Internet Roundup 1998

As 1998 begins, a new strain of virulent anti-Americanism is circulating throughout our country. We see the Holocaust Lobby attempting, in complete and utter disregard for the basic tenets on which our country was founded, to eliminate revisionist dissent through nongovernmental, “voluntarist” tampering with the free market of ideas. While the Left, and nearly all of the Holocaust lobby, is always quick to denounce Senator Joseph McCarthy for his campaign to expose Communists, real and occasionally imagined, few criticisms are heard of the new campaigns to curtail freedom of speech which originate from the “anti-Fascist” camp itself.

Disturbed by the growing success of groups with whom they disagree, the thought-controllers are attempting what looks to be a coordinated campaign of censorship to veil any and all free exchange of ideas. Obviously having studied George Orwell’s “Principles of Newspeak,” these self-appointed censors label all dissent as “hate.” Our 1990’s version of “Newspeak” has seen the adoption of “hate crime,” “hate speech,” “hate groups” “hate sites” and even “hate radio.” The use of these words by government officials and Thought Police organizations is intended to achieve a common goal—the elimination of dissent.

The misnamed Anti-Defamation League (ADL) released its less than incisive booklet, High-Tech Hate late last year (see SR 48). This was one of the opening salvos from the new McCarthyites. In this pamphlet, ADL attacked various groups that they themselves hate. Within its pages, various revisionist websites, first among them CODOHWeb, were marked with the ADL’s “scarlet letter.”

Their book published, the ADL was ready for its next shot. It has been reported that they have now partnered with a software company to develop filters to screen out whatever they deem to be “hate sites” (chief among them CODOHWeb) on the World Wide Web. The software package Cyber Patrol will block access to those sites under the guise of filtering out material unsuitable for children. The ADL has attained a new level of arrogance, as well as hypocrisy, by this move: reportedly clicking on the web address of an ADL-blacklisted site will bring the user to the ADL’s website. Alas, in ADL’s world only one voice is to be heard.

Not to be outdone in their bid for the anti-“hate” buck, the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) issued, almost simultaneously, a fundraising letter in which Rabbi Marvin Hier cites various examples of “antisemitism” around the globe. Like the word “hate,” “antisemitism” is a newspeak word-weapon of choice. Among other examples, Hier cited a Palestinian author who mentioned that the number of “Holocaust” victims was “inflated”; “hate groups” in cyberspace; the Japanese magazine Marco Polo's article questioning the “gas chamber” story; and David Irving’s lectures on “Holocaust”-related topics. Charging each of these individuals or groups as “antisemitic hatred,” the SWC, which runs something called the “Museum of Tolerance,” urges contributors to help to “snuff out” their opposition. Clearly the new McCarthyites are not as “tolerant” as they would have people believe.

On SWC’s website, the organization complains mightily that the David Cole video, which offers a tour of what was formerly believed to be the “gas chamber” of Auschwitz, is offered for sale through the Internet.

Horrors! A free exchange of ideas in a (somewhat) open market place—clearly a very foreign idea to some. What do they recommend as a means to combat such ideas?

The SWC proposes “guidelines” like those already in place for newspaper and television advertising. Those concerned with effective freedom of speech should pay careful attention to such newspeak euphemisms as “guidelines.”

Before writing off this threat to our personal freedom, consider this: the SWC has recently been awarded nongovernmental organization status from the United Nations. In this capacity the SWC will be represented at all UN meetings and will be spreading their brand of intolerance to representatives from around the globe.

Not to be outdone in the bid for thought control and contributions, the folks at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) have also sent out a request for funds. Besides touting their goal of “immortalizing] the six million,” the USHMM asks, “who will counter the hate-mongers and revisionists…?” One’s mind reels when confronted by such hate and slander uttered in official correspondence of a United States taxpayer supported institution. In another example of extreme arrogance and, as Michael Hoffman would say, “revelation of method,” the USHMM declares, “…this Museum … has the possibility of changing forever the way people think.” Indeed.

The USHMM knows the revisionist onslaught is coming. Our historians and scholars have already manned the battlements. They have seen CODOH’s materials. They know their “gas chamber” door is as genuine as the phony reconstructed “gas chamber” of Auschwitz.

The SWC has fallen into favor at the UN, an organization largely disliked and not trusted across the heartland of this great country. As Americans are loath to fund the bankrupt ideas of the UN, so shall real Americans resist supporting the SWC leadership in its ploys for publicity and money through advocating worldwide censorship.

The ADL denies all debate. A single voice is to be heard from sea to shining sea. Will the students of the coming millennium fall into line before the Cyber Patrols and the Thought Police?

I suggest that as in former generations our new students will not ignore the threat to their unfolding intellectual freedom, but will confront and defeat it.

Considering this prediction for the coming years, I envision glorious new images as I prepare to “surf the web.” Net-revisionists will be riding high, wide, and handsome on a tsunami of freedom and truth—as the new McCarthyites of Holocaust orthodoxy drown beneath a great cyber-wave of information and ideas.