Toast from Arthur Butz to Robert Faurisson on the day of the “Sahar” trial in Paris

Apart from one exception, I envy my friend Robert’s situation. This man has exposed the vulgar pretences of our leaders, whose positions are now seen to rest on the empty egg shells and old tin cans revealed by his intrepid scholarship. He is a great man.

The persecution of Robert started at the outset of his great project, but for a while there were also some lame attempts to reply to him within the usual protocols of intellectual discourse, which of course require a right of both sides to speak. However in 1990 the Dance of the Seven Veils ended with the Fabius-Gayssot law, which was understood by all, from the outset, to be a bill of attainder applied to Robert Faurisson.

He now stands indicted for saying what millions now know, and which our leaders do not want said. Words such as “scandal” and “outrage” are inadequate; perhaps a poet is needed to express it. I’m not a poet.

Now my exception: I don’t want to stick my head in the same guillotine, so I have not come to France for this trial. This toast to Robert, which perhaps should be termed a tele-toast, will have to suffice for now.

We all join in congratulating Robert Faurisson!

***

Straight after the trial, in the presence of Robert Faurisson and revisionist friends from both France and abroad, Lady Michele Renouf, of London, read out some salutations sent from Professor Butz, whose toast was translated into French by Guillaume Fabien. The gathering took place at the “Brasserie des Deux Palais”, just opposite the courthouse.

And now a bit of history: The “two palaces” in question are the “Palais du Roi” (King’s palace) and the “Palais de Justice”. They form a single architectural complex that includes the Sainte Chapelle. The Roman governors of “Lutetia” had already chosen the spot for their residence and seat. In the 14th century, appalled by the bloody horrors committed in his palace by rioters, King Charles V decided to leave it and settle elsewhere, first in Paris, then nearby. At the time of the Revolution and the Terror (precisely, from 1793 to 1795) the Revolutionary Tribunal sat within the Palais, sending a large number of its convicts to the guillotine. Beginning in the summer of 1944, special courts hearing cases of the crime of “collaboration” pronounced a considerable number of sentences there, including death sentences. Among the most famous of those they condemned to death are the writer and journalist Robert Brasillach, shot by firing squad on February 6, 1945, and Marshal Pétain, whose sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on the Isle of Yeu, where he lies buried and whence the State still refuses to transfer his remains to Verdun. In a little book entitled Mais qui est donc le professeur Faurisson?, the writer and journalist François Brigneau has dealt with that period, those trials and, in particular, the trial of the “Milice française” member Pierre Gallet, which the young Robert Faurisson happened to attend, coming away from it quite shaken. Robert Faurisson has himself been summoned to the premises on many occasions for the offence of revisionism; he has in the past been physically injured there, as have other peaceful revisionists, by bands of young Jewish louts. Inside the palace gates and today open to the public is the museum of the Conciergerie prison, where so many men and women were locked up at the time of the Revolution. This museum is of exceptionally “revisionist” character in its scrupulous approach to conveying the relevant facts and figures to the visitor.

To end, it is remarkable that, in his toast, after mentioning the Fabius-Gayssot law (born of the parliamentary initiative taken by the extremely rich Jewish Socialist MP Laurent Fabius and an electoral bargain which that former Prime Minister struck with the Communist Jean-Claude Gayssot), professor Butz should have spoken of a guillotine, if not, of course, in the literal sense, at least figuratively!

July 11, 2006