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Smith to “sissy” Hayes: Let’s share a beer

By Bradley R. Smith ∙ April 17, 1991

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In his “Plain Talk” perspective Thursday about the Holocaust and Revisionism, Professor Peter Hayes charges me with manipulation, deception, distortion, ignorance, intimidation, nastiness, dishonesty, duplicity, maliciousness, tastelessness, the browbeating of academics like himself, conspiracy mongering, promoting implausibilities and spreading disinformation.

Hayes evaded the challenge of addressing content, however, so I suppose you could say he failed the test. For my part, even when I collapse into a frenzy of ad hominem invective, I try to retain some interest in content. But then I'm not an academic, so what do I know?

Hayes expresses a fear that the real intention of people like myself is to “wear down” people like him. I don't want to wear down Hayes. I want to talk things over with him. The free exchange of ideas is invigorating, not burdensome. I should think only sissies would find it otherwise.

I'll be going to Evanston soon and when I get there, I'll look up the good Professor Hayes. I suspect that what he really needs is to kick back, lift a few beers and get into a real-life relationship with a man about whom he has been told the worst and suspects the worst but knows not at all.

If I miss Hayes, maybe I'll chat up some of his students.

—BRADLEY R. SMITH
Director, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust

The Daily Northwestern, Wednesday, April 17, 1991.

  • Bradley R. Smith

    Bradley R. Smith was born in Los Angeles on February 18, 1930. At 18 he joined the army and in 1951 served with the infantry in Korea where he was twice wounded. After three decades of a variety of professional activities, it suddenly hit him: In 1979 he read a leaflet by Professor Robert Faurisson, "The Problem of the Gas Chambers." Then, Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the Twentieth Century did it for him. He understood from the beginning that he would address the censorship, the suppression of independent thought, the taboo against publishing and debating revisionist arguments—not the arguments themselves. That has remained his position. In 1989, Smith founded Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) dedicated to defending free speech and free inquiry into the Holocaust question. He handed over CODOH's helm in late 2014. He passed away on his 86th birthday, February 18, 2016. Read a series of obituaries here.

Bibliographic information about this document: The Daily Northwestern, April 17, 1991
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