On the Use and Misuse of Pen Names

I have heard it numerous times, and so again just a couple weeks ago: Arthur R. Butz, the grand old scholar of Holocaust Revisionism, doesn’t trust people who use pen names. If a person cannot publicly stand by the views he or she espouses in his/her writings, s/he shouldn’t espouse them.

I started my career as a writer with my expert report, now titled the Chemistry of Auschwitz, by using my real name, publicly. You cannot be accepted as an expert to testify in court when you write your reports under a fake name. Honesty and openness are non-negotiable prerequisites in that field. But then, when it came to having my views published in books for the consumer market, I used the pen name Ernst Gauss (for the first German editions of Dissecting the Holocaust, Lectures on the Holocaust and Auschwitz: Plain Facts). The reason for that was simple: I could not publicly stand by my views, because had I tried, the German government would have prevented me with draconian force to take any public stand – by throwing me in prison. That’s exactly what happened eventually – after I had dropped the pen names and put my real names on new editions of these books: I was put for 18 months in prison for the second German edition of Lectures on the Holocaust, bearing my real name.

Arthur Butz is speaking from a place where he is safe from prosecution by his government due to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That’s not the real world for those of us living elsewhere but in the United States. Butz is also safe from losing his job, because he had been a tenured professor before he took a stand with his views. He furthermore is to a large degree safe from social ostracism, because he is an unwavering maverick due to his personality. As such, he has no dense network of friends, family and acquaintances, no memberships in groups and clubs, no involvement in any regular social, religious, political or professional activities. Hence, he has little to lose, if anything.

It’s different for most of us who are gregarious. We have family, friends, acquaintances; memberships in clubs and associations; involvements in social, religious, political and professional activities and events. If your opinions deviate too much from what these circles expect or tolerate, you can and will lose it all. I’ve been there. I have been thrown out of pretty much any and every organization I’ve ever been a member of; tenancy agreements got canceled; bank accounts closed; employment contracts terminated. You name it, I suffered it. (How all this is possible, is a story in itself.) The only way to prevent or at least limit or delay the impact of these devastating events is by either shutting up entirely – or using pen names.

I have been active in the field of creating and publishing controversial historical research and opinions since 1990. My 35 years of experience have taught me one thing: to recommend to any newcomer to the field to use a pen name, unless he or she is prepared to accept the blowback that this activity can and will bring in their life.

I recognize that Carlo Mattogno’s trail-blazing historical research into the Holocaust is impactful not the least because he has always put his real name to his writings. But Carlo has been lucky to have created most of his incontrovertible research in decades when Italy safeguarded his right to free speech. Others live in places where this was not given. Three engineers and good friends of mine come to mind who live(d) in Austria and Germany, where speaking your mind on controversial issues can get you a maximum prison term from five (Germany) up to twenty(!) years (Austria). Hence, all three chose to have their research published under pen names. In fact, they used a pool of pen names, changing and swapping them to confuse their country’s prosecutors: Michael Gärtner, Hans Lamker, Werner Rademacher and Hans Jürgen Nowak. One of these individuals died a while ago, which is why one of his contributions, included in Dissecting the Holocaust, is now bearing his real name: Willy Wallwey, “Microwave Delousing and Gastight Doors at Auschwitz.” Another of these three authors is an Austrian engineer, the former president of Austria’s Federal Chamber of Civil Engineers Walter Lüftl, who started having his papers published under his real name already in 2003. (His paper included in Dissecting – “The Case of Walter Lüftl” – is now also bearing his real name, while it bore the name “Werner Rademacher” for the first (2000) and second (2003) editions). The third engineer of this team is still vulnerable, so I will not name him yet. With all the fury and hatred with which the German and Austrian judiciaries persecute historical dissidents, these authors have remained safe and free – because they used pen names when they were vulnerable. And again, how and why this condition even exists in modern Europe, deserves much more study and analysis.

Another case in point is Ernst Zündel’s use of the pen name “Robert Lenski” when he published his account of his second free-speech trial in Canada in 1990 under the title The Holocaust on Trial (currently available as a second edition under his real name). When Ernst published this book, he was under a Canadian court’s order, as a condition to remain a free man after his conviction in 1988 and pending his appeal to Canada’s Supreme Court, not to speak publicly about the Holocaust. Hence, had it become known that he wrote that book, he would have been arrested instantly. Ernst chose to dodge that bullet, and who would blame him?

Some say that the use of pen names is like lying, and is therefore immoral. I disagree in cases where using pen names is the only way of preventing illegitimate and unjust persecution and prosecution, where truth is no defense and a defense in the matter itself is actually deemed a crime – which is the case particularly in Germany today. Where the government tyrannically suppresses peaceful speech – meaning speech that does not advocate, promote, justify or condone the violation of anyone’s civil rights and right to self-determination in the past, present or future – these speakers have the moral right to protect themselves against tyrants. Therefore, I have no trust issues with individuals who protect themselves with pen names under such circumstances.

There are cases where I agree with Dr. Butz, however. When Robert Faurisson ghost-wrote the famous (first) Leuchter Report and had Fred Leuchter put his signature under it, although little in it originated from Fred’s own thought processes, but then they both gave the impression during the Second Zündel Trial that Fred was the author, that was wrong. Presenting a text of a different person as the written testimony of someone else in a court of law is a major deception and may even have been a crime. Of course, strictly speaking, Dr. Faurisson did not use Fred Leuchter’s name as a pen name. Faurisson used the name of a perceived expert to give his own ideas and notions a reputational weight they otherwise wouldn’t have had. The psychological success of this court-room operation critically depended on this deception. Robert told me – in his own words: “I wrote the Leuchter Report!” – in a private phone call shortly after I had emigrated (or fled) to the United States in late 1999 or early 2000. The misperceived lack of recognition for his life’s work always bothered Robert, and so finally he couldn’t hold back anymore and confessed it all.

I must confess that I am not without fault either, but I learned my lesson early. Here is the brief history of my moral failure: In late summer/early fall of 1992, Germany’s leading weekly newspaper Die Zeit published two long essays by a German physician (No. 39, Sept. 18, 1992, p. 104, and No. 40, Sept. 25, 1992, p. 90) which aimed at refuting “Holocaust Denial” of the new kind, as had mushroomed ever since the release of the Leuchter Report. In reaction to this, I wrote a brochure that, first, reprinted the entire text published in Die Zeit, then refuted it point by point. (It is now part of the German edition of Vol. 18 of the Holocaust Handbücher, still titled “Die Zeit lügt!”/“Die Zeit lies!”). Having this brochure published fast in the quickly moving newspaper media sphere was pivotal, and so a friend of mine saw to it that it got printed and distributed within a few weeks. Needless to say, I didn’t want my real name on it. That would have gotten me in the hot seat at a time when I was still deluding myself that I could successfully finish my PhD studies. Hence, I decided to use a pen name. That was fine, but then, I had the idea of turning this into a parody, and that is where it became problematic. I need to elaborate a little here on the background.

In spring and summer of 1992, I was called by several defense lawyers as an expert witness in several trials imposed on historical dissidents in Germany (Udo Walendy, District Court Bielefeld, February 1992; Gerd Honsik, Upper District Court Munich, March 1992; David Irving, County Court Munich, May 1992; Mr. Detscher, County Court Munich, July 1992; Dr. Max Wahl, District Court Munich, July 1992). In these trials – as in all trials against revisionists – the judges rejected any and all evidence presented by the defense, including all expert witnesses. In one case, I had to learn that a chemist (I) was rejected because I was neither a toxicologist nor a historian, an engineer (Fred Leuchter) was rejected because he was neither a chemist nor a historian, and a historian (Prof. Dr. Georg Haverbeck) was rejected because he was neither a chemist nor an engineer. My conclusions were that one obviously had to be at the same time an engineer, a chemist, a toxicologist, a historian and perhaps even a lawyer to be accepted as an expert witness by a German court of law. The legal process being so perverted in Germany, I decided to mock it with a parody by inventing a person with all these features – a jack of all academic trades, so to say. Of course, having a person with so many different academic credentials and/or degrees is somewhat unrealistic, to put it mildly. Therefore, I split that person into four, giving each a different academic degree to cover all bases: Dipl.-Ing. Hans Karl Westphal, engineer; Dr. Werner Kretschmer, attorney, Dr. Christian Konrad, historian, Dr.Dr. Rainer Scholz, chemist and pharmacologist.

Although it was not my intention to give the – false – impression that I had all these academic degrees and thus competence, it sure could have the effect on the common reader. It was wrong. Hence, when using a pen name in situations of persecution and/or prosecution, it is important not to give the impression that this invented person has credentials which the actual author does not have. That’s where both I, with my banter, and Robert Faurisson with his court-room deception were wrong.

There is another moral trap lurking when resorting to the use of pen names: a lack of accountability. If we know that we will be held morally accountable for what we say or write, it is more likely that we show some restraint in what we espouse than when we convey it from behind a carapace of seemingly invulnerable anonymity. Societal pressure to abide by certain rules of behavior isn’t always a bad thing. The legitimacy test is whether you would be willing to stand by your words if publicly identified with them. For instance, the brochure I wrote in response to Die Zeit has nothing in it I wouldn’t identify with at any time. I didn’t write anything different or in any different way just because my name wasn’t on it. In fact, as mentioned earlier, it is now available under my real name, basically unchanged (only a little updated). However, if an author starts writing in a style and with contents that he would never want to be associated with, such as vituperations and even threats, or associations with ideologies or ideas that the author couldn’t and wouldn’t normally line up with or defend, then this is a problem.

Enter Thomas Dalton. Dalton currently describes himself as a retired professor from a major U.S. university, which is true. Thus, he has no job to lose anymore, and is not threatened with jail time thanks to the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. True, when Dalton’s first book appeared – Debating the Holocaust in 2008 – he was not retired, and could have lost his teaching position. And of course, he had all the usual social ties and constraints that put practical limits on one’s speech.

Over time, Dalton expanded his area of writing activities from Holocaust skepticism to skepticism toward Judaism, Zionism and Jews, and from there he expanded into republishing classic texts of National Socialism. This is a slippery slope. Is the Thomas Dalton of Debating the Holocaust the same person as Thomas Dalton of The Poisonous Mushroom or Pan-Judah? That’s for him to say, and no one else. My point is not to answer this question, but to show the many complex issues involved.

Recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center has zeroed in on the pen name Thomas Dalton, claiming to have discovered who is hiding behind it. As media production manager of Castle Hill Publishers and Armreg Ltd, I have worked closely with the real author of the books Castle Hill has published over the years (and Armreg has re-issued), voicing skeptical views on the mainstream Holocaust narrative, and also skeptical views on Jews, Judaism and their roles in society. I have made the usual contributions and suggestions, including for wording, facts, statistics and translations. I do not endorse all his views, but as media production manager, I defend his right to publish such things. And I, of course, as with him, do not endorse any actions that might violate anyone’s civil rights, or any speech that promotes, justifies or condones such actions. Our historical works are just that: history. If some find parallels to the present day, that’s up to them.

If the person behind the pen name Thomas Dalton is fine with associating with the views published in Dalton’s many books and articles, let him use his real name. I suspect he will, when he is ready – perhaps sooner than later.

I will not reveal the identity of any of our authors writing under a pen name. And I will not make things worse by contributing any lies. Lügen haben kurze Beine. – Lies have short legs (meaning they don’t get far). Now is a time for truth – full stop.