Smith’s Report, no. 3, February 1991

Greetings:

The other afternoon I was in the office of an equipment rental yard set in the farmland between Visalia and Tulare when the woman behind the counter turned to me and said: “The war has started.” And there on her little black and white TV were the voices of CNN journalists reporting from their 9th story hotel room in Baghdad and in the background you could hear Iraqi anti-aircraft fire. Lots of it. I was enraged by the stupidity of it and at the same time stirred by the excitement you feel witnessing great violence when you yourself are safe from it. While the rage was there, at the same time I wanted our military to do their work well. I wanted them to do it in a way that would make me proud that they're Americans. I believe that's what you call having mixed emotions.

When such gigantic events are being played out on this stage of a world it's difficult sometimes to take your own interests, your own work, seriously. Sometimes you have to pause and remind yourself that working for free inquiry and open debate is a serious matter. That it is worth while to go on with it even, and perhaps especially, in times of great national upheaval. That the suppression of the free expression of ideas really is a prelude to tyranny, murder, ruin and the destruction of human sensibility. To war. Can you even imagine a Saddam Hussein as the tyrant of Iraq if the people there were allowed a free press? Even a press like ours?

So we'll go straight ahead with our efforts here to encourage open debate on the Holocaust on college campuses in the United States. Our understanding is that the cultural life of the nation is corrupted by the suppression of free inquiry into any matter whatever and that open debate on the Holocaust is healthy while evading it sickens us. Nothing radical here. It's just the way Americans expect to live.

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Northwestern University

As you can see from the above, CODOH is announcing itself in the display classifieds of the Daily Northwestern. In future we will appear each Thursday. The announcement isn't quite right yet but by next week it will be. And it's nice to be there among all our Jewish friends. In matters of the intellect, we are and always will be pro-choice. Following is a letter published on the same date.

The Daily Northwestern (11 January 1991)

Holocaust revisionists deserve a forum.

Before the holiday break there was an on-going ruckus in The Daily Northwestern over Winnetka resident Safet Sarich and others who do not follow the politically correct line on the Holocaust story.

When Prof. Arthur Butz or his Hoax of the Twentieth Century are mentioned, for example, it appears to be routine at Northwestern to always make the most vicious ad hominem attacks on his person to always stay away from his book. This behavior is not only accepted by faculty at Northwestern but is encouraged by them.

In 1978 when the first news of The Hoax reached your campus the primary response of faculty, without any of the participants demonstrating that they had read the book, was to sign an “advertisement” condemning Professor Butz and publish it in The Daily. This demonstration of high academic idealism was praised by Hillel, among others.

Isn’t it time for some of the faculty at Northwestern to grow up a little and begin to encourage free inquiry into the Holocaust story and to discourage suppression of free inquiry? Isn’t it time for one professor or one administrator on some out-of-the-way corner of the campus to call for a free exchange of ideas on the Holocaust, rather like you expect grown-ups to do at a university?

Isn’t it time for some nervous-nellie Northwestern historian to get a grip on himself and invite Prof. Arthur Butz to say a few words about why he chooses to express doubt about what students at Northwestern are required to believe?

Why not? Is there a fear among Northwestern faculty that free inquiry promises something to revisionist scholarship that it does not promise to their own? What could that possibly be?

—BRADLEY R. SMITH
Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust
Visalia, Calif.

[Read the flyer distributed around that time which caused the “ruckus”: “The Holocaust Controversy, The Case for Open Debate”; ed.]

There is no reason to doubt that there are many students on the campus at Northwestern and every other university and college in America who would want to know what Revisionists are saying about the Holocaust. They get no encouragement for it from either faculty or administration. They don't even know what the questions are that should or even could be asked. They have no support from their elders and none from their professors.

That's the purpose of the College Speaking Project. We're going to provide students access to Revisionist scholarship that is routinely denied them by their own faculty.

That's the work for which I ask your support. What you see here is just the beginning of the project at Northwestern, and Northwestern is only the beginning of what we can make into a nation-wide project.

The Daily Northwestern is not the only college publication in which the CODOH Open Debate announcement is appearing. In Albuquerque, revisionist Ty Landon has placed the CODOH Open Debate announcement in the University of New Mexico student paper, The New Mexico Daily Lobo. This is an especially interesting situation in that Ty has also set up a monthly revisionist television program to run on the local Public Access channel. He will run films provided by Canadian Jerry Neumann, Ernst Zündel's associate and cameraman, as well as film from other sources.

Arrangements are now being made to run the CODOH Open Debate announcement in Pennsylvania, Nevada, California and Massachusetts.

Below is a letter published in The Northwestern Review, again on 11 January. The typesetting was botched at the paper but the letter was in response to the ugly attack on Professor Butz by Ravi Nessman that was included with issue #2 of Smith's Report.

The Northwestern Review, 11 January 1991

Blind belief in holocaust “impresses” reader

Ravi writes (“Arthur Butz: A Hoax of a Professor,” Nov. 2) that when news of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century first arrived at Northwestern an “advertisement” condemning him and bearing the signatures of numerous faculty members was placed in the Daily Northwestern.

Since at the time there was no evidence that any professor at Northwestern had yet seen The Hoax, much less read it, we were not particularly impressed by the “advertisement” or by the example set for students by the faculty members who signed it.

Now, more than a decade later, Mr. Nessman, following the example of the elders, writes that Professor Butz’s Hoax is ridiculous, disgusting, fetid, paranoic, myopic, trashy, anti-Semitic and wrong. He doesn’t attempt to demonstrate any of those charges.

At Northwestern University, it would seem, it’s enough to sign advertisements and make ad hominem attacks against those who express doubt about what is supposed to be universally believed.

It’s all very impressive indeed.

Bradley R. Smith
Director, Committee for Open Debate On the Holocaust

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National Association for College Activities (NACA)

The first mailing directed to the 1,200 colleges belonging to NACA is out. In it I solicit paid speaking dates to discuss the Holocaust and the issue of open debate. The mailing package contains a 2-page cover letter, my leaflet The Case for Teaching Holocaust Revisionism in our Colleges and High Schools, and the leaflet written by Mark Weber for CODOH, The Holocaust: Let's Hear Both Sides.

If you would like to have a look at the package, drop me a line and a donation for expenses.

The CODOH advertisement has been appearing in NACA's slick monthly, Programming for three months. I am receiving a trickle of inquiries and none has come to fruition. Now that the advertisement is being backed up quarterly by a direct mail solicitation I expect responses to begin to increase

The handful of directors of student activity committees that has called me sound a little incredulous that I am actually here. I think that from this point on it is going to be increasingly evident in the academic community that we are, in fact, here. I don't want to write of specific colleges here that do inquire about my speaking at their campus, for the usual reasons. I don't want to give clear targets to the strong-arm censors working for the Simon Wiesenthal Center or the Anti-Defamation League. They'll get into the act soon enough. When they do, I plan to take them on head-on. But I want to do it when we are both out in the open rather than allow them to work secretly behind the scenes.

On Making News

I am aware of increasing problems booking radio and television interviews for the Media Project that I take care of for the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). There are signs tho no real proof that I am being consciously cut out of some of the major media markets. I am particularly aware that New York City has closed its doors to me. When I was handling PR for the IHR conference in Washington this past October I was blanked out completely by D.C. electronic media, even tho I made an especially assertive effort to exploit it. Chicago has always been a tough town for me, too, tho I did do the Stacy Taylor interview on WLS last fall.

Several times during the year I changed the format of the mailings I send regularly to radio and television. Nothing worked. Each mailing produced three or four interviews rather than the 10 to 15 that I had grown accustomed to. Recently it's occurred to me that while I was passing along important revisionist news to the media, I wasn't making news. The thing about media and news is that it's better to make news yourself than to give them news that others have made.

I think from this point on we are going to make news ourselves, which will make media happy which in turn will make us happy. And it won't be only in the Chicago area either.

National Coalition Against Censorship, et al.

When I didn't receive written confirmation that CODOH had been admitted as a member of National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) up the office in New York to assure myself that we had been accepted. All's

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well. We have been. NCAC, headquartered in New York City, is directed by the respected Leanne Katz. NCAC is an umbrella organization for many of the anti-censorship organizations in America, including:

Actor's Equity
American Association of School Administrators
American Association of University Professors
American Association of University Women
AmericanCivil Liberties Union
American Ethical Union
American Federation of Teachers
American Film and Video Association
American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Congress
American Library Association
American Literary Translators Association
American Orthopsychiatric Association
American Society of Journalists and Authors
Association for Communication Administration
Association for Education in Journalism
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
Authors League of America
Directors Guild of America
Fund for Open Information and Accountablity, Inc.
International Reading Association
Modern Language Association
National Council for the Social Studies
National Council of the Churches of Christ
National Council of Jewish Women
National Council of Teachers of English
National Education Association
PEN American Center
People for the American Way
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Screen Actors Guild
Speech Communication Association
Student Press Law Center
The Newspaper Guild
Union of American Hebrew Congregations
U.S. National Student Association
Unitarian Universalist Association
United Church of Christ
United Methodist Communications, United Methodist Church
Women's American ORT
Writers Guild of America , East, Inc.
Writers Guild of America , West, Inc.

I've known about NCAC for some time but was reminded of it again recently when I received a solicitation signed by children's author Judy Blume extolling the organization and urging me to join with her in standing against the “book banners” who are once again “on the march.” She mentioned books like Catcher in the Rye, Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary and so on.

Well, I thought, I know of a few books that are effectively banned in this country. NCAC sounds like the organization for me. At Northwestern, when Hillel or some like organization attempts to have CODOH's announcement banned from the Daily there, I'll fire off a letter to NCAC's Leanne Katz and she'll clean up the problem once and for all. I know there are (forgive me) some cynics among you who do not believe it will work quite that way, but I'm an optimist.

This Is a Plan That Will Work!

• Make news
• Concentrate attention on students – not on faculty or administration
• Run ads in college student papers offering access to Revisionist scholarship
• Announce in the ad that speakers are available
• Solicit college speaking dates for student organizations using direct mail
• Run ad in Programming soliciting college speaking dates
• Monitor and respond effectively to media stories on Holocaust in target area (example: Chicago metropolitian area)
• Be prepared to travel anywhere and speak before (almost) any audience.

YOU CAN PLAY AN EFFECTIVE ROLE IN THIS PROJECT

Particular needs at this moment are funds to publish four leaflets for CODOH: new editions of Mark Weber's “The Holocaust: Let's Hear Both Sides” and “Auschwitz: Myths and Facts.” Mark did these new versions several months ago but I haven't had the funds to print them. They will be key documents to use on college campuses. And there are two leaflets I have written: “The Case for Teaching Holocaust Revisionism in our Colleges and High Schools” and “Interview With a Holocaust Revisionist,” a reprint of an very effective and energetic interview I gave to the Loompanics publishing house. These leaflets are going to be unusually effective on campus. Each leaflet will cost about $300 to print in quantities of 5,000 each. Total cost: about $1,200.

There are many other expenses associated with this project. The project produces no income whatever at this stage of the game. It will, but at the beginning that simply can not be the case. Your generosity is very much appreciated, and it will be effective.