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From ubc-cs!van-bc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!news.acns.nwu.edu!news Thu Apr 16 07:39:36 PDT 1992
Article: 207 of alt.revisionism
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Path: oneb!ubc-cs!van-bc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!news.acns.nwu.edu!news
From: mhauser@sally.acns.nwu.edu (Marc Hauser)
Subject: RE: THE HOLOCAUST STORY
Message-ID: <1992Apr16.033759.17198@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Mr. News)
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 03:37:59 GMT

I am back, again in response to the posting, by Ralph Winston, of the  
Bradley R. Smith essay, "THE HOLOCAUST STORY:  HOW MUCH IS FALSE?: The  
Case for Open Debate," and it's misrepresented attribution to The Daily  
Northwestern.  Again, it was a PAID ADVERTISMENT, and not a legitimate  
article or editorial.  The following comes from the Anti-Defamation  
League, from their Special Edition, February, 1992.  This is being printed  
with permission from the ADL.  It is about Bradley R. Smith, the author of  
the essay, his history, and his ties to anti-Semetic organizations.

**************************************************************************
		Bradley Smith: A Man and His Myth

"I get up in the morning. I go to the typewriter and write down the  
simplest things which have the most tremendous implications," wrote  
Bradley Smith in a self-published autobiography, "Confes sions of a  
Holocaust Revisionist, Part 1." "I write all about how all the historians  
are wrong, how the scholars and the intellectuals and the universities
are all wrong and how I'm right."

That kind of bravado has sustained Smith for over a decade in his
crusade to deny the facts of the Holocaust and to camouflage such non-
sense as rational and intellectual inquiry. Smith claims to have stumbled
upon his calling in 1979 after a stranger handed him an article by long-
time Holocaust "revisionist" Dr. Robert Faurisson titled "The Problem of  
the Gas Chambers or, The Rumor of Auschwitz," which inspired Smith. He
became convinced that he had "discovered the taboo, that for half a  
century has protected the Holocaust story."

Smith went on to publish a Holocaust-denying newsletter called "Prima  
Facie," now defunct.

Smith has acted in concert with the Institute for Historical Review (IHR),  
a pseudo-scholarly entity closely tied to Liberty Lobby. Under its  
founder, Willis Carto, Liberty Lobby has been the most active anti-Semitic  
propaganda organization in the country. Since 1979, IHR has spearheaded  
the movement to deny the Holocaust.

Over the years Smith's association with IHR has involved him in attempts  
to publicize its agenda. In 1986 he managed the "IHR Radio Project," a
publicity campaign to disseminate IHR propaganda through guest appearances  
by Holocaust "revisionists" on radio talk shows. One of Smith's original  
ideas for the project, a proposed debate on the authenticity of "Shoah,"  
Claude Lanzmann's Holocaust documentarv film, was rejected by every  
station he approached.

Smith solicited interviews under the premise of discussing "Confessions of  
a Holocaust Revisionist." He claims to have discussed "revisionism" on  
over 230 radio talk show


"C.O.D.O.H."


In 1987 IHR spawned another Holocaust-denying entity, "The Committee for  
Open Debateon the Holocaust," (CODOH); Smith and fellow "revisionist" Mark  
Weber were identified as the directors. (Weber was replaced in 1990 by Dr.  
Robert Countess, an IHR editorial board member in Huntsville, Alabama.)  
CODOH initially received funding from the late William Curry, an  
anti-Semitic Nebraska businessman. In 1988 the Missouri-based Chnstian  
News, a bi-weekly newspaper specializing in Holocaust-denial, helped  
organize a CODOH-sponsored effort "to promote a Holocaust debate." Hailed  
by Liberty Lobby's publication, The Spotlight, as "the debate of the  
century," this event took place in the Los Angeles area in 1989.

Smitll has continued to pursue CODOH's objectives. His primary tactical  
subterfuge, "open debate" on the Holocaust, consists of a disingenuous  
pursuit of "free inquiry" and First Amendment rights. In one of his  
irregularly self-published tracts, "Revisionist Letters," (April 1989)  
Smith wrote, "CODOH remains uncertain why the concept of free inquiry  
should be so disturbing. . ."

In the same edition of the newsletter, Smith illustrated what Orwell  
called "doublethink": "Revisionism," Smith wrote, "demonstrates that the  
Holocaust story is shot through with fraud and falsehood." Smith then  
added "However, bigots use this information to accuse jews of lying about  
the Holocaust. . ."

In a piece published in September 1990 in a California newspaper, the  
Visalia Times Delta, Smith sought to disavow anti-Semitism. "Holocaust  
revisionism is not an attack on Jews, but the natural urge that all men of  
good will have to get the history of their age into accord with the facts  
and to not bear false witness against others, even when they are German."  
In that same editorial
Smith praised the discredited "Leuchter Report" as "perhaps the most  
significant revisionist document circulating at the moment.."


Mr. Smith Goes To College


Smith's early attempts to funnel "revisionism" into academia received  
little notice.

Smith's more recent campus outreach, however, has received more attention.  
Attempting to disguise itself as a vehicle for scholarly inquiry, his  
current advertisement acknowledges that the Nazis "singled out the Jewish  
people for special and cruel treatment." However, the ad contends, that  
occurred because Jews were viewed as "enemies of the State" and "an  
influential force behind international communism." Jews who died in work  
camps, the ad maintains, did so of typhus and other diseases. The gas  
chambers were only used as "lifesaving" fumigation chambers to delouse  
clothing and prevent disease. "The figure of 6 million Jewish deaths" the  
ad asserts "is an irresponsible exaggeration."

As of this writing five campus papers have published Smith's ad, while  
twelve have refused it outright, and two published it with editorial  
commentary. Smith has accused those newspapers who refused to publish the  
ad of capitulating to organized Jewry's conspiracy to suppress  
"revisionism."

After The Cornell Daily Sun and the Michigan Daily ran the advertisement,  
protest rallies were organized. The Daily Northwestern's decision to run  
Smith's paid notice sparked sharp debate, in part because of Arthur Butz's  
presence on campus. (Butz, on the faculty of Northwestern's engineering  
department wrote a Holocaust "revisionist" book with the self-explanatory  
title "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century". The book has become a mainstay  
of hate group booklists.) One hundred seventy-five professors and students  
responded to Smith's propaganda with an advertisment of their own  
denouncing Holocaust "revisionism" (and Butz's book) as malicious.

After the Smith ad ran in Duke University's campus newspaper, The  
Chronicle, the paper's editor justified that decision by asserting that  
the material presented information within the bounds of legitimate  
historical revisionism. However members of Duke's History Department  
rebutted this claim with a unaninimously endorsed statement distinguishing  
between interpreting history and denying it altogether. "The Chronicle  
editors make a serious error" read the faculty statement "when they  
confuse Holocaust deniers with historical revisionists. Whatever one  
thinks about the right of The Chronicle to accept this advertisement as  
historians, we deplore this effort to use the language
of 'scholarship' to distort and obliterate an event which to our  
everlasting shame did occur. We urge all members of the Duke community to  
treat such advertisements with the contempt they deserve."

(It should be noted that First Amendment guarantees of free speech and  
freedom of the press in no way obligate newspapers to accept every ad or  
other item submitted for publication.)

The Daily Targum of Rutgers University elected to treat CODOH's  
advertisement as an "expose," with rebuttals; a similar approach prevailed  
at The Lantern at Ohio State.

Campus newspapers that decided against publishing Smith's ad included  
those at Harvard, Yale, the University of Texas (Austin) and the  
University of California (Berkeley).


Seeing Conspiracies, Telling Lies


Smith has insisted that the "Holocaust myth" was created by Soviet and  
U.S. forces to justify their own wartime actions. He has also asserted  
"Jewish organizations get up in arms over this because the Holocaust story  
has become a secular religion for some parts of the Jewish community." To  
reinforce the point Smith noted: "Influential pressure groups with private  
agendas have made the Holocaust an exception to open debate." The  
Anti-Defamation League was designated as one of those groups; Smith  
described ADL as "a private Jewish intelligence agency which operates  
along the lines of the KGB."

Perhaps Smith himself has made the best case against his own propaganda. A  
promotional piece for "Confessions of a Holocaust Revisionist (Part I)"  
asserts: "The primary interest of the author is not what happened in  
Europe 45 years ago, but in how history and historic lies affect the lives  
of individuals living today." Bradley Smith's version of "history" can  
only "affect the lives of individuals" in the direction of ignorance and  
anti-Semitism.

					-reprinted with permission
					Anti-Defamation League, 1992
**************************************************************************

Bradley R. Smith has been submitting his essay, "THE HOLOCAUST STORY:  HOW  
MUCH IS FALSE?  The Case for Open Debate," as a Paid Advertisment to  
university newspapers around the nation.  This disturbing trend began at  
Northwestern University, and now this disease is infecting many schools  
nation-wide.

If you are a student, or even if you are not, and are disturbed by this  
trend, contact the ADL, or me.  I urge everyone to post to this newsgroup  
in sheer volume, to show the protest and this disgust towards the  
"revisionist" movement.

Marc Hauser
mhauser@courtney.acns.nwu.edu
"If the soul is sleeping, than the flesh is ink."-Garcia





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