Once more, Hoffman vs Faurisson
In May of this year, in a 3-page text, I happened to write: “Today those active in revisionist research or diffusion are very few. We may cite mainly Walter Mueller, Ingrid Rimland, Germar Rudolf (helped by his friend Jürgen Graf in Russia), Michael Santomauro and Bradley Smith in the United States, Heinz Koppe in Canada, Fredrick Toben in Australia, Carlo Mattogno in Italy, Jean Plantin in France, Vincent Reynouard in Belgium, Ahmed Rami and Serge Thion on the Internet.”
On August 14 Michael Hoffman commented on those few lines in an article entitled “Faurisson Suppresses Record of Revisionist Activists.” Here is his text (the emphasis in boldface is mine).
According to information in an e-mail of Aug. 12, 2004 from the Adelaide Institute, Dr. Robert Faurisson, in his “Foreword (May 2004)” lists “…mainly Walter Mueller, Ingrid Rimland, Germar Rudolf (helped by his friend Jurgen Graf in Russia), Michael Santomauro and Bradley Smith in the United States…” as active U.S. revisionists.
Michael A. Hoffman II, author of “The Great Holocaust Trial”, publisher of “Revisionist History” Newsletter and operator of the RevisionistHistory.org website, is excluded from Dr. Faurisson’s list, along with such American revisionist notables as Dr. Arthur R. Butz, author of “The Hoax of the 20th Century,” Hans Schmidt, publisher of Ganpac newsletter, and Mark Weber of the IHR.
Robert Faurisson is a giant in the history of revisionist scholarship who has suffered horribly for revisionist convictions which, to his credit, he has never recanted. In view of this, it is most unfortunate that he has chosen to invalidate other revisionists’ contribution to revisionism. In my own case, Dr. Faurisson’s deliberate omission compounds a boycott against this writer exacerbated by Walter Mueller, a petty intriguer who launched a vicious, public campaign of libel merely because I asked his associate to have the courtesy not to distribute their newspaper inside our Coeur d’Alene post office. For that “mortal sin,” I was publicly libelled by Mueller. My defense against the libel was censored by Mueller, who has never dared to publish anything I have written in its entirety. Now Mr. Mueller, whose claim to fame is the circulation of an Internet gossip column which practices censorship and character assassination, has been promoted to the status of leading American revisionist by Dr. Faurisson.
Last Fall I debated my long-time colleague Dr. Faurisson in an exchange of letters (“Human Rights, not Reich” online at http://www.revisionisthistory.org/revisionist13.html). It’s obvious – at least to me anyway – that Robert is now anointing revisionist leaders on the personal basis of where they stand with regard to the dogmas of Robert Faurisson. By this ecclesiastical criterion, if you assent to Faurisson’s dogma, you are “active in revisionist research and diffusion,” if not, then you are persona non grata. Carlo Mattogno and Henri Roques, two eminent revisionist scholars, found this out the hard way.
Dr. Faurisson writes a “sombre appraisal” of revisionism. What is truly sombre and what must give us pause, is the ad hominem nature of Prof. Faurisson’s characterization of the revisionist movement. He seems to have completely lost his objectivity. For example, I have not failed to list Mark Weber as a revisionist historian who has been excluded from Robert’s list of active American revisionists, in spite of the fact that Mr. Weber is no friend of mine. By the same token, if Walter Mueller ran a genuine revisionist news service that included rather than excluded revisionists, I would cite him for that accomplishment. Instead, Mr. Mueller behaves as does Faurisson – one obtains cachet as a revisionist in Mr. Mueller’s gossip column by being a friend of Mr. Mueller, not on the basis of one’s achievements as a revisionist. This is a ruinous standard of measurement which, if allowed to spread, will reduce the revisionist movement to a personality cult.
I am confident that a new revisionist movement will eventually emerge from the tired, stale, personality-driven version we are saddled with today. Re/Vision is a method, not an “ism.” It was developed by Harry Elmer Barnes and Paul Rassinier among others, but pioneered in terms of epistemology, by Charles Hoy Fort. The revisionist epistemology cannot be contained within the perimeters of homicidal gas chamber revision, for it encompasses the whole field of human endeavor. For example, after having authored “The Great Holocaust Trial” (the only revisionist book about the first Zundel trial in 1985), I turned my sights on bonded labor in early America, after I apprehended that the notion that blacks were the only chattel slaves in American history was also a hoax. My revisionist history book, “They Were White and They Were Slaves: The Untold History of the Enslavement of Whites in Early America” was the result. I am the author of six books, including a revisionist study of Judaism (“Judaism’s Strange Gods”) and my seventh will be a revisionist history of Islam.
I don’t know how many books my detractors have written or what they have done besides live off the fat of their mouths, but it is somewhat outrageous that this writer’s ongoing contribution to revisionist activism has been sent down the memory hole. Furthermore, Robert has been very harsh and intemperate over the years in his estimation of David Irving, Charles Provan, Mattogno and any others who he believes have failed his de facto Jesuit criterion that error has no rights. If Dr. Faurisson regards a researcher as having erred by dissenting from a plank of the Faurisson Dogma, then even if that person is the author of dozens of seminal revisionist histories such as David Irving, or operates revisionist websites, publishes revisionist newsletters, loses a livelihood and the ability to support a family by refusing to recant his revisionist principles, then, nonetheless, that person’s status as a revisionist will be suppressed by Robert Faurisson. Is this not a type of falsification?
Do we remain silent in the face of such falsification because it emanates from one of our own, someone who has become, in his own mind, the grand arbiter of who is and who is not a revisionist? Can one imagine the “Encyclopedia of Revisionists” as edited by Faurisson? It would be a slim volume indeed, bearing some resemblance to the quondam, constantly redacted Soviet encyclopedia, where activists and colleagues disappeared with alarming alacrity.
Mr Hoffman need not worry. If he reads my words carefully, he will realise that I simply talked about those who in May 2004 were active in revisionist research or diffusion. Of course, by “revisionist” I meant revisionism of the “Holocaust” hoax. Specifying “One may mention, principally“, I mentioned thirteen names, including that of Carlo Mattogno. I surely could have given a few more names (Claus Nordbruch, Carlos Porter, Hans Schmidt,) or instead still fewer – as I had done in my original French version. That mention did not mean that I agreed with the way each one of those thirteen revisionists was fighting the Big Lie. I might even disagree with some of them but I had to be fair in naming those courageous people still able to carry on actively on our side in spite of all our defeats. Now, if I had to edit an Encyclopedia of “Holocaust” Revisionists, I should mention more than one hundred names, including M. Hoffman’s, especially for his having published nineteen years ago a booklet about the first big Zündel trial. I am afraid I should even mention my own name.
As for David Irving, he would also be mentioned and I should be all too pleased if M. Hoffman could help me in writing my notice on the “reluctant revisionist”. On November 25, 2003 I asked M. Hoffman: “What do you think of the quotation of David Irving that I included in my last letter, words to the effect that he agrees somewhat with Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, known for contending that there is, amongst the Germans, an inborn propensity to evil?” I told him that the quotation was verbatim and gave him all the necessary references. He answered that he would not comment on Irving’s endorsement of Goldhagen’s view without Irving’s confirmation. I then insisted on getting an answer to my question. As yet, to no avail. Maybe I shall soon get an answer to my repeated question from M. Hoffman or – who knows? – from the horse’s mouth.
August 19, 2004
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Note 1: The exact words of D. Irving were: “The Germans seem to be of a different personality [from that of the English and other civilised peoples] and I am afraid I have to agree to a certain extent with that author, Daniel Golhagen, who wrote a book suggesting that the German mentality is somewhat different” (in Australia, “Ron Casey [Radio 2GB] talks with David Irving”, November 8, 1998, as reported in Adelaide Institute Online, December 1998, p. 17).
Note 2: In May 2004 I mentioned thirteen names; today I should add the name of Richard Odorfer for his book on The Soul of Germany, first printing 1995, second printing 2003 [P.O. Box 31 07 42, New Braunfels, Texas 78131-0742]. (See especially p. 393-399.) Although I would disagree with this author on many points, his book may be considered as a revision of the history of the so-called “Holocaust”.