Thugs Attack Revisionist Speaker at UCLA Meeting

Thugs violently broke up a panel discussion at the University of California at Los Angeles, January 22, which had been called to debate the refusal of the student paper to publish Bradley Smith's advertisement on the Holocaust issue.

A young Revisionist activist, David Cole, was assaulted in the melee, in which campus security personnel refused to intervene. The attack was also recorded by television news personnel, who likewise did nothing.

The panel discussion was sponsored by the “National Traditionalist Caucus,” a conservative campus group. Bob Morrissey, head of the group, explained that although he does not support Holocaust Revisionism, he affirms the right of Revisionists to present their views.

Speakers were to debate the decision by the UCLA student paper Daily Bruin not to publish Smith's full-page call for open debate on the Holocaust issue. The paper turned down an invitation to send a representative to defend the paper's decision before the panel.

About 50 or 60 persons were present when the meeting began, although this number increased to about 100 as the afternoon progressed. About 20 of those present were Jewish Defense League (JDL) members and sympathizers.

Before the meeting began, JDL leader Irv Rubin tried to push Cole down a flight of stairs. JDL hoodlums also harassed and pushed Morrissey.

Once the meeting began, the thugs tried to shout down the speakers, and when that didn't work, they threw food at Cole. Finally, a JDL thug assaulted Cole, hitting him in the face and bloodying his nose.

The tumult was recorded on video by a news team from the CBS television news program “48 Hours,” as well as by news crews of two local Los Angeles television stations. However, neither of the two local stations mentioned a word of the incident in their nightly news broadcasts.

The Los Angeles JDL chapter later boasted of its disruption of the meeting in a recorded telephone message. A JDL spokesman mendaciously denounced Smith's Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust as a “neo-nazi” group, and compared David Cole- who is Jewish- to collaborating Jews in wartime German concentration camps. Revisionists “should all die from cancer,” the JDL spokesman ranted.

Adapted from IHR Newsletter Feb. 1992 No.85, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659.