I (we) recently attended Earth Hour in my town. It was a rather comparable event. Of course if you were to ask any of the 30,000 dough-heads around here if saving the earth is more important than getting wasted this weekend, they would invariably answer yes. Ask those same 30,000 to show up for an hour, walk a few blocks and hold a candle - and you see (or hear them drunkenly shout) their support from the sidelines at best.
I had to review this mans material as a part of my studies in preparation of university law, and I was utterly shocked at what I read. In my work I had to consider three cases; Keegstra, Andrews and Zundel.
The first two were unrepentant neo-nazis, foisting their views of 'jew-hating' onto either immature or otherwise undesirable intellects. It is not proper in any estimation to force certain political views which incite the hatred or degradation of any racial or ethnic class, this should go without saying. Thusly the first two are obviously culpible in a criminal offence... but as I began to review the works (and trials) of Mr. Zundle (an incomplete review I might add here [mostly due to its volumnous content) I was shocked. This man was never charged with hate crimes, mostly it seems he was charged with the dissemination of 'untrue messages', specificallly related to the question of wether 6 million people really died from gaseous executions at internment camps sanctioned and operated by the federal governemnt of Nazi germany and its legitimate (as in established and documented) policy programs.
Now obviously we are not likely to find a note to the effect:
Dear Fellow Nazis,
Please execute all joos in gas chambers.
In Loyalty to the Fatherland,
Your Loving Furher,
A
But some would argue that for such a sweeping campaign to have been enforcable it would have had to have been officially sanctioned, authorized and documented at some level if not many. Obviously I am no authority on these matters, but what I was able to easily deduce is as follows:
1) Mr Zundel is a racist in as far as he recognizes that chinese people generally have different physical attributes and psychological tendancies than, let us say, africans. I hope I dont come off as racist for saying this (as my black girlfriend will likely have at me if I do) but my lady-friend and I do have different physical characteristics because we came from parents of wildly different linage and or historical location. She is more 'black' and I am more 'white and middle eastern'. This is also somewhat reflected in our habits. Where she is quite taken with the causes of american civil liberties, I am more interested in spaceflight. Obviously this does not mean that white people are not interested in civil liberty no more than charles bolden is a basketball star, the point here is that genetic or environmental - race exists. Me and my girlfriend are obviously human, but we have different charactistics based on genetics (she loves the sun and I am more dormant, and we are physically built to suit such preferences).
2) Mr Zundel is as pro-neo-nazi as Ronald McDonald is pro-pure-beef. Even though Ronald and Mr Zundel 'sell a product (not an experience)' that seems like the real deal, it is, upon observation not as it first appears. Even when I had been discussing the interests of protecting such a man as this because he has not caused or purposfuly caused others to harm any identifyable group or individuals so far as I can tell - my friends look to me askance and ask "are you defending this?!"... to which I reply, absolutely not, but I am addicted to cheezeburgers.
That was a bit of fun, but I have been asked by reasonable people during a discourse about protecting the rights of free speech if I do then ALSO endorse the killing of millions in gas chambers as a solution to their...umm.... their... being jewish ? The answer to this rediculous postulation is of course "I dont think you understand the issue here." And we move on to more interesting topics like ass-to-mouth-matt-wrestling or which beer tastes better with these nuts ...really strong, heady stuff like this. This illustrates the problem I believe Mr Zundel faced quite aptly;
Bob: I must say, Andrew, after reviewing all the information I am not sure that much more thurough a job was done here with the holocaust than in the 9/11 comission... I dont think people have the whole picture, the people may be uninformed or underinformed even, I mean building WTC 7, come on !
Andrew: Hello, 911, Please inform Mr Harper that I am here with someone who supports 9/11 terror, osama, saddam and nazis.... yes at this address... I should be able to keep him busy yes...okay.... yes we'll be here just come in the back door and I'll act all suprised ----- oh, ahem, what was that bob ? --- yes yes, no I dont want any reward just please leave me to live in peace with freedom and security.... oh you can't guarantee that... well.....ok. Please hurry.
The point is that as soon as you start to talk about this you are painting yourself with a sitcky and stinky brush... is that appropriate ? In my review I found Mr Zundel not to be very aggrevating or purposful so far as supporting any ideas which end with "so lets kill all the jews". Much the contrary I have found him to be rather dry and academic [it is much more the people questioning him who jump to: so then you want to kill the jews?]. His analysis of the FACT of allied propoganda and manipulation in pre and post-war germany (and beyond) is not anything shocking. In any war you dont re-educate the defeated in the ideologies that led to war in the first place, you try to prevent it, even at the cultural expense of the victim state (ask the North American Indiginous People)
3) No one really cares about anything anymore anyway. Al Franken said it best in MOTY.
Paraphrased:
TV has destroyed my perception of reality, here on the left - a man who is fully accredited, supported and papered telling me that after years of research the holocaust never happened. Here on the right a man who claims to have survived the horrors of a death camp... now they sit and debate the points and their views back and forth... this happens for a while until I loose interest and basically decide that it doesn't really matter to me either way, I'm not a scholar or a survivor, so why worry - really I can never know which of these two people is correct.
In the years he has been gone Mr. Zundel has missed out on how the rest of us just stopped caring anymore. Mr Zundel may be the last of a dying breed... the ideological martyr. When all this was big news there was still some hope that perhaps Mr Zundel was wrong, a faith that he was an incorrigable individual, not even worthy of the paper he consumed to push forward his empire of disinformation... Now the attitude would be different on two accounts.
i) everyone KNOWS that the government is full of shit. If obama doesn't really wow us on April 15th then expect another domestic terror incident really soon after as people will be without purpose, direction, liberty or security for far too long to remain civil
ii) most of the 'falsehoods' that mr zundel was accused of propogating have been basically revealed as, at least, partial truth - or well closer than we'd imagined before !
The saddest thing about it is that NOBODY in his camp or mine is strongly advocating or in any way vocalizing hatred against jews or anyone else. What is happening here is an attack on dissent and the very nature of truth, history and democracy. What this case says to me in my limited understanding is: that its better to be in line with the current party line than it is to have an opinion. That it is safer not to worry than to do my due-dilligence and critically analyse the mythos of my own origins and history. We will tolerate no review of history or historic events that shape and define our national goals and ambitions, and we will not protect pepoles rights a human beings if we dont like what they are saying.
Take the content out and change his book to read: Is (and was) it really 100% (non-madcow) beef ? and you may have a libel suit on your hands but hardly a criminal charge for trying to incite hatred against McDonalds or the companies that brought us Bovine Suppliment (even though we should be nearly equally enraged as if the holocaust was a lie).
At the end of the day, I titled this blog as I did because its an important fact: Earth Hour in my community attracted about 30 supporters, many of whom were personal friends of one another - linked to the mayor and the city power structure - and a few were just plain friends of the Earth with no agenda. It may also be worth noting that me and my partner were the only ones between 1-50 who did not seem to have been brought to the event as part of a 'family outing'.
Mr Zundel was recieved by a small but intimate crowd who were there as, perhaps, the last supporters of common poeples right to think... to speak... and to be common people. As I have studied this mans work and persecutions I tremble in fear at the notion that when his generation is gone we will loose all connection to a western culture before income tax, SINs, modern economy, and the global village...free-range humans will be endangered if not extinct at that time. Here I am watching what may be the last truly free man on Earth be released from one of the most rediculous and illegal imprisonments in a long time... an no one cared... not like they cared for him when he was advocating their right to not be persecuted because of their german ethnic heritage.... not like they cared for him when his books were fuel for the pyres the white-heads used to stoke hatred and violence which mr zundel so abhorred... not like they cared so much when they opposed his re-admission to Canada... the only prominant article I could even find on his release came from the SUN (that bastion of truth) and was written by a very one-sided columnist, not even close to an impartial, someone with an old axe to grind.
I have seen interviews mr zundel was a part of which featured highly reliable british testimony in support of his 'cause' and I have seen him allow an interview, in what seems to be his home, to a jewish journalist whom he says he respects because that journalist at least came and asked mr zundel face to face. He in no way and at no time strikes me as a person who intends to cause any harm, in fact it seems his actions are motivated only by personal conviction and a quest for truth and knowledge on behalf of himself and all humanity.
Only one great truth lunges at me from the pages upon pages I have reviewed from both sides on this issue... the precedent in law has been made... if I ever publish my book "Was September 11 really a murder conspiracy created by Osama Bin Laden that killed 3,000 New Yorkers?" I'm done for.
Not because I am saying that it was an inside job, that it was a false flag tactic to spurr two middle-eastern wars.... but because it may have been closer to 2,500.
I dont expect much love for writing this, but I just want to say that I think it a grave miscarriage of justice what happened to this man and I hope he is vindicated one day for the remarkable dedication to principle and concience that he has shown. We may not agree with his views, we may find him personally objectionable, we might not even like Hitler, but that does NOT give us the right to imprison someone, nor to discriminate against them in an application for citizenship, etc.
Mr Zundel was specifically persecuted in several countries on account of ONE THING - he did not support the historical dogma about the holocaust. Worse still he questioned it openly !! This has made him a very dangerous man in the eyes of the government in several countries... What I wonder now is why ? If he is wrong about all this and the facts of the holocaust stand up to review then who cares... indeed who cares enough to distort the laws of several countries to secure his imprisonment... and who has the power... who benefited ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tJy4IZFsG4&feature=related
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