not much of a debate if readers can't jump with ease from those claims to those rebuttals.
What sort of debate is it, if the reader can't go quickly from claim to rebuttal, but rather has to navigate and search through large web sites, full of other, unrelated information? Or worse -- and this is the current situation! -- what if the reader doesn't even know that the rebuttal exists!? That's surely not debate!
As Mr. Zuendel writes in his September Power Letter: Nizkor, the Holocaust Promotion Lobby Website, has asked for a link with the Zundelsite - which means the great electronic Holocaust debate is here and the world can listen in, watch, read - and DECIDE who has the better evidence! That announcement may have been a bit premature, but he was and is on the right track.
The "great debate" is just beginning now. It will not be a traditional debate that is over in an hour or two hours. It will grow and mature over many months, or years, as each of us puts on the web more claims, more evidence, more rebuttals, more information -- and as we cross-link it all together. We're at the first step now. Let's do it! And, just to make myself perfectly clear: As I've stated publicly many times, Nizkor is committed to open debate on the topic of the Holocaust. We want to see argument linked to reply, point linked to counterpoint
. We want this in all cases: both when some might say it is to our advantage, and when some might say it is to our disadvantage. I believe that, in the long run, it is _always_ to Nizkor's advantage to have totally open communication about all these issues. And though we believe the web is not the _best_ medium for debate, that's a topic for another day.
Our
committment to open debate means that we will make the best use of _all_
the tools we have at our disposal. To that end, we have pledged to create
cross-links to web sites that offer opposing views, whenever those views
directly concern material which we have on our web site.
We have followed through on this pledge in numerous places already, and if you find any more Nizkor web pages that have material that you think should be cross-linked to your web sites, please let us know.
This invitation of mine is simply asking that each of you do what Nizkor has already pledged to do. And specifically, that Mr. Raven and Mr. Zuendel do it in this particular instance. If there are reasons why this is not possible, please contact me immediately, so that we can discuss it. I thank you all for your time. This open letter is being posted to alt.revisionism and on Nizkor's web site. --
Jamie McCarthy