American Holocaust: Will there be people who deny it?

Over the summer the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL) named me one of the “Top Ten Extremists” in America. The ADL published the charge in a print booklet, and to make certain no one missed it, published it on its World Wide Website on the Internet.

I have never thought of myself as an extremist, the extremists I’m acquainted with think I’m a cup cake, so I was very surprised to see myself being taken so seriously. I feel a little like one of those serial murderers listed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list – it’s nice to see my photo at the post office, but is it what I really want?

What have I done to be taken so seriously? Placing advertisements in student newspapers? Asking for some back and forth on a historical issue? Encouraging intellectual freedom — even with regard to the Holocaust question? Always with the cooperation of student editors, their business managers and faculty advisors? That makes me one of the top ten extremists, maybe one of the most dangerous men (there are no women on the list) in the nation? What is it about me that is so unsettling to these people?

On the Internet the ADL page for Extremism In America shows a photograph of the Oklahoma City Federal Building after it was bombed by Timothy McVeigh, et al. Is that what intellectual freedom leads to? The mass killing of civilians and their children? I didn’t know that. I’ve always thought that intellectual freedom would lead to a non-violent exchange of ideas, encourage communication among the citizenry, create confidence in an open society, and illuminate the activities of special interest organizations, particularly those that have an agenda that is anti-democratic. But of course — that’s it!

The Anti-Defamation League does some good human rights work, I’m not going to dismiss the League entirely. At the same time it is a leading ethno-centric Jewish organization that puts Zionist political and cultural issues before everything else, both here and in the Middle East. It has provided unwavering support for the humiliation and brutalization of Palestinians by the Israeli Government for half a century, and lobbied American politicos – successfully — to do the same.

The one common thread among nine out of the ten of those on the ADL’s Top Ten list of Extremists in America is that they are all involved with the White racialist movement. I’m the one exception, but I made the list anyhow. What a guy! How did I pull it off? I have never been a member of a racialist organization. I have never written on racial issues. And then there is the little irony that my family is Mexican, my children are Mexican, and most of my friends are Mexican. Why is CODOH and Smith on the list then?

This is a no-brainer. Those who manage the Holocaust Industry, and the ADL is in the top management tier of that peculiar Industry, exploit the premise that anyone who encourages intellectual freedom with regard to the Holocaust question hates Jews. This is a sickly way of reacting to those who express skepticism about what you happen to believe, but there you have it. I’m one of the top ten extremists in America because I have found that in one respect the Holocaust story is like every other war story I have ever heard, some of it’s true, some of it isn’t — and I have argued that the time is come to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Well, that’s old news now. After 11 September when the bin Laden people made their views known about American and Israeli foreign policy in the Middle East, my importance as a “top ten” extremist became very small potatoes, even to me. I understand now, I think I understand, that Americans will never again find themselves so bemused with the “Holocaust” that happened in Europe over half a century ago. We all watched a “holocaust” on our television screens – a holocaust about which there is no doubt whatever.

The airplanes actually existed. The World Trade Towers existed. The airplanes really did fly into the Towers. There really were great fiery explosions. Immense columns of smoke really did lift up into the heavens. There were hundreds if not thousands of “eyewitnesses” to the same specific event. People really did jump from windows eighty and a hundred floors above the ground. The towers really did fall down.

Are there going to appear “deniers” who will try to dismiss the destruction of the World Trade Center as a hoax? Will they try to “revise” the story, claiming that the planes missed their mark? That the towers did not really collapse? That there really was no deliberate plan to kill the people in the towers? Not likely is it?

On the other hand, will this “American” holocaust be exploited to promote imperial foreign policy initiatives by the U.S. Government and its little ally in the Middle East? Entirely possible. In imperial politics, that’s how “holocausts” are employed.