by Kourosh Ziabari, Foreign Policy Journal

ERNST ZUNDEL is a German author and historian who has spent seven years of his life behind bars as a result of expressing his controversial viewpoints and opinions. He is a revisionist who has denied the Holocaust as described by most historians. He has been one of the most prominent political prisoners in Europe and has been jailed in three countries on two continents.

After his arrest in the U.S. in 2003, he was deported to Canada, where he was kept in prison as “a threat to the national security” for two years. After deportation to Germany in March 2005, he was convicted and sentenced in 2007 to five additional years of imprisonment on charges of holocaust denial.  He was finally released on March 1, 2010.

This is the first interview Ernst Zundel has given since his release.

Firstly, I would like to extend my congratulations on your recent release. Were you ever mistreated or subject to any type of mental or physical punishment in breach of international conventions?

(ILLUSTRATION: Ernst Zundel in a courtroom in Mannheim, Germany on November 8, 2005; Michael Probst/AP)

My entire treatment these past seven years by those arresting me, trying and convicting me, and keeping me in prison has been in brutal breach of international conventions.  I was arrested in broad daylight on American soil by officials of the U.S. government who acted as hit squads for a nefarious lobby. There was no arrest warrant. I was not read my rights. I was whisked away in handcuffs without being allowed to get my wallet, to call my attorney, to be allowed to make my case before an American Immigration Judge or even hug my wife goodbye.

I was incarcerated in six different prisons on two continents in three countries–the USA, Canada, and Germany–without relief of any kind. In effect, I have had 10 percent of my life stolen from me — and for what “crime”? For having “overstayed my U.S. visa”?

Throughout my imprisonment, basic human rights principles were trampled underfoot repeatedly and with impunity. The worst prisons were the Canadian detention centers at Thorold, Ontario and at Toronto West, where I was held for two long years in isolation cells, ice-cold in the winter, no shoes or socks allowed. The electric light in these cells, bright enough to be able to read, was kept on 24 hours a day. Through a glass slot in the door I was checked every 20 minutes, and my activities were meticulously noted by the guards: one sheet for every day.  No dignity, no privacy. My toothbrush was kept in a plastic bin in a hall. I was not allowed to speak to other prisoners. Bed sheets were changed only after three months. No pillows. No chairs. When I wrote to my wife or to my attorneys, I had to sit on a makeshift pile of my court transcripts. No radio, no television, not even an electrical outlet to sharpen my pencils. No ball point pens, only pencil stubs, cut in half with a saw. No spoons, forks, or knives were permitted; only a white plastic spoon with a fork called a “spork” that had to be returned every time at the end of the meal. With very few exceptions when furtive guards showed me some kindness away from the surveillance cameras, I was treated as though I was the worst of criminals. That’s Canada for you, where I have lived and worked without a criminal record for more than 40 years.

It was somewhat better, but not much, in the United States. In Germany, it was quite a bit better in terms of the basic necessities, but personal mail was routinely withheld — 1,700 letters for up to five years — even after I forced a court to order that it be given to me. My so-called trial in Mannheim was a political show trial in the Stalinist mode in that my guilt was a foregone conclusion. I requested that exculpatory exhibits be allowed as validation for what I believed and had written and said. No meaningful defense was allowed. I could not put on record any forensic evidence, any historical documents, or even expert witnesses, That very request to be allowed to offer evidence was held to be a new offense of criminal behavior and could have resulted in new criminal charges — as were, in fact, lodged against my lawyers during that very trial who tried to overcome these restrictions.

Along with the rest of EU members, Germany regularly criticizes other countries for violations of free speech and human rights. However, your case demonstrated the emptiness of such claims within Europe. What’s your take on that? Is Europe really a utopia of liberty and freedom of speech?

Most European countries have only selected free speech for officially approved and sanctioned views on history. Almost all EU countries have laws in place that restrict freedom of speech under the guise of one fig leaf or other, such as the prevention of racist or neo-Nazi activities. The state decides selectively who is and what is racist.  These laws are hypocritical, in Germany’s case superseding even their own Basic Law.

Dissidents are allowed very little opportunity to be read or heard in the mainstream corporate media channels of the West. The control mechanisms of the press are many, often subtle but widely understood and obeyed — fear of loss of jobs, diminished circulation, the withholding of government advertisements etc. There is no longer unrestricted freedom in any Western country, not even in the U.S. with its wonderful Constitution and Amendments such as the Bill of Rights.

Allow me here to point out to your readers the outline of a censorship practice known by its neutral term “rendition”, but more honestly defined as political kidnappings to force the silencing of dissident speech or alternate thoughts.  Renditions in the West are ever more frequently practiced not only against alleged “terrorist suspects” but against ordinary political activists and writers whose viewpoints are frowned upon by such outfits as AIPAC and similar Zionist lobby and interest groups, B’nai Brith, the Canadian Jewish Congress etc.

In order to spell out what I can only describe to you in broad strokes, I’d like to briefly shed light on the period preceding my arrest in the U.S. and Canada, the conniving and the similarity in other cases like mine, where an innocuous or alleged infraction is used as a fig leaf to silence a political opponent.

Viet Dinh, a Georgetown University law professor and director of their Asian Law and Policy Studies Program who helped craft the Patriot Act, put it succinctly, as reported in an American publication called Wired that deals with freedom of speech on the net. That interview reads:

Wired News: An estimated 5,000 people have been subjected to detention since 9/11. Of those, only five – three noncitizens and two citizens – were charged with terrorism-related crimes and one was convicted. How do we justify such broad-sweeping legislation that has resulted in very few terrorist-related convictions?

Dinh: I’ve heard the 5,000 number. The official numbers released from the Department of Justice indicate approximately 500 persons have been charged with immigration violations and have been deported who have been of interest to the 9/11 investigation.

It may well be that a number of citizens were not charged with terrorism-related crimes, but they need not be. Where the department has suspected people of terrorism, it will prosecute those persons for other violations of law, rather than wait for a terrorist conspiracy to fully develop and risk the potential that that conspiracy will be missed and thereby sacrificing innocent American lives in the process.

This is exactly what happened to me. The initial reason given was an alleged immigration infraction — namely a “visa overstay”. I was no terrorist; I was a dissident writer. My political detractors knew perfectly well that I was in America legally, awaiting adjustment of status due to my marriage to an American citizen. I was in Immigration Adjustment of Status proceedings, meticulously following all the prerequisite steps. I was living openly in a rural area in Tennessee and was listed by address in the local telephone book. The U.S. government had given me a Social Security number, a work permit, a document that allowed me to leave the country and return unmolested. I had undergone and passed an FBI check and a health clearance.  The only last step missing was a personal interview by an immigration official to ascertain a valid marriage to my American citizen wife.

We had been notified in writing that this interview could take as long as three years, and that no status report would be given. We were patiently waiting for that last step, a routine interview with an immigration official. Our immigration attorney had requested such an interview in writing — twice!  Under oath, he testified that he had written those letters.  These letters have mysteriously disappeared from our immigration file.  When I was arrested, it was claimed that I had negligently “missed a hearing” which gave them grounds for an arrest due to a visa overstay. In other words, a simple bureaucratic loophole was found or fabricated that has cost me seven years of my life.

What happened to me in the context of a deliberate state policy of deception has also happened to others.  Similar ruses via false accusations were used in cases like Germar Rudolf, likefwise married to an American citizen, El Masri of Germany, Maher Arar of Canada, Gerd Honsik of Spain, Siegfried Verbeke of Belgium, David Irving, and now Bishop Williamson of England, to name only a few individuals who were caught between the grind stones of a criminal policy possible only under the Patriot Act in the U.S. and similar legal instruments in other countries. Embedded in that background of a widespread covert policy and practice to force political conformity, my case makes eminent sense. We are no longer dealing with an aberration. These extrajudicial renditions give 9/11 and the Patriot Act a new light as a global policy instrument of brutal censorship of unpopular thinkers and writers.

The thrust of a prestigious publication such as yours would normally deal with the policies of foreign governments, renditions, kidnappings, and incarcerations not only of foreign enemies but, as in the case of Vanunu, an Israeli-born- and-raised atomic scientist. He was no neo-Nazi, no racist, no Holocaust Denier, yet he was relentlessly pursued by the Mossad and ultimately kidnapped and jailed for 18 years.

The patterns of the breaking of international law and conventions, the use of false identities, and the brazen practice of breaking and entering by spy and intelligence agencies, etc. — these criminal activities are daily in the news. This sets the stage and makes my case a logical progression of an old, established policy, with this one difference: we are no longer talking about hunting and kidnapping alleged “Nazi war criminals” like Eichmann or stone-throwing Palestinians or even “Arab terrorists”, but instead the targeting of writers and other political dissidents in Western countries calling themselves “democracies”.

My story does not even end there. In my case, my “Holocaust Denier” profile was convenient, but passé. It was not even, as is so commonly and falsely claimed, “Denial of the Holocaust” or even more bizarre, my “visa overstay”!  I was told what actually happened by a friend of ours with high-level UN connections. In his own words: “It was the Blue Booklet that did it! That’s when it was decided at the very highest level to take you out for good!”

Here is what happened, briefly: In the early months post-9/11 my wife, an avid Internetter, discovered a compelling research document entitled Stranger than Fiction: An Independent Investigation of 9/11 and the War on Terrorism by Anonymous, 11-11-2. She gave it to me over breakfast. I read it, found it interesting, and ran a few copies off on my printer for people on my mailing list. I did not write that lavishly footnoted paper. I did not research it. I merely copied it.  Somebody must have concluded that I, with my background of thorough forensic investigations in other areas, showed more than ordinary interest in 9/11 as a potential political false flag common in intelligence agency operations!

During my trial in Mannheim, ostensibly for “Holocaust Denial”, portions of my monthly newsletter, where I mentioned this booklet and the 9/11 topic, were referenced by the prosecution as criminal offenses. Only after it became clear that I welcomed the opportunity to have my attorneys present forensic evidence of a potential 9/11 cover-up were those portions of the accusation against me hastily dropped, and my trial became a “Holocaust Denial” show trial in the traditional Stalinist mode, “… accuse wildly but don’t allow a defense!”

As we later found out through various freedom of information requests in various countries, there was in place for years a deliberate, convoluted plan to arrest and detain me under false pretenses so as to take me out and put me behind bars.

I mention this only as an overarching, logical example as to how diabolically clever my political opponents are in using the accusation of “Holocaust Denial” and persecution of Holocaust Revisionists as arrows in their arsenal of weaponry to shore up, consolidate, and protect their deceptively acquired power and influence.

What’s the reality behind Holocaust? Didn’t it happen at all? What about people such as Elie Wiesel, Thomas Blatt, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Leopold Engleitner who are Holocaust survivors and describe their own accounts of those painful days, when they personally witnessed the heart-rending demise of their parents in concentration camps and bone-crushing machines. How should we resolve these contradictions?

I will not answer this question.  I would risk five more years in jail if I answered these questions honestly and truthfully. However, in the age of the Internet, others less known than I am find ways to simplify a painful, multifaceted problem, as the cartoon below makes plain:

(ILLUSTRAATION: “Prevent Holocaust: BOMB IRAN” by Carlos Latuff)

Many people of other countries have come to the categorical conclusion that the Western world is a beacon of liberty and unrestricted freedom of speech. But it sometimes seems that the reality is something else, and that people can be easily prosecuted merely for publishing views that are disliked. The booklet you published, Did Six Million Really Die?, is an example. What do you think?

Here is just one more example of what I already outlined above: We have faxes and other documents that prove on official embassy letterhead that the much vaunted and propagandized U.S. Judiciary has run interference for these kidnappers and renditioners via behind-the-scenes ex parte communication, thus engaging in a cover-up and whitewash worse than the ones practiced by those the U.S. government always blames for human rights violations in their hypocritical press campaigns, like against China in Tibet, Lukashenko in Belarus, Putin in Moscow and, of course, Iran during the recent so-called Green Revolution.

Many Zionist websites have introduced you as a white supremacist. Is that a fair characterization?

This claim is a convenient character assassination technique. I have never been a white supremacist and have stated so for decades, publicly, in countless interviews, newsletters, speeches, broadcasts, etc. It is my opponents’ modus operandi to broad-brush complex issues by politically expedient demonization.

You’re opposed to the regime of Israel because of its discriminatory and atrocious approach against the nation of Palestine. You consider yourself a pacifist who advocates stability and peace; aren’t these beliefs incompatible with your viewpoint regarding Hitler, who is internationally considered to be a notorious dictator and relentless killer? How can your peace-seeking stance come together with your approval of Hitler?

I cannot answer this question due to legal restraints.  An honest and complete answer would land me in jail as a re-offender very quickly. Implicit in your question is the toxic image of me that my detractors would like you to have.  To be called a Nazi is worse than being called a leper. For decades I have been on the receiving end of just such a targeted character assassination campaign. I have been jailed many times not for advocating an ideology but for expressing a dissident, alternative viewpoint on many topics, including Adolf Hitler’s role in history.  Revisionism is not an ideology.  It is merely a scientific method of re-examining historical events and of trying to understand the movers and shakers who made history a footnote to their personalities.

Let me answer your question this way:  I have always abhorred any kind of violence in the pursuit of political goals.  By anyone! Politically, I was and am a pacifist, much in the Gandhi style. I advocate a sober, neutral look at history, including the period known as the Third Reich. The peoples of the world, regardless of what system of government they live under, owe it to themselves to emancipate themselves of the simplistic images of propaganda and deceit posing as history.

On May 1995, your Toronto residence was the target of an arson attack which resulted in $400,000 worth of damage. A few days later, some of your extremist opponents were caught trying to break into your property. Again a few days later, you received a parcel bomb which the Toronto police detonated. Have you ever tried to lodge a complaint against them? Have they ever been lawfully sentenced?

This is the flip side of some of the questions above. While I have never advocated or engaged in violence, egregious acts of violence have been repeatedly practiced on me, of which the political kidnapping in 2003 was merely the latest. As to the fire and the bomb, no, nothing was ever resolved. The police apprehended the bomb builders and senders, but the charges laid were stayed. There seems to have been no political will at the highest levels of the Canadian government. There was no political coin to be garnered by prosecuting Jewish arsonists, who even confessed to the deed.

Do you differentiate between the Zionists  and Jews as the followers of a divine, monotheistic religion?

Yes, the two are totally different. Some Orthodox Jews who are united against Zionism, such as the Neturei Karta, believe that also. They know the godfathers of Communism and Zionism followed identical policies. The guiding spirit behind the two systems is the same. Neturei Karta rabbis attended the 2006 Teheran Conference sponsored by your President in an attempt to distance themselves from what they consider to be a dangerous atheist clique in the pursuit of illegal politics of conquest of which they want no part.

The mainstream corporate media, while having already vilified you, remained silent about your release. What do you think about this? Are you going to continue your ideological path or would you prefer to keep a low profile and forget about the intellectual activities?

Ironically, that was exactly what I intended to do when I moved to Tennessee and married Ingrid; keeping a low profile and turning to private endeavors such as my love for art and music.  I felt that my revisionist outreach was finished, concluded to my inner satisfaction. Let others read both sides and then judge for themselves. All the arguments, all the information needed on the Holocaust is out there, on the Internet, in tens of thousands of websites, all for the taking. How often do you have to dig up an archeological site to find yet one more bone, yet one more implicating shard? My wife likes to say that you don’t have to eat a camel to know what a cutlet tastes like. I was quite ready to retire and satisfy my creative needs and desires. I could leave the political mopping-up activities for others to complete. But could my political opponents bring themselves, as rational people might have, to likewise call it quits? No; that is simply not in their nature.

As you point out so cogently, a powerful vilification campaign is still going full blast. It keeps my name in the media for people to decide for themselves who I am. Upon my release, my wife has collected thousands and thousands of letters from readers, only three of which were negative! Not a bad record, of the millions of dollars spent and millions of words dispersed in an attempt to paint me as as a devil with horns.

Let me ask you — would your prestigious publication have cared to interview me if you thought that I deserved the label of Evil Incarnate?

Read the full article at Foreign Policy Journal

About the proposed EU Holocaust Denial Law

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, 1984

IF THE EU is going to craft new ‘Holocaust Denial’ legislation, surely it must first be defined. Mainly it is used to label those who, in the opinion of the one using the term, minimize the suffering of Jewish Holocaust victims and thereby foster the potential for future state-organised mass murder. The imagery of the über-industrial Holocaust is so gut-wrenchingly horrific that anyone challenging the story is deemed criminally guilty of intent to incite racial hatred or civic disorder.

The subjectivity involved in evaluating intent explains the many glaring examples of double standards surrounding the ‘holocaust denial’ controversy. For example: the ‘establishment’ historian Raul Hilberg states that the number of those murdered in Auschwitz was not four but one million, whilst the total number of Jews who died in WW II was not six but five million. When he makes such revisions, this is not considered ‘denial’. Yet when an ‘unapproved’ historian such as David Irving cites the same figures or, for example, that the gas chamber at Auschwitz is a post-war Soviet construction, during his trial in Austria he was not allowed to bring in the Auschwitz director to testify because no question regarding the truth or falsehood of any aspect of the Holocaust was allowed. In most courts where such cases are tried, there is virtually no defence against ‘denial’ accusations even if the revision in question is generally agreed-upon by ‘non-denier’ Holocaust historians.

Not only do these surreal double standards make Kafka appear a realist, but also the changing story makes defining the Holocaust, let alone ‘denial’, almost impossible. Although all mainstream ‘approved’ historians accept that the systematic mass murder of millions took place more or less as narrated, the specifics have changed considerably in the light of new evidence, usually uncovered by those they label ‘deniers’. At first, the method was not gassing but steaming, mass burnings and so forth, with people sentenced to death based on numerous eyewitness testimonies (without cross-examination). Later, gassing was established as the main method with hundreds of further eyewitnesses recalling in graphic – and conflicting – detail as to how this was perpetrated in camps in Germany proper. But years – and more testimonies, convictions and executions – later, all mainstream holocaust historians agreed that there were no gassings within Germany, rather outside, most of them in the Auschwitz complex. But when later forensic analysis, witness cross-examinations and other documentary analysis (train schedules, official German inmate records released from Russian archives, trials etc.) revealed that this too was inaccurate, the numbers in Auschwitz shrank from four to around one million, though the global total of six million remains.

Whether or not the total is accurate or even important, always overlooked is this glaring fact: the latest approved version means that previous versions, largely based on eyewitness testimonies in this ‘most documented event in world history’, were false. In other words, even though we know for certain that many events – such as making soap from Jewish fat – did not occur as related in sworn testimony used to execute ‘war criminals’, pointing this out or challenging any aspect of a decades-old narrative riddled with inconsistencies and thousands of outright lies can be construed as hate speech, whereas the original falsehoods, which themselves are clearly hate speech – indeed blood libels – are neither characterized as such nor are the perpetrators prosecuted.

What matters, it seems, is not the facts but simply who is telling the story. ‘Kosher’ storytellers can revise the narrative freely whilst their non-kosher opponents are sent into solitary confinement for years, such as Zündel and Rudolf in Germany. Right now, the kosher historians all ‘deny’ the following: that gassing happened in German-based camps, that soap was made from Jewish fat, that six millions were killed systematically, that four millions were killed in Auschwitz, and most – but not all – that Hitler gave written orders for mass extermination. They are not guilty of ‘denial’. However, if any non-kosher authors state any of the above they can be prosecuted for the crime of hate-speech.

From Denial to Confession

Even assuming such a thought-crime statute were to be passed, it should not exclusively refer to those denying only the Jewish Holocaust during WW II. The point is often made that the Jewish Holocaust receives disproportionate attention because other genocides, such as in Ukraine, Armenia, China or Russia, are generally ignored. Although true, this still misses the key issue, namely the Holocaust’s main function as propaganda whose purpose is to preserve our sense of self-worth and honour by demonising the enemy in order to deflect attention away from the atrocities perpetrated by the victors.

For example, it is time the Allies cease ‘denying’ a literal holocaust (death or sacrifice by fire) that we perpetrated against about 900,000 Germans, mainly civilian women and children in phosphorous-aided firebombing raids. [photo] We deliberately burned them to death, thousands of them roasted alive in airtight bomb shelters which remained so hot from the raging flames in the fire-induced tornadoes outside that, when the doors were opened long after the raids were over, the sudden inrush of oxygen caused families of desiccated corpses to spontaneously burst into flames. We literally roasted living people to death. There are many photographs; but few have seen them.

Similarly, it is time the US admitted how many hundreds of thousands (some say well over a million) of German prisoners we starved to death in open fields, with US guards, as ordered by Eisenhower, on pain of execution, not to provide any food or shelter whatsoever. The detainees ate all the grass available, drank rainwater and died in their hundreds of thousands. We did this. Also, the post-war forced winter march of several million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe during which over two million starved or froze to death – not to mention, no doubt, other atrocities along the way.

One of the first to raise this explicitly was Justice Wennenstrum in the Chicago Daily Tribune, February 23rd 1948, shortly after quitting the Nuremberg Trial proceedings in disgust:

“If I had known seven months ago what I know today, I would never have come here. . . The initial war crimes trial here was judged and prosecuted by Americans, Russians, British and French with much of the time, effort and expenses devoted to whitewashing the Allies and placing the sole blame for World War II upon Germany…. The prosecution has failed to maintain objectivity aloof from vindictiveness, aloof from personal ambitions for convictions. It has failed to strive to lay down precedents which might help the world to avoid future wars.” (Chicago Daily Tribune, February 23rd, 1948).

Many say that the main value of remembering the holocaust vividly is so that ‘never again’ as civilised peoples will we allow such horror to arise in our midst; this is a convincing point, and usually sincerely made. However, by overlooking much of the overall story in favour of allowing one particular slant to dominate the meta-narrative and thus core identity of ‘modern’ society, we are already doing it again. How else to explain how we believe that since 1990 we have starved and slaughtered well over one million Iraqis, mostly women and children, through sanctions, bombing and invasion all in the name of ‘justice’, ‘decency’ and ‘freedom’? The only way we can buy into such self-serving deception is because of this powerful belief in our own righteousness. This belief allows us to ‘deny’ that we have perpetrated such war crimes because, thanks to our meta-narrative, we do not perceive ourselves as capable of such crimes even whilst actually committing them, as we are collectively doing even today. Belief trumps facts every time.

More importantly, this collective collusion on our parts drives the process. Even assuming ‘ruling elite societies’ exist, it is not they who pull strings in a vacuum, rather we who need puppet-masters to assume responsibility for determining our collective imperatives in the right sort of ‘feel-good’ way. So the murder of a million Iraqis in the past decade, and the displacement of over three million since 2003, is the result of our own mutually engendered ‘conspiracy’ for which we are all responsible.

The Atrocity God

‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!’ – Sir Walter Scott

How can ‘good’ people like us be the ones perpetrating such crimes even now? Answering this question reveals the ongoing function of the Holocaust narrative in our lives today.

The Holocaust is part of a much larger history involving most of the world during the past century. However, the emotional core of WW II, itself the essential crucible in which today’s world order was forged, is experienced viscerally within the Holocaust imagery. This is of far greater emotive import than the outer official ‘history’. For us today, the pith of the entire catastrophe known as World War II is captured in the imagined mental image of a few score naked civilians huddled together in a shower room dying an unspeakably horrible death. This vivid imagery provokes immediate, viscerally felt horror. Just as we would deplore anyone who tortures an infant, we feel natural revulsion towards the perpetrators.

To understand this dynamic as it plays out today, we need to examine the nature of the belief system. Since the WW II Holocaust narrative helps shape our belief in who we are as people by defining our role in this seminal period of modern world history, its function is similar to that of a deity – in this case one whose imagery focuses on atrocity, cruelty, injustice, anguish, hatred and so forth. Strangely enough, the past and current examples of our crimes mentioned above are not because of ‘holocaust deniers’ who in essence question the veracity of this ‘Atrocity God’, but its adherents who believe that by ‘worshipping’ images of hatred, injustice and brutality they can in turn dish out atrocity themselves without doing wrong, because ‘they’ who make us fear atrocity, deserve to suffer it themselves, whilst ‘we’ who fear and fight against atrocity, are always reasonable people acting in reluctant but heroic self-defence. This sort of view allows Israel, for example, to keep taking more territory in the name of self-defence without seeing the glaring hypocrisies involved. Zbigniew Brzezinski remarked on this during a recent congressional hearing about Iran, namely that after some sort of attack on ‘us’ – false-flag or otherwise – we could then go after them ‘defensively’.

This deceptive view is far more than simple self-serving opportunism: it is sincerely believed, something most critics and victims do not understand. Shortly after he left office, President Clinton said that his biggest mistake early on was to assume that his opponents were aware of their hypocrisies; however, later on he realised that they truly believed they were doing the right thing, which is why they were so powerful.

The ‘prayer’ invoking such demons into our world is any dynamic which solidifies antagonism between self and other – collectively ‘us’ and ‘them’. This ‘satanic’ prayer has great ‘evil’ power, and we see it invoked day after day in so many ways. By praying to such Manichean deities, we engender their type of emotion-based aggression to incarnate in reality. Our world takes on the atmosphere of our perception, as any mystic, lover or good housekeeper well knows, so we should be far more careful about the nature of the gods we worship. Our contemplation essentially summons them into our mind and body streams, invoking a living presence which then looks out through our eyes, walking amongst us, permeating personal and public life. This power, far greater than any individual’s, is all pervasive but invisible and as such is a form of deity, or god.

Our ‘belief’ in this ‘god’ allows us to ignore the degree to which its living emotional impact shapes our collective identity by confirming us as those who combat demonic forces and from there being able to deny – sincerely – that we are anything but the good people we ‘believe’ ourselves to be. We enjoy cheap chocolate and coffee – the products of exploiting child (aka slave) labour, third world farmers, local governments and crooked international funding mechanisms – starve children, bomb civilian populations and so on, secure in the knowledge that we are the good guys who stood up to the totalitarian psychopath Hitler and the mesmerized fanatical German masses who gassed millions of living, innocents, huddled naked and helpless in chambers disguised as public showers.

The story IS the Deity

The meta-narrative is the peg on which we hang the rest of our self-righteous identity. Anyone who criticises ‘us’ is ‘them’, whom we are now cognitively ‘programmed’ to perceive as emotionally identical to those holocaust-perpetrating monsters of yore. Emotion always trumps reason by having a higher volume on the scale of experience, since emotions are felt viscerally in the body-mind, that agent which anchors our experience to specific place and time, aka ‘reality’. This is why arguing the facts never challenges a core belief system.

Furthermore, it is not the story that creates the Manichean dynamic, rather that dynamic which creates the story, our desire to have our cake and eat it, to perpetrate injustice and selfishness in the name of justice and altruism. Attacking the story is attacking ourselves and is therefore verboten. The debate about whether or not the story is true or its detractors thought criminals is a diversion; rather, we must become more aware of how we use it to avoid responsibility for our own crimes, past and present.

If we in the modern age feel that because of our reliance on science we are less ruled by belief or myth, we are fooling ourselves; there is no power greater in the human realm. Stories mirror how we weave physical, cognitive and emotional faculties into one overall tapestry of experience – aka ‘real life’. Without narrative context, we could not progress moment by moment through getting up, bathing, dressing, eating breakfast, going to work and returning back home; we could not grow up, marry, raise children, age and then die in any coherent fashion.

Because all experience is filtered through this narrative cognitive process, ‘real life’ combines objective and subjective. Each individual at the family dinner table views the same ‘facts’ differently depending on how they fit into their own particular subjective ‘story’ or viewpoint. Similarly, we combine fact and fiction to fashion our collective identities from which manifest national institutions, language, dress, highways, schools, technology and so forth. This is called ‘culture’, something so quintessentially human and real, but which is clearly a blend of reality and artifice. Without such storytelling faculties, we could make no sense of space and time, there would be no society or culture. This faculty binds together our physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual faculties into that which ‘makes sense’.

So the ongoing story of life is a primordial art form; and the art of life is how we fashion the tale to engender mutually enlightening culture, not one that wags us into hell. Hell is where every interaction involves aggression and fear, i.e. intense angst and pain. Intensifying aggression between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is that which fuels the furnaces of hell.

Because ultimately we can never separate fact from fiction, in the context of this issue what is most important is to see how we use narrative, including visceral imagery, to empower the Atrocity God to ‘bless’ our belief that no matter who ‘they’ are and what we do to ‘them’, we will always remain on the side of decency, ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and so forth because ‘they’ are evil. Through such belief, we are possessed by the demon of self-serving deception – and it is deception, because of course ‘they’ are of the same nature as ourselves, breathing the same air and sleeping each night under the same celestial canopy of stars.

Propaganda in some form or another is a natural function of all States, for when all is said and done it involves how a collective tells its meta-narratives to itself. In other words, even a totally enlightened society will have its narratives, or ‘propaganda’; the issue is whether or not they reflect sanity and wisdom rather than deception and neurosis.

Beyond the Manichean:

Whilst I was slowly writing this article, William Pfaff published one in the NY Review of Books about America’s current myth of, or belief in, cultural exceptionalism. He too seems to be echoing the theme here that a society’s ‘meta-narrative’ determines how we view ourselves, also that the life of a nation resembles the plot-line of any work of fiction, in this case tragedy.

“Schumpeter remarked in 1919 that imperialism necessarily carries the implication of

an aggressiveness, the true reasons for which do not lie in the aims which are temporarily being pursued…an aggressiveness for its own sake, as reflected in such terms as “hegemony,” “world dominion,” and so forth…expansion for the sake of expanding…. This determination cannot be explained by any of the pretexts that bring it into action, by any of the aims for which it seems to be struggling at the time…. Such expansion is in a sense its own “object.”[12]

Perhaps this has come to apply in the American case, and we have gone beyond the belief in national exception to make an ideology of progress and universal leadership into our moral justification for a policy of simple power expansion. In that case we have entered into a logic of history that in the past has invariably ended in tragedy.”

Being alive at all is a great blessing, and any ‘enlightened’ society nurtures and celebrates this, whereas unenlightened ones pervert living into some sort of endless nightmare. All over the world billions of parents love their children and vice versa; all over the world, there is sun, wind, rain, trees, flowers, foods to eat. Each blade of grass and dewdrop thereon is saturated with a limitless abundance of basic goodness. However, any or all of us can become ‘possessed’ by an Atrocity God or any other demonic principle which perverts our basically good nature into an overly selfish, I-versus-other dynamic.

Any aspect of human life that is essentially good, uplifted, decent etc. can be so perverted, be it speech, food, dress, thought, love, marriage, community, solitude, scholarship, monasticism, religion, politics, parenting – and so on ad infinitum. Such deception covers up our naturally good, kind nature, polluting us with the poison of hatred-spawning aggression from which comes all the horror of immorality, societal neurosis and war. Perfectly good people are capable of this, as we proved not only by the literally millions of atrocities we perpetrated during WW II, but also by the ways in which we continue to perpetrate more of the same whilst denying them – and again: sincerely so.

Interestingly, although natural and perverted can be differentiated, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are not simply two sides of the same neutral coin; rather there is fundamental goodness, and then its perversion. The Manichean fallacy is to perceive them as being essentially equal, like two different colours. Although philosophically seminal to the issue under discussion, it is beyond the scope of this short essay, not to mention the wisdom of its author, to expound on further as it deserves.

Even if we are ‘good’ and happen to be facing those possessed by such demons, the way to ‘overcome’ them is not by becoming worse demons ourselves, because such aggression only intensifies the demonic ‘us-versus-them’ dynamic, making the Atrocity God stronger as ‘He’ seduces more of ‘us’ into being willing inhabitants in His hell realm. First we should not buy into deceit-derived ‘us-them’ dynamics; then, starting with our own view, we must find a way to perceive ‘them’ as ‘us’ and in turn invite them to feel similarly. In this way, we become of the same kin, which has the same root meaning as ‘kind’. True kindness is a virtue, not a vice or weakness – contrary to what so many pseudo ‘conservatives’ nowadays preach!

If one is not under its spell, this sort of deception is quite easy to spot because it always involves using other to define self, often blaming someone else, or ‘them’, for one’s own condition, a function of solidifying the (illusory) difference between self and other. Those who keep building their narrative edifices using the bricks and mortar of accusing others of being ‘liars’ or ‘mass-murderers’, for example, are reflecting their own state of hostility as projected onto others, whilst denying responsibility for their own aggression. So the us-versus-them dynamic is quintessentially aggressive.

This goes back to the deity principle: the deity image (like anything in life) is a symbol of its own nature. The Atrocity God, whilst pretending to champion the opposite, in fact worships atrocity, injustice, cruelty and so forth because that is the aggressive nature of its imagery – its viscerally, and thus literally embodied, state of being. The lie always reveals the nature of the liar just as the object of worship reveals the nature of the worshipper. For example, consider this famous quotation:

“Every Jew, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate – healthy, virile hate – for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German.” — Eli Wiesel, winner of 1986 Nobel Peace Prize

Since he is a leading member of ‘the Church of Atrocity’, such outrageous statements do not merit hate-crime prosecution. He is a part of ‘we’, and therefore ‘good’ (even worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize) so we all basically agree that his hatred is ‘healthy’, whereas ‘theirs’, of course, is beyond the pale. And yet the expression is clearly one of other-demonisation in order to justify hatred.

Criminalizing those who question core aspects of our collective meta-narrative only further empowers this Atrocity God, one of whose favourite deceptions is to prevent us from understanding that pointing out the falsehoods in our other-demonising, self-sanctifying narratives is not necessarily the same as saying that ‘they’ are all good and we are all ‘bad’. In other words, if we strip away the victors’ propaganda, we might find that the Germans of WW II were no worse or better than the British, American and Russians, or in other words that we are no better than they who are no worse than ourselves.

But saying this about past or current adversaries is regarded by many as so offensive that any statements intimating that our enemies are anything other than demons or that we are anything other than noble is ipso facto perceived – first emotionally and now legally – as such clear evidence of a ‘hate crime’ that no defence is even permitted and the perpetrators banished from society.

Threat to our individual or collective identity and thus sense of reality, engenders a viscerally-felt fear response, such inner emotional turmoil instantly projecting out distorted versions of other. Having thus projected onto other our own fear-spawned hatred, using the typical response of aggression which essentially places self above other, we strive to eliminate the threat. Our own fear, born of clinging to the false identities that give existential meaning to our lives, engenders such monsters. Rather than listen to what they have to teach about our own distortions, we destroy them. Because challenging the meta-narrative is threatening, arousing hatred in ourselves, those who claim that denial is a hate crime are sincere, but the question remains: whose hatred is in play: those of the deniers, or those who disagree with them?

Even considering such thought-crime legislation evidences the degree to which the us-versus-them Demon of Aggression, the Atrocity God, holds sway in our culture. And the obvious fact that such laws are now being introduced in Europe sixty years on indicates the narrative’s seminal importance in our culture today.

_____

Ashley Howes is a Canadian citizen who grew up in the UK. He works in Sydney, Cape Breton, NS, paying modest bills and watching the larger world go by through the lens of the Internet. Occasionally, he likes to voice his opinion as an individual citizen of this our world.

Read the original text on One State Solution

www.opinion-maker.org

WHO SAYS al-Qaeda takes credit for a bombing? Rita Katz. Who gets us bin Laden tapes? Rita Katz. Who gets us pretty much all information telling us Muslims are bad? Rita Katz? Rita Katz is the Director of Site Intelligence, the primary source for intelligence used by news services, Homeland Security, the FBI and CIA. What is her qualification? She served in the Israeli Defense Force. She has a college degree and most investigative journalists believe the Mossad “helps” her with her information. We find no evidence of any qualification whatsoever of any kind. A bartender has more intelligence gathering experience.

Nobody verifies her claims. SITE says Al Qaeda did it, it hits the papers. SITE says Israel didn’t do it, that hits the papers too. What does SITE really do? They check the Internet for “information,” almost invariably information that Israel wants reported, and it is sold as news, seen on American TV, reported in our papers and passed around the Internet almost as though it were actually true. Amazing.

Do we know if the information reported comes from a teenager in Seattle or a terror cell in Jakarta? No, of course not; we don’t have a clue. Can you imagine buying information on Islamic terrorism from an Israeli whose father was executed as a spy by Arabs?

It is quite likely that everything you think you know about terror attacks such as the one in Detroit or whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead comes from Rita Katz. Does she make it all up? We don’t know, nobody knows, nobody checks, they simply buy it, print it, say it comes from Site Intelligence and simply forget to tell us that this is not only a highly biased organization but also an extremely amateur one.

Is any of this Rita’s fault? No. She is, herself, selling her work. The blame does not belong to Site Intelligence, it belongs to the people who pass on the information under misleading circumstances.

Imagine if a paper carried a story like this: Reports that Al Qaeda was responsible for bombing the mosque and train station were given to us by an Israeli woman who says she found it on the Internet.

This is fair. Everyone should be able to earn a living and information that comes from Israel could be without bias but the chances aren’t very good. In fact, any news organization, and most use this service, that fails to indicate that the sources they use are “rumored” to be a foreign intelligence service with a long history of lying beyond human measure, is not to be taken seriously.

Can we prove that SITE Intelligence is the Mossad? No. Would a reasonable person assume it is? Yes.

Would a reasonable person believe anything from this source involving Islam or the Middle East? No, they would not.

SITE’s primary claim to fame other than bin Laden videos with odd technical faults is their close relationship with Blackwater. Blackwater has found SITE useful. Blackwater no longer exists, as they had to change their name because of utter lack of credibility.

What can be learned by examining where our news comes from? Perhaps we could start by being realistic and begin seeing much of our own “news” for the childish propaganda it really is.

Propaganda does two things: 1. It makes up phony reasons to justify acts of barbaric cruelty or insane greed. 2. It blames people for things they didn’t do because the people doing the blaming really did it themselves. We call these things “false flag/USS Liberty” incidents.

Next time you see dancing Palestinians and someone tells you they are celebrating a terror attack, it is more likely they are attending a birthday party. This is what we have learned. Perhaps this is what we had best remember.

From an AFP article on Site Intelligence:

Rita Katz and S.I.T.E. are set to release yet another “al-Qaeda” tape

WASHINGTON (AFP) The head of the Al-Qaeda network Osama bin Laden is expected to release a taped message on Iraq, a group monitoring extremist online forums said Thursday. The 56-minute tape by the hunted militant is addressed to Iraq and an extremist organization based there, the Islamic State of Iraq, said the US-based SITE monitoring institute, citing announcements on “jihadist forums.”

It said the release was “impending” but did not say whether the message was an audio or video tape. Despite a massive manhunt and a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head, he has evaded capture and has regularly taunted the United States and its allies through warnings issued on video and audio cassettes.

Source: ME Times

Despite a massive manhunt by the world’s intelligence agencies, bin Laden seems to evade their combined efforts, staying on the run. But he still has time to drop into his recording studio and cook up a fresh tape for the likes of Rita Katz and her outfit called SITE. SITE is staffed by two people, Katz and a Josh Devon.

Yet these two individuals manage to do what the ENTIRE combined assets of the world’s Western intelligence can’t: be the first to obtain fresh video and audio tapes from al-Qaeda with Bin Laden making threats and issuing various other comments. If BL appears a bit “stiff” in the latest release, that’s because he is real stiff, as in dead.

How is it that a Jewish-owned group like SITE can outperform the world’s best and brightest in the intelligence field and be the first to know that a group like al-Qaeda is getting ready to release another tape?

How is it possible that Rita Katz and SITE. can work this magic? Maybe looking at Katz’s background will help:

Rita Katz is Director and co-founder of the SITE Institute. Born in Iraq, her father was tried and executed as an Israeli spy, whereupon her family moved to Israel [the move has been described as both an escape and an emigration in different sources]. She received a degree from the Middle Eastern Studies program at Tel Aviv University, and is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. She emigrated to the US in 1997.

Katz was called as a witness in the trial, but the government didn’t claim she was a terrorism expert. During the trial it was discovered that Katz herself had worked in violation of her visa agreement when she first arrived in America in 1997.

She also admitted to receiving more than $130,000 for her work as an FBI consultant on the case.

FOR YEARS the Cal State Long Beach community has seen repeated attacks on me. Powerful activist organizations – the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League – have come to campus to condemn me. Several departments at the university have issued public denunciations, and I have been harassed and condemned by individual professors on faculty e-mail lists. Beginning with the current semester, several students have disrupted my classes; they have campaigned to get me fired and have written inflammatory articles in the Daily 49er.

Why all this hostility? Fundamentally, I am attacked because I advocate ideas that fly in the face of the conventional wisdom as seen by the academic left that has come to dominate the university.

First and foremost, I am an evolutionary psychologist. On the basis of my understanding of the theory and research in this field, my view is that everyone has ethnic interests – including people of European descent. A great many other identifiable groups in multicultural America have a strong sense of ethnic identity and interest. Quite a few departments on this campus are devoted to strengthening the ethnic identity of non-whites and articulating their interests. But explicit expressions of white European-American identity and interests are condemned as indicating moral turpitude or even psychiatric impairment.

This is a completely unnatural state of affairs – the result of a prolonged assault on the legitimacy of these concepts by politically and ethnically motivated elites that have dominated public discourse on issues of race and ethnicity since before World War II and especially since the 1960s.

I reject labels such as “white supremacist” or “racist” that are routinely bestowed on assertions of white identity and interests as a means of muzzling their expression. Non-Western peoples throughout the world continue to seek political power, and they attempt to control their borders, establish their own cultures and defend their perceived interests. No one would claim that Korea, say, has a moral obligation to import millions of non-Koreans or to change their culture so that the traditional people and culture are pushed aside. Many countries, including Mexico, have excluded immigrants and dealt with them harshly. Israel not only has an identity as a Jewish state, it also rigorously enforces a biological conception of Jewishness as the basis of its immigration policy. Israel has erected an apartheid society on the West Bank and has discriminatory policies against its Palestinian minority within Israel.

Nevertheless, as Joel Kotkin points out in his recent book “The Next Hundred Million”, the U.S. stands poised to add 100 million non-whites by 2050, making the current white majority into a minority and implying a dramatic decline in their political and cultural influence.

Whether explicitly or implicitly, ethnostates are the norm throughout the world. Societies in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand that have been controlled by whites for hundreds of years are the only ones to accept the idea that the ethnic majority has a moral imperative to cede power and become a minority. I view this outcome as the result of competition over the construction of culture in which the legitimate interests of Whites have been compromised. My scholarly book, “The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements” (1998), and much of my subsequent writing, are an attempt to determine how this unnatural state of affairs came about.

The big picture is that the left championed the interests of the working and middle classes of pre-1965 America. Since that time, the left has been strongly identified with massive non-white immigration and multiculturalism – policies that have compromised the interests of the working and middle classes of traditional America, black and white alike.

My main concern is that this upheaval opposes the legitimate interests of the European-descended peoples of the U.S. It’s not about hatred. It’s about seeing legitimate conflicts of interest among different ethnic groups. I was a staunch leftist as a young person. But it’s obvious that the left now stands for policies that are radically opposed to the interests of people like me.

As part of this revolution against pre-1965 America, the left has erected a culture of political correctness in which expressions of ethnocentrism by Europeans are proscribed. Organizations such as the SPLC and the ADL seek to stifle free speech by condemning any hint of ethnocentrism by Europeans – and only Europeans.

Because their point of view is intellectually bankrupt and cannot be rationally defended, the left has repeatedly resorted to force to accomplish its goals. Many European countries and Canada have savage legal penalties that enforce intellectual conformity on these issues. In America the sanctions are more informal – but nevertheless similarly effective. The condemnations of my writing and my affiliations by academic departments, professors and students at Cal State Long Beach are a part of this campaign to shut down free speech on these issues and to make my life as difficult as possible.

America and other Western societies stand to lose much as a result of these transformations. Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam has shown that increasing ethnic diversity lowers the willingness to contribute to charity or to public goods such as, apropos the current national debate, public health care. Ethnic diversity also increases social isolation and lowers trust both within and between races; it also lowers political participation and lessens confidence in political leaders.

Throughout the world, ethnically diverse societies are marked by ethnic conflict. The bottom line is that no one has come up with a formula to get rid of ethnicity as a form of identity and as a vehicle of expressing interests. None seems on the horizon. My vision of the future of Western societies is that they are well on the road to becoming cauldrons of competing ethnic groups, with chronic divisions over issues like affirmative action, redistribution of wealth and the establishment of public goods like health care – any issue that may be seen as benefiting one ethnic group more than another. In the long run, democratic forms of government and the rule of law are threatened.

An early sign of this dystopian future is that American politics have become increasingly racialized. The Republican Party routinely receives roughly 90 percent of its votes from whites, while overwhelming majorities of non-whites identify with the Democratic Party. There is a palpable rage building in America among the tea partiers and working and middle-class white Americans who want something like the America they grew up in. These people are being pushed out economically and politically. They are less able to avoid the costs of multiculturalism: They can’t move to gated communities or send their children to all-white private schools. Their unions have been destroyed and their jobs either shipped overseas or performed by recent immigrants, legal and illegal.

Despite what some of my critics have claimed, I have never advocated violence as a solution to the rapidly diminishing prospects of non-elite white Americans. But we are clearly headed into very dangerous times.

Kevin MacDonald is a psychology professor at CSULB and a member of the American Third Position party.

Read the original editorial in the Daily 49er

LAST WEEK a colleague who has been facing repeated and unfair attacks in the media and the blogosphere (for making arguments that cut against the conventional wisdom) sent around an email asking a number of friends and associates (including me) for advice on how to deal with the attacks. Having been smeared in similar fashion myself, I circulated a list of the lessons I learned from my own experience with “grabbing the third rail.” A few of the recipients thought the list was helpful, so I decided to revise it and post it here. If any readers are contemplating tackling a controversial subject — and I hope some of you will — you’ll need to be ready should opponents decide not to address your arguments in a rational fashion, but to attack your character, misrepresent your position, and impugn your motives instead. If they take the low road, here are ten guidelines for dealing with it. (The advice itself is politically neutral: it applies regardless of the issue in question and no matter which side you’re on.)

1. Think Through Your “Media Strategy” before You Go Public. If you are an academic taking on a “third rail” issue for the first time, you are likely to face a level of public and media scrutiny that you have never experienced before. It is therefore a good idea to think through your basic approach to the media before the firestorm hits. Are you willing to go on TV or radio to defend your views? Are there media outlets that you hope to cultivate, as well as some you should avoid?

Are you open to public debate on the issue, and if so, with whom? Do you plan a “full-court” media blitz to advance your position (an article, a book, a lecture tour, a set of op-eds, etc.), or do you intend to confine yourself to purely academic outlets and let the pundits take it from there? There is no right answer to these questions, of course, and how you answer them depends in good part on your own proclivities and those of your opponents. But planning ahead will leave you better prepared when the phone starts ringing off the hook and there’s a reporter — or even someone like Bill O’Reilly or Jon Stewart — on the other end. Don’t be afraid to listen to professional advice here (such as the media office at your university or research organization), especially if it’s your first time in the shark tank. It’s also a good idea to let your superiors know what’s coming; deans, center directors, and college presidents don’t like surprises.

2. You Have Less Control Than You Think. Although it helps to have thought about your strategy beforehand, there will always be surprises and you will have to think on your feet and improvise wisely. Sometimes real-world events will vindicate your position and enhance your credibility (as the 2006 Lebanon War did for my co-author and myself), but at other times you may have to explain why events aren’t conforming to your position. A vicious attack may arrive from an unexpected source and leave you reeling, or you may get an unsolicited endorsement that validates your views. Bottom line: life is full of surprises, so be ready to roll with the punches and seize the opportunities.

3. Never Get Mad. Let your critics throw the mud, but you should always stick to the facts, especially when they are on your side. In my own case, many of the people who attacked me and my co-author proved to be unwitting allies, because they lost their cool in public or in print, made wild charges and ad hominem arguments, and generally acted in a transparently mean-spirited manner. It always works to your advantage when opponents act in an uncivil fashion, because it causes almost everyone else to swing your way

Of course, it can be infuriating when critics misrepresent your work, and nobody likes to have malicious falsehoods broadcast about them. But the fact that someone is making false charges against you does not mean that others are persuaded by the malicious rhetoric. Most people are quite adept at separating facts from lies, and that is especially true when the charges are over-the-top. In short, the more ludicrous the charges, the more critics undermine their own case. So stick to the high ground; the view is nicer up there.

4. Don’t Respond to Every Single Attack. A well-organized smear campaign will try to bury you in an avalanche flurry of bogus charges, many of which are simply not worth answering. It is easier for opponents to dream up false charges than it is for you to refute each one, and you will exhaust yourself rebutting every critical word directed at you. So focus mainly on answering the more intelligent criticisms while ignoring the more outrageous ones, which you should treat with the contempt they deserve. Finally, make sure every one of your answers is measured and filled with the relevant facts. Do not engage in ad hominem attacks of any sort, no matter how tempting it may be to hit back.

5. Explain to Your Audience What Is Going On. When refuting bogus charges, make it clear to readers or viewers why your opponents are attacking you in underhanded ways. When you are the object of a politically motivated smear campaign, others need to understand that your critics are not objective referees offering disinterested commentary. Be sure to raise the obvious question: why are your opponents using smear tactics like guilt-by-association and name-calling to shut down genuine debate or discredit your views? Why are they unwilling to engage in a calm and rational exchange of ideas? Let others know that it is probably because your critics are aware that you have valid points to make and that many people will find your views persuasive if they get a chance to judge them for themselves.

6. The More Compelling Your Arguments Are, The Nastier the Attacks Will Be. If critics can refute your evidence or your logic, then that’s what they will do and it will be very effective. However, if you have made a powerful case and there aren’t any obvious weaknesses in it, your adversaries are likely to misrepresent what you have said and throw lots of mud at you. What else are they going to do when the evidence is against them?

This kind of behavior contrasts sharply with what one is accustomed to in academia, where well-crafted arguments are usually treated with respect, even by those who disagree with them. In the academic world, the better your arguments are, the more likely it is that critics will deal with them fairly. But if you are in a very public spat about a controversial issue like gay marriage or abortion or gun control, a solid and well-documented argument will probably attract more scurrilous attacks than a flimsy argument that is easily refuted. So be prepared.

7. You Need Allies. Anyone engaged on a controversial issue needs allies on both the professional and personal fronts. When the smearing starts, it is of enormous value to have friends and associates publicly stand up and defend you and your work. At the same time, support from colleagues, friends, and family is critical to maintaining one’s morale. Facing a seemingly endless barrage of personal attacks as well as hostile and unfair criticisms of one’s work can be exhausting and dispiriting, which is why you need others to stand behind you when the going gets tough. That does not mean you just want mindless cheerleaders, of course; sometimes allies help us the most when they warn us we are heading off course.

One more thing: if you’re taking one a powerful set of opponents, don’t be surprised or disappointed when people tell you privately that that they agree with you and admire what you are doing, but never say so publicly. Be realistic; even basically good people are reluctant to take on powerful individuals or institutions, especially when they might pay a price for doing so.

8. Be Willing to Admit When You’re Wrong, But Don’t Adopt a Defensive Crouch. Nobody writing on a controversial and contested subject is infallible, and you’re bound to make a mistake or two along the way. There’s no harm in admitting to errors when they occur; indeed, harm is done when you make a mistake and then try to deny it. More generally, however, it makes good sense to make your case assertively and not shy away from engaging your critics. In short, the best defense is a smart offense, even when you are acknowledging errors or offering a correction. For illustrations of how my co-author and I tried to do this, see here: http://hbpub.vo.llnwd.net/o16/video/olmk/setting_the_record_straight.pdf , and here http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a908660944&db=all , and here http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0047.pdf.

9. Challenging Orthodoxy Is a Form of “Asymmetric Conflict”: You Win By “Not Losing.” When someone challenges a taboo or takes on some well-entrenched conventional wisdom, his or her opponents invariably have the upper hand at first. They will seek to silence or discredit you as quickly as they can, so that your perspective, which they obviously won’t like, does not gain any traction with the public. But this means that as long as you remain part of the debate, you’re winning. Minds don’t change overnight, and it is difficult to know how well an intellectual campaign is going at any particular point in time. So get ready for an emotional roller coaster-some days you might think you’re winning big, while other days the deck will appear to be stacked against you. But the real question is: are you still in the game?

The good news is that if you have facts and logic on your side, your position is almost certain to improve over time. It is also worth noting that a protracted debate allows you to refine your own arguments and figure out better ways to refute your opponents’ claims. In brief, think of yourself as being engaged in a “long war,” and keep striving.

10. Don’t Forget to Feel Good about Yourself and the Enterprise in Which You Are Engaged.Waging a battle in which you are being unfairly attacked is hard work, and you will sometimes feels like Sisyphus rolling the proverbial stone endlessly uphill. But it can also be tremendously gratifying. You’ll wage the struggle more effectively if you find ways to keep your spirits up, and if you never lose sight of the worthiness of your cause. Keeping your sense of humor intact helps too; because some of the attacks you will face ar bound to be pretty comical. So while you’re out there slaying your chosen dragon, make sure you have some fun too.

Read the full article

Just ten days after a rowdy mob of protesters, egged on by a university administration that admonished the controversial U.S. writer Ann Coulter against “inappropriate” or hateful speech, won the University of Ottawa (unaffectionately known as the U of Zero) a reputation for censorship when Ottawa Police advised that the appearance be canceled rather than that they preserve law and order and free speech, Canada’s foremost free speech lawyer, Doug Christie, made a successful appearance before a packed standing room only meeting of 150. The meeting was organized by a number of free speech supporters and partially funded by the Canadian Association for Free Expression. Afterward, the audience listened with rapt attention and engaged the Battling Barrister in a lively discussion.

Notes for Doug Christie’s Speech
University of Ottawa, April 8, 2010

I’m here to talk about free speech. I’m not here to practice it.

Unlike Ann Coulter, I don’t need a warning from the provost. I am a Canadian, trained by law in the way of silence, sullen silence, and code language. I have been trained by the Supreme Court not to engage in hate speech, even though no one can define it in advance, so I can avoid it.

There are general taboo topics which I must avoid or tread lightly around, like race, religion, ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, mental or physical disability or mental status. Then there are peripheral taboo topics like multiculturalism, immigration, affirmative action programs and a host of other ill-defined topics.

I have been trained to remain very sensitive to the broad political implications of these topics lest I face a very expensive lesson from the Human Rights Tribunal.

What the Supreme Court taught me when I appeared in Taylor and Zundel and Keegstra was that free speech has its limits in “hate” which means “extreme dislike.” So presumably I must like all races, religions, ethnic origins, etc. equally or at least dislike them only moderately. Or at least pretend to, which is more Canadian. I cannot denounce any one as evil.

The Law Society, through its decision of Harvey Strosberg taught me that if I speak in public, “law students” may tape some but not all of my words, and the Chairman of the Discipline Committee can issue a statement to the media condemning me as “identifying with a lunatic fringe,” even in the very act where he decides not to give me the benefit of a hearing where I could answer the allegation with evidence where both sides could be heard.

I learned in McAleer and Malcolm Ross, both of which went to the Supreme Court of Canada, that expressing your religious beliefs on your own time, is no defence and placing the messages in the United States where it is legal, is no defence if you mention where you can get the message to someone in Canada.
I learned that our parliamentarians of all parties love free speech so much that they banned someone from the precincts of Parliament who wanted to rent the parliamentary press gallery, a place anyone can rent for a press conference.

What was the press conference about? That the Human Rights Tribunal had ruled in Zundel’s case that “Truth was no defence,” and the truth of the statement could not be proven by any evidence. I know because that someone was me, the only lawyer in Canadian history to be banned by all party agreement from the precincts of parliament. Because in Canada truth is no defence. Orwell was right about double speak. Randy White a so-called Reform MP said he did not want me in his work place. Orwell was right about a lot of things.

I have learned and been carefully taught to avoid the taboo topics, to measure every word lest a tape recorder in the audience be taken to the Human Rights Commission, the police, the Law Society, or someone likes to complain to the Human Rights Commission.
I have learned to talk about free speech but never practice it. Never say anything like Ann Coulter would say, coming from a free society. And being in a university setting is all the more reason to be very careful about how you choose your words. The left-wing political giants who run most universities are able to let loose the mob with a wink and the students know their success with many professors depends on how successfully they can entrap a political foe.

Universities are the most dangerous place to practice free speech. Even topics like abortion which you would not normally think involve a taboo topic can quickly be spun into forbidden territory and sexism can result in expulsion or criminal charges. The civility of universities is accorded to those who can mobilize the largest screaming mob. No one listens.

I have to even be careful how I speak about Freedom of Speech.

So let me just speak about freedom of speech. I have come here to praise freedom of speech, not to bury it. I do not want to be cynical or bitter. But since 1984 when I took up the cause of freedom, I have become aware of the price to be paid for this precious legacy of freedom.

My office has been vandalized, repeatedly; my name has been defamed in the press; I have been the target of spurious complaints to law societies, I have been banned from the precincts of parliament. The very press who today became the target of complaints themselves because they post on the internet, who have come late to the battle, because of their money and power, are turning the tide. They were not long ago in the forefront of the mob, vilifying my clients and myself, since it was not their ox that was gored.  Irony, thy name is Canada.

1984, the year Orwell entitled his most famous work was actually the year I got involved in the defence of James Keegstra. From that moment on, the lawyer who had defended successfully all manner of criminal cases from drugs to rape to murder and with no ill effects to his reputation other than professional jealousy became in the eyes of many, through the window of the media, a hated nazi-lawyer. This title, I have worn to this day, at first reluctantly and gradually resigned myself to it, knowing as “Human Rights” law tells us, “Truth is no defence.”

I would never be elected anywhere to anything. Any party would expel me, the right of left for fear of the media. I was warned this would happen. “Better alone than in the company of hypocrites,” I reasoned. There is one hope and that is that truth cannot be buried forever, and people will tell it come what may, even about race, religion, or ethnicity. There are some truths to be told on that score. They are the building blocks of culture and even the government of Quebec is recognizing this, even though they wrap it in convoluted language. Oops! I almost practiced free speech!

The best indication of what is the true value of free speech is provided by what happens when it is taken away. The thinking people become “bush league.” The first reaction to a controversial idea is not to hear the person about whom you heard, but to adopt the mob-mind view.

Left-wing, multicultural, tolerant, good. Right wing, xenophobic, intolerant, bad. A few code words and the mob takes the argument to the streets. The psychological guillotine cuts off debate and civility like the real guillotine cut off heads in Paris in the revolution till there were no heads to cut off. Everybody was at the same low level of passive, intellectual obedience to the omnipotent state. Then a forceful tyrant like Napoleon can impose his will with very little difficulty. Do we really have to go through these cycles of oppression, revolution, depression? Have we no intellect to listen for ourselves, evaluate for ourselves, accept or reject an idea with a civil attitude of tolerance? Do we need to have a hysterical violent reaction to every idea of a different perspective?

The Roman maxim: “Audi Alteram Partem” was over the door of the law library at McGill University where I once spoke. I entered through that doorway to face a hostile screaming mob, much like Ann Coulter faced. They had never met me. They could never hear me. Why did they reject me before hearing me? Why not hear both sides? Sometimes all sides need to be heard. Until they are, how can you really form an intelligent and informed opinion?

I believe the truth is that the idea of tolerance has been used as an Orwellian doublespeak smoke screen for intolerance and is really about narrowing the scope of debate before the debate begins. This is consistent with Marxism, but it is not consistent with liberalism or of constitutional principles of free speech. Certain topics cannot be discussed.

We don’t absolutely make it illegal to talk about certain subjects, we just make it so dangerous, with so many obscure and complex rules that no one dares to go there. Somewhat like gun laws. We don’t overtly ban all fire arms. No, we would find too much resistance and rational criticism. The hypocritical Canadian way is simply to regulate them out of existence, gradually, just like controversial speech. Hate laws mean whatever we say they mean. We will only tell you after you say something if you have offended. This is the process of gradual Marxism. The state gradually disarms the citizen of their weapons and their free speech by slow degrees so that absolute control both physical and mental will be with the state.

The other side of this equation is the enforcers, state agents, professional complainers, the enablers of state power. The people who go from politicians to judge or from politician to president of a University. They create a network of willing and compliant officials who can be counted on to cleverly manipulate and manage the progress from freedom, which they call “anarchy,” to the tyranny they call a “benevolent oligarchy.”

Thus they acquire through a system of servants and paid enforcers, through Human Rights Commissions and police forces the only persons authorized by law to break into your house, seize your computer, examine your files, your books, your speeches, your appearances and even your surreptitiously recorded comments as in the case of David Ahenakew.

They can ruin you. They can prosecute you. They can and will vilify you in the press. As was done to David Ahenakew and then even if you win, you still lose. You go through court for four years of stress and when you are finally acquitted, no one says “sorry” or pays your costs. On the contrary, they repeat in the media around the world the words of the judge condemning you in the very act of acquitting you.

And the state has all the guns, police, sheriffs, jails, probation officers, all paid by the state which you support with your taxes. If you want to be a paid bully, there’s a job for you. If you want to shoot people, just don’t say so, join the RCMP. If you want to taser people like Dziekanski, if you want to shoot teenagers like Ian Bush, or misfits like Jess Hughes, and never be charges, join the RCMP.

Just be sure you don’t admit what you did and the establishment will protect you. You are after all, protecting them. We are paying for our own enslavement. Only a few really know where we are going. The rest are following along for the ride, and the free lunch.

(Oops! Too much free speech!)

So if you want to carry on down the road to tyranny, just shout me down. If you want to go quietly into the night of tyranny, just ignore what I have said. Put it out of your mind and never think of it again. The legitimate function of the state is to preserve and maximize the freedom of the conscience, belief and opinion of the individual. It is not to enforce a social model of artificial cultural stew, enforced by law. We have inherent rights to survive as a free people only to the extent we articulate, manifest with rigorous debate and listen to all criticism with an enlightened and critical mind. Let us not presume we are possessed of all knowledge before the discussion starts, and set a limited agenda for social and acceptable speech.

Where once sex was a taboo topic, it has now become an obsession. Speech about race, if suppressed, becomes an obsession and if further suppressed, leads to violence. Let’s get debate out of the closet on all matters. Let’s use it, or we’ll lose it.

I have not said anything. More than anything, I have been allowed to speak here without interruption on the belief I would be ineffectual and secondly I would make the administration look better than the last speaker who was cancelled. I realized this at the beginning, but it is an opportunity to make the point that the redemption of an individual like me, or a society like your university, or of a country like Canada, is only possible if we listen to each other and talk openly about all of our serious and sensitive issues. Unless this really happens, Canada isn’t worth saving and neither is this university.

I will leave here knowing more than anyone in this room about the battles for free speech that have gone on in this country in the last thirty years. I see only minor changes occurring. This is your chance to ask what you need to know to make a difference.