Editorial

Friend:

The Campus Project kicked off good in October. Smith’s Report has a facelift. We have a new bi-monthly publication, The Revisionist—which you should have received a couple weeks ago. TR has been distributed via the student newspaper at Hofstra University in Hempsted, New York (see story below). And the stats for CODOHWeb demonstrate that the number of On-line revisionist documents are being accessed at a rate of 15,000 to 20,000 times daily!

The announcement, or advertisement, for this years Campus Project focuses on Holocaust Studies programs, and how accusations of “hate” are used as tools, with utter hypocrisy, to suppress and censor the revisionist critique of what is taught in those programs, ft employs our old friend Elie Wiesel—again. He’s such an easy target it almost seems unfair to shame him again, but he is used, and he uses himself, so ubiquitously, that it’s difficult to avoid using him ourselves.

The ad is headed: “Holocaust Studies. An Appointment with Hate?” and is reproduced (slightly reduced) on page four of this issue of SR As of this writing it has run at U Maine-Orono, Iowa State U-Ames, Boise State U, U Minnesota-Duluth, and for the first time many first-time top liberal arts colleges, many of them Christian. Among those confirmed as of this date are Augsburg College (MN), Wheaton College (IL), Pacific Union College (CA), Wilson College (PA), Lock Haven U (PA), Bowdin College (ME), Berea College (KY), Stonehill College (MA), Shepperd College (WV), Coe College (IA) and Ohio Wesleyan U. At OWU there was something of a flap, which I learned about when a Columbus Dispatch reporter called to ask why I was submitting these ads everywhere. In the next issue of SR I’ll print a full rundown of where the ad has run.

I did an end run around the ADL this year by going, for the first time, to smaller but top liberal arts colleges around the country. I didn’t know what to expect, many are religious schools, and it is unlikely that any of their editors have ever before held a revisionist text in their hands. Nevertheless another dozen of these top private colleges have already signed up to run the ad over the next ten days.

On the day the ad ran at Iowa State U, on 15 October, the hits on CODOHWeb shot up to 25,000. That’s what it means to run these ads. It isn’t only the text of the ad, but what the ad message advertises in addition to its text—CODOHWeb, our vast revisionist library, and find out for himself what is behind the ad.

Last year we got so many responses when I sent out our $250,000 offer that I couldn’t keep up with it—I was dealing with some 200 ad reps and editors. Everything else went begging. It’s rather a trade-off—if I submit the ad to too many, papers I can’t stay on top of the work; if I send to too few the results are slow coming in. You never know which way the wind will blow.

Every three or four years Smith's Report takes on a new look and new form, as it does with this issue. Its function remains what it has been through each previous transformation—to inform you of what I am doing, with a lot of help from my friends, to take revisionist theory to the universities, the media, and through those agencies to the widest possible public.

Those of you who have been with Smith's Report for four years or longer will have been aware that with issue 31 SR expanded its breadth of reporting. There was WorldScope reporting on revisionism worldwide, Internet Round-up with Richard, an occasional piece by David Thomas on how CODOHWeb actually works, and we were beginning to publish some original scholarship.

The main figure behind those changes in SR was Ted O’Keefe, formally an editor of the Journal for Historical Review, and an old buddy. Just about the time Ted offered to help, I was turning my attention to CODOHWeb, in addition to running the Campus Project, working on a couple books that I keep talking about but never have time to finish, and the rest of what has to be done around here.

Things change. Now Ted has returned to his old hangout, the Institute for Historical Review, and his old friends, Mark Weber and Greg Raven. Several years ago Ted was one of the casualties of the fallout between the Institute and Willis Carto.

That situation, which was something of a catastrophe for the Institute, for Mr. Carto, and for revisionism all together, is slowing being settled. The Institute is about to get some of the money diverted from it, O’Keefe has returned, and there are several new publishing projects in the works there. With the usual round of never-ending work, and a little luck, IHR is going to reclaim its place in the consciousness of the American public as the leading revisionist center in the US.

So—what’s going to happen to Smith’s Report under these new circumstances? SR is not a project unto itself. The Project is more important that SR Yet, without SR, I have no funding, so there is no Project. It’s something of a catch-22. I either have to put more time into Smith’s Report and less into the Campus Project, or I have to do the opposite. I have to choose.

I have chosen to focus on the Campus Project, because that‘s where the work is. SR speaks to the converted—that’s its purpose. It’s the converted who fund outreach to the unconverted. There is no other way to do it. The Campus Project speaks to the great middle, the top end of the great middle, the unconverted, and I have upped the ante there by distributing The Revisionist free to the editors at 500 of the top universities and colleges across the nation. I will do that with each issue. I want to make The Revisionist part of the campus culture.

I will be doing Smith’s Report only five times a year rather than eleven, so I will no longer be able to call it “America’s Only Monthly Revisionist Newsletter.” Keep in mind that while you will receive only five issues of SR, you will get six issues of The Revisionist So you are still going to hear from us every month—except for August when I am supposed to take my family and the dogs for a motor trip. Nevertheless, those of you who have contributed to the Project and do not approve of this turn of events may want your money refunded. You have that right, and a post card will do the trick.

The Revisionist, of course, is not a sure bet. I’m not supposed to say that, it’s bad for business, but there you are. This is another of my high-wire acts. I think I can pull it off. Maybe I’ll fall on my face. I believe I have the right idea, the right people, the right target audience, and the right strategy. We’ll see.

You have read in the cover letter that arrived with your copy of the first issue of TR how I plan to use it—having it distributed by the thousands on college campuses by inserting the magazine in student newspapers. This has never been done before. The worst scenario is that no newspaper will agree to accept it. The next worst is that I will be able to get it distributed the way I want but it will prove to boring for students to be interested in it. I really do not expect that to happen.

TR stands alone as the first revisionist publication in America (anywhere?) that will go directly to student editors—and city editors, key journalists, feature writers, and others in the mainstream press. It will go as well to university journalism departments and professional press organizations around the country. Focusing, as it will, on topical cultural and political issues which affect, and are affected by, revisionism, and at the same time being distributed on me college campus after another, it’s going to be very difficult for either the professors or the press to pretend indifference to us.

You say (I can hear you saying): “You don’t have time to manage the Campus Project and do your newsletter both. Now you’re adding a 20,000-word journal to your work schedule six times a year. Reducing the number of SR’s you do each year and replacing them with six issues of The Revisionist doesn’t sound like less work. It sounds like more work.

Well, I’m not going to do TR by myself—I promise you that. I have recruited, if I can use that word, an editor-in-chief who is going to run the whole shebang— run it elegantly and tough. George Brewer is a trained historian (Columbia and Berkeley) who knows how to write, crack a joke and produce! You’ve never heard of him? Of course not. He lives in the real world, has a real family, real children, a real job, and can not take a chance on being outed and bankrupted by the usual perpetrators.

This is America, he’s not going to be thrown in the slammer for net keeping it zipped up about revisionism, but he runs the very real risk of losing his career and his living both. He deserves a break. It’s a clumsy situation, but that’s how it has to be for the immediate future. When our ship comes in—it’s nowhere in sight yet—Brewer can come out of the closet and live a normal life—normal for us.

There were many problems putting together the first issue of The Revisionist, some of which you can see in the production itself. But the final pain in the neck was with my printer. I chose to use the printer who printed the one issue of Revisionist Letters I published ten years ago, San Dieguito Printers in San Marcus, a town north of San Diego.

To make certain they did not get any surprises with TR, I gave them two copies of Revisionist Letters up front, so they knew what kind of project we were talking about. We worked back and forth for the best part of a month. On the day San Dieguito Printers was to actually print TR, a lady named Jean Faulkner called, introduced herself as the business manager for San Dieguito, and said the company had decided against printing TR.

Rather than telling me why, she started beating around the bush. She was trying to be a little charming about it. To get her out of her misery I asked if the problem might be “content.” She was immediately relieved. Yes, it was contort. Who had turned up at the last minute to decry the content of TR? No one in particular. One person in the company had this reservation, another that one. Everybody appeared to be part of the decision.

When I asked around I discovered two things about San Dieguito Printing: it’s run by women (they apparently suffer from the same lack of principle as men) who do a major part of their business with city, county and state agencies—so there’s the rub. What would happen with their government contracts if it got out they were printing a revisionist magazine?

I don’t complain about these little-events; that’s how the game is played. You have to know how to lose. This is a game where you are going to experience a lot of losing. If you want to promote revisionist theory and you don’t know how to lose, if losing keeps you up at night and makes you kick your dog and bark at your wife and kids, this just isn’t the game for you.

The first person I called after Jean Faulkner’s call to me was David Thomas. He guided me to a printer I had used maybe four years before, for a different kind of job, and who I had forgotten about. One phone call, a three-hour drive north across the border, a one-half hour chat, and I was in business again. Would this printer come through? You betcha’.

Nine days later, two days behind schedule but what the hell, I had 25,000 copies of TR stacked up on two pallets in their warehouse. There were some production problems, as you might have noticed with your own copy, particularly the back cover, and unnecessary empty space inside the book. There were also two awful bloopers—both of them my fault. I had referred to Peter Novick, both on the cover an in the lead on page 19, as “Robert.” Nevertheless, there it was.

I see The Revisionist as one more missing link in the Campus Project that is no longer missing— one more instrument, on top of the advertisements we run with such success, that will strengthen the direct connection between myself and student editors, and beyond between CODOHWeb and the press worldwide.

Because of its topicality and reasonable intellectual tone (without being academically stuffy), TR will encourage student editors to have some confidence in the materials, not only in TR itself, but in the great revisionist library that is in place and Sill a-building on CODOHWeb. And it will give a broad, steady support base to the advertisements we are running. The professors might try to dismiss the ads as mere provocations, but that won’t wash so easily with TR and CODOHWeb.

It’s been suggested that rather than piling a new load of work on myself publishing a magazine for the campus (and off-campus) press, that I print larger runs of Smith’s Report and distribute that to college editors and the rest of the press. Kill two birds with one rock. But SR does not address revisionist issues from a perspective that is profitable for newspaper editors. It has a different target audience entirely—you. It has a different purpose—to tell you what is happening with the Project. Newspaper editors are not interested in this Project. They want to ignore it. They want it to go away.

To the left is a somewhat reduced reproduction of the 2-column by 12-inch ad we’re running in student papers this fall. We’ve had an unusually high rate of papers that made a deal to run the ad, accepted payment, then reneged. I’m uncertain why this should be, but it’s been suggested that the language is too strong. Maybe it is, but I don’t want to run $200 ads that say nothing.