ZGram - 11/28/2004 - "The Campaign to Decriminalize History" -
Part I
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Tue Nov 30 03:16:15 EST 2004
Zgram - Where Truth is Destiny: Now more than ever!
November 28, 2004
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
Most people have a simple formula: "Holocaust Deniers = Jew haters!"
It gives them permission to reject outright and with religious zeal
what Holocaust revisionists have found through diligent research and
tried to make known to the world. A silent, vicious war has been
fought by one of the strongest powers on earth against a handful of
people armed with nothing but the truth as they found it and the
resolve not to be silenced by bullying.
This three-part Zgram speaks of the means of suffering inflicted on
those to whom historical truth and freedom of speech are not
negotiable. It is clear, much-needed essay on how historical
revisionism, particularly Holocaust revisionism, stands up and
measures up despite relentless pc propaganda.
The Campaign To
Decriminalize WWII History
"No one should be imprisoned for writing a book."
11-29-4
This paper was authored by
Christopher Cole and Bradley R. Smith.
One is a revisionist, one is not. Short bios follow the end notes.
Throughout the Western world people are being prosecuted for writing
about World War II and the Holocaust. Historians, researchers,
authors, and publishers are being fined, imprisoned, placed under gag
orders, expelled from their native countries, and denied entry into
others. Those who are prosecuted are routinely prevented from
mounting an effective defense, because witnesses who testify on their
behalf often find themselves arrested. In some cases, even the
defense lawyers are prosecuted!
Countries that have laws that limit the scope and substance of World
War II and Holocaust research include France, Germany, Switzerland,
Canada, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden,
Denmark, Poland, and Spain.1 These laws make it a crime for anyone,
regardless of their credentials or the factual basis of their views,
to question or revise any aspect of the history of World War II or
the Holocaust in a manner that goes beyond the somewhat arbitrary
standards established by the governments of those countries.2
Although there are no laws in the United States that criminalize
Holocaust and World War II history, some of our nation's most
prestigious legal minds have backed a proposed law intended to do
just that.
Why should you, why should any of us, be concerned that certain areas
of historical research have been criminalized?
FREE SPEECH
Free speech is very much on the minds of young people today. Many who
oppose the Bush Administration's actions since 9/11 claim that there
is now an oppressive "chill" on free speech in America. Is this
"chill" something new? Or has an ill wind that's been blowing for
quite some time finally caught up with people who never expected to
feel it?
Most people on our college campuses today grew up during the Clinton
years. Clinton appealed to young people and reflected many of their
values. These days, however, the same people who grew up feeling
empowered during the Clinton years are now feeling like dissidents,
as they protest post-9/11 U.S. policies of an administration that
many see as hostile to civil liberties, and a news media dominated by
conservative talk radio shows, and networks like Fox.
Suddenly, a lot of people who used to feel empowered are now feeling
marginalized.
The problem is, many of those who are complaining the loudest right
now about the "chill" on free speech are the very people who laid the
groundwork for speech restrictions and muted public debate. This
includes the college professors and administrators who, throughout
the 1990s, championed campus "speech codes" that restricted the
expression of views they deemed "insensitive."
No subject has been more vilified on college campuses over the past
decade than historical research that questions various aspects of
Holocaust history. Throughout the 1990s, as dissident Holocaust
historians (often called "revisionists") were being prosecuted and
imprisoned in Europe, Canada, and Australia, college campuses
throughout the United States were practicing their own brand of
censorship.
Revisionist speakers were banned from campuses. Regardless of the
factual basis for their views, they were derided as insensitive
"hate-mongers." Ads for revisionist books or videos were banned from
school newspapers. If, occasionally, a revisionist ad or op-ed was
published in a campus paper, the resulting outcry from students and
faculty alike brought waves of condemnation and apologies from
administrators and newspaper staff.3
Many of the people who express outrage at the "silencing" of today's
war critics are the same people who championed the silencing of
dissident Holocaust historians in the 1990s - just as many of those
who are screaming the loudest about the evils of the Patriot Act are
the same folks who supported the Clinton administration's Omnibus
Antiterrorism Bill of 1995.4
But just as you can't understand the Patriot Act without
understanding the way in which the Clinton Omnibus Antiterrorism Bill
paved the way for it, you can't really understand the post-9/11 free
speech "chill" without understanding the way in which the
rationalizations for silencing dissent (especially on campus) were
developed during the past decade in the campaign to silence
revisionist historians.
Take this op-ed from the Cornell University Daily Sun, November 22,
1991. The author, Doreen Lee, explains why there should be no free
speech allowed for Holocaust revisionists: "Some issues are not meant
to be challenged, provoked, or critically debated. True, political
correctness can limit the First Amendment. Freedom of speech is a
great and fundamental right, but it's also a political construct that
should be ultimately subject to the limits of humanity, sensitivity,
and respect."5
Sound familiar? Ms. Lee might as well be a Bush Administration
official warning protesters not to "challenge, provoke, or critically
debate" U.S. policy during times of war. After all, we must show
"sensitivity" and "respect" to the victims of terrorism, and to
people in the military and their families. Ms. Lee's op-ed is one of
thousands of similar op-eds and editorials that appeared in college
(and off-campus) newspapers throughout the '90s, arguing that
dissident Holocaust historians have no right to speak. Those who
allowed this cancer of censorship to grow and flourish during the
past decade should not be surprised to now find themselves the
victims of it.
Those who protest the Bush administration's "war on terrorism"
policies want the right to freely voice their opinions without being
censored or dismissed as "unpatriotic" or "pro-terrorist." However,
to paraphrase the Beatles, in the end, the free speech you get will
be equal to the free speech you give.
Once you start censoring and slandering others who are trying to have
their say, you've created exactly the kind of "chilled" atmosphere
that will, inevitably, end up affecting your right to speak as well.
As simple as this notion is, it's amazing how many people just don't
seem to get it. Take Robert Berdahl, Chancellor of the University of
California at Berkeley. Back in 1993, when Berdahl was President of
the University of Texas at Austin, he led the charge to ban
revisionist Holocaust views from campus. When the Daily Texan, the UT
Austin campus newspaper, accepted an advertisement for a documentary
film in which the Director of the Auschwitz State Museum in Poland
admitted that the building displayed in the camp as a "gas chamber"
is not genuine, Berdahl angrily argued in an op-ed that revisionist
Holocaust views are "patently unsuitable" for the paper.
Even though the ad said nothing about Jews or any other racial or
religious group, and even though the ad's author made it clear that
he was not denying the Holocaust, Berdahl maintained that the ad had
no place on campus because the university newspaper is "obligated to
protect its readers" from anything that might be "a source of great
pain and anguish," or anything that "insults a community's standards
of decency."6
Fast-forward seven years, to the UC Berkeley class of 2000
Com-mencement ceremony. Berdahl (now Chancellor of Berkeley) became
furious when a group of students angrily protested the convocation
address given by Berkeley senior Fadia Rafeedia, a Palestinian who,
at that time, was an editor for a website called the Free Arab Voice,
a site that not only claims that the Holocaust is a "Jewish lie" but
also advocates the outright murder of Jews. Berdahl denounced the
protesters, calling Ms. Rafeedie "insightful," and claiming that "her
strong will and strong opinions make her . . . the essence, the
spirit, and the promise of this institution."7
Even more recently, in March 2003, Berdahl, appearing on a Berkeley
radio show, decried those who would silence campus antiwar
protesters, worrying that "a climate of fear" might create "a lack of
dissent."8
What Chancellor Berdahl doesn't seem able or willing to acknowledge
is that he bears some responsibility for creating the very climate he
is now denouncing. In advocating the banning of dissident Holocaust
history, he made it clear that, in his view, universities are
obligated to "protect" students from unpleasant or offensive views.
Why should it now surprise him when students who find other things
offensive - like the Free Arab Voice Web site - use the same
rationalizations to try and ban what they find to be "a source of
great pain and anguish"?
In 1993, when Chancellor Berdahl argued in favor of banning
revisionist Holocaust history from the campus paper, at least one
local commentator saw the potential ramifications of his views.
Dallas Morning News columnist Joe Patrick Bean predicted that
Berdahl's actions "may have set a potentially harmful precedent that
will limit discussion of legitimate but highly controversial or
sensitive views."9
In fact, a plan that would indeed "limit discussion of highly
controversial or sensitive views" in the name of keeping the American
public safe from dissident World War II and Holocaust history had
already been cooked up only five years earlier at one of America's
most prestigious universities.
In April 1988, Hofstra University in New York sponsored a three-day
conference, at which dozens of the most prestigious and respected
legal minds from the worlds of academia, government, and the justice
system gathered with one goal - to find a way to copy the laws by
which Canada and Europe have criminalized Holocaust and World War II
history. A nationwide contest was held, in which law students were
asked to draft a model law that would limit the free speech of
Americans in a way that might not be ruled unconstitutional.10
As outlined by conference director Monroe H. Freedman, Professor of
Legal Ethics at Hofstra, and Executive Director of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Council (which oversees the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, DC), the winning law would have to be
"a statute that would permit prior restraint by public officials."
First prize would go to the law that was "as broad as
constitutionally permissible, or, at least, arguably permissible."11
The speakers at the closed-door conference made no attempt to hide
their hostility to free speech. A professor from the University of
Western Ontario expressed displeasure with "the absolutist approach
that characterizes American thinking about freedom of speech." The
solution, he said, was to abandon "abstract notions of
individualism."12 A professor from the University of Baltimore argued
that the U.S. needs to restrict certain "fervently held beliefs and
political thoughts, none of which," he added, "the First Amendment
was ever intended to protect."13
At the end of the conference, the participants chose what they
considered to be the best anti-free speech law, and two runners-up,
from among the hundreds of entries submitted by law students from
across the country. The judges who chose the winners included Abner
Mikva, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of
Columbia, and Amalya Kearse, of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of
Appeals. The conference attendees agreed that the law would have to
be kept under wraps until a time when the Supreme Court consists of a
majority of justices who are sympathetic to its aims.14 The
conference concluded with a mock trial in which a Holocaust
revisionist was convicted and sentenced to prison under the proposed
law.15
So what does the Hofstra Law say? The Hofstra Law would criminalize
"any oral, written, or symbolic speech" that "debases, degrades, or
calls into question the loyalties, abilities, or integrity of members
of an aggregation of people identified by a common race, religion,
national origin, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference." The law
also states that "An agency shall be established that will review all
films and movies," as well as all published or broadcast speech.
Anyone who publishes or broadcasts any type of material before it has
been submitted to, and reviewed by, this agency, "shall have
committed a misdemeanor."
While this law might sound tantalizing to those who crusade against
"hate speech" and other forms of bigotry, the devil, as they say, is
in the details. In order for this law to pass muster with the Supreme
Court, the law states that "all speech that defames a group will be
equally restricted, regardless of the group that is being defamed."
In other words, this law does not just protect minorities or groups
with a history of being oppressed. Under the definitions established
by this law, "Americans" count as a protected group, as do "white
people." Recently, the man who authored the runner-up Hofstra Law
admitted in an interview that under the provisions of his law, a
group like the Ku Klux Klan could successfully take legal action
against author and filmmaker Michael Moore for comments he made in
his book, Stupid White Men!16
The Hofstra Law was endorsed by some of America's most respected
legal minds, who expressed their desire to one day see it enacted
into law. The participants in the Hofstra conference celebrated their
proposed law's ability to criminalize dissident Holocaust and World
War II history, and this is most likely how the law would be sold to
the public.17 But the truth is, the Hofstra Law would outlaw a whole
lot more than dissident history. By its very wording, it would leave
no controversial point of view safe from prosecution.
Indeed, the threat posed by the Hofstra Law illustrates the truth of
the notion that it's either free speech for all, or free speech for
none.
THE VALUE OF DISSIDENT HISTORY
Of course, it's possible to agree that revisionist Holocaust and
World War II historians should not be censored or imprisoned, while
still dismissing their views as irrelevant or unimportant. After all,
why should anyone care what revisionist historians have to say about
an event that took place over a half-century ago? The answer to that
question probably helps to explain why so many people want to
suppress or outlaw this kind of research.
World War II and the Holocaust have taken on an iconic status that
people of all political creeds and ideologies exploit for their own
benefit. The repressive laws against Holocaust and World War II
research target historians whose work challenges the myths and
misconceptions surrounding these events, myths that have the ability,
even today, to influence political events. The war in Iraq is a case
in point. Both the pro-war right and the antiwar left exploit these
myths in order to justify their positions.
Both sides in the Iraq war debate make use of the perception that
World War II was a "necessary" and "good" war, in which the Allies
acted ethically and with a supreme concern for human life, a war in
which our government didn't lie or manipulate public opinion in order
to create popular support for the war, a war in which there was clear
evidence of crimes against humanity being committed by our enemies,
and a war that concluded with even-handed and compassionate justice
meted out to our vanquished foes.
The pro-war right uses these myths in order to lull the public into
thinking that there can actually be such a thing as a good, clean,
"painless" war. "Iraq will be a 'good' war, like WWII. There will be
no unnecessary deaths, no phony war propaganda. After the war we'll
easily create a democracy in Iraq, just as we did in Germany, using
kindness and positive reinforcement. And you can trust our
President's reasons for going to war. Our government would never
knowingly use false information to entice Americans into supporting a
war." Many Americans backed the war in Iraq because they believed
that there was historical precedent for the right's fanciful vision
of how the Iraq war would be fought and won.
The antiwar left also uses the mythical model of World War II in
order to create a phony standard of what constitutes a "good" war. A
"good" war, like WWII, is one in which no enemy civilians are
intentionally targeted or needlessly killed, no phony propaganda is
used to justify the war, and vanquished foes are treated in a fair
and decent manner. During the Afghan war, once Afghani civilians
started dying in U.S. air raids, the left declared that it was no
longer a "good" war - like WWII.
Many Americans have protested the treatment of captured Taliban and
Al Qaeda prisoners on the grounds that these prisoners deserved a
fair and constitutionally sound hearing, "just like at Nuremberg."
Since no real war can ever measure up to the phony standard of a
"good war" generated by the mythical version of World War II, the
left can conveniently oppose any and all military operations on the
grounds that they are not "good wars" like World War II was.
Over the years, dissident historians have accumulated an impressive
array of facts that challenge the myths of World War II. Documents
and testimonies have been found that show that the Allies purposely
targeted German civilians during air attacks,18 that the Allies were
ready and willing to use poison gas against Germany and Japan,19 that
England and France were as responsible as Germany for the initiation
of the war,20 that the postwar period between the end of hostilities
in Europe in 1945 and the initiation of the progressive Marshall Plan
in 1947 was marked by the organized murder, rape, and starvation of
German civilians,21 and that the postwar trials of captured Germans
were tainted by phony evidence and the systematic torture of the
defendants.22
In a bid to silence war dissenters, President Roosevelt imprisoned
American antiwar authors and activists23 (ironically, many of the
books written by these imprisoned authors in the 1940s are now banned
again under the current laws that criminalize World War II and
Holocaust history24). In England, Prime Minister Churchill had
antiwar authors, activists, and even members of Parliament imprisoned
in a concentration camp on a British island.25
There are volumes of evidence suggesting that the Allies engaged in a
massive disinformation campaign after the war in order to convince
the public that the war, and its mind-numbing body count of
50,000,000 people, had been necessary and worthwhile. After all, the
initial reason for the war - to keep Poland free - was no longer
usable after Roosevelt "gave" Poland to Stalin at the close of the
war. Therefore, finding and publicizing evidence of Nazi crimes
against humanity became necessary in order to create a new
justification for the war (ironically, most mainstream historians now
believe that Hitler came up with the idea of murdering the Jews
sometime in the summer or autumn of 1941, two years after the war
began, making World War II a war with an ex-post facto reason for
being26).
[END]
Tomorrow: Part II. Footnotes to follow at the end of Part III
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