The Institute in the News

In addition to the attention generated because of the impact of its materials on the Internet, the Institute for Historical Review has been attracting other recent media attention. A few highlights:

• A brief but error-packed item about the Institute appeared prominently in The Washington Post, May 11, under the headline “The Neo-Nazi Network.” With blatant disregard for elementary facts, the IHR was cited, along with three other individuals or groups, as a “primary source” of “Nazi propaganda material” sent to Germany.
  The six-line item contained not only factual errors, but misrepresented the IHR as the “Institute for Historic [sic] Review.” Predictably, the Post declined to publish a letter from the IHR correcting the errors.
• Journal editor Mark Weber appeared February 19 as a guest on the “America First Radio,” an hour-long shortwave radio talk show hosted by Harry Bertran and sponsored by The Populist Observer (P.O. Box 15499, Pittsburgh, PA 15237).
• The Institute was mentioned several times in a news report broadcast May 28 on National Public Radio's “Weekend Edition/Sunday” program. Speaking from Rome, the NPR reporter described the IHR as “the most active source of Holocaust denial material in the world,” and misleadingly lumped it together with “American white supremacists” and “neo-Nazi groups.” With a tone of alarm, the Institute's international conferences and worldwide Internet outreach were also cited.
• Journal editor Mark Weber was smeared in a made-for-television movie, “The Infiltrator,” broadcast over the HBO television network on June 24. This crude, lie-packed “dramatization” about neo-Nazis in Germany, attempts to portray the Simon Wiesenthal Center as a courageous, principled fighter of “hate.” Jewish comedian Alan King, in the role of Wiesenthal Center “Dean” Rabbi Marvin Hier, calls Weber a “big-time fascist.”
• An essay by former Journal editor Theodore O'Keefe, “The US Holocaust Memorial Museum: A Costly and Dangerous Mistake,” was reprinted in full in the March-April 1995 issue of Social Justice Review, a thoughtful traditionalist Roman Catholic journal published bimonthly by the Catholic Central Union, 3835 Westminster Place, St. Louis, Mo. 63108. O'Keefe's essay also appeared in the March-April 1995 Journal.
• Steven Frogue, a high school history teacher in southern California, has come under fire for saying that the IHR's view of the Holocaust story deserves serious consideration. In an interview with the Irvine Valley College student newspaper, Frogue expressed the view that the Institute has “raised questions” about the Holocaust story that should “enter the debate.”
  Frogue teaches history at Foothill High School in Tustin and is a member of the Saddleback Community College district board. A report on the matter in the Orange County Register, April 4, appeared under the headline “Teacher's View of Holocaust Stirs Furor.”
• A front-page article in the Wall Street Journal, April 28, about “extremist” groups “in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing” cites the Institute for Historical Review by name as a dangerous “far-right group.”
  In fact, far from being a fomenter of “hate” or illegal activity, as the nationally-distributed daily suggest, the IHR has been a repeated target of terrorists. (For details, see The Zionist Terror Network, a 20-page illustrated booklet, available from the IHR for $5.50, postpaid. [Check www.ihr.org for current availability and price; ed.])
• Sometimes they get it right. After persistent urging, local newspapers have been describing the IHR and its work more accurately, dropping the silly “Holocaust denial” and “Holocaust denier” labels. For example, the Los Angeles Times (Orange County edition), June 25, describes the IHR as “a think tank known best for its claims that accounts of the Holocaust are exaggerated.”