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At Deadline

By Bradley R. Smith ∙ September 1, 1998

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University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). The Daily Bruin has ran a column (26 August) headlined “Propaganda Denies Holocaust Occurred.” The columnist, Julianne Sohn, tells us that the flyer “serves as an advertisement for two groups of Holocaust and Historical Revisionists, the Committee or Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) and the Institute for Historical Review (IHR).” Ms. Sohn is rather bewildered by the content of the flyer but tries to make the best of it, and comes out against the censorship of revisionism. I have been faxed the flyer. It’s a no-holds-bared challenge to debate all received opinion on the holocaust story. Revisionism and intellectual freedom have found a champion on the UCLA campus. What’s next? I don’t know, but stay tuned—just in case.

Boise State University (BSU). As we wrap up this issue of Smith's Report we are able to report that our $250,000 Offer has run in The Arbiter at Boise State University. The Arbiter, with 14,000 circulation, is by far the largest campus newspaper in Idaho.

Boise is the city where early in August businessman and political consultant Robert Boatman published an op-ed article in The Idaho Statesman (the state’s biggest newspaper) that assailed the city’s decision to build a memorial to Anne Frank. Boatman, a political consultant to Republican Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth, was fired. He refused to retract his criticisms of the Boise Anne Frank memorial, which he based on revisionist criticism of the authenticity of the diary—or is it diaries?

When I ran the almost-finished $250,000 ad past my CODOH buddies, the inclusion of Anne Frank among the debating issues drew the most criticism. It was “off-target.” I wasn’t sure. It is and it isn’t. Still, it’s used, particularly politically, as one of the primary texts of the Holocaust story and it’s become a taboo promoted by the ADL and the rest of the Lobby. Now that The Arbiter has rumour— $250,000 Offer to debate, among other matters, the authenticity of The Anne Frank Diary, I wonder what the ADL thinks. Off-target—or on?

Thanks for all your help. With you we can do it. Without you—not a chance.

Bradley

Author

  • Bradley R. Smith

    Bradley R. Smith was born in Los Angeles on February 18, 1930. At 18 he joined the army and in 1951 served with the infantry in Korea where he was twice wounded. After three decades of a variety of professional activities, it suddenly hit him: In 1979 he read a leaflet by Professor Robert Faurisson, "The Problem of the Gas Chambers." Then, Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the Twentieth Century did it for him. He understood from the beginning that he would address the censorship, the suppression of independent thought, the taboo against publishing and debating revisionist arguments—not the arguments themselves. That has remained his position. In 1989, Smith founded Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) dedicated to defending free speech and free inquiry into the Holocaust question. He handed over CODOH's helm in late 2014. He passed away on his 86th birthday, February 18, 2016. Read a series of obituaries here.

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Bibliographic information about this document: Smith's Report, no. 57, September 1998, p. 8
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