The World Wide Web: What Is It and Why Is It Important to Revisionism?

(Richard Widmann is Co-Webmaster of the Bradley Smith / CODOH Website.)

As readers of this newsletter are well aware, Bradley Smith has a presence on the World Wide Web (WWW). But what exactly is the WWW? It is currently estimated that 40 million people internationally have access to the Internet. The Internet is a loose connection of hundreds of thousands of computers across the globe that allows people to send electronic mail to each other, participate in “live” chat sessions and post messages to electronic bulletin boards or “newsgroups.”

In recent years, the most popular and fastest growing section of the Internet has been the World Wide Web. This area of the Net allows users to post their texts with various fonts, point-sizes and color, not unlike the capability of various print mediums. It also allows for the addition of various graphic images and even sound bytes. These features and others allow an individual or organization to create an electronic “magazine” or “publishing site.”

The theory and reality of the Web actually goes beyond this, however. For thousands of years, various text mediums have presented the reader with a linear mode of information. That is to say, the reader will progress from the first page in the book to the last.

The Web is developed in a three-dimensional format. The reader can move traditionally from the first page to the last but also has the ability to move “into” the document, entering in essence a third plane. Each reader can choose different paths through the information, concentrating on his areas of interest.

For example, if you were interested in the Bradley Smith / CODOH site, you would reach it either by knowing its specific electronic “address” or by searching for the site using one of the Web’s many search indexes. If you were interested in the persecution of revisionists by various governments, you could find a history of the subject by selecting the ThoughtCrimes Archive on the CODOH site. There you would find a “table-of-contents” listing various incidents. If you were to select the 1985 article, “Zuendel Attacked on way to Trial,” you would discover a news article on the events surrounding Zuendel's troubles.

The Zuendel article contains a “hot key,” a short code that is carefully entered into the document to link one document to another, thereby creating the three-dimensional effect. If you select this “hot key” (this word or symbol is actually highlighted on your monitor) you will find biographical information on Zuendel, his photograph, and even a bibliography of pertinent works. Within this document there are additional hot keys, each able to open a subfile further illuminating the original document. Each of these subfiles may also be “linked” to additional documents, ultimately creating a gigantic web-like structure of information, hence the name World Wide Web.

The portrait of Zuendel has hot keys which take you automatically to his now famous website, the “Zuendelsite,” and all the information independently posted there by Ernst and his team. Other links include portraits of other leading revisionists, among them David Irving, Robert Faurisson and Fred Leuchter, as well as two pamphlets published by the Institute of Historical Review (IHR), A Few Facts about the IHR and Inside the Auschwitz 'Gas Chambers.' The IHR pamphlets are accessed through yet another link to the Greg Raven / IHR site. Accessing these allows the reader to explore all the materials Raven has independently posted. As the reader proceeds he will find more and more hard-hitting revisionist information. For example, clicking on the portrait of Robert Faurisson will take you another layer deeper into the Web, where you will find a short biography of Paul Rassinier.

Why is all of this so important to Revisionism? Millions of people world-wide now have access to material they were otherwise unaware of. They can”download” this information into their computers to read or study at their leisure. Similarly, they can print out any of the materials for their own use or for distribution to others. For the newcomer who is otherwise unaware of revisionism, the linkup to other documents can instantly provide him or her with pictures, biographies, bibliographies, and addresses for ordering books or other materials.

Otherwise complex materials can be rendered much simpler by providing instant linkage to other related materials. Imagine a newcomer who, while reading an article on some aspect of the Holocaust story, comes upon the name “Kurt Gerstein.” A link from this name could present him with, for example, the works of Henri Roques or others who have addressed the Gerstein documents from a revisionist perspective. Or imagine the newcomer who sees a reference to Treblinka. A link could pull up all pertinent facts on the Internet regarding the camp. This medium allows for the construction of a personal interactive revisionist encyclopedia available at no cost in the privacy of your own home.

Are we all the way there yet? No, not by a long shot. There’s plenty of work to be done. But, with the energy and assistance of revisionists around the globe, we are building a reference source that one day will exist in millions of homes. This source of revisionist information and contacts is available, through the Internet, in even those countries which currently censor printed revisionist materials. The World Wide Web is a revisionist outreach tool that goes beyond anything we have seen before — beyond what, a few short years ago, very few of us could even have imagined.

Note: following are the addresses, or URL’s (Universal Resource Locators), for the Websites mentioned above:

• http://www.valleynet.com/~brsmith/
• http://www.webcom.com/~ezundel/english
• http://www.kaiwan.com/~ihrgreg

There have been more than 8,000 visits to the CODOH Website on the Internet

The Net has been touted as a vast repository of knowledge and a remarkable research tool. While it is both, it is also proving to be a magnet for students and galvanizing instrument for helping create meaningful activist work on college campuses—distributing leaflets which can be devastatingly effective among students who have had no previous contract with the results of revisionist research; exhibiting revisionist videos and books and getting them shelved in their campus libraries; asking informed revisionist questions in Holocaust classes and lectures; and working for open debate and intellectual freedom for everyone.