Lipstadt discusses free speech on campus

At a recent Hillel sponsored Washington conference on "The University and the Jewish Community", Prof. Lipstadt was among the speakers who addressed the subject of free speech on campus. Inside Higher Ed has a report on the conference; here is an excerpt:

People of the Book (and the University)

[...]

Not all of the talk at the meeting was about broad issues of faith — much of it focused on the specifics of campus politics.

Deborah E. Lipstadt, director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University, led a discussion about how colleges should respond to incidents of “hate speech” against Jewish students. Lipstadt, who is considered one of the world’s leading experts on Holocaust deniers, noted that she is a strong supporter of unrestricted speech and that she opposes laws in some countries that limit the ability to argue or publish Holocaust-denying materials. “We have history on our side,” she said, and bans on Holocaust deniers turn them into “martyrs.” For similar reasons, she said she was very skeptical of attempts to regulate campus speech.

In some sense, everyone on the panel agreed, with all endorsing free speech. But some focused on other issues.

Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor known for his fierce defense of the First Amendment and his equally fierce devotion to Jewish causes, said in a video presentation that he is pretty close to being an “absolutist” on free speech issues on campuses. He said that he applauded the idea that campuses needed to have a “circle of civility” for discussion of tough issues. But he said that there needed to be “ism equity” when talking about which kinds of criticism would be tolerated in what way.

Dershowitz said that on many campuses, criticism of Arabs would be labeled harassment while equal criticism of Jews or of Israel would be considered protected free speech. He said that this “double standard” was wrong — and that campuses needed to treat all groups the same way. “You can’t have affirmative action on free speech.”

[...]

"The peculiar persistence of Holocaust denial"

Today's issue of the Baltimore Sun has an article in which Prof. Lipstadt and the Irving trial are cited. Here are some excerpts:

The peculiar persistence of Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial flies in the face of overwhelming evidence. Yet, decades after the Nazis' crimes, it continues -- and the president of Iran is merely its latest, and highest-profile, advocate.

By Arthur Hirsch
Sun reporter

May 21, 2006

When a three-day conference in Tehran on the future of the Palestinians ended last month, the few hundred militant leaders and their backers had heard speeches condemning Israel and pledging support for Hamas - but not, as many anticipated, any experts challenging evidence of the Holocaust. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he'd stage a conference of Holocaust skeptics, right around the time he referred to the mass murder of European Jews during World War II as a "myth."

Ahmadinejad may be the first president of a country to challenge the Holocaust, allying himself with an array of claims viewed among serious historians in much the same light as the case for a flat Earth. He seemed to soften that a bit during the April meeting, referring to his "serious doubt" that the Nazis killed 5 million to 6 million Jews.

If the Iranian president does convene a conference challenging Holocaust evidence - a former Iranian foreign minister said it is still being planned - he'll step into what scholars describe as a parallel universe, an arena of minutiae and semantic gamesmanship where the weight of historical evidence is never so great that it cannot be dismissed with a fine point, even if the point has been willfully or innocently misconstrued.

[...]

Deborah E. Lipstadt, who teaches modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta, published one of the early books on the phenomenon in 1993 only after overcoming strong impulses to ignore Irving and others, hoping they would go away. In Denying the Holocaust, she insists deniers are racist extremists who demand attention not for the merit of the ideas but "because of the fragility of reason and society's susceptibility of such farfetched notions. Many powerful movements have been founded by people living in similar irrational wonderlands, national socialism foremost among them."

[...]

The tendency to see the Holocaust as propaganda aiding Jewish causes has run through this form of extreme "revisionism" at least since the Frenchman Paul Rassinier published The Drama of European Jewry in 1964. The gas chambers, he said, were an invention of the "Zionist establishment."

When Ahmadinejad threatens Israel in one breath and in the next calls the Holocaust a "myth," he echoes a familiar song. How it's playing, and what his remarks do for the cause of the likes of Irving, is hard to say.

[IHR's Mark] Weber certainly does not seem enthusiastic about the remarks, saying Ahmadinejad is not a historian and should keep these thoughts to himself.

Next to the Irving trial outcome, Lipstadt says Ahmadinejad is the deniers' "worst nightmare ... I don't think it helps."

Ahmadinejad's intended audience is clearly not the world's academic historians, but Lipstadt figures that his remarks do say something significant about the leader of a country that apparently has serious nuclear aspirations.

"Some say he's crazy," says Lipstadt. "I say he's crazy like a fox."

Reaction to Latest Austrian Holocaust Denial Trial

The BBC has posted an European press review on the latest Holocaust denial trial in Austria.

Holocaust denier

Austria's Der Standard praises a court decision to hand down a suspended one-year prison term to a former politician for playing down the Holocaust.

John Gudenus, a former member of Austria's upper house, was tried for suggesting that the existence of gas chambers in the Third Reich should be verified. Later he said there had been gas chambers in Poland but not in the Third Reich.

The paper argues that these two remarks are "cynical and humiliating and show contempt for the Verbotsgesetz", Austria's Holocaust denial law.

"He has rightly been convicted for this," it says.

The paper adds, however, that comparisons with Holocaust denier David Irving, who was jailed for three years by an Austrian court in February, are not warranted.

It feels that while David Irving has caused "great ideological damage", John Gudenus is more of a marginal figure who has "learned absolutely nothing from history".

Austria's Die Presse agrees that the two cases are different.

The paper observes that David Irving has written books and "is admired as an icon" in neo-Nazi circles.

John Gudenus, on the other hand, is regarded as an "eccentric", it adds.

The paper believes that, as a result, the jurors did not take him seriously, and "this helped Gudenus in court".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4949254.stm

Published: 2006/04/27 03:09:12 GMT

© BBC MMVI

A moving moment: Visiting with Paola Castagno

As readers of this blog know, I have just returned from a few months in Rome. While there I made contact with Paola Castagno who wrote me a very moving email after my trial. Below is the story of that enconter.

About a week after I arrived in Rome I began trying to find Paola Castagno. Paola is the young woman who sent me the incredibly moving email which I include in my book. She talked about her grandfather Aldo having been in Auschwitz for 8 months and that “he didn’t say me nothing about it.”

I sent her an email but heard nothing. The email did not come back. So I tried again. Still no response. Then I asked Flavia, our secret weapon, to help. She sent her an email in Italian. I am not sure if it was Flavia’s email that did it, but shortly thereafter she called the office.

I immediately called her and she said she would try to come to Rome. Turns out she lives in Torino [Turin]. My student Syliva Haya, who works in the Roman Jewish archives, told me that Castagno was not a Jewish name. So we began to surmise that either Aldo has not been Jewish or that he was her mother’s father and that her mother had married someone named Castagno, who was not Jewish.

A few days later I received an email that she was coming down from Torino with her mother and would arrive in the afternoon. Since the trip is about 5-6 hours, I figured that they would stay overnight. Turned out that they were planning to go back that evening. So, in essence, they were making a 10 hour train ride for a three hour visit.

They were coming on a Tuesday when I teach. It was the day we were scheduled to discuss Primo Levi’s Se Questo e un Uomo [If this is man]. I told her we would be doing so. She emailed me that she was excited about being there for that.

I told them to have the receptionist call me when they arrived. I immediately went down to find them. As soon as I walked into the area I spotted her. She is a tall, dark haired, long legged beautiful young woman with large dark eyes. Her mother is also a beautiful woman. She has a great spirit about her – but I knew that from the fact that she went to the trouble to find my email address after the trial and wrote me that beautiful email.

We got some coffee and I showed her that I had included her email in my book. She was touched. Her mother seemed quite proud. Turned out that Aldo was not Jewish and that they truly know virtually nothing about his Auschwitz experience or even why he was deported. It is obviously a big hole in their lives.

The mother brought a picture of Aldo. He was a stunningly handsome man. The picture was taken about six or seven months after he came back from Auschwitz.

At one point I asked her if she came to Rome often. She said, a bit sheepishly, that this was her first trip. People from Piedmont go North she said jokingly. She has traveled much – London, Germany, France, Oslo – but not Rome. I told that she was a couple of blocks from the Coliseum and the Roman Forum and since she had shlepped so far to see me, I felt obligated to show them some of Rome. So on this bright, beautiful late winter/early spring day we walked over to these ancient sites. I gave her a “tour.” We laughed at how the American was showing the Italian Roman history.

Paola told me how in life he suffered terribly from stomach problems which he attributed to his time in the camp and the terribly poor nutrition there. She stressed how he never told them anything. She described how she would ask him to come to her class to describe his experiences, as other Italian survivors did, but he refused adamantly. Every April 25^th, the day on which the Italians mark the Holocaust, he would sit in front of the TV and cry. When she talked about it was as if she was relieving it.

I was struck by the fact that she talked in the present tense and as if she had personally experienced. “When he came back he was so much sadder than when he went.” “When he came back he was so much skinnier.”

When we returned to the Gregg [the University] a TV crew was waiting to film me. They had already done an interview and wanted some shots of me in front of the school and in my class. The reporter, who had attended my talk and read my book, knew about Paola. She was touched to meet her.

In the class we talked about Levi’s experience. A number of things struck me: First of all, we were discussing Levi in 3^rd person, not dispassionately but certainly analytically. For them it was Aldo’s experience. We were discussing the author of this important work. They were hearing Aldo’s story.

Secondly, it also struck me that technically one could say that Aldo was not part of the Holocaust per se. After all, he and his entire family were not destined for death, as Jews would have been. Paola and her mother know he “did” something but did not know what it was. For a Jew it was not a matter of “doing” something, it was simply because they were Jews. Yet watching them sit there listening – with tears in their eyes – to our discussion of Levi’s experience, I realized that while my distinction was historically correct on a personal level it was somewhat irrelevant.

It was a brief but moving moment.

New Holocaust Denial Trials

From Ha'aretz:

John Gudenus, a former legislator in Austria's upper house of parliament, was sentenced on 26 April 2006 to a suspended one-year prison term for denying aspects of the Holocaust. Gudenus had declared in April 2005, during an Austrian television interview, that the existence of gas chambers in the Third Reich should be "seriously debated." Later he amended his remarks to say that "there were gas chambers, though not in the Third Reich but in Poland." According to Austrian law, Gudenus could have faced up to 10 years in prison for denying the Holocaust had he been found guilty by the eight-member panel of jurors.

Two weeks earlier, on 11 April 2006 Spanish Holocaust denier Pedro Varela was arrested in his bookstore Libreria Europa in central Barcelona and hundreds of books denying or minimizing the Holocaust were seized by the police. After posting bail, Varela was released. He may be subject to 5 years in prison if convicted. On 16 November 1998 Varela was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment, Spain's first conviction for Holocaust denial.

Sources: Ha’aretz, 26 April 2006; rense.com, 16 April 2006; Journal of Historical Review, 1998

German Plans to Bring Holocaust to Palestine

For this chilling, but not surprising, news story, see http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060407/wl_nm/germany_holocaust_palestine_dc_1

Katrina vanden Heuvel in Washington Post:"Stop Using Hitler analogies"

A group of scholars of the Holocaust -- myself included -- have sent a letter to the Washington Post supporting an op-ed by Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the liberal political newsweekly The Nation, who offered what she called “A modest proposal for improving national political discussion”: a “cease-fire” on Nazi analogies.

David Irving as a metaphor for ignorance

The opening line of a review of in the Music Express, a London based publication reads as follows:

"Aside from the deaf or those in a level of denial up there with David Irving's idiot pronouncements on the Holocaust, everyone's aware that we live in great times for music."

http://www.nme.com/reviews/be-your-own-pet/7895

This clearly demonstrates that Irving is being subjected to the worst fate of all for someone who so desperately wants to be taken seriouly: ridicule.

Humor is a wonderful weapon

As I have said before on this blog, humor is a wonderful way of exposing the idiocy of your opponents arguments. Charlie Chaplain and Mel Brooks knew that in their powerful riffs on Hitler.

And now a Swiss cartoonist whose work was reprinted in the International Hearld Tribune has done the same to the Iranian president.

I am unable right now to post a link to it but it essentially showed the Iranian president Ahminajead at a meeting of the IAEA [Int. Atomic Energy Commission] and saying: I would like to announce the Hisoshima cartoon contest. The other people present have their heads in their hands.

It is a commentary on how he and -- to some degree his country -- have become the laughing stock of the world.

Holocaust denier Rbert Faurisson outreach to the Iranians on a White supremacist website

For a long rambling but revealing letter by Robert Faurisson see the website of Storm Front.org, a White power and rather revolting website. Fauri

Faurisson is full of priase for the Iranian effort to deny the Holocaust.

For those of you not in the "know" on these matters [and be happy you are not], Faurisson is the same man who declared that the Diary of Anne Frank must be a hoax because it's written in green ball point pen. It's not.

His many other claims are equally trustworthy.

A no-holds barred attack on me....

Some people have asked about some of the attack mail I receive. I thought, therefore, that I would post the following. It really calls for no comment, except that it says a lot about the mental state of the author.

The author threatens to publicize her email to millions of people, unless I apologize to Arthur Butz of Northwestern among others. I thought I would help her out by posting it here.

Actually, two things deserve comment. Even I, who am rarely surprised by these things, find myself a bit gob smacked at the correspondent's use of the murder of Ilan Halimi as proof of the world's awakening against the Jews.

In fact, I would have assumed that even virulent antisemites would try to distance themselves from this terribly gruesome act. It reveals a side of the antisemites that does their efforts no good.

And secondly, please note, that for someone who declares herself to not be an antisemite, she hardly misses any of the antisemitic canards.

Clearly not one of the sharper knives in the drawer.....

Dear Ms. Lipstadt,

I am appauled at your disgusting and one-sided attack of Dr. Arthur Butz at Northwestern University on FOX News. Have you no shame!! Although I am not anti-semitic, your Jewish greed is overbearing and crippling. The world is beginning to see the collective Jewish attempt to control the world economy and world media.

In fact, the recent arrest of Dr. Irving in Austria shows that European Jews are scared.

Another example: the recent killing of the French Jew raises interesting questions. There is no doubt that the world is beginning to feel the oppression of Jewish greed.

Why have attacks on Jews been increasing in Europe and Russia? Why is the Jewish media pressuring the arrest of people speaking out against the extent of the Holocaust? Why have the Jews written all major history books for! our young children to become indoctrinated with? Why have thousands of Palestians been slaughtered yet Jews will not accept the Palestian holocaust? Two-faced?

Why have the Jews created laws making freedom of speech a crime? Is it merely chance? Fortunately, you know the answer. Please call up Dr. Butz and extend your deepest apology!!

Please call Mr. O'Reilly and extend your apology!! Please write a letter to all students, faculty and Americans extending your apology!! Remember what you say... those who forget history are bound to repeat it.

Have you no intellect? The world Jews are doing exactly what the Romans did 2,000 years ago: they got arrogant, stupid and overextended their luck. By the end of the Roman empire, they had more enemies than allies. STOP your exaggeration of the Holocaust to simply get more $$$.

The world is catching on sister!! I ! have a feeling that you will probably not extend you apologies to the above mentioned individuals. Thus, let me do it for you. As you know, the internet is a beautiful thing. I will extend this e-mail to your president and faculty, to individuals of interest, to hundreds on my e-mail address list and have them send it to thousands more. Hopefully, within 5 days tens of thousands will read this e-mail. Good day...

[In a fashion that is typical of the people who send these kinds of attacks, the whole email was one long paragraph. I broke it down into shorter ones. I figured the stuff is hard enough to read as is... why make it any harder for the readers of this blog. Other than that, it is precisely as I received it.]

Lipstadt in Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/search/aggregate.html#

David Irving's 'Bit of Fun' -- Who's Laughing?
Wall St. Journal

March 4, 2006; Page A9

I agree with much of your Feb. 24 editorial "Defending the Indefensible¹" (Taste page, Weekend Journal) regarding David Irving. Censorship laws are not efficacious, especially when, as is clearly the case with Holocaust denial, the fight can be won with history, evidence, and the truth. During Mr. Irving's libel suit against me, his Holocaust denial claims collapsed when we tracked his sources and found all of them predicated on lies and fabrications.

I must disagree, however, with your statement that, as a result of jailing him, "Austria has forced serious people to come to the principled defense of a detestable man." I disagree. David Irving knew there was a warrant for his arrest. Yet he went to Austria anyway, announcing his visit on the Internet. According to his wife, Mr. Irving thought it would "be a bit of fun, to provoke a little bit." He assumed that, if the Austrians arrested him they would release him with a slap on the wrist. He had even booked a first-class ticket home for Monday night, the day of the trial. Spectators report that he looked "stunned" when his little prank resulted in a three-year sentence. Given that this was a lark designed to provoke the Austrian authorities, and that he could have voiced his protest without entering that country, I am not sure why serious people should feel compelled to make a principled defense of him.

I have repeatedly criticized the notion of Holocaust denial laws, but I have no intention of defending someone who is not only an anti-Semite and a racist, but who goes out of his way to get himself in trouble.

Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ph.D.
Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies
Emory University
Atlanta

March 21: At the Gregoiran Pontifical Institute in Rome

If you happen to find yourself in Rome on 21 March you are invited to attend my lecture at the Gregorian Pontifical Institute:
http://www.unigre.it/pug/eventi/2006/20060321.pdf

La presente per invitarVi alla conferenza dal titolo "The Holocaust: From Memoirs to Material Evidence - How Can We Know and Understand What Happened" della Prof.ssa Deborah Lipstadt della Emory University di Atlanta (USA). La conferenza, in lingua inglese, si terrà martedì, 21 marzo, 2006 alle ore 16.00 nell'Aula delle Tesi (C012) della Pontificia Università Gregoriana.

In allegato la locandina dell'invito.

Con la speranza che possiate partecipare e con preghiera di massima diffusione, Vi inviamo i nostri più cordiali saluti,


Prof. Joseph Sievers, Direttore
Sr. Lucy Thorson, nds, program planning
Ms. Flavia Galiani, Segretaria

Centro "Cardinal Bea" per gli Studi Giudaici
Pontificia Università Gregoriana
Piazza della Pilotta, 4
00187 Roma - Italia
Tel. +39/06-6701-5522
[ mailto:judaicstudies@unigre.it ]judaicstudies@unigre.it
[ http://www.unigre.it ]www.unigre.it

Attacks on Lipstadt for references to Armenian genocide: Part 2

I am not looking for any kudos for the little I have done.

At the risk of being accused of "protesting too much," I don't want folks to think I am looking for praise. I am not.

I just wonder why that attacks?

Now I shall go back to enjoying the beauty of Florence, where I am lectuing on Monday p.m.

Attacks on Lipstadt for references to Armenian genocide

There have been a number of people -- including those whose comments I have posted on this blog -- who have attacked me for being concerned "only" with the Armenian genocide.

When other folks have taken them on, e.g. the Artyom Reader, and said that I was being unfairly attacked, my critics have responded by saying things such as "it’s sad that some people feel the need to go and bow in front of people like Lipstadt just because she mentioned the ‘Armenian genocide’.

Though these negative comments have not come from a lot of people, they have been pretty voiciferous in their critiques of me. [Some were so obnoxious that I stupidly deleted them, which I now regret doing.]

I find this all very strange. A simple Google search of lipstadt + Armenian will bring up a number -- though certainly not all - my references to and comments, many of the quite public, about the Turkish denial of the genocide of the Armenians.

Some of my statements have even been posted on Armenian websites, placed in the Congressional Record, and reported on at top American universities, e.g. Princeton.

Given this easily accessible record, I can only assume that there is another motive behind these attacks. But what is it?

I have to wonder. It seems there is another agenda here but I can't figure out what it is.

Arson at the Holocaust HIstory Project

Someone -- and the authorities are sure it was deliberate --- tried to burn down the offices of the thhp causing over a million dollars of damage. This is not the first time that thhp has been targetted. The project does great work and this attempt is quite disturbing. The following press release on the fire has just been released:

Trial By Fire: Holocaust History Project Won't Be Silenced


In the early hours of March 6, 2006, a fire broke out at a warehouse complex near San Antonio International Airport, causing extensive damage to the offices of The Holocaust History Project (THHP), an organization that has been, for the last ten years, in the forefront of confronting Holocaust denial online, in addition to providing educational materials to students throughout the world. Arson investigators now have confirmed that the fire was intentionally set and are continuing their investigation.


It was just the latest in a series of attacks with the apparent intent to silence THHP. For the past 18 months, the THHP website has been under an unprecedented Distributed Denial of Service attack. This cyber attack began on September 11, 2004, and is being carried out by a specially modified version of the MyDoom computer worm, programmed to target the THHP web server. (see the THHP statement: [ http://holocaust-history.org/denial/denial-of-service.shtml ]http://holocaust-history.org/denial/denial-of-service.shtml)


Harry Mazal, the Director of THHP said, "We have been able to defend our work against these cyber attackers. They tried, but couldn't shut us down. We have strong indications that this arson is the next step in a series of attacks against our educational and scholarly work. Although the fire caused significant damage to our offices, there is no way we will be silenced. Our web site has not been affected, and our work will continue."


While an arson attack such as this cannot be specifically anticipated, THHP has long ago taken steps to minimize the impact of any attacks, physical or virtual. Several mirror sites ensure that even as serious an attack as occurred Monday morning will be unsuccessful in forcing THHP to go offline.


Background:


THHP ([ http://holocaust-history.org/ ]http://holocaust-history.org) is one of the largest repositories of information relating to the Holocaust on the Web. For the last ten years, an international staff of volunteers has worked tirelessly to make information on the Holocaust, and on those who would deny it, easily accessible to students, scholars, and anyone who has an interest in the truth.


Among the material on the site are essays about various events and people, scientific and legal analyses, original Nazi documents, expert witness testimony, transcripts of many of the Nuremberg trials, and the complete texts of two seminal works, Jean-Claude Pressac's "Auschwitz" and Robert Jay Lifton's "The Nazi Doctors." In addition, THHP volunteers personally answer emails from thousands of students each year who are looking for information to further their studies.


The site registers more than 50 million hits a year. "Traffic to our site increases every year," said Mr. Mazal, "we intend to keep adding new content to the site. Right now we are preparing the Belsen trial transcripts, and the transcript of Adolf Eichmann's trial in Israel."


The Holocaust History Project Internet site may be reached at
[ http://www.holocaust-history.org/ ]http://www.holocaust-history.org.

Media questions should be addressed to Sara Salzman, 303-617-9412, [ mailto:media@holocaust-history.org ]media@holocaust-history.org







###

Neteurei Karta rabbis visit Iran

According to the Mehr [Iranian] news service, two Neturei Karta rabbis visited Iran "to set the record straight" about the difference between Judaism and Zionism.

Maybe while they are there they can also set the record straight about the Holocaust. Methinks, they lost some folks in that tragedy.

Dissenting from Iran's Holocaust denial: The voice of the moderate Muslim

I mused in my previous post whether the Holocaust denial in certain Muslim quarters and the violent reaction by Muslims in many parts of the world to the Danish cartoons might not prompt moderate Muslims to feel freeer to speak out in dissent.

Would they not feel even more motivated to differentiate their world view from that of adherents to Islamicism, i.e. reactionay Islam.

Such seemed to be the situation in the case of the "Manifesto," which , as I have noted was signed by a number of self professed moderate Muslims.

Such also seems to be the case, according to Deutsche Welle, among certain Muslims in Germany who are distressed by the Iranian presidents outright Holocaust denial. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1907670,00.htmls

Manifesto on Islamism: signed by Rushdie, Bernard Henri-Levi, and other Europeans

A manifesto [that is apparently the term used by the signatories] signed by leading European intellectuals and writers including Bernard Henri Levy and Rushdie has been issued in Paris. It attacks Islamism which it defines as “reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism.”

It declares that "After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global threat: Islamism."

Their concerns were aroused by the violent reaction to the Danish cartoons Many Europeans, as exemplified by these intellectuals, see the violent reaction to the cartoons as exemplifying the threat to Europe from adherents to Islamism who, the intellectuals believe, lack fidelity to democratic values.

Not all Muslims share these views, but the signatories worry about those who do. It should be noted that the signatories included a number of self-professed Muslim moderates who worry that their religion is being hijacked by extremists.

While this has not gotten great press, it may well be the beginning of a trend among moderate Muslims who are less afraid to speak out. Maybe the completely out of proportion reaction to the cartoons and the fact that there is has been a far greater outcry about the violence of the reactions than about the cartoons themselves, have given the moderates a feeling that this is a moment that must be seized.

Portland State Univesity Vanguard on Irving sentence

Riggs Fulmer, writing in the Portland State Vanguard, issues another ringing defense of freedom of speech.

He cites my position that opposes Holocaust denial laws correctly. However, he misstates my position when he says that I don't think Holocaust denial is a form of antisemitism. That it is, without doubt.

He also fails to understand the national context. As I said in the previous post, the same words, costumes, and symbols have different meanings in different contexts.

I must say that I continue to be amazed at the column inches this is getting