Archive/File: orgs/american/ihr about.smith 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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