Fredrick Töben Arrested for Thoughtcrime

Dr. Fredrick Töben, director of Australia's revisionist Adelaide Institute, was arrested and imprisoned in Mannheim, Germany on April 9, 1999 on the charge of “defaming the memory of the dead.”

As readers of Smith’s Report are well aware, this latest outrage against freedom of speech is just one in a long line of human rights violations by the current “democratic” government of Germany.

Dr. Töben was arrested after meeting with public prosecutor Hans-Heiko Klein, who is known for his persecution of revisionists. Klein apparently invited Töben to return to his office a second time to further discuss his concerns. When Dr. Töben arrived, state security police Superintendent Mohr arrested him.

In years past, revisionists learned of such situations weeks and even months after the fact, as hardcopy magazines and newsletters were prepared and mailed. Today, the Internet has changed all that. On the day of Töben's arrest, news was already being sent to revisionists worldwide. David Irving was probably the first to break the news on his fine Focal Point Website. Within 24 hours the revisionist bulletin boards and newsgroups were aflame with news that Dr. Töben was in jail in Germany.

CODOHWeb quickly posted the story to our Thoughtcrimes Archive. This Archive, which dates from 1995, was one of the first features of CODOHWeb. In conceiving and compiling it, we were anxious to alert our readers to the oppression of revisionists around the globe for the past twenty-plus years. Since those early days of CODOHWeb, the archive has grown and is now the largest single source documenting the worldwide governmental suppression, censorship and intimidation that has been practiced against those who seek to inquire, speak, and write freely about the Holocaust controversy.

Today the Thoughtcrimes Archive contains sixty individual stories on this subject, spanning the past twenty years. In addition to news stories the archive contains important pictures like those of the small mountain of burned revisionist titles resulting from the 1984 terrorist arson attack on the Institute of Historical Review. We have as well the swollen, bloodied face of Prof. Faurisson after he was attacked and beaten by Jewish thugs near his home in Lyon, France, in 1989.

The archive is emblazoned with George Orwell’s prophetic words from 1984: “Thought crime does not entail death: thought crime IS death.” Predictably, even these shocking photos and Orwell's warning have not deterred Thought police internationally from their efforts to censor “dangerous” (revisionist) ideas. Given the free-speech ethos of the Internet. Orwell’s words are a warning. and a challenge, that are particularly appropriate.

The Internet has changed the way we get information. We now learn of Töben's incarceration in the Sydney Morning Herald the day the story is published. Within 24 hours revisionists around the world are writing the German government, arguing for intellectual freedom and Toben’s release from jail. Toben’s Adelaide Institute keeps us updated on his story through its own Website.

Net revisionists have posted the email addresses of important contacts like the German consulate and the so-called human rights organizations—which have in fact consistently turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the persecution of revisionists for nothing more than their speech and writing.

Thanks to the work of net revisionists, word has made it to the Electronic Frontiers Association (EFA), an organization which takes up human rights and free speech issues on the Internet. The EFA has informed the Adelaide Institute that it will support Dr. Töben on the issue of free speech on the Internet. How often have we heard of a mainstream organization dedicated to intellectual freedom offering to help a jailed revisionist? Never?

The Adelaide Institute has posted on its Website the following words regarding Dr. Töben’s plight: “Dr. Töben has joined the list of martyrs for historical truth and his suffering will not be in vain. The struggle for historical truth will continue, just as he would wish.”

While Töben is but the latest name in the long role call of revisionists persecuted, he is also one of the Internet’s own. Fred Töben has fought on the frontlines of the cyberspace Holocaust debate. Even his enemies sense something is wrong. Kimberley Heitman, a lawyer for Electronic Frontiers Australia, commented on the Töben case “The global Internet is the sort of resource where the opinion of one government [Germany] doesn't mean much.”

Perhaps Heilman is correct and the latest bid by Germany to muzzle the Internet is bound for failure, but the imprisonment of Dr. Töben does mean something.

To revisionists and defenders of free speech across the net, Töben is one of our own—we shall not be silent un- [the article ends this way due to an apparent editing error; ed]