Notebook

Several hundred new subscribers come on board in recent weeks—Hello and Welcome to one and all! The paper work associated with it taxes my meager office skills to the limit. I thank the gods for Patricia, 300-plus miles to the north in Visalia, who sorts, orders, prints and ships everything and keeps the books straight.

One new project after another is developed for CODOHWeb (you can reach us right now on the World Wide Web at . Thanks to the steady and imaginative work of Webmaster David Thomas and Managing Editor Richard Widmann and all those working with them.

AnswerMan! CODOHWeb’s responder to what students and Everyman need. The one they can turn to to » find out everything they ever wanted to know about revisionism and the Holocaust story but had no one to turn to to ask. AnswerMan! answers their questions in a way they will understand and in a manner they can accept. AnswerMan! is so good I can’t wait to take a trial run at advertising him. Even tho it’s the summer quarter, I begin submitting ads announcing him to campus newspapers. We tell you all about it below

Libertarianism and Revisionism: I pursue my exchange on CODOH-Web with Marco den Ouden. president of the West Coast Libertarian Foundation. We exchange eight letters during May and June. We workhard to define our “terminology” but can’t. Much of it follows the outline of what many revisionists must have experienced themselves.

Den Ouden wants me to understand that any “accusations or arguments about atrocities [he makes] are leveled against the Nazis and not the German people. There is a distinct difference.”

I used to think so, but I don’t think so any longer. We do not distinguish between Republicans and Democrats on the one hand and the American people on the other, and when it came time for the Americans and British and the Soviets to kill and destroy everything in sight they did not attempt to distinguish between Nazis and Germans. And after the war when it came to sending German money to Israel, the Israelis did not insist that it be taken only from old Nazis.

There are many such exchanges over such everyday issues as these.

The culture has sensitized how we think about these things in some very peculiar ways. Den Ouden writes: “…in one of your answers to my questions you ask, 'Why the Jews?’ meaning why should we care more about the Jews than about the victims of Dresden or Hiroshima. Two points here. The Jewish question in Germany is a major issue because they were not victims of a random attack like Dresden, but were systematically persecuted, rounded up and murdered because of their race and religion. They were the victims of racism and genocide.”

How has it come to be seen that the burning of Dresden was a “random” attack? It was part of the strategic air war of the Anglo-American military against the civilian population of Germany. The British, particularly, insisted that it was. I agree that some, even many, Jews were killed because they were Jews. What the hell? But then the Dresden Germans were killed because they were Germans. The reason the Portuguese were not killed in the raid on Dresden is that they were not there, they were in Portugal. In any event, when the State or its factotums order the killing of civilians it’s not important to me what reasons the State gives. The State always has its reasons.

Den Ouden observes (finishing up his train of thought): “The victims at Dresden happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I agree, of course. Following that line of reasoning we will see that the Jews of Europe were in the wrong place at the wrong time. As a matter of fact, that’s what the German government pointed out to them.

And so on. Den Ouden believes it’s important to define the word “Holocaust.” I believe it’s important to define what a “crime against humanity” is. Den Ouden argues that the Germans intentionally killed Jewish civilians because they hated Jews, and that that hatred is what makes the killings by Germans particularly repugnant.

The implication is that when the Allies purposefully killed the civilians of Dresden, Hamburg and half a hundred other German cities they did so without hating them. Den Ouden suggests an interesting concept: that it is worse to kill people you hate than it is to kill those you do not. I ask him about this but he does not respond.

It’s difficult for us to bridge the gap of “understanding” that separates us, the cultural perspective I suppose I could say. In that respect, libertarians are like everyone else. I’m going to keep on trying.

Meanwhile, Den Ouden tells me he has associated himself somehow with Nizkor, the biggest site on the Internet openly dedicated to “fighting” revisionism. So I suppose our dialogue takes on a larger significance than I thought it had at first.

[If you think this may be your cup of tea, you'11 find the first exchanges in our Catalog Update.]

Fax-by-email. Technology that puts us in with the big boys. I write a press release on a breaking revisionist story this afternoon. I include simple directions on how editors can find relevant, organized and absolutely unique background on the story on CODOHWeb. I “attach” the lists of media fax numbers to it I want the release to reach. I send the release to my Internet server in the States and the server sends the whole enchilada to the media I choose. It’s sent electronically so it travels at no charge. It’s always a local call. I send a press release to The London Times for the same cost I send it to The Los Angeles Times. It’s magic. This is one of the surprises we have in store for campus and other media come September. You’ll like it.

Several of you contact me to suggest projects for CODOH you believe will be productive. You offer to fund or partially fund the projects. This makes all the difference. There isn’t a really bad idea in the lot. I am so busy that I do not respond properly to any of you. Don’t lose patience. I’ll respond to each. No idea reaches me fully formed. It has to be worked out. Sometimes it can’t be. Sometimes it takes time. A lot of time. I can’t just take the money and do the project. None of us wants to spend time and money to do something that won’t work.

An Oregon man sends David Cole’s video on Auschwitz, along with a cover letter, to the department of education of every state in the Union. He addresses each package to specific superintendents and media services people at each department. Typically the department acknowledges receipt of the video and informs him where they are forwarding it for review.

The CODOH Bulletin Board. I’m surprised one morning when I go On-line to discover that our Webmaster, David Thomas, has installed a “bulletin board” on CODOHWeb where people can debate (post messages) live. Messages can go back and forth in real time. Last year we didn’t have the know-how to place a board on CODOHWeb. Now we have. Four and five years ago, when revisionism was first getting a toehold on the Internet, Dan Gannon’s bulletin board up in Portland Oregon was a rallying point for many of us, and was instrumental in convincing me that I should go on the “Web” in the first place.

One of the first posts on the CODOH Bulletin Board reads: “The Holy Grail of the holocaust is the gas chambers. Only if your heart is pure can you see them. One may search a lifetime and never find one. Absolute faith in their existence is required to have the purity of heart to recognize a gas chamber.” It’s signed by Matt Giwer, July 1, 1998.