Many people have asked me what I think of a young man who calls himself "Pontifax Maximus" or, alternately, "Reverend Hale" who has been given a very sudden, high profile red carpet treatment with lots of prime time TV exposure and extra ink by mainstream media because of his association, of all people, with Alan Dershowitz.
Hale is a 27 year old law student who, upon completion of his studies, was refused acceptance into the law profession because of his "racist" beliefs.
I will tell you some of what I know - and also alert you to the possibility of yet one more cleverly manipulated intellectual sting operation. I heard about Hale a couple of years or so ago from a young woman volunteer who seemed to be familiar with our movement and seemed to have a close friendship with him. She described Hale as aggressively verbal and very capable and thought that Ernst ought to get to know him and recruit him to be part of his own legal team.
I remember mentioning Hale once or twice to Ernst, but Ernst had never heard of him and nothing came of it. Hale himself has never contacted the Zundel-Haus, to my knowledge.
A few months ago I received in the mail a rather large envelope with promotional material, pitching what is known as COTC - "The Church of the Creator." When I asked some friends what that meant - if this movement was a form of Identity Christianity or Wotanism - I was told that, no, it was some derivation of some ancient nature worship, promoting Aryan man or whites as the highest product of nature in the Darwinian selection order of things.
I remember leafing through the material, which was of high quality, printed on on expensive paper, professionally done, which struck me as having been financed by considerable money, and threw it away, since I could see no use for it. What disturbed and offended me was its aggressive "Rahowa!" (Racial Holy War) tone and the use of words like "mud people", "muds" etc. - and, quite aside from its taunting, low-brow language, I thought that this COTC thing was probably an insignificant fringe symptom of generalized White dissatisfaction that would burn itself out very quickly because it was off target about what is really of concern to most people in America today.
Enter Alan Dershowitz, a well-known, mouthy, grandstanding Jewish lawyer. As described on the dustcover flap of his 1991 autobiography, "Chutzpah", we learn that Dershowitz is a prominent law professor, famous appelate lawyer, columnist and commentator, the nation's leading defender of individual rights...recognized as having one of the nation's most brilliant legal minds - and free-speaking tongues..."
Chutzpah is indeed his stock in trade - the very first sentence in his book states: "American Jews need more chutzpah."
Why in god's name would Alan Dershowitz take on a client such as Hale? They are polar opposites in beliefs. And why, in such a very short time, such a blatant, artificial media build-up of a virtual unknown? Surely Dershowitz is not in need of controversial clients? Surely Hale as a young, would-be lawyer could not afford such expensive counsel half-way across the country? Clearly, I thought, some people - including the public at large - are being set up for the proverbial straw man, or for a flight-of-fancy situation guaranteeing a crash landing? And chances are it isn't going to be Dershowitz!
When I asked around, I found out that Dershowitz had tried his best already fifteen years ago to nose himself into the first Great Holocaust Zundel trial in 1985. One day, out of the clear blue sky, he called the Zundel-Haus, got Ernst on the line, and kept talking non-stop, in machine-gun rapidity, eagerly offering himself and his services, either as a member of the Zundel legal team or as a witness, please!
Lucky for the Zundel case, Doug Christie, senior legal counsel, saw little use for Dershowitz, suspecting him of being a Trojan Horse, and so the offer fizzled out. Dershowitz took his revenge a few years later with a couple of nasty, derogatory passages and pages about Ernst Zundel, Robert Faurisson, Holocaust Denial and the works in his "Chutzpah".
And there, on pages 170-173, we find a few interesting insights into this well-known Jewish lawyer describing what he thinks of the Great Holocaust trials and the legitimacy of our struggle. I will quote just a few:
Q_____"Jews, unlike other groups, are expected to be in the forefront of defending the rights of their sworn enemies."
Q_____"A...disastrous result was achieved in Canada in 1985, when Jewish pressure led to criminal prosecution against two despicable Holocaust deniers with Nazi affiliations. Prior to the commencement of the criminal prosecutions, the pamphlets and speeches of these neo-Nazis were limited in their impact. But the trials brought all the professional Holocaust deniers out from under their rocks."
Q_____"Inevitably, criminal charges of this kind result in the Holocaust itself being put on trial. And so, in 1985, a Canadian courtroom became the platform for a legal "debate" that should never have taken place - a debate about an incontrovertible historical fact."
Q_____". . . the courtroom is no place to put ideas - no matter how false or harmful - on trial."
Q_____"(J)ust because Nazi bigots have a right to preach their garbage does not mean that decent people should lend legitimacy to the content of their pernicious lies. If I were asked to defend the right of a Holocaust denier to express his perverse views, I would agree to defend his right, but I would insist on exercising my own right to call his views anti-Semitic and false. Nor would I encourage anyone to read or listen to such garbage. To the contrary, I would urge everyone to reject it outright in the marketplace of ideas, to refuse to patronize that disease-infested part of the market."
One more time one gets to appreciate the Zundel-Team's clear-headed foresight in rejecting this hateful, poisonous man's "help". Imagine the impact he would have had on a jury, or the judge, not to mention what the sound bytes on the evening news would have sounded like. Ernst is always accused of grandstanding and trying to make media waves and headlines - luckily, he had the good sense to forego this kind of publicity, which would have followed Dershowitz like a comet's tail.
So what can you expect - if you call yourself Pontifus Maximus - from someone such as Dershowitz? This lawyer, who has defended such "famous" clients as Claus von Blow, Jonathan Pollard, Leona Helmsley, Rabbi Meir Kahane, Jeffrey MacDonald, Jim Bakker and Natan Sharanski, I predict, has a surprise or two up his Talmudic sleeves for up-and-coming "racist" Pontifax Maximus.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"I'd like to buy a book on chutzpah, and I'd like you to pay for it."
(Cartoon in Dershowitz's book, page 19, showing a book store customer addressing the clerk behind the counter)
Back to Table of Contents of the March 1999 ZGrams