Notebook

The fact that we are living in Mexico is still sinking in on SR readers, and on us. One reader writes: “This move to Mexico is a serious mistake. A very serious mistake. You are too vulnerable down there. There are too many people who would like to get at you. They can wipe out everything you've done in a matter of minutes. And it puts your family in harm’s way too. If they can’t find the executioners of a Mexican cardinal, do you think you’ll matter one bit the day after you’re gone? For crying out loud, what are you thinking about?”

Another writes: “It's a good idea, going to Mexico. You should have done it a long time ago. It's a lot of trouble, I’m sure of that but you’ll be safer down there.”

These two points of view represent much of the mail I have gotten on the subject. In all likelihood, one is right.

Some time ago CODOHWeb was reviewed by Lycos, one of the Internet's top search engines (an “engine” in this case being the computer program that allows you to “search” all the Web sites and all the data bases all over the world that are on the Internet). I forgot about it(!) until it was brought to my attention again by a correspondent. CODOH-Web was included in the Lycos Top 5%! What’s that you ask? Lycos Top 5% is “… a selective directory of top-shelf sites rated by the Web’s most experienced reviewers.” This accolade is due almost entirely to the work accomplished by our Webmaster David Thomas and our Editor Richard Widmann. We accept the accolade, of course, but point out that the site is much superior now to what it was a few months ago when we got our “Top 5%” rating.

As usual this time of year, I’m busy setting up the Campus Project Nothing I’ve done in the last month has yet emerged above ground. Underground, of course, it's another matter.

The Summer 1997 issue of the Anti-Defamation League bulletin FrontLine features a story titled “Press and Prejudice on Campus.” There we find that the ADL Department of Campus Affairs sponsored a panel entitled “Anti-Semitism in the Campus Media: Whose Responsibility Is It?” It took place at City University of New York (CUNY) and was moderated by John Hockenberry, the former star of National Public Radio.

The prospectus for the conference asks “What’s Wrong?” What's wrong, among other things, is that “College newspaper editors publish anti-Semitic Letters to the Editor and advertisements” [emphasis mine]; and that “Holocaust denial is advocated by professors in publications and on the Internet.”

What is it necessary to do? Create special retreats for Jewish high school seniors that will “Teach those entering college how to fight anti-Zionism [and] Holocaust denial….” And it is very interesting to see that they have put the two together.

As we reported here in SR 46, CODOHWeb features a folder titled “The Tangled Web: Zionism, Stalinism, and the Holocaust Story.” One department in that folder is devoted to “The Consequences” of exploiting the Holocaust story to legitimate the Israeli depredations against the Palestinians. The ADL is going to have to hold a lot of retreats for high school students to convince them that what they see in “Consequences” can be legitimated by nothing more than double talk.

When I heard that a conference was going to take place September 24-26 at the University of Smith Carolina (Columbia), assembling nine of the living American prosecutors from the Nuremberg and subsequent war crimes trials, and that it was to be keynoted by Professor Daniel Goldhagen of Harvard, author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, I put together an opinion piece based on an excerpt from an elegantly written paper by IMT scholar Carlos Porter, titled simply “War Crimes Trials.” In an endnote I informed the reader that Porter's book Not Guilty at Nuremberg: The German Defense Case, has been censored by the German Government and ordered confiscated and that the reader can find the full text of the book on CODOHWeb.

I mailed the piece to student newspapers at 35 Southern and Eastern-seaboard colleges. Two days before the conference was to begin I faxed it directly to the editor of the USC Gamecock News. Instructions for obtaining a copy of the essay are on page eight.

As expected, we did not hear from Dr. Walter Reich, Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by return mail (see SR 46, p. 4). So I think I was well advised to go ahead with an opinion piece written by Samuel Crowell on the Museum's “gas chamber” door, the one “proof” of gas chambers exhibited at the Museum Titled “The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Problem of its ‘Gas Chamber’ Exhibit,” a key sentence from the middle of the essay reads:

The fact that common, mass produced air-raid shelter doors were used as “gas chamber” doors has certainly never been recognized by historians. How anyone could take a bomb shelter door and say without explanation that it is a “gas chamber” door can only bring into question the rectitude of the institution which sponsors it I would imagine that, as it stands, the Museum exhibit could well become a terrible embarrassment to its management, as it demonstrates the extent to which irrationalism and academic politics have been allowed to infect the study of recent history.

Crowell’s opinion piece is circulating to student newspapers at the top universities across the country. (See p. 7 on how to get the piece. Read what our college editors are reading!)

The CODOH ad that ran in university newspapers during the 1996/97 academic year remains the primary ad for the Project. Because of the provocative theory' Samuel Crowell is pursuing on the Museum’s fraudulent exhibit of a “gas chamber” door, I have put together a second ad addressing that issue (see this page).

This new ad has already been accepted by The Washington Square News at New York University, and by the Daily Aztec at San Diego State University, plus two others that have said probably. It looks like it will not be difficult to place the ads. Paying for them could be.

My observation in SR 46 regarding Hitler and tyranny has elicited a lot of mail. One reader writes that “it seems to not occur to you, Bradley, that intellectual freedom is not necessarily the highest value.”

As a matter of fact, it does occur to me. I have written in a number of places that I do not believe any ideal can be proven to be ideal. Ideals are preferences we have based on our genes, our culture, and the lives we have led. I think intellectual freedom would be preferable to tyranny—on the American campus, in Hitlerian Germany, with my family. Others have other preferences. I promote intellectual freedom as well as I am able by arguing for it and practicing it. Others promote tyranny as best they can, typically by encouraging the initiation of force against those with whom they disagree about one thing or another. While no society allows its citizens to express what they think with complete freedom, I prefer a society in which you feel you can take a run at it to one where you know up front you'd better forget about it.

Several readers have written to say that they very much enjoyed reading “Laughing: Not Laughing,” the story about my first formal bullfight as a carefree youth. One reader sent the manuscript back to me with his proofing corrections. Seeing all the typing errors, my whole head turned red (thanks, Dan). I could not have imagined sending out something so full of typos, and ridiculous typos, as I did with “Laughing.” A couple years ago at an IHR conference Greg Raven awarded me first prize for publishing the revisionist newsletter most in need of editorial assistance. I took Greg’s advice and got that for SR but last month when I had a computer problem and could not get the proofed version of “Laughing” to print out—I don’t know why—I typed it up again from scratch at the last minute and did not send the new typescript through the editing process before I gave it to Patricia to send out. And there you have the whole story. Apologies to one and all.

A last minute e-mail message informs me that our opinion piece based on Porter’s “War Crimes Trials” article has run in the Lantern at Ohio State University. We'll have details next month.