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The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 18 January 2002
Vol. 6, Number 7 (#642)
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Book/Movie Reviews:
01) Ward Harkavy (Village Voice), "The Nazi on the Bestseller List: E
-Book on a Hitler Lover Lights Up the Net," 15-21 Nov 02
Fascist Crimes In the News:
02) AP, "Neo - Nazis Convicted in Slaying," 17 Jan 02
03) AP, "Feds Sue Alleged Nazi Persecutor," 15 Jan 02
04) Samuel Maull (AP), "UN Employee Charged With Hate Crime," 10 Jan 02
05) Reuters, "April Trial Set for Alleged Alabama Church Bomber," 18 Feb
02 Obituary:
06) AP, "Prof Who Said Blacks Inferior Dies," 10 Jan 02
Contra Pierce:
07) Ken McVay (Nizkor), "William Pierce? The NAZI, William Pierce?," 18
Jan 02
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BOOK/MOVIE REVIEWS:
01) The Nazi on the Bestseller List: E-Book on a Hitler Lover Lights Up the
Net
Ward Harkavy (Village Voice)
15-21 Nov 02
German media giant Bertelsmann, still feverishly trying to make people
forget that it once marketed Hitler to the masses, is now selling a Vermont
professor's regurgitation of the ideas of America's foremost living Hitler
admirer, William Pierce, author of the Turner Diaries.
Unable to find a publisher for his 420-page labor of love, University of
Vermont education professor Robert S. Griffin is peddling The Fame of a
Dead Man's Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce
for $8 per download on MightyWords.com, where it has the immediate
potential to reach millions of people.
The Web site is owned jointly, through a subsidiary, by Bertelsmann and
Barnes & Noble. And Griffin's e-book has zoomed to No. 1 on the MightyWords
bestseller list.
Griffin, in an interview with the Voice, insists he's no mere publicist for
Pierce, an ex-physicist whom Jewish activists consider America's most
intellectual—and most dangerous—anti-Semite and racist.
Scholars of hate will find the book fascinating and revealing for its
unvarnished, detailed rendering of Pierce's explanation of his life and
views. Griffin spent weeks in conversation with Pierce at his remote
National Alliance bunker in the West Virginia mountains and even traveled
with him to Germany, where Pierce spoke to white-supremacist groups.
"I am simply a conduit," says Griffin. "If you want to see what he says,
where he comes from, here it is. Do I agree with him? No."
It's the first extensive portrayal of Pierce that claims to present him
without the labels of "racist" and "anti-Semite." Griffin describes his
approach as "cultural anthropology."
It's easy to see why mainstream publishers would shy away from the book.
Griffin presents Pierce as a smart guy who, through extensive reading,
developed the idea that Jews are the planet's natural villains and people
of color are inherently stupid. But it's just as easy to argue that Pierce
was a guy who, long before he started reading, hated Jews and blacks and
then used his quick mind to marshal the heavily biased material that
supported his deeply ingrained prejudices and fears. Maybe it had something
to do with the fact that Pierce claims he grew up in a Southern household
in the 1930s and '40s in which a relative kept a black servant who was
virtually a slave.
According to Griffin's book, Pierce readily admits that even before he
turned away from a physics professorship and toward full-time racism, he
assumed Jews were Communists and loathed as inherently unlovable the
"dusky" offspring of an interracial couple who he says were his friends. No
wonder he latched onto Mein Kampf, which he read and reread. And then he
started to absorb other racist tracts and such books as Bolshevism From
Moses to Lenin.
So which came first? Pierce's prejudices or his elaborate rationalizations
for his prejudices? "I realize that I have a turn of mind that leads me to
exaggerate and oversimplify things for the sake of better understanding,
and I know there are dangers in that," Pierce tells Griffin. "But I think
that tendency in me helps me get to the essence of things."
Uh-huh.
Griffin listens to Pierce give rave reviews for such obscure authors as
Savitri Devi, who revered Hitler as another Vishnu. Then, Griffin gives the
reader exhaustive background on the authors who inspired Pierce. In a
kernel Griffin dug up from the 1958 book The Lightning and the Sun, Devi
argued that Hitler was "inspired by the inner vision of a healthy,
beautiful, and peaceful world, a real earthly paradise reflecting cosmic
perfection."
The professor leaves readers to draw their own conclusions from such
passages and from Pierce's self-appraisal that Hitler "understood things
pretty much the same way I did."
Judging from customer "reviews" on MightyWords, others connect the dots the
same way. Readers laud Griffin for allowing Pierce to tell the "truth" to
the American people.
That's why Griffin's readable book is fine for people who are familiar with
hatemongers' elaborate rationalizations but may be a problem for the
masses, says Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Weisenthal
Center.
Cooper, who's based in Los Angeles, says he skimmed what he thinks was an
early version of Griffin's book. "It certainly offered some insight into
the mind of Dr. Pierce," he says of Griffin's book. "But it was missing a
greater sense of perspective. For someone just walking into this cold,
there's something missing. There's a lack of critical analysis."
Cooper led a highly publicized campaign in 1999 to block Bertelsmann,
Amazon.com, and other publishers from hawking Hitler's Mein Kampf in
Germany, where it's illegal to do so. The same year, The Nation and other
papers revealed that Bertelsmann was vastly understating its role as the
main propaganda house during the Third Reich. But Bertelsmann has mounted a
major public-relations campaign to try to overcome its past. Cooper notes
that he has participated in a European seminar with Bertelsmann on the
issue of hate speech conveyed through Internet publishing.
Bertelsmann needed to spruce up its image because it has taken over Random
House, the biggest U.S. publisher. In cahoots with Barnes & Noble,
Bertelsmann is trying to capture the nascent electronic publishing market
as well. And the p.r. campaign has mollified its critics so well that the
company's foundation was honored last year by the Anti-Defamation League.
For Pierce's purposes, of course, the banning of Mein Kampf in Germany
simply reinforces his theory that Jews control the media. He wasn't well
known until after the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City. Soon afterward, it was revealed that bomber Tim McVeigh was
one of Pierce's most ardent followers. McVeigh had hawked Pierce's
apocalyptic novel, the Turner Diaries, replete with a white revolt against
evil Jews and their "Negro" lackeys, a story some say provided the model
for the attack.
Pierce, on his recent radio broadcasts and in Web musings, has praised
Griffin's book, sneering at the print-publishing houses that rejected it as
supposedly dominated by Jews. Griffin himself, having suffered through a
series of rejection slips from publishers, carries somewhat of a grudge
against Pierce's critics—not to mention a point of view that is sympathetic
at least to Pierce's intellect.
"I'm not defending him," Griffin says. "But I think it's possible to have
two points of view on, for instance, interracial marriage. Someone who's
not comfortable with it? I think they have a right to be heard. You don't
need to read my book to call Pierce a white supremacist. But it becomes
qualified, becomes layered. It's not that easy. I think a reasonable person
could come out with a negative view of Pierce."
Griffin insists his book is not a biography, but a "relatively unfiltered
look" at Pierce and his ideas. Sounding a little freaked out and defensive
when a reporter tracked him down to question him about the book, Griffin
argues readers shouldn't make up their mind about his "portrait" of the 67-
year-old Pierce until they've made "a careful reading" of every word of the
tome.
He has a point. Griffin does sprinkle in some perspective on Pierce, but in
the process, Pierce's racial theories and love of hate get a lengthy
hearing. The notion of filters and the question of censorship will be hotly
debated if the book starts spreading among the general populace.
And it could spread just as easily as it was published.
To sell it on the Web, Griffin says, all he had to do was upload it to
MightyWords.com, where it was beamed around the world, unedited but nicely
packaged and heavily promoted on a high-class site. "I didn't even deal
with a human being," marveled Griffin, who set his own price and gets half
of the sales for each copy downloaded.
That lack of process worries people like Cooper. "As Americans," says Rabbi
Cooper, "we're brought up not to be afraid of ideas. But in this case, it's
not the thoughts that concern us, it's the promotion, the packaging."
At regular publishing houses, he points out, "someone's involved in the
process—like editors."
And even though most words on the Web on any subject are unreadable
rubbish, Pierce's words have a track record of influencing people. Asked
whether Jewish lobbyists will take action against the bestselling book,
Cooper demurs. "The fact that it's on a vanity press speaks volumes," he
says. "I'm sure Pierce is number one because he told his friends to buy it.
Let's take a look and see where it is in four weeks."
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FASCIST CRIMES IN THE NEWS:
02) Neo-Nazis Convicted in Slaying
AP
17 Jan 02
OSLO -- Two neo-Nazis were convicted Thursday of stabbing a black Norwegian
teen-ager in a killing that sparked anti-racism demonstrations across
Scandinavia.
A third defendant was convicted of being an accessory to the attack. The
killing was seen in Norway as the first racial killing in recent memory.
Benjamin Hermansen, 15, had gone out to meet a friend near his Oslo home
when he was attacked by the two men on Jan. 26, 2001. The teen had spoken
out against racism on national television a few months before his death
after he was assaulted by neo-Nazi youths during a soccer tournament in
Denmark.
His death sparked outrage in the wealthy nation of 4.5 million, and tens of
thousands of Norwegians took to the streets a few days later to protest
racism and violence.
Smaller protests were held in neighboring Denmark and Sweden to show
solidarity. Hundreds attended the boy's funeral, including Norway's prime
minister.
On Thursday, the Oslo City Court convicted the two men, Joe Erling Jahr,
20, and Ole Nicolai Kvisler, 22, of first-degree murder in what it said was
a clearly racist killing.
It sentenced Jahr to 16 years in prison and Kvisler to 15 years -- well
below the 21-year maximum term set by Norwegian law. A third suspect,
Veronica Andreassen, 18, was convicted as an accessory and sentenced to
three years in prison.
The three defendants, all linked to the neo-Nazi group Boot Boys, also were
ordered to pay $37,275 in compensation and damages to the victim's mother.
That is high by Norwegian standards.
Kvisler appealed the ruling Thursday. The two others said they will review
the ruling before deciding whether to appeal.
Hermansen's friends and family, gathered at the downtown court to hear the
verdicts, expressed shock and said the sentences were too light.
Prosecutors said they would decide later whether to appeal the sentences.
"I thought there was going to be some kind of justice here. But there was
no justice," the victim's mother, Marit Hermansen, said after the verdict
was read. "It is as if they said racism is there, but we don't really
care."
The judges said they had determined that "the court cannot see that it is
automatic that a racially motivated murder is placed in a special category
when measuring out a sentence."
Anti-racism groups offered mixed reactions.
"Of course they should have gotten 21 years. But 15 and 16 years are a lot
of years, and Norway normally has low sentences," said Kjetil Aanensen, a
spokesman for the SOS Racism group.
Nadeem Butt, director of the Center Against Racism, said the sentences "may
be low" and he hopes the case reaches the supreme court to set a
standard for punishing racial violence.
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03) Feds Sue Alleged Nazi Persecutor
AP
15 Jan 02
CHICAGO -- The federal government has filed a lawsuit seeking to strip the
citizenship of a man accused of helping in Nazi atrocities during World War
II.
Peter John Bernes, 79, was a deputy to Werner Loew, a Nazi-appointed mayor
and police commander assigned to Kupiskis, Lithuania, according to lawsuit
filed Monday.
Bernes allegedly participated in the removal of condemned prisoners from a
jail in the small Lithuanian town in 1941 so they could be taken to nearby
execution sites. More than 1,000 Jewish men, women and children were killed
that summer in Kupiskis, the lawsuit said.
Bernes emigrated from Germany in 1947 and became a citizen in Chicago in
1954.
Bernes could not be reached for comment. Federal prosecutors said they were
unsure if Bernes had a lawyer.
His neighbors in the southwest Chicago suburb of Lockport were stunned at
the allegations. They described Bernes as a regular at homeowner board
meetings and block parties.
"He's the most friendly person you'd ever want to meet," said neighbor John
Corso.
Since the Justice Department (news - web sites)'s Office of Special
Investigations began its operations in 1979, 66 alleged Nazi persecutors
have been stripped of their U.S. citizenship and 54 have been deported.
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04) UN Employee Charged With Hate Crime
Samuel Maull (AP)
10 Jan 02
NEW YORK -- A German United Nations employee who admitted scratching anti-
Semitic graffiti on a Jewish neighbor's door and setting it afire was
indicted Thursday on arson and other charges as hate crimes.
Acting State Supreme Court Justice Arlene Goldberg revoked the $50,000 bail
that had been set for Matthias Gueldner, saying he appeared to have
"snapped" mentally and releasing him would be risky.
Gueldner's lawyer, Daniel Gotlin, said his client "is clearly mentally ill"
and is not a criminal. Outside court, he said Gueldner, a U.N. public
information officer from Hamburg, should be allowed to return to Germany
for psychiatric treatment.
Gueldner has also been under federal scrutiny for allegedly reporting a
false terrorist threat last month. Federal officials have asked the state
to detain him for questioning.
An arrest warrant included in the court filing says he falsely reported
overhearing a Dec. 14 telephone conversation in which two people discussed
plans to crash an airplane into U.N. headquarters in New York. A woman
whose voice Gueldner said he heard had won a $257,600 civil judgment
against him alleging assault. He is fighting the judgment and has refused
to pay it.
Authorities arrested Gueldner on Dec. 22 after he admitted to police that
he set fire to a door across the hall from his New York apartment.
In a handwritten statement filed with court papers, Gueldner said he used
alcohol and bags filled with paper to fuel the fire. He wrote that he
started the blaze because the neighbor harassed and menaced him, called him
nasty names and was disrespectful. He did not explain the anti-Semitic
slurs.
Assistant District Attorney Mark Bederow said investigators found Arabic
grammar study books in Gueldner's apartment. He said one of the comments on
the neighbor's door was in Arabic script and it translated to "Death to
Jews."
Defense attorney Gotlin, who is Jewish, said he had received threatening
telephone calls from a Jewish group that denounced him for defending a
"Nazi" in court.
Gueldner "is no more a Nazi than I am," Gotlin said.
If Gueldner is convicted on any of the seven counts classified as hate
crimes, the judge can increase the severity of his sentence.
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05) April Trial Set for Alleged Alabama Church Bomber
Reuters
18 Feb 02
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A former Ku Klux Klansman will go on trial in April for
the murders of four black girls killed in an infamous 1963 church bombing,
an Alabama judge said on Friday.
Jefferson County Circuit Judge James Garrett said jury selection in the
trial of alleged church bomber Bobby Frank Cherry, 72, would begin on April
29, followed by opening statements about a week later.
Cherry admitted his Klan membership to the FBI (news - web sites) in
interviews following the bombing.
Cherry's defense lawyer, Mickey Johnson, immediately informed Garrett that
he would seek a change of venue for the trial. "There is a lot of merit in
this case to ask for a change," Johnson told reporters after the hearing.
Cherry, who claims to suffer from dementia that his lawyers say makes him
mentally unfit to stand trial, is charged with four counts of murder for
the Sept. 15, 1963, bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham.
Earlier this month, Garrett ruled that Cherry was competent to stand trial.
Prosecutors allege Cherry was part of a small group of white supremacists
who bombed the church, a nerve center for the civil rights movement in
Birmingham, in a bid to keep the Southern city's strictly enforced
segregation laws in place.
The blast killed Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins,
all 14, and Denise McNair, 11. If his trial proceeds, Cherry will become
the third Klansmen to be tried for the bombing.
In May 2001, an Alabama jury convicted Thomas Blanton Jr. of murder and
sentenced the one-time KKK member to life in prison. "This (the Cherry
trial) is not going to be more difficult, but it is going to be different,"
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Posey said.
Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, the suspected mastermind of the church
bombing, was convicted of murder in 1977 and died in prison eight years
later. A fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died in 1994 without ever being
charged.
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OBITUARY
06) Prof Who Said Blacks Inferior Dies
AP
10 Jan 02
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Glayde Whitney, a psychology professor who was branded
a racist for claiming that blacks were generally less intelligent than
whites, has died. He was 62.
Whitney, who taught at Florida State University for the past 31 years, died
of natural causes at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital on Wednesday, nursing
supervisor Susan Gibbs said.
Whitney, who studied genetic mechanisms underlying behavior, found himself
at the center of controversy in 1999 when he scripted a foreword to a book
written by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. In it, Whitney said he
believed Duke relied on "good science" in concluding blacks should attend
separate schools and perhaps even live in separate countries.
Duke's book, "My Awakening," also claimed blacks are inferior to whites.
At the time, the Tallahassee branch of the NAACP asked Florida State to
fire Whitney. Professors in his department put out a news release
distancing themselves from him and students protested his views.
FSU administrators took no formal action against Whitney, who had tenure.
University President Talbot Sandy D'Alemberte said Whitney's opinion on
race was obnoxious and wrong, but he defended his right to express it.
"If there's any place in our society that deserves to have robust free
speech, it's the university," D'Alemberte said.
Unlike environmental psychologists, who believe intelligence has more to do
with living conditions than race, Whitney contended most blacks are
destined to fail and that science proves it.
"Is it a nice idea to have a society where you have a lot of mentally not
very smart people, and you tell them as children that they can all be
astronauts or neurosurgeons if they want to be, and it's just not true?" he
said in 1999.
Whitney, who earned his bachelor's and doctoral degrees at the University
of Minnesota, said he was shocked by the negative publicity. He said he was
a "Hubert Humphrey liberal" during the civil rights movement.
Donald Foss, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said he would
remember Whitney as a research scientist at the forefront of his field,
though many colleagues disagreed with Whitney's opinions.
"In the face of such criticism, he defended his views," Foss said in a
statement.
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Contra-Pierce
07) William Pierce? The NAZI, William Pierce?
Ken McVay (Nizkor)
18 Jan 02
<http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/national-alliance>
Mr. Pierce is North America's premier proponent of the "Gee, us white folks
are dumb" school of politics, and promulgates two major pillars of belief:
1. Non-Jews are really, REALLY dumb.
2. Jews are nearly super-human.
Although Mr. Pierce's National Alliance has prattled about "Jewish
control of the media" for years, the case has never been made. A list of
Jewish CEOs, or people with names which SOUND Jewish, is provided to
suggest that Jews "control" the company in question. While that may well be
true in some cases, it is not true in others.
The issue of ownership, of course, raises another peripheral issue
that Mr. Pierce would rather not address. That is, his own censorship of
his organization's membership, which is not permitted to release
any new propaganda without his specific authorization, and which is
not permitted to speak in public without his specific authorization.
Not only does Mr. Pierce rigidly censor his own organization, but he also
openly calls for massive and repressive censorship of the North American
media and the Arts. An empowered National Alliance, for
instance, would ban "Semitic and other non-Aryan values and customs
everywhere."
Of course, Mr. Pierce hasn't explained how we're going to get along
without mathematics, but perhaps he simply overlooked it...
Then there's Mr. Pierce's plan for the Arts. God forbid that "Ayran"
children should "undulate or jerk to negroid jazz or rock rhythms,"
something Mr. Pierce promises to halt.
Mr. Pierce's National Alliance also plans to ban non-White faces from the
motion picture screen and theatre, and create "art galleries
without Marc Chagall."
I think that Mr. Pierce's hypocrisy is clear, and that of his pimps
even moreso.
How can "Joseph Smirnov," for instance, complain about perceived
Jewish "censorship" while he promotes an oganization openly advocating
censorship on a massive scale?
How is it that National Alliance pimps never mention the collorary to
Pierce's anti-Jewish screeds, which is that Pierce would deny Jews the
right to participate in the democratic process (advocate before
governments) and would most certainly deny them the right to
participate in our free market, i.e. Pierce would not allow Jews to
invest in media-related companys... or any other kind, for that
matter?
Then there's the matter of Mr. Pierce's anti-Christian policies. He
doesn't just hate Jews, he hates Christians, too, as he indicates when he
describes his Aryan Disneyland as a place including "spiritual
feeling coming from the soul and unencumbered by superstition or
dogma, soaring free and reaching far above today 's priest-ridden,
church-bound spirituality."
Mr. Pierce also plans to abolish democracy, but at this point, it's
almost overkill to mention it. He describes politicians as "liars with
charisma," and promises to abolish them. While he may be correct in
many cases, he does not have the right to abrogate the PEOPLE'S right to
remove such people from office.
* * * * *
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only.
__________________________________________________________________________
FASCISM:
We have no ethical right to forgive, no historical right to forget.
(No permission required for noncommercial reproduction)
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