Fwd: Anthony Flood on the Holocaust Heresy Trial

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

>
>
>
>
>
>In What Sense Is Germany a Free Society?
>
>I urge everyone to read and contemplate the implications of Jon 
>Rappoport's plain-spoken, temperate, courageous, and I believe, 
>unanswerable, editorial on the ordeal of Ernst Zundel, the West's 
>most significant political prisoner. He became one, as you should 
>all know by now, with the collaboration of the United States 
>Government.
>
>In the past I've been taken to task for being a bit free with the 
>word "unanswerable." All right: Rappoport's ripping away of the 
>legalistic B.S. surrounding Zundel's persecution is unanswerable to 
>anyone in whom a Voltairean heart still beats.
>
>By the way, where are all you libertarians, civil and otherwise, 
>these days? Cat got your tongues? Don't want to upset your precious 
>apple carts? When Commissar Chertoff and his gang get around to 
>deciding that you're "giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of 
>war," or some such nonsense, you're going to be apple sauce. And who 
>will then utter a peep on your behalf?
>
>By his stubborn and personally costly defense of the right to utter 
>and print sentences, even those that blaspheme the West's de facto 
>religion, Zundel has effectively pop-quizzed all of us on our 
>commitment to liberty. Most of us deserve a big, fat "F."--Anthony 
>Flood
>
>Posted by Anthony Flood on Wednesday November 16, 2005 at 11:28am.


=====

>
>
>A Nauseating Phrase for Any Lover of Liberty
>
>". . . was arrested on charges of violating a law that makes denying 
>X a crime."
>
>Denial: a mental act, expressed in oral or written words, asserting 
>the nonexistence or nonoccurrence of a thing or event.
>
>If a thing exists, and I deny that it does, or if an event occurred, 
>and I deny that it did, I may either be ignorant of the existent or 
>occurrence, and therefore nonculpably mistaken; or I may be 
>cognizant of the existent or occurrence, and therefore a deliberate 
>deceiver.
>
>In the case of the latter, I may be guilty of communicating a 
>falsehood to whom I contractually owe the truth, and in that case 
>the false communication is tantamount to a violation of rights, 
>which is actionable in any legal order worthy of the name liberal or 
>libertarian.
>
>As everyone knows, however, those accused of the contemporary crime 
>of "denial" do not enjoy the privilege of defining themselves. That 
>is, they do not, in fact, call themselves "deniers."
>
>The writers, scientists, and scholars who for decades have been 
>repressed, hounded, threatened, beaten, tried, fined, and jailed on 
>the charge of what is called "Holocaust denial" are in every 
>instance doubters of aspects of a complex historical narrative - no 
>more, no less.
>
>In no case is the alleged "denier" a party to a contract that 
>obliges him to communicate truthfully to the other party facts known 
>to the "denier." That is, in no case is the "denier" guilty of 
>having done anything that ought to be a crime by the standards of 
>Western jurisprudence.
>
>Of course, this counts for less than nothing. Illiberal forces have 
>triumphed in several countries to have it declared officially, 
>sanctions attaching, that a certain narrative is off-limits to 
>rational discussion. They will not rest until they are victorious 
>globally, which means also in the United States.
>
>The protected narrative is not, of course, off-limits to those who 
>wish to press it into the service of their own domestic and 
>international political initiatives. In fact, the latter suffices to 
>explain the former.
>
>Doubters of the existence of God, the divinity or resurrection of 
>Jesus, or the inspiration of the Bible are no longer the criminals 
>they once were in the West. Rather, they figure prominently in what 
>passes for "da kulcha," which reserves pedestals for thugs while 
>confining "deniers" to a netherworld, whose denizens "decent, 
>ordinary" people need not concern themselves.
>
>Where are those obnoxious, in-your-face, iconoclastic radicals, now 
>that we really need them?
>
>More significantly: where are our hell-bent-for-leather 
>investigative journalists? Their continuing, and deafening, silence 
>amounts to aiding and abetting the persecution of investigators who 
>are willing to pay any price for the truth.
>
>We love to quote Voltaire, don't we? But where, oh where, are those 
>willing defend to the death Zundel's, and Rudolf's, and Irving's 
>right to say what so many find disagreeable?
>
>This is where the mettle of what's left of the West is being tested. 
>Not flag-burning, not breast-feeding in parks, but the verbal 
>expression of mental reservation concerning what happened in 
>history. So far, we're failing miserably.
>
>
>Posted by Anthony Flood on Thursday November 17, 2005 at 12:34pm.


=====

>
>
>The Ongoing Attack on the Right to Inquire: My Post on Ephilosopher.com
>
>There is most certainly an elite--multi-national but with an 
>identifable Jewish segment (which does NOT speak for all Jews)--that 
>has targeted writers who have been the most effective in doubting 
>key aspects of a complex historical narrative concerning the fate of 
>the Jews at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. It's Zundel 
>one day, Rudolf (note spelling) the next, David Irving only 
>yesterday. Those who use the law to silence them merely expose their 
>intellectual bankruptcy. Truth has never needed such surly 
>bodyguards.
>
>Doubters -- men who merely utter and print sentences -- are branded 
>"deniers" in grave tones that recall medieval heresy trials. The 
>implication is that to doubt is to blaspheme, and blasphemers are to 
>be suppressed. This is the line adopted by millions who do not have 
>a conventionally religious bone in their bodies.
>
>An explanation may be found in the role the sacred narrative plays 
>in rationalizing various policies, whether aggressive wars abroad or 
>"diversity" programs at home. Whatever serves to undermine 
>confidence in the official story threatens to upset domestic and 
>international applecarts--especially those that dispense, not 
>applesauce, but billions of tax dollars in reparations, educational 
>programs, etc. (See "The Holocaust Industry" by son of Holocaust 
>survivor Norman Finkelstein.) Revisionists violate no one's rights, 
>but they certainly harm interests. Those whose interests are harmed 
>are shamelessly using the full might of the State to violate rights 
>in order to further those interests.
>
>When witnessing the consequent persecution -- people being whisked 
>away from their families and shipped out of the country for trial 
>abroad, losing their freedom, their livelihoods, their homes, their 
>books -- folks who were such Voltarean libertarians only the other 
>day suddenly come down with a terminal case of "Legal Positivitis."
>
>Legal Positivism asserts that there is no "natural right" on the 
>basis of which one may sensibly oppose a positive statute. The 
>statute IS the law. Period. "You don't like the law, change it; 
>until you do, it stands, and the penalties apply." The same people 
>who once objected to that kind of defense of the Old South's Jim 
>Crow laws have made their peace with it when it involves "defaming 
>the memory of the dead."
>
>History is always winnowing out the heroes from the villains. THIS 
>is the test for libertarians, civil and otherwise. Forget 
>breast-feeding in parks, nose rings or religious head gear in public 
>schools, and all the other "controversies" that clutter our daily 
>news. This battle is about the equal liberty of all, not just some, 
>to use their bodies, minds, and other property to ask questions and 
>communicate answers about complex historical matters.
>
>The new wave of physical attacks on those who affirm this liberty is 
>heating up. Does one have the right to mount a reasoned challenge to 
>Received Opinion, a challenge subject to reasoned, public 
>refutation, without fear of interference by authorities, or not? 
>That is, which of the following two values in our hierarchy of 
>values is to be preferred to the other when they clash? Feelings? Or 
>the right to inquire into the truth of a matter? Our answer will 
>determine what kind of people we are.
>
>
>Posted by Anthony Flood on Friday November 18, 2005 at 11:57am.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/attachments/20051210/5589673c/attachment-0001.htm