Getting Out The Word
Revisionist Radio Talk Show Tackles Important Issues
Radio talk show host Jim Floyd has been regularly delighting listeners across northern Alabama with an array of stimulating revisionist guests and his own probing questions and hard-hitting commentary. “The Jim Floyd Show” is broadcast every weekday morning, Monday through Friday, normally for one hour, 8–9 a.m. over station WAJF (Decatur), and simulcast on WHRT radio (Hartselle).
Recent guests have included:
• Prof. Tony Martin, who became a victim of threat and intimidation because he dealt with the historic Jewish role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade during a Wellesley College survey course;
• Rev. Dale Crowley, who has campaigned against anti-Christian propaganda at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum;
• Issah Nakleh, Palestinian historian and 1981 IHR Conference speaker;
• Paul Findley, former Illinois Congressman and outspoken critic of America’s dangerously pro-Zionist Middle East policy; and,
• IHR adviser Friedrich Berg.
On June 3, Journal editor Mark Weber appeared as a guest, along with IHR advisor Robert Countess, for more than an hour. Noting the attention being given to the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landing in France, Weber spoke about media distortion of Second World War history. He also commented on the destructive military adventurism of recent American presidents, and discussed war propaganda generally. Jim Floyd’s well-informed questions showed that he had done considerable background reading.
With the daily “Jim Floyd Show” in Alabama, and Brad Smith’s recently inaugurated weekly radio program in Rhode Island, there are now at least two regularly scheduled radio programs through which revisionist views routinely reach the American public.
University Officials Block Talk by Prof. Butz
Just two hours before it was scheduled to begin, Northwestern University officials used chicanery to cancel a student-organized campus presentation by Associate Professor Arthur Butz, a prominent Holocaust revisionist.
School administrators barred the May 9 semi-formal “fireside” meeting on the pretext that the Public Affairs Residential College (PARC) dorm where it was to take place would immediately have to pay $1,500 from its “Student Organizations Finance Office” (SOFO) account to hire eleven security officers. Even though a member of the faculty, Prof. Charles Thompson, announced that he was willing to pay the required amount himself, the dean of the university college, Donald Collins, insisted that the money could only come from the SOFO account.
Dr. Butz is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois). He is a member of this Journal’s Editorial Advisory Committee and author of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, a major work disputing the orthodox Holocaust extermination story. The text of his address at the 1992 IHR Conference was published in the May-June 1993 Journal.
Dr. Thompson, a professor of industrial engineering, said he believed that the last-minute SOFO qualification requirement was part of the university’s “campaign of intimidation” to prevent Butz from presenting his revisionist views about the Holocaust story.
Dan Prosterman and Bob Fabsik, two sophomore students who had worked to organize the “fireside” meeting, said that in light of the university’s actions, they had no choice but to cancel the event. “It was very embarrassing for Bob and I to cancel,” said Prosterman. “But [Butz] was not as upset as I thought he would be.” (The Daily Northwestern, May 10.)
“He [Butz] said that this was the closest that he'd ever gotten” to addressing a meeting on campus about his revisionist views, said Prosterman, who also expressed anger at the University’s last-minute financial requirement. “We are extremely upset at the way the university handled the event,” he said. “A lot of the strife and conflict that has gone on in the dorm between us, and the dorm and the community could have been avoided.”
PARC dorm students complained that the Butz meeting was cancelled because of a technicality. “If the administration had told us up front that we would have had to use SOFO funds, we never would have considered” organizing the meeting, said Prosterman.
Even though Butz did not speak, about 120 demonstrators rallied against him and Holocaust revisionism on the evening of the cancelled meeting. The protest rally was organized jointly by the Hillel Jewish student group and the International Socialist Organization (ISO), a Marxist group. Hillel Rabbi Michael Balinsky addressed the rally and thanked the demonstrators.
Peggy Barr, the university’s vice president for student affairs, attended the Jewish-Marxist demonstration, and said she was pleased that the Butz meeting had been cancelled. ISO member Joel Geier, told demonstrators that Butz “used to be just a kook that this university was stupid enough to protect, and now we see the rise of fascism once again. Why does the faculty still rub shoulders with him?”
The bigoted university action apparently does not reflect the sentiment of most students. A survey conducted in connection with the controversy showed that an overwhelming majority of Northwestern University students — 72 percent of those polled — believe that Prof. Butz should be allowed to speak on campus. (Northwestern Chronicle, May 27).
Editor Addresses Populist Party Meeting
Journal editor Mark Weber addressed the national convention of the Populist Party in West Palm Beach (Florida) on May 21. He was introduced by Don Wassall, chairman of the struggling dissident political group. Among the other speakers was Jim Townsend, editor-publisher of the National Educator, a weekly paper that has often supported the IHR.
Idaho Television Poll Shows Widespread Skepticism about Holocaust Story
Smith and Weber on “Schindler’s List” Discussion
A recent poll conducted by an Idaho television station shows that one in four participants reject the Holocaust extermination story.
On the evening of March 22, Twin Falls (Idaho) television station KKVI (an ABC network affiliate) aired a special report and discussion program devoted to Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust movie “Schindler’s List.” A three minute telephone interview with Journal editor Mark Weber, which had been recorded the day before, was aired as part of the program. In addition, CODOH chairman Brad Smith appeared by telephone hookup as a live guest, along with a World War II veteran. Mention was made during the broadcast of the appearance of Weber and Smith two days earlier on the CBS television network’s “60 Minutes” program. (For more about that, see the May-June 1994 Journal.)
Shar Alexander, who conducted the interview with Weber, later said that she was very pleased with the public response to the program, which she described as “wonderful.” People were still talking about it a week later, she said.
Viewers of the KKVI television report and discussion were invited to respond to a telephone poll organized by the station. (Viewers can call a telephone number and, by using a touch tone phone, vote Yes or No.) The question was: “Do you believe that the Holocaust really occurred?” Alexander said that she and the others at the station were astonished by the viewer response: One out of four voted No.
Holocaust Skeptic Almost Wins US Congress Nomination
A New Jersey man who is openly skeptical of the Holocaust extermination story recently almost became the Democratic Party’s candidate for US Congress in the state’s 11th District. Receiving 48 percent of the vote, John L. Kucek — a 67-year-old Certified Public Accountant, US Army veteran, and former business manager — barely lost the June 7 primary election race.
“I do not believe that there was any deliberate extermination plot against Jews or anyone else,” said Journal subscriber Kucek during an interview last fall. “The Auschwitz so-called gas chambers are documented to have been a fabrication.” In a more recent interview, he said: “If there were 400,000 survivors of the concentration camps, and over four million Jewish survivors collecting reparations from the German government … Apparently, there couldn’t have been six million who died.” ("Holocaust skeptic is likely nominee for Congress,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 30.)
Kucek, who was denounced for his views by Jewish leaders and regular Democratic party leaders, describes himself as a “traditional Democrat in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Al Smith.” Kucek favors sharp limitations on immigration. He has cited “distorted” and “vicious” media coverage as major reasons for his defeat.
Weber Heard in Los Angeles
A portion of a previously-recorded interview with Journal editor Mark Weber was broadcast April 13 over Los Angeles radio station KFI, one of the most widely heard in the western United States. Hundreds of thousands heard Weber talking about the “victimization” phenomenon whereby various racial-ethnic groups cite a record of past persecution to claim moral standing in our society.
From the Journal of Historical Review, July/August, 1994; vol. 14 no. 4: p. 42.