Remember when we had the cyberwar around the Zundelsite in 1996, courtesy of the Wiesenthalers?
In response to that first overt tribal attack on the Net, around the globe computer screens went black - and then started sporting Blue Ribbons. Young people world-wide set up their Zundel-Mirrors, and I dressed up in honor of this country called America.
"The Declaration of Freedom in Cyberspace", written by John Perry Barlow, was one of the most beautiful pieces of writing that I have ever seen. Those were some emotion-filled days!
And then I watched with disbelief what happened next: the Holocaust shriekers moved systematically, en masse, into the cyber activist newsgroups and started shrieking "Nazi!"
The Cyber Braves scattered like squirrels.
Remember Rich Graves? Jamie McCarthy? The Steins and Finkelsteins? Ironically, the only person halfway on my side for any length of time was yet another member of the tribe - a fellow who called himself Lizard.
Yet even Lizard said something to the effect (here I am writing this from memory) that if Ingrid said two-plus-two was four and Jamie said two-plus-two was five, he would probably give thumbs-up to Jamie.
So much for fact and principle.
We said at the time that freedom of speech on the Internet could not be had, and would not be won, as long as so-called freedom fighters allowed the Wiesenthalers to control what people could read and not read. You cannot be just a little bit pregnant, and you cannot have a little bit of censorship - much less the massive censorship the Wiesenthalers think they can impose on people they dislike - and still think you have freedom of speech on the Net.
Now it is almost four years later. In just about that time span, Germany has raided, prosecuted, fined and imprisoned more than 28,000 thought dissidents. And this in a "democracy"?
That's right. Thanks to your friendly Wiesenthalers.
And who is behind this new ban of "Mein Kampf"? Of course your ever-righteous Wiesenthalers.
Writes yet another of the conventional freedom-of-speech'ers:
This is something that makes me break out in a cold sweat. If any other group or organization tried to flaunt this much power on the web, the online community would kill it.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, as a Jewish organization, has no authority to decide what online users should and should not access or buy. Like any other organization on the web (including real "nasties" like NAMBLA, anarchists, Satanists and Microsoft) the Center has the full right to disseminate its opinions, and to inform people on what they feel is right and wrong.
But banning books (either for or against Nazism) and restricting free trade in goods in a neutral zone are the same abuse of power the Hitler government was guilty of. The Nazis burned books, the Simon Wiesenthal Center would see them banned. The Nazis closed down Jewish businesses, the Simon Wiesenthal Center restricts trade in items it does not care about.
Here is a reply from Revisionist quarters, courtesy of Slade Farney:
Wiesenthal is not "just as bad as" Hitler. SWC is worse by far.
The book burning in Germany took place under the Weimar Republic by their laws of censorship, as dictated (and authorized) by the Treaty of Versailles.
But the really big book fires in Germany took place under the Allies, "cleaning up" after the war was over. That was the work of SWC's ilk.
And that is the current work of the SWC, right now, all over Europe and Canada. And leave us not forget the book fires in Russia throughout the century.
Portrayal of Hitler as the world's #1 bogeyman is cute, sexy, cliché, and just plain wrong. It is #1 religious doctrine of the SWC.
A little dose of Truth in History is good for America's nostrils whenever you can reach them. They wince and groan, to be sure, but they wake up just a little bit with every sniff of the salts.
--Slade
In the spirit of fairness, let's remember and admit that Goebbels did order books to be burned - smut books, Marxist stuff, books undermining the regenerating spirit of the country etc.
But the book burning in the Third Reich was peanuts compared to the book burning ***after*** the war.
Over 50,000 titles were destroyed forever on orders of the "democratic" Allies. The Russians took trainloads of stolen books back to their country. A few years back, a high-ranking Russian official offered a whole library of stolen books to be returned Germany. The German government refused to take those books back.
Ingrid
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Thought for the Day:
"Did you read the very recent tale about Russian immigrants in Israel who are eating too much pork! Pork was defined as *anti-semitism* by some outraged Jews!"
(Letter to the Zundelsite)