Newcomers to this list and our struggle for freedom of speech on the Net will not appreciate the fine irony of the news item below, but there will be grins from sea to shining sea when people "in the know" read the following:
Nizkor, the Zundelsite opposition web page and the main website involved in the first cyber war ever around the issue of freedom of speech, has apparently slid in cyber foreclosure.
Asking price? No, not $6 million. A piddling $500,000!
According to the Canadian Jewish News, predated October 21, 1999, and titled "Anti-Holocaust denial Web site's future uncertain", we learn the following:
Canadian Jewish News:
An extensive educational Web site that has played a significant role in debunking Holocaust denial faces a tenuous future, unless further funding is secured.
Ken McVay, founder and director of the Nizkor Project (www.nizkor.org), said last week he has sufficient funding to last only until January.
Zundelsite:
Nizkor has indeed played a "significant role", but not in "debunking Holocaust denial." In the beginning - say, around 1996 - a significant number of the Zundelsite traffic was generated by Nizkor because of their poisonous posts against Revisionism and Revisionists, both on the website and in the news groups. Visitors were very curious about this so-called "Holocaust denial" business. The rest is happy cyber history.
Canadian Jewish News:
"Even though there has been some very strong support from a few very generous people, it hasn't been enough," McVay, 59, said in a phone interview from his home on Vancouver Island, B.C.
He is in the process of determining the site's commercial value, although he said it is not currently for sale and he does not foresee shutting it down.
Zundelsite:
Well, he seems to be standing on the steps of the courthouse, waiting for the auction, as can be deduced from the paragraphs below.
Canadian Jewish News:
McVay has listed the site on www.GreatDomains.com with an "asking price" of $500,000, based on the size of Nizkor and the amount of traffic it attracts.
The site receives about 9,000 hits a day, said McVay.
Zundelsite:
And here we didn't know what kind of cyber equity the Zundelsite was growing! The Zundelsite routinely logs anywhere from 8,000 hits on slow days to 20,000 hits on hyper days. After the New York Times article last year that was picked up by syndicate wires and sent to dozens of major papers across the USA, the Zundelsite had several days of around 40,000 hits.
Canadian Jewish News:
(The Nizkor website) has grown from 27 pages in 1995 to almost 5,000 pages, including the entire transcript of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, he added.
Zundelsite:
So even in 1995, the Zundelsite had about 30 documents - which means we were a noselength ahead of the Nizkorites. :)
Canadian Jewish News:
McVay is proud to have those transcripts, the product of 18 months of negotiation. "I know that the Holocaust deniers, who absolutely revile this site and me, refuse to talk about the Eichmann trial. They can't lie about it now."
Zundelsite:
One wonders in what universe McVay is dwelling. Revisionists have been discussing the Eichmann trial and the transcript controversy on many occasions - on the Internet and elsewhere. On this one, Ken is in LaLaLand.
Canadian Jewish News:
The job is never-ending, said McVay. Among his current projects, he is working on making documentation from the Nuremburg (sic) trials available.
Zundelsite:
Good for him! The more the merrier! It will be cheaper in the long run for Ken to store them and for us to download and dissect them. Saves us a lot of sweat, labor and money.
Canadian Jewish News:
Although McVay says the years of devoting himself to Nizkor have left him weary, his tone of voice - and the fact he recently spent four consecutive 20-hour days on the project - belie his claim. "Of course I care," he asserted. "I never stop caring. I don't know what I'd do without [Nizkor]. It's my life."
Zundelsite:
Things haven't been going too bad for McVay. Before Nizkor, he was an unkempt gas station attendant and a grocery clerk stacking supplies. Becoming a schlepp for the Chosenites paid off. At least, it netted him a hair cut and a suit.
Canadian Jewish News:
McVay believes that only a "small and very dedicated group of people" does care. He guesses that of the estimated 100 to 300 million Internet users in the world, only about 100 are actively involved in fighting racism on the Net.
Zundelsite:
So all this sweat has netted McVay some 20 supporters a year? Which certainly speaks volumes about the interest for Holo-business out there. And, by the way, who was it that said that Mr. Zundel didn't have enough supporters to fill a phone booth? He has supporters in many countries. And I certainly have many more than 100.
Canadian Jewish News:
Nizkor began when McVay, a non-Jew with a long-standing interest in World War II, encountered Holocaust denial on the Internet in the early 1990s. He was angered by the bigotry he perceived.
"I'm still angry," he said. "It makes me angry that there are very few people in the world who give a damn about this."
Zundelsite:
See? What did we tell the Nizkorites, way back in 1995? A lot of people care about the details of the Holocaust fraud - many, many more than you think. In fact, it is the hottest intellectual movement on the planet. Certainly more care to know about the racket and its manifestations than Mr. McVay's 100 devotees care about his claims.
Canadian Jewish News:
A native of Santa Clara, Calif., McVay grew up in a middle-class neighborhood where, to the best of his knowledge, racism didn't exist. In high school, about half his friends were not white. "We never thought about it," he said. "Maybe I was just naive."
Although McVay had read extensively about World War II, he knew little about the Holocaust per se. "I had just enough background to know that [Holocaust denial] was crap, but I didn't have a clue why it was crap."
Zundelsite:
Just the other day, as I was mulling over the cyber-state-of-affairs, it occurred to me that not one of our regular, active opposition on the Net is a professional in the traditional Holocaust mode. There's no Deborah Lipstadt. No Raul Hilberg. There are only the regular character assassins and yellers and shriekers like Keren, McCarthy and "OBC"-McVay. You wonder: Why is that? Where is Littman? Bernie Farber? Marvin Kurz? Karen Mock? Christopher Browning? I haven't seen them around very much.
Canadian Jewish News:
McVay made it his business - his obsession, actually - to learn the truth, and show it to the rest of the world.
"That's the beauty of the Internet," he said. "Most people exposed to the venom of Holocaust deniers do not have the time or resources to check the so-called facts they provide."
Zundelsite:
Was it not the Mayor of Toronto who looked and looked and looked for "hate" on the Zundelsite - but for the life of her could not discover it? On the other hand, there is plenty of venom to be found on the Nizkor site and its sidekick, the JDL site.
And just how did Mr. McVay "check the facts"? It is part of Holocaust lore that at first, the Nizkor site claimed the traditional "six million." Then Revisionist Giwer got into the act and goaded them to increase the number to "eleven million" - just to show how easily inflation in victimhood works.
Just now I checked. Now Nizkor meekly and modestly claims "millions" but doesn't say how many. Which means that Ken McVay is now a bona fide Revisionist - since he's been caught revising numbers upwards - and then downwards.
Canadian Jewish News:
The Net, he noted, has given him access to prosecutors, historians and community leaders who have provided Nizkor with testimony and answers.
Zundelsite:
Such is the intellectual glory that has accrued to Canada. McVay the gas station attendant now lectures to prosecutors, historians and community leaders and rubs elbows with the police. Why is it, then, that none care to help him - unless they can scam it off some charity tax dollars?
Canadian Jewish News:
Over the years, McVay has developed a worldwide network of dozens of volunteers to help him access, translate and post material.
Zundelsite:
Way back, the claim was 150 volunteers, implied to be working out of Nanaimo. When M r. Zundel went to check, all he could find was a mail drop in a strip mall mail box outfit.
Canadian Jewish News:
The League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada administers the Nizkor Fund, through which donations to support the Web site can be channeled.
Zundelsite:
This part is the best. This part takes the cake. Did the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal not raise a ruckus because Mr. Zundel was one of the Zundelsite sponsors? Was not the shrieking claim made, over and over, that therefore Mr. Zundel "owned" the Zundelsite and was "administering" its operation?
Are we now to infer that B'nai Brith is the owner of Nizkor and is responsible for what is posted there - for the entire world to see? You wonder how Revenue Canada's Charity Division's forensic accountants and investigators will look at a charity first hamstering and then donating money to Nizkor - and then, to top it off, trying to sell the very recipient website for a cool $500,000.
There's much, much more to come, I bet you!
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
The first bid for the Nizkor Domain name has already been submitted - a grand total of $250 by Mr. Marc Lemire of the Canadian Freedomsite. :)
And just now word has reached the Zundelsite that Mr. Zundel is contemplating a bid to help rescue Nizkor - which, he says, will become an "electronic monument and memorial" to the biggest scam and lie of the century!
Back to Table of Contents of the Oct. 1999 ZGrams