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Return to the Dark
Ages: Censorship is on the rise
Is it coming to America?
Jared Taylor
Americans think of
Europeans as essentially like themselves. They believe European societies are
like their own-rooted in the rule of law, freedom of religion, democratic
government, market competition, and an unfettered press. In recent years,
however, Europeans have given up an essential liberty: freedom of speech. It is
true that in the United States prevailing orthodoxies on some questions are
ruthlessly enforced but it is still legal to say just about anything. Not so in
much of Europe. In the last decade or so countries we think of as fellow
democracies-France, Germany, Switzerland and others-have passed laws that limit
free speech for the same crude ideological reasons that drove the brief,
unsuccessful vogue of campus speech codes in the United States.
Today in Europe there are laws as bad as anything George Orwell could have
imagined. In some countries courts have ruled that the facts are irrelevant, and
that certain things must not be said whether they are true or false. In others,
a defendant in court who tries to explain or defend a forbidden view will be
charged on the spot with a fresh offense. Even his lawyer can be fined or go to
jail for trying to mount a defense. In one case a judge ordered that a
bookseller's entire stock-innocent as well as offending titles-be burned!
Just as Eastern Europe is emerging from it, Western Europe has entered the
thought-crime era, in a return to the mentality that launched the Inquisition
and the wars of religion. It is a tyranny of the left practiced by the very
people who profess shock at the tactics of Joseph McCarthy, an exercise of raw
power in the service of pure ideology. The desire not merely to debate one's
opponents but to disgrace them, muzzle them, fine them, jail them is utterly
contrary to the spirit of civilized discourse. It is profoundly disturbing to
find this ugly sentiment codified into law in some of the countries we think of
as pillars of Western Civilization. At the same time, these laws cannot help but
draw attention to the very ideas they forbid. Truth does not generally require
the help of censors.
There are two subjects about which Europeans can no longer speak freely. One is
race and the other is Nazi Germany. "Anti-racism" laws generally take the form
of forbidding the expression of opinions that might stir up "hatred" against any
racial or ethnic group. In some countries, it is now risky to say that genetic
differences explain why blacks have, on average, lower IQs than whites or to say
that non-white immigration should be prevented so as to preserve a white
majority. There are probably parts of every issue of American Renaissance
that could be banned in some European country, and we have an obvious interest
in opposing censorship of this kind.
Far more prosecutions have taken place, however, in connection with what is
called "Holocaust revisionism" or "Holocaust denial." This appears to cover any
skepticism about the generally-accepted view that the Nazis had a plan to
exterminate Jews and managed to kill some six million, mostly by gassing. There
is considerable variety in the laws that forbid disagreement on this matter (see
sidebar, page 6), but the Jewish Holocaust has become the one historical event
on which people in France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Holland, Poland,
Austria, Lithuania (and Israel) can be legally compelled to agree. It is still
legal to dissent from Holocaust orthodoxy in Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Norway,
Britain, Ireland, and Croatia, but there is powerful pressure in some of these
countries to join the censors. Third Reich Jewish polices are of no special
interest to AR, but it is outrageous that any point of view on any
question be forbidden.
In the United States there is widespread complacency over this blatant thought
control practiced by our closest allies. This complacency proves the utter lack
of integrity of those who make principled free-speech claims for Communists,
pornographers, rap "artists," and flag-burners, but who will not lift a finger
to stop the persecution of "racists" and "Nazis." Liberals get dewy-eyed over
the First Amendment only when it suits them, and are quietly delighted to see
their opponents dragged off to jail because of their opinions. Indeed, several
thousand Europeans are arrested every year who, if they were leftists, would be
lionized as "prisoners of conscience." Indifference, even joy, over their fate
is the contemptible sentiment that prevails across the political spectrum even
in America.
France has had perhaps the most colorful history of modern European censorship,
perhaps because it has the longest history of Holocaust revisionism. The leftist
Paul Rassinier cast doubt on accepted views as early as the 1950s, but it was in
1978 that revisionism came to the attention of a larger European public. In that
and the following year Prof. Robert Faurisson of the University of Lyon
published two articles in the newspaper Le Monde asserting that there were no
execution gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camps. Mr. Faurisson, an expert
at textual analysis who made his case from original documents, provoked a storm
of opposition.
Nine anti-racist and concentration-camp survivor organizations brought civil and
criminal suits against Prof. Faurisson for "falsification of history in the
matter of the gas chambers," a curious charge brought under the French
anti-racial-discrimination law of 1972. In April 1983, the Paris Court of
Appeals found Prof. Faurisson innocent of "falsification of history" but found
him guilty of the equally curious crime of "reducing his research to malevolent
slogans," and made him pay a small fine. At the same time, the court upheld the
right to express any opinion on the existence of Nazi gas chambers (presumably
so long as it was not expressed "malevolently"), concluding that "the value of
the conclusions defended by Faurisson rests therefore solely with the appraisal
of experts, historians, and the public."
This was a setback to the suppressers of free speech, who responded with what is
known as the Gayssot law-named for the Communist deputy who promoted it-signed
into law in 1990 by President François Mitterand. This law made it a crime
punishable by up to 250,000 French francs (at that time approximately $50,000)
or one year in prison or both to dispute the truth of any of the "crimes against
humanity" for which Nazi leaders were charged at the Nuremberg trials. Prof.
Faurisson, who had continued to publish views on the Holocaust, was the first to
be convicted under this law, and was fined 100,000 francs in April, 1991, a
penalty reduced on appeal to 30,000 francs. He has not given up his work and has
been repeatedly found guilty of the same crime. At last count, he has also been
physically assaulted ten times and on at least one occasion was nearly killed.
Although the Gayssot law was controversial when it was passed, the French are
now happy with it. According to a 1998 Sofres poll, 79 percent think it
necessary "because one does not have the right to say anything one likes about
the extermination of the Jews."
The extent of this sentiment explains why there were other convictions for
Holocaust-related comments before passage of the 1990 Gayssot law. In 1987 the
leader of the French National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen was fined under
anti-racism laws, not for denying the existence of Nazi gas chambers but merely
for describing them as a "detail" or "minor point" in the history of the Second
World War. Astonishingly enough, not only must a Frenchman affirm a certain
historical fact, he must attribute to it a certain prescribed importance.
Another French celebrity-turned-thought criminal is Brigitte Bardot, the former
actress. In retirement she has become an ardent animal-rights activist and has
often denounced the ritual slaughter of sheep by French Muslims during the
festival that marks the end of the Ramadan fast. She has also spoken in more
general terms, lamenting that "my country, France, my homeland, my land is again
invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims." Like Prof.
Faurisson, she is impenitent and has been fined at least three times-in 1997,
1998 and 2000-under the 1972 anti-racism law. A judge concluded that Miss Bardot
was guilty of inciting "discrimination, hatred or racial violence," and that her
condemnation of Muslim practices went beyond any possible concern for animal
rights.
There has been a host of other less-well-known Frenchmen convicted under the
censorship laws. In May, 1999, the editor of a small-circulation magazine
Akribeia was fined 10,000 francs ($2,000) and given a suspended six-month
sentence for writing favorably about Paul Rassinier, the founder of French
revisionism. At his arrest, police strip-searched Jean Plantin and confiscated
his two computers and a dozen computer disks, destroying the results of several
years' research. In September 2000, a 53-year-old French high school teacher in
Lemberg in the Moselle region was fined 40,000 Francs ($8,000) and given a
one-year suspended sentence for telling his students that the Third Reich gas
chambers were used for delousing clothes and that the concentration camps were
not extermination centers.
Censorship cases now get little attention in France unless there are unusual
circumstances or the defendant is a celebrity. In July 2000, a local National
Front politician in the Rhône-Alpes region, Georges Theil, was charged with
"disputing the existence of crimes against humanity." In what he thought was a
private e-mail exchange and using a screen name, he had written, "Homicidal gas
chambers never existed for the simple reason that they were simply and
profoundly impossible." Mr. Theil had not counted on the diligence of the French
police, who tracked him down through his Internet service provider, Wanadoo, and
hauled him into court where prosecutors asked for a six-month suspended
sentence. Cases of this kind, which show how deeply the French police are
willing to burrow into what people think are their private lives, have been
completely ignored in the United States.
Two recent censorship trials that did receive international attention were "the
Garaudy affair" and the successful attempt to shut down certain activities by
the American Internet portal Yahoo. The Garaudy scandal is particularly
instructive because it shows how willingly the left will sacrifice its own to
the gods of Third Reich orthodoxy. Roger Garaudy was born in 1913, served in the
French army, joined the war-time Resistance, and sat in the French National
Assembly as a Communist, first as a deputy and later as a senator. For 25 years
he was a major theoretician for the Communist Party, but broke with the comrades
over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He continued to teach
philosophy and promote anti-racism and socialism. He converted to Islam, and
enjoyed great prestige as one of France's most influential public intellectuals.
Over the years he took an increasing interest in the Palestinian cause, and came
to believe Jews were exaggerating the horrors of the Holocaust in order to
squelch criticism of Israel. This and other views expressed in his 1995 book The
Founding Myths of Modern Israel (published in English in 2000 by the
California-based Institute for Historical Review) unleashed not only a flood of
criticism but likewise brought the octogenarian into court for violation of the
Gayssot law. Prof. Garaudy's impeccable credentials as a leftist and anti-racist
were no defense. In February, 1998, he was duly fined the equivalent of $40,000
after a trial that caused a sensation in France and throughout the Islamic
world. Probably no event has prompted more interest in Holocaust revisionism
among Arabs than the trial of this French Muslim who defended Palestinians.
Religious and political leaders from Egypt to Iran denounced France for putting
him on trial, and the wife of the president of the United Arab Emirates
contributed $50,000 to his defense. Egyptian Nobel laureate in literature Naguib
Mahfouz wondered about the health of Western societies in which it is
commonplace to deny God but a crime to doubt the Holocaust.
The affair took on yet another tragi-comic dimension when Abbé Pierre, one of
the most popular and admired men in France, made a few offhand remarks in
support of Prof. Garaudy. Abbé Pierre is a Capuchin friar whose real name is
Henri Groulčs. He came to be known as "the abbé" during his work with the French
Resistance smuggling Jews out of occupied France. He has devoted his life to
good works for the poor and for immigrants, and has a reputation something like
that of Mother Theresa. He had become acquainted with Prof. Garaudy and shared
his concern about Israel's treatment of Palestinians. After a few comments in
favor of his old friend, he was horrified to discover that despite much
backtracking and many apologies his reputation had vanished. He acknowledged he
had not read the book, called on Prof. Garaudy to correct any errors, and
disavowed any association with Holocaust denial. Even so, leftists whom he
thought were life-long friends turned on him, kicking him out of the
International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, a French anti-racist
organization of which he had long been a member. Perhaps the cruelest blow was
his expulsion from Emma-us, the charitable organization he himself had founded.
Although not charged with violation of the Gayssot law, Abbé Pierre fled to
Italy and hid in a monastery until the controversy blew over.
The French case against the American Internet giant Yahoo, which is a gateway to
search engines, auctions, shopping and much else caused only a brief murmur of
disapproval in the United States, but is an ominous first step in bringing the
Internet under the control of European censorship laws. The same International
League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism of which the abbé used to be
member-known by its French acronym LICRA-joined the French Union of Jewish
Students in suing Yahoo to stop Internet auctions of Nazi medals, arm bands,
photos, autographs and the like. France's anti-racism laws forbid commerce in
anything "racially tinged," and the California-based Yahoo promptly removed
these auctions from its French web site.
This was not enough for LICRA and the Jewish students, who insisted that Yahoo
find a way to block French Internet users from reaching Yahoo sites in the U.S.,
where auctions continued. Yahoo said it was technologically impossible, and the
court appointed a panel of three computer experts-American, British, and
French-to render a ruling. Two of the experts said it could not be done, but
Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez chose to believe the Frenchman, who said it could. In
May 2000, he gave Yahoo two months to make it impossible for French Internet
users to reach the Nazi auctions. He said he would fine the American company
----100,000 Francs (now $13,000) a day if it did not, since the sale of Nazi
souvenirs offended "the collective memory of the nation." Judge Gomez also
ordered Yahoo to pay 10,000 Francs to the plaintiffs LICRA and the Union of
Jewish Students. A LICRA spokesman hailed the ruling as a great victory for
democracy, of all things.
The next month Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo, said his company would ignore
Judge Gomez' order. "Asking us to filter access to our sites according to the
nationality of web surfers is very naďve," he said, adding, "we are not going to
change the content of our sites in the United States because someone in France
is asking us to do so." Six months later, in January 2001, Mr. Yang ate crow
when Yahoo decided "voluntarily" to stop auctioning anything that bears a
swastika or any other "hate" symbol such as a KKK insignia. "Yahoo recognizes
that we were right," exulted LICRA, and Ygal El Harrar, chairman of the Jewish
students, welcomed "the return to its senses by the American company."
Incredibly, Yahoo claims daily fines had nothing to do with its decision. Noting
that it already bans auctions of live animals, used underwear, and tobacco, it
is pretending it is was only adjusting its list of forbidden products.
No one is fooled. Lee Dembart wrote in the International Herald Tribune on Jan.
15, 2001, that the precedent has now been set for any country to try to control
the Internet all over the world. China could threaten to fine sites that promote
the Falun Gong Buddhist cult, which is illegal in China. Arab countries could
fine Internet sites that sell Jewish memorabilia, since such things no doubt
offend their "collective memory." But by and large the American media have had
nothing to say about what amounts to the imposition of French law on Americans.
Needless to say, there would be a frenzy of denunciation if it were not "Nazis"
who were being shoved off the net but, say, abortion-rights activists.
Switzerland
In the minds of Americans Switzerland is
an orderly, sensible country of decent, independent-minded people. It is also
perhaps the only country that has ever brought censorship upon itself through
referendum. Over the weekend of Sept. 24 and 25, 1994, the Swiss voted by a
majority of 54.7 to 45.3 percent to make it a crime, punishable by fine and/or
up to three years imprisonment, to "publicly incite hatred or discrimination" or
"deny, grossly minimize, or seek to justify genocide or other crimes against
humanity." Half of all Swiss cantons voted against the new law but thanks to the
overall majority, it went into effect Jan. 1, 1995.
Swiss authorities had not actually needed this law to censor foreigners. In
November 1986, the Geneva police stopped two French Holocaust
revisionists-Pierre Guillaume and Henri Roques-from giving a press conference
and banned them from speaking publicly in Switzerland for three years.
The first Swiss citizen to fall afoul of the new law was Arthur Vogt, an
80-year-old retired school teacher. On June 3, 1997, a court in Meilen fined him
20,000 Swiss Francs ($15,000) for mailing copies of a revisionist book to seven
acquaintances and for publishing a private newsletter in which he had written
revisionist essays.
In December 1997, a court in Vevey sentenced Aldo Ferraglia, an Italian citizen,
to four months in jail and court costs of 15,075 francs. He was also made to pay
28,000 francs in "atonement" to three Jewish organizations for having
distributed a number of Holocaust revisionist books, including Roger Garaudy's
The Founding Myths of Modern Israel. At the Ferraglia trial the judge defended
the new law by explaining it did not forbid opinion, only the public expression
of certain opinions-a distinction that may be a little too fine for Americans.
By June of last year, there had been no fewer than 200 trials and 100 sentences
based on the 1995 law. As in France, such trials no longer attract much
attention. Probably few Swiss heard about it when animal rights activist Erwin
Kessler went to jail for two months for writing that Jews who practice ritual
slaughter of cattle are no better than concentration-camp guards.
The press took only slightly more notice of Gaston-Armand Amaudruz whom a
Lausanne court sentenced to a year in prison for articles he wrote in his
monthly newsletter Courrier du Continent, which he started in 1946 and had only
about 500 subscribers, mostly in France. Mr. Amaudruz holds a doctorate in
social and political sciences and has been a teacher of French and German. These
are the words for which the 79-year-old paid with a year in prison: "For my
part, I maintain my position: I don't believe in the gas chambers. Let the
exterminationists provide the proof and I will believe it. But as I've been
waiting for this proof for decades, I don't believe I will see it soon." At
sentencing, the judge criticized Mr. Amaudruz' lack of remorse and noted that he
had continued to violate the law, writing "Long live revisionism" in the issue
of the newsletter that appeared just before the trial.
Perhaps the most prominent Swiss to be found guilty under the censorship law is
49-year-old school teacher Jürgen Graf. In March, 1993, after the publication of
his 112-page book, The Holocaust on the Test Stand, in which he cited reasons to
doubt the accounts of extermination, he was fired from his job as a teacher of
Latin and French at a private secondary school. The French banned the book in
1994. Before long Mr. Graf found himself in court, and in July, 1998, he was
sentenced to 15 months in jail for various revisionist writings. Sentenced along
with Mr. Graf was his 70-year-old publisher, Gerhard Förster, who got 12 months.
The court fined both men 8,000 Swiss francs ($5,500) and ordered them to turn
over 55,000 francs ($38,000) in proceeds from book sales. Presiding Judge Andrea
Staubli said the defendants' "remarkable criminal energy" and lack of remorse
justified harsh punishment.
Their defense counsel protested that he could not even try to explain the
reasons for Mr. Graf's statements without, himself, being prosecuted under the
same law. He also argued in vain that censorship law violated the free-speech
provisions of the European Human Rights Convention which Switzerland has signed.
Wolfgang Frölich, an engineer called to vouch for the authenticity of Mr. Graf's
findings, found himself threatened with prosecution if he testified. Just as
absurdly, the court included The Holocaust on the Test Stand in its reasons for
finding Mr. Graf guilty even though he wrote it before the 1995 censorship law.
Mr. Graf decided to flee the country rather than spend 15 months in prison. In
November 2000, he ended up in Iran, where he planned to stay for some time. He
has been welcomed by scholars in Tehran, and was invited to give lectures at
Iranian universities. Mr. Graf does not intend to return to Switzerland until
the country restores the right of free speech. As we will see, he is not the
only European to go into exile rather than face jail as a prisoner of
conscience.
Germany
Since the end of the Second World War,
beginning with de-Nazification, Germany has had censorship laws unthinkable in
the United States. Nazi songs, salutes, and symbols are illegal even in private,
and the country has been as aggressive as any in trying to expand the effects of
its own repressive laws beyond its own borders. By now, thousands of people have
fallen afoul of anti-Nazi, and "incitement to racial hatred" laws, which violate
the German constitution's own guarantees of freedom of expression. Any number of
quite remarkable cases of state-sponsored thought control have gone almost
completely unreported in the United States.
Fredrick Toben was born in Germany in 1944 but emigrated with his parents to
Australia when he was ten, and is an Australian citizen. He studied at Melbourne
University and at universities in Heidelberg, Tübingen, and Stuttgart, and has a
doctorate in philosophy. In 1994 he established the Adelaide Institute, in the
Australian town of that name, to promote Holocaust revisionism. He sent some
material to Germany, and was arrested in Mannheim in April 1999 during a visit.
He was held without bail until his trial seven months later and was charged with
"incitement to racial hatred," "insulting the memory of the dead," and "public
denial of genocide." The court sentenced Dr. Toben to ten months in prison but
let him off with a fine of 6,000 marks ($3,500) on the strength of time already
spent in prison. As in Switzerland, it is impossible to mount a defense against
these charges. Defendants and even lawyers who try to explain or justify their
statements have been immediately charged with additional offenses right in the
courtroom.
The prosecution tried to charge Mr. Toben on additional counts because of
articles on his Australia-based Adelaide Institute web page (www.adelaide
institute.org), but the court ruled that his only violation of German law was to
have sent printed matter directly into Germany. Foreign Internet sites were not
covered by the law even if Germans could read them. As Deputy Interior Minister
Brigitte Zypries explained in July 2000, "That's life and that's the Internet .
. . . You can't build a wall around Germany." Since the government could not use
the most serious evidence against him, Dr. Toben got off lightly; the shortest
previous sentence for his crimes had been two years, and the prosecution was
asking for two years and four months.
However, in December 2000, in a very significant ruling that went virtually
unnoticed in the United States, Germany's highest court, the Bundesgerichtshof,
reversed the lower court. It said German law applies to any ideas or images
Germans can reach from within Germany, so someone who posts a swastika on a web
page anywhere in the world is a criminal under German law. Dr. Toben, whose case
provided the high court with the basis of this ruling, could presumably be the
subject of an extradition request. As we will see below, Dr. Toben faces
problems enough back home in Australia.
One of the few Americans to notice and comment on this extension of German (and
French) law to the Internet was Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center in Los Angeles. "We commend the German authorities for sticking to their
commitment," he said; "it's their democracy, these are their laws." He went on
to praise the French, too: "We have to commend the Germans and the French for
basically saying 'In our societies, this is how we deal with the problems of
hate, racism and Holocaust denial. You in America have your own laws, but at
least respect our values.' " Perhaps Rabbi Cooper would be pleased to see
European-style censorship in the United States.
The case of Germar Rudolf is likewise remarkable. Born in 1964, Mr. Rudolf
graduated summa cum laude in chemistry from the University of Bonn and is a
certified chemist. After serving in the German air force, he entered a Ph.D.
program at the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics. While
still at the institute he carried out a forensic physical examination of the gas
chambers of Birkenau and concluded that for a variety of technical reasons they
could not have been used for executions. In 1993 he published his findings in
what is called The Rudolf Report, and was promptly dismissed from the Max Planck
Institute. A court in Stuttgart ruled that the report "denies the systematic
mass murder of the Jewish population in gas chambers" and was therefore "popular
incitement," "incitement to racial hatred," and "defamation." The court rejected
Mr. Rudolf's request for technical evidence about the truth or falsehood of his
report, ruling that the "mass murder of the Jews" is "obvious."
Mr. Rudolf has continued to commit thought crimes, editing a compendium of
revisionist articles called Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte [Foundations of
Contemporary History]. In 1996 a court fined his publisher 30,000 marks
($18,000) and ordered all copies seized and burned. Police raided Mr. Rudolf's
apartment three times, and in 1996 he was finally sentenced to 14 months in
prison. Rather than serve time he fled to England, which has anti-racist laws
but where Holocaust denial is not (yet) a crime. He is now director of Castle
Hill Publishers, which issues revisionist works, and publishes a German-language
revisionist quarterly. Jewish groups have brought pressure on the British
government to enact laws to outlaw Holocaust denial so that Mr. Rudolf can
either be prosecuted in England or extradited to Germany. Like Jürgen Graf of
Switzerland, unless free speech is restored in his homeland, he will go to jail
if he ever returns. Recently he moved to the United States and has applied for
amnesty as a political refugee. It will be interesting to see how the INS, which
has stretched "political persecution" to include wife-beating and making fun of
homosexuals, will avoid granting him asylum.
One German defendant who did not flee the country was the elderly historian Udo
Walendy, publisher of the "Historical Facts" series of booklets. In May, 1996,
the district court of Bielefeld sent him to prison for 15 months, and a year
later a court in Herford added 14 more months to his sentence. He was also fined
20,000 marks ($12,000) when 12 copies of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf were found in
his possession. Judge Helmut Knöner of the Herford court took the curious
position that Mr. Walendy was guilty not of a sin of commission but of omission:
"This [case] is not about what was written-that is not for this court to
determine-but rather about what was not written. If you had devoted just a
fraction of the same exactitude to highlighting the other side [of the Holocaust
question], you would not have been sentenced."
Here we find the tortured reasoning to which censorship laws invariably give
rise. To have failed to write about a particular historical event in a balanced
manner is a crime that can send a historian to jail. In the court's view, this
one-sided writing was "meant to disturb the public peace," not withstanding the
"exactitude" of Mr. Walendy's work. Moreover, although Mr. Walendy has been a
model prisoner he was denied the usual grant of release after serving two-thirds
of his sentence. Authorities explained that this was because he was unlikely to
change his views.
It is possible to argue that Austrian censorship laws have already claimed a
life. In 1995, Werner Pfeifenberger, a German professor of political science
published an essay called "Internationalism and Nationalism: a Never-Ending
Mortal Enmity?" in a collection issued by Austria's Freedom Party (see AR,
Dec. 1999, and March 2000). A prominent Jewish journalist attacked the essay,
accusing Prof. Pfeifenberger of writing in a "neo-Nazi tone," and "extolling the
national community." Because the professor had criticized the 1933 Jewish
declaration of an international boycott of Germany, the journalist also accused
him of reviving "the old Nazi legend of a Jewish world conspiracy."
The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia dismissed Prof. Pfeifenberger from
his teaching position, and a court in Vienna prepared a case against him under
Austrian anti-Nazi laws. On May 13, 2000, just a few weeks before the trail,
Prof. Pfeifenberger took his own life. His lawyer explained that Prof.
Pfeifenberger faced ten years in jail under the charges, did not expect a fair
trial, and had already spoken of committing suicide. As in Germany and
Switzerland, Austrian law does not permit a defendant to argue the veracity of
his statements; offensive "tone" or "diction" is sufficient to secure
conviction.
United States citizens have fallen afoul of German censorship laws-without the
slightest gesture of support from their own government. Hans Schmidt of
Pensacola, Florida, runs the German-American National Public Affairs Committee,
which publishes a newsletter. Mr. Schmidt, who fought in the German army, moved
to the United States after the war and became a U.S. citizen. In 1995, on a trip
to Germany to visit family members, German authorities arrested him for having
sent some of his newsletters to Germany. They held him in jail for five months
but released him in conjunction with the first part of his trial. Mr. Schmidt,
who could have been sentenced to five years in prison, slipped out of the
country rather than stay for the rest of his trial.
Another American, Gary Lauck of Lincoln, Nebraska, was not so lucky. Known as
"the farm-belt Führer," Mr. Lauck is an unapologetic supporter of Nazism, and
has shipped a considerable quantity of Nazi material to Germany. In March, 1995,
he was visiting Denmark, a country that does not have anti-Nazi laws, but in an
operation of questionable legality, the Danes extradited him to Germany. In
August, 1996, a Hamburg court convicted him of inciting racial hatred and
distributing illegal materials-which he did legally in the United States and not
in Germany-and sentenced him to four years in jail. He served his sentence and
returned to the United States, where he continues to promote Nazism.
At almost the same time Mr. Lauck was on trial in Germany, the American citizen
Harry Wu-a fervent critic of China-slipped into China illegally on a mission of
support for dissidents and was arrested. The U.S. State Department mounted an
extraordinary effort to secure his release, but completely ignored Germany's
prosecution of Mr. Lauck.
Another curious case involving the United States is that of a young German
musician Hendrik Möbus. Mr. Möbus said provocative things about Jews, gave the
Nazi salute during a concert, and later turned up in the United States. In a
little-known incident in the summer of 2000, federal officers arrested Mr. Möbus
with the intention of extraditing him to Germany, even though his offenses were
not crimes in the United States. Apparently thinking better of this
unjustifiable proceeding, the government released Mr. Möbus, who promptly turned
the tables by suing for political asylum. With the help of William Pierce of the
West Virginia-based National Alliance, Mr. Möbus has hired immigration lawyers
to argue his case on the grounds that he will be persecuted for his political
beliefs if he returns to Germany.
One of the common difficulties for applicants for asylum is that they must prove
they face a realistic threat of persecution. In Mr. Möbus' case, the German
authorities have already issued an extradition request in which they openly
state they want to send him to jail. Once again, it will be interesting to see
how the INS responds.
Neo-Nazi music is increasingly popular in Germany, and bands play a constant
cat-and-mouse game with the police. Most make their recordings in secret studios
or across the border in Poland, and the recordings are then pressed in the
United States. The CDs come back to Europe via Sweden, where the material is not
illegal. Mere possession is a crime in Germany, but the authorities estimate
there are more than 100 neo-Nazi bands operating clandestinely.
Some repressive measures fall short of imprisonment. In August, 2000, the German
postal bank, which is part of the government-owned post office, systematically
shut down all accounts used by any group it considered "far-right." These
included Germany's two main nationalist parties, the German Peoples' Union (DVU)
and the National Democratic Party (NPD). Postbank chairman Wulf von Schimmelmann
explained that the measure was "a contribution to political hygiene and
cementing of democracy in Germany."
Thought-control can take a comical turn. In August, 2000, Dresden police ordered
a 25-year-old man to get a haircut because he had shaved the back of his head
leaving only the letters "SS," in the distinctive angular script used by the
Nazis.
Mein Kampf has been banned in Germany for years, and German companies
have been quietly enforcing the ban overseas as well. Publishing giant
Bertelsmann polices its US-based website bookstore for titles forbidden in
Germany, and is trying to do the same with Barnesandnoble.com, of which it owns
40 percent. Mein Kampf is banned in several other countries, including
Holland and the Czech Republic, where distributors were recently fined. There is
considerable irony in suppressing Hitler's turgid autobiography. For years it
was common to say that if only people had read it in the 1930s they would have
stopped Hitler in his tracks. Now we must presumably be kept from reading it for
fear we will follow its advice.
Other Countries
Until 1995, Spain was a popular refuge
for dissidents facing prosecution elsewhere in Europe but in that year it passed
new laws putting it firmly in the camp of the censors. The first conviction came
in November, 1998, when bookseller Pedro Varela was sentenced to five years in
jail for "incitement to racial hatred" and "denying or justifying genocide." His
case began in December, 1996, when police raided his Librería Europa bookstore
in Barcelona and confiscated 20,000 volumes. Nearly two years went by before he
went to trial because many of the books were in English, French, or German, and
the court insisted that they be translated into Spanish. In addition to the
five-year prison term, the court fined him 720,000 pesetas ($5,000) and ordered
all 20,000 books burned-even though only 30 of some 200 titles were found to
violate the law.
In December 1998, Mr. Varela appealed the sentence to the provincial court or
Audencia of Catalonia, which ruled unanimously in April 1999 that the censorship
law violates guarantees of free expression in the Spanish constitution. The case
will now go before the Constitutional Tribunal in Madrid. In the meantime, Mr.
Varela's 20,000 volumes have not yet been burned, but he has not gotten them
back either. He restocked his store and continued to operate, but in January
1999, a mob of "anti-fascists" smashed through the protective metal shutters of
his shop, ransacked it, and burned hundreds of books. Police arrived but did
nothing. Mr. Varela rebuilt his store and continues to sell books.
In Britain, despite campaign promises from Tony Blair that Labour would ban
Holocaust denial, in early 2000 Parliament resisted pressure from Jewish groups
to do so. Home Office Minister Mike O'Brien explained that the government was
unable to "strike a balance between outlawing such offensive statements while
ensuring that freedom of speech is not unduly restricted." Since 1986 the Public
Order Act has made incitement to racial hatred an offense, but Jewish groups
argued this law was inadequate because prosecutors have been unable to show that
Holocaust denial incites hatred. This is not to say that these laws have never
been used. Although enforcement is sporadic, a few racial nationalists have been
convicted.
Originally prosecutors had to prove a defendant intended to stir up hatred, but
that was difficult. Later the laws were broadened to permit conviction if hatred
was stirred up whatever the intent, but that was also hard to prove. Now, it is
sufficient to show a "likelihood" that some act will incite racial hatred, and
it was on this basis that Spearhead editor John Tyndall and British Nationalist
editor John Morse were tried together and convicted by a single jury in 1986.
The prosecution's tactic was to read page after page of "offensive" material in
court and the cumulative effect seems to have convinced the jury what they wrote
was "likely" to incite hatred. The judge decided the crime deserved six months
in jail. Mr. Tyndall, who after serving his sentence returned to editing
Spearhead, despises incitement laws but believes they have the beneficial effect
of keeping racial nationalists from using intemperate-and ultimately
unpersuasive-language.
Nick Griffin, now head of the British National Party, received a suspended
sentence after a similar conviction in 1998. He also edited a magazine, which
discussed Holocaust revisionism and opposed non-white immigration to Britain. In
his case as well, there seems to have been no clear line between acceptable and
unacceptable opinions; his magazine apparently created an overall atmosphere
that was "likely" to incite hatred.
Some British anti-racism measures approach outright insanity. As reported in the
July 2000 issue of AR, a recently-passed law forbidding "racially
threatening or abusive words" was recently invoked against a Cambridge man who
got into a whispered argument in a library. A woman overheard Robert Birchall
tell Kenyan-born Mugai Mbaya to "go back to your own country," and reported him
to police. Mr. Birchall was fined 100 pounds. In the city of Glouc-ester police
officers are reported to have been sent to eat in ethnic restaurants and listen
in on the conversations of other patrons so they can charge them with crimes if
they say rude things about other races.
Perhaps even more than to Europeans, Americans feel kin to Canadians and perhaps
Australians-fellow English-speakers who have established themselves far from the
homeland. But here, too, traditions of free speech have crumbled under the
pressure of special-interest groups. In October 2000, the Australian Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission ordered Frederick Toben-back from prison
in Germany-to remove Holocaust revisionist material from the web page of the
Adelaide Institute. Commissioner Kathleen McEvoy said Mr. Toben violated the
1975 Racial Discrimination Act by "having published materials inciting hatred
against the Jewish people." She also ordered Mr. Toben to post a lengthy
apology. Mr. Toben refused, saying he would not apologize for material he
believed to be factual and that any proceeding against him was immoral if truth
was not permitted as a defense. The government-funded commission has no
enforcement powers, but could initiate proceedings to have Mr. Toben jailed for
contempt.
In Tasmania, the commission has also accused an associate of the Adelaide
Institute, 58-year-old Olga Scully, of selling anti-Jewish material and putting
it in mailboxes. She also refused to apologize, and the commission announced
plans to take her to court. The Russian-born grandmother says she is not
intimidated and is "quite prepared" to go to prison.
It will be a surprise to many Americans to know that our next-door-neighbor
Canada now has a nearly 20-year tradition of censorship. In 1981 a well-liked
secondary school teacher and mayor in Lacombe County, Alberta, named Jim
Keegstra was reported to be telling his social studies students that Jews run
the world. The school board fired him-which it no doubt had the right to do-but
Canadian authorities also charged him with violating section 281 of the criminal
code, which prohibits spreading hate against an identifiable group. Mr. Keegstra
remained unrepentant during a ten-year legal battle that took him to the
Canadian Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction.
The most famous Canadian thought criminal is undoubtedly Ernst Zundel, a German
who immigrated to Canada in 1958 and established himself as a commercial artist.
Since the mid-1970s he has published and publicized Holocaust revisionist
materials, and in 1983 he was charged under section 181 of the criminal code,
which prohibits spreading "false news" that the purveyor knows to be false.
His case became something of a cause célčbre, and the trial dragged on for eight
weeks before reaching a conviction. Mr. Zundel filed numerous appeals and in
1992 the Supreme Court ruled the law under which he was convicted
unconstitutional because it was "an unjustifiable limit on the right and freedom
of expression."
Mr. Zundel was not out of court for long. At the urging of Jewish groups, he was
brought before the Canadian Human Rights Commission in what must be one of the
most Kafkaesque censorship proceedings of modern times. There is a section of
the Canadian criminal code written to outlaw telephone answering machines with
"hate messages." It makes it illegal "to communicate telephonically" "any matter
that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred [for reasons of race,
ethnicity, etc.]." In a tortured interpretation of this law, Mr. Zundel was
charged on the basis of a web page that contains Holocaust materials by him and
by others. Although the site is commonly known as the Zundelsite, it is based in
the United States and run by an American.
Ironically, the Human Rights Commission has been asked to find Mr. Zundel guilty
because he is associated with a foreign web page that publishes articles that,
in print form, have been found to be legal in Canada. Indeed, the first and
lengthiest of the pamphlets cited in the charge is the very one cited in the
previous case that was thrown out by the Canadian Supreme Court! What is more,
this case has dragged on for an astonishing five years. At the same time, the
chairman of the Human Rights Tribunal has conceded that "the truth is not an
issue before us. . . . The sole issue is whether such communications are likely
to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt." Mr. Zundel, who has spent
an estimated $140,000 on the case, recently gave up even trying to defend
himself, saying "I would rather save my money and appeal their grotesque ruling
when it comes out." Amazingly, the case continues to drag on without him, with
final arguments expected in late February.
Yet another prominent censorship victim has been Doug Collins and the newspaper
that used to publish him, the North Shore News. In February 1999, the British
Columbia Human Rights Tribunal found Mr. Collins guilty of acts "likely to
expose Jews to hatred or contempt." Found criminal were four columns he wrote in
1994. Interestingly, the tribunal decided that taken individually none of the
columns was a criminal act, but taken together they were. The tribunal ordered
Mr. Collins and the North Shore News to desist from further incitement to
hatred, and to pay $2,000 to a Jewish man who had brought the charges, as
compensation for injury to his dignity and self-respect. It also ordered the
paper to publish the judgment in full, which was perhaps the first time the
government ever forced a Canadian newspaper to print something against its will.
Mr. Collins now publishes on the Internet.
Canadian authorities have been very unpredictable in their enforcement of laws
against "incitement of hatred." They have never been bothered by the lyrics of
black rap "musicians" who openly urge blacks to kill whites, but it has taken a
very close look at academic studies of racial differences. Canadian customs
authorities have seized many shipments of books from the United States including
Race, Evolution and Behavior, by Philippe Rushton (reviewed in AR,
Dec. 1994). Prof. Rushton, who teaches psychology at the University of Western
Ontario, has been himself investigated for inciting hatred and nearly lost his
job because of his carefully-researched studies of racial differences. Other
books Canadian customs have held at the border include Shockley on Eugenics
and Race (reviewed in AR, Jan. 1993), Race, Intelligence and Bias
in Academe by Roger Pearson, The Dispossessed Majority by Wilmot
Robertson, and The Immigration Invasion by Wayne Lutton and John Tanton.
The United States does not have censorship laws but we are creeping in that
direction. Hate crime laws are an ominous step, because they add penalties to
crimes based on motive. Until the passage of hate crime laws sentencing did not
depend on the motive of a crime but whether it was premeditated or spontaneous.
You could punch a man because he was fat, black, insulted you, or seduced your
wife, and you were guilty of assault. Now, certain motives-that is to say
certain thoughts-bring heavier penalties. In February of this year, a Houston,
Texas, judge sentenced 21-year-old Matthew Marshall to no fewer than ten years
in jail for burning a cross in front of a black family's house. People who
commit gruesome violent crimes often get less jail time.
We have also had a few cases of censorship almost as absurd as those that have
begun to crop up in England. In August, 1998, Janis Barton was leaving a
restaurant in Manistee, Michigan, and walked by another group waiting to be
seated. Those in the other group spoke to each other in Spanish, and Mrs. Barton
said, out loud, "I wish damn Spics would learn to speak English." One of the
Spanish-speakers filed a complaint and Mrs. Barton was charged with the crime of
committing "insulting conduct in a public place," on the grounds that what she
said were "fighting words" that could provoke violence. A jury bought that
argument and the judge sentenced Mrs. Barton to 45 days in jail (she served only
a few days). This is an odd case that may not be repeated, but it clearly shows
the direction in which hypersensitivity to the feelings of non-whites is taking
us.
Another worrying step towards censorship is a law passed just last December 15,
which requires all libraries receiving federal money to use content filters on
computers connected to the Internet. The idea is to protect people from
pornography, violence and "hate speech," but the makers of filtering software
invariably give it a leftist slant. The federal government is using the power of
the purse to restrict access to certain views and information.
What These Laws Mean
The full-blown, unabashed censorship
laws in Europe and Canada are a giant step backwards in the history of Western
Civilization. It was perhaps one of the most significant conceptual
breakthroughs in human thought to recognize that the social cost of suppressing
"error" is far greater than the damage unchecked "error" can do when men are
free to refute it. It is cause for great sadness that our European brethren have
stepped back into the mentality of the witch hunt, forcing their citizens into
exile and making them prisoners of conscience.
Indeed, it is in the defense of prisoners of conscience that Amnesty
International (AI) made a name for itself, and cases like those described here
would appear to be tailor-made for them. According to their own publications,
prisoners of conscience are "people who are imprisoned, detained or otherwise
physically restricted anywhere because of their beliefs, color, sex, ethnic
origin, language or religion, provided they have not used or advocated
violence." Every person mentioned in this article and thousands more have been
charged with crimes because of the non-violent expression of beliefs. AI goes on
to say that "all people have the right to express their convictions and the
obligation to extend that freedom to others" and that "Amnesty International
seeks the immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience."
A number of people have appealed to AI to intervene on behalf of imprisoned
Holocaust revisionists but AI refuses. In 1995 it affirmed "Amnesty
International's intention to exclude from prisoner of conscience status those
who advocate the denial of the Holocaust . . . ." They took this step on the
grounds that dissent from accepted views on the Holocaust means one has
"advocated national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to
discrimination, hostility or violence." What this means is that AI does not
consider someone a prisoner of conscience unless it agrees with him.
It is probably true that some of the people charged under incitement laws really
do want to stir up hatred-something that however reprehensible is legal in the
United States and should be legal everywhere-but there is no evidence whatever
that this is the motive of people like Robert Faurisson, Fredrick Toben, Pedro
Varela or Germar Rudolf. It is the people who oppose their work who appear to be
driven by hatred. Furthermore, as British prosecutors have found, it is unclear
just how disputing the existence of gas chambers or the number of Nazi victims
incites hatred against anyone. People are not suddenly going to start hating
Jews just because a pamphlet convinces them the Nazis killed only one million
rather than six million.
It would be more plausible to say that anyone who harps on slavery, Jim Crow,
and segregation is inciting hatred against whites, or that anyone who describes
the way Indians mutilated the bodies of Custer's men at Little Big Horn is
stirring up hatred against Indians. If you scoff at the miracles in the Bible
are you inciting hatred against Christians? If not, why not? After all, neither
the truth of the statements nor the intent of the speaker matters. Laws of this
kind cry out for abuse and invidious application.
Obviously of concern to American Renaissance is the possibility that any
description of race or sex differences could be considered incitement to hatred.
What if the French and the Germans decide discussions of race and IQ are
hate-mongering? This is actually more logical than saying skepticism about gas
chambers makes people hate Jews. Will AR be banned in Europe? Will people
who write for AR be arrested if they go to Europe?
Laws about inciting hatred are really very simple: If you hurt the feelings of
certain people you can be charged with a crime. So far, the people about whose
feelings one must be most careful are Jews. Pressure from Jewish organizations
has turned what may have been intended as universal prohibitions into
prohibition of opinions that upset Jews.
Laws of the French, German, and Austrian type that specifically prohibit
Holocaust denial likewise reflect the pressure of Jewish organizations. There is
only one historical event in all of human history-an event of particular
interest to Jews-about which the law forbids dissent. Legally requiring
acceptance of a historical event is an absurdity on its face, but why just this
one? In January 2000, the French National Assembly voted officially to recognize
the Turkish "genocide" of Armenians during the First World War. There are many
people who strongly dispute the number and circumstances of these deaths; Turkey
angrily withdrew its ambassador after the vote. No doubt there will be vigorous
"genocide denial," "whitewashing of crimes against humanity," and "insulting the
memory of the dead." Why will this not be a crime in France? One can only
conclude that it is because Armenians have less influence than Jews.
But the real shame is how few people, either in Europe or the United States, are
willing to oppose this clampdown on freedom. The left loves to quote lines
attributed to Martin Niemoller (1892-1984), the German Lutheran minister
interned by the Nazis:
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a
Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't
a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a
Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to
speak up for me."
The message, of course, is that we must be vigilant against wrongs done even to
people with whom we may disagree, because if we do not resist evil we may some
day be its victims. European censorship laws are precisely the kind of creeping
evil Niemoller warned against, but the left ignores them because it has no
principles and the right ignores them because it has no spine. Censorship is
therefore on the march in Europe and licking at our own borders. We have entered
a new Dark Age.
Sidebar: The Law Is an Ass
The laws
under which Europeans, Canadians and perhaps now Australians can be prosecuted
for thought crimes are of several kinds. The first includes the French Gayssot
law, which, though amazing, clearly says what it means: No one is to dispute the
genocide or other crimes against humanity for which the Nazi leaders were put on
trial at Nuremberg after the war. There is no ambiguity about this. Anyone who
says the Nazis did not have an extermination program is a criminal.
Laws that forbid "incitement of hatred" are much more ambiguous. These laws are
particularly frightening because there is no way to know what they mean.
Presumably, if it is against the law to "incite hatred" there should be no
conviction unless it is proven that something caused hatred. The prosecution
should produce someone who, having read the offending work or heard the
offending speech or seen the offending picture or symbol, became a hater. None
of the censorship laws requires this. Courts have decided without the slightest
evidence that anyone who takes a position on certain questions-even if all he
does is deliver this view to subscribers who have paid to receive it-is
"inciting hate." The other breath-taking aspect of these laws is that intent
does not matter either. It makes no difference if someone sincerely believes he
is uncovering the truth; if what he says can be construed as likely to incite
hate, he can end up in behind bars.
Finally, there are laws that have no clear meaning at all. What does it mean to
"glorify National Socialism" or "insult the dead" or "whitewash the crimes of
the Nazis"? Crimes that depend on wording as vague as this-and there have been
plenty of convictions under them-are close kin to Communist laws that forbade
"anti-Soviet behavior" or "parasitism." These were justly decried in the West,
but there is almost complete silence about anti-Nazi laws. In the United States
vague prohibitions of this kind are clearly unconstitutional.
Another astonishing aspect of these laws
is that truth is not a defense. Once again, in the United States, the law is
clear: Truth is an absolute protection for anyone charged with making hurtful,
damaging, or embarrassing statements about anyone or anything. In the American
colonies this tradition dates back to the famous John Peter Zenger trial of
1735. Zenger, publisher of the New York Weekly Journal, was charged by
British authorities with publishing articles "tending to raise seditions and
tumults among the people of this province, and to fill their minds with contempt
for his majesty's government." Zenger was arrested, jailed, and tried. Jurors,
however, were persuaded that "truth ought to govern the whole affair of libels,"
and in concluding that what Zenger had written was true, both set Zenger free
and, in effect, rewrote the law.
To many people, it seems preposterous that anyone who disputes gassings at
Auschwitz or doubts Germany's extermination program could appeal to the truth as
a defense. However, in cases of this kind facts are of so little importance that
there have been convictions for statements that appear to be almost certainly
true. British historian David Irving, who in 2000 lost a celebrated libel case
against an anti-revisionist author, was fined $30,000 by a German court for
telling a German audience that the Auschwitz gas chamber is a post-war
reconstruction. Even the Polish curator at Auschwitz has conceded it is a fake,
but Mr. Irving is a criminal and the curator is not. A different German court is
seeking Mr. Irving's extradition for having said the same thing to a different
German audience.
James Alexander, one of the lawyers who defended John Peter Zenger, would have
been appalled. "Freedom of speech," he wrote after the trial, "is a principal
pillar in a free government: when this support is taken away, the constitution
is dissolved and tyranny erected on its ruins."
[American Renaissance,
March, 2001]
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