After I came back from Vancouver, I received a call from Ernst who sounded chipper as can be and told me happily: "I am on Vancouver Island in the city of Nanaimo. I am trying to find Ken McVay to see if I can get an interview. . . " and I said: "You are kidding!" Yesterday, after having cleaned up yet another mail bomb mess that took me more than four hours to download onto my hard disk so I could finally get rid of it, I learned the finer details of the story while editing Ernst's Power letter for November. In it, there is a little segment there for ZGram readers to preview and savor. Entitled "The elusive "Nizkor boss" - Ken McVay", it offers food for thought. Here's Ernst:
"I have lived and worked in the same location for over 21 years. I have been bombed in 1984, burned out in 1995, and was sent a mail bomb a few weeks after the fire. Each time, some Jewish group or individuals, in calls to the press, have claimed credit for those acts. Yet I still talk to Jews. In person. Freely and practically daily. McVay, just what is the big deal? I had some business to conduct in Western Canada where Ken McVay resides. I had plans to meet with my attorney and advisors, translators and supporters. While I was there, I wanted to take the opportunity to drop in at the Nizkor Office, meet and, hopefully, interview Ken McVay - at the very least, I hoped to get a little more acquainted! After all, we have "known" each other since September of 1995 when the Nizkor people announced, in alt.revisionism, I believe, that since we were not going to be joining them in the sewers of that newsgroup that they populate, they were going to ". . . follow us onto the Web" - or words to that effect. Out of that, and many letters back and forth, all of which are archived for posterity, grew the aborted "debate" that triggered last year's cyberwar about Free Speech on-line - another Zündel First. Ever since, we have linked with Nizkor on every one of our documents, stating "We do not recruit; we convince. Truth has no need of coercion. For relentless Holocaust promotion, on the other hand, contact Nizkor." If people click on "Nizkor", it takes them straight to their page where Deborah Lipstadt, in "Denying the Holocaust", is quoted, for her part, as follows: "...truth is far more fragile than fiction...reason alone cannot protect it." We beg to differ, see? Makes us look good by comparison, doesn't it? My plan had been to make a video or at least a radio interview with Nizkor's "Director and Founder," Ken McVay, to be broadcast all over North America by satellite, and later over 60 cities on Public Access TV. Nizkor could have reached millions of people with their Holocaust Promotion story - entirely free of charge! But no dice! We had sent an e-mail message to that effect, and had been told that McVay had been for five years on the Internet and that I could meet him there - whatever that was supposed to mean. The suggestion sounded to me like something out of a cheap Western - I thought that I was challenged to another electronic shoot-out at the OK Corral. This response made me think that Ken's handlers - or the people for whom he so diligently performs his shabbes-goy job at Nizkor - were shielding him from me. For my part, I had face-to-face in mind. And so I decided to take the ferry across to Nanaimo, B.C., and visit Ken personally, shake his hand, look him straight in the eye, share a cup of coffee with him, shoot nothing but the breeze, and then see if there was a chance to do an interview. I was prepared to be grilled by Nizkor staffers and volunteers, and actually figured that we might build some bridges. (I am still dreaming of that live debate on national or even international TV, perhaps broadcast from some prestigious university campus. I do not easily give up!) I got off the boat, looked up a map, and drove to what I thought was the Nizkor Office advertised on the Internet. Imagine my surprise when I could only find a mail drop - the kind you see in most cities where frequently "fly-by-night" outfits operate their shady enterprises. I looked at it, and then I filmed it for posterity, to get at least a head start. It took me a while to come to realize that either McVay is a midget and lives in one of those mail boxes that Nizkor is renting - and which I thought naively was their "suite" number in some stately office complex - or they have something to hide. The Anti-Racist-Action Marxist terrorist group in Toronto is similarly stationed - or so, at least, they said on their grant application form to fleece the Canadian tax payers. This situation says a lot. You can call me at the Zündel-Haus, and I personally answer the phone. I take great care to be accessible. You can visit me at a real location with an address listed in the telephone book where grown-up people live and work in real rooms. Every day, I talk to people face to face - even enemies and opponents. My name and full address are on my letterhead and business cards, in video films and TV and radio shows broadcast around the globe. That's how I have operated for all of the 38 years I have lived in Canada. That is my style - because I have nothing to hide. In my opinion and experience, only cowards, liars, con-men and crooks hide behind a PO Box and a sleazy mail drop operation out of some cubbyhole in a shopping mall and refuse to meet in an honest encounter. Once I realized the con, I decided to call Nizkor's telephone number given on the Internet. I heard the voice, after being given the "Shalom", of a Mike Goldberg. Apparently, in light of recent events, he is the schlepp for Ken McVay - or Ken, more likely than not, is the goy-schlepp for Goldberg. I left two messages on the machine, requesting that he or someone please call my Toronto Office, where I would pick up my messages. I mentioned that I was out West, wanting to meet McVay. An emergency number was given on that recording, and I took that down and looked at it, divining to whom it belonged. Being respectful and mindful of the Jewish Sabbath, I did not call on Saturday before sundown - but after the Sabbath had ended, I decided the emergency was now real because I would be returning to the mainland and to Toronto soon. I called the emergency number and got a rather suspicious-sounding woman on the line who, it turned out, was Mrs. Goldberg. I once again stated that, by now, it was an emergency and I wanted to do an interview with McVay of Nizkor since I had come all the way across the continent to do so. Would someone please call back? No one, of course, called back. So I had the telephone number checked out by B.C. Telephone to find out who was using the name of that answering service, and to my not-so-great surprise, did not get the Midgets at the Mail drop but instead the Mighty Synagogue in Victoria, B.C., - 95 kilometers away - who hustles the money for Ken's front. Task not accomplished, I left. On my way back to Toronto, I was told by one of my office associates that Harry Abrams, the Jewish hyper-activist of B'nai Brith, Victoria, had sent a threatening type e-mail, demanding that, in the future, if I wanted to reach Ken McVay, I should only contact him (!) or the R.C.M.P. (!!) Well. I was flabbergasted! Was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Victoria, B.C. taking messages for Nizkor's head honcho? What do you make of this story? These Nizkor folks are allegedly into spreading "truth" about the Holocaust and fighting Nazi lies etc. I wonder why they are hiding - or what they have to fear. Frankly, I was saddened by this lesson. I thought Ken McVay was an electronic free speech advocate and freedom fighter. It seems to me now that he is either a prisoner in that mail box out there in Nanaimo or, more likely, a front man for deeper, darker things - and someone is exploiting and using him, fearing that in a face-to-face confrontation, Ken would not be able to hack it and might become a convert to the Zündel cause after all - which would be sad day indeed for the synagogue boys. And for Nizkor! I understand Ken is an American. I find it ironic that a man raised on First Amendment Rights, undoubtedly taught to cherish free speech, now works, or at least fronts for, an organization that has him utterly gagged. At the Zundelsite, we don't recruit; we convince. For relentless Holocaust promotion, contact the midgets in the mailbox at Nizkor. . . "
Ingrid
Thought for the Day: "You never know where bottom is until you plumb for it." (Frederick Laing)