Jailing Opinions - reviewed by Peter Rushmore in the current issue of Heritage and Destiny (issue 27)

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2006 was the year when persecution of historical revisionists hit the headlines worldwide, largely thanks to the imprisonment of the British historian David Irving. Yet some racial nationalists still try to avoid the questions raised by revisionists, arguing that these have little direct relevance to their target voters and risk tarnishing the racial nationalist message by association with national socialism.

Those comrades should see this new DVD. Although based on a symposium organised by the Danish Society for Free Historical Research in Copenhagen on January 28th 2006, it is aimed at an audience way beyond the converted and produced to a very high standard. We must hope that various sections of our movement will learn from this DVD that modern editing and production techniques can help project our message more effectively.

Lady Michèle Renouf

The main speakers on Jailing Opinions are Lady Michèle Renouf, who has been one of the most active campaigners on behalf of persecuted revisionists, and Richard Edmonds, former BNP national organiser, who has tirelessly promoted revisionist publications for more than a quarter of a century. From the old BNP bookshop in Welling, Richard used to despatch copies of the revisionist classic Did Six Million Really Die? to every corner of the globe, even while building the party which shook Britain's political establishment. His experience should convince the modern BNP that (even leaving questions of principle aside) there is no necessary contradiction between fighting historical battles and fighting to defend 'Rights for Whites' - indeed these are separate fronts in the same war.

The overriding message of Jailing Opinions is that a fundamental premise of our civilisation is threatened by the criminalisation of revisionism - namely the "Hellenic premise of source scepticism". The triumph of Greek civilisation over Eastern despotism established the principle of free enquiry, as noted by the military historian Victor Davis Hanson in his book Why the West Has Won. If Dr Hanson had the courage to join the revisionist cause, he could perhaps write a sequel showing the way that the concept of thought crime is accelerating the decay of white society - Why the West is Losing!

Six years before the symposium filmed for Jailing Opinions the orthodox view of the Holocaust was carved on tablets of stone by the Stockholm International Forum at a conference organised by Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and U.S. President Bill Clinton. The declaration issued by this forum insisted that "we share a commitment to encourage the study of the Holocaust in all its dimensions". However it also maintained that "the unprecedented character of the Holocaust will always hold universal meaning." In its guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust, the forum blatantly stated that "care must be taken not to give a platform for deniers" and that one should not "seek to disprove the deniers' position through normal historical debate and rational argument."

We should note that the British delegation to the forum included, alongside then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, Prime Minister Blair's personal envoy to the Middle East, Lord Levy of Mill Hill - the same Lord Levy who was arrested by Scotland Yard detectives last July investigating the sale of political honours, then arrested again in January 2007 on suspicion of "attempting to pervert the course of justice".

Lord Levy - PM Blair's Middle East envoy and fundraiser
seen here after his initial arrest in July 2006

The historical orthodoxy imposed by Lord Levy and friends is no academic trifle - it is a tyranny which has become ever more blatant in recent years. Lady Renouf points out that Holocaust Memorial Day, far from complementing our existing Remembrance Day, makes a mockery of our valiant dead who supposedly died to protect our freedoms.

Notable revisionist martyrs include Robert Faurisson, currently facing trial in France; Ernst Zündel, deported from Canada to Germany in March 2005 and still incarcerated at Mannheim prison pending his trial; and Germar Rudolf, deported from the U.S. to Germany in November 2005.

The imprisonment of David Irving gained more column inches of press coverage than all the other revisionist prosecutions combined. Irving was sentenced last February to three years in prison for "trivialising" or denying the Holocaust - something which is not a crime in his own country. As most readers will know, he was released from prison just before Christmas and has made clear that the experience of prison has not caused him to recant.

Among the many ironies highlighted by Jailing Opinions is the recognition by some of Irving's leading enemies, such as the American historian Deborah Lipstadt, that his prosecution would ultimately backfire.

Anyone watching this DVD cannot fail to observe that even while relentlessly persecuting revisionists, the establishment has been forced to revise its own lies. Among the most glaring examples is the saga of the memorial plaques at Auschwitz, which when blessed by Pope John Paul II commemorated the supposed deaths of four million Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau. By the time I visited the camp in 1993 this had been recognised as a lie and the memorial inscriptions had been erased; they now bear a "corrected" inscription referring to one million, not four million, Jewish deaths - yet on pain of imprisonment we are required to continue paying homage to the myth of six million total Jewish deaths. As the former pop music impresario Lord Levy well knows, there's no business like Shoah business.

Pope Benedict at Auschwitz inspects the amended memorial plaques

One of the most valuable lessons of this important and instructive DVD is that the whole edifice of Holocaust mythology is based on "evidence" acquired by the most dubious methods. Modern viewers already know the lies about weapons of mass destruction, the exposure of which may incidentally have assisted the revisionist cause, but as Richard Edmonds makes clear the Holocaust lies have an even more dubious pedigree. The Nuremberg trials abandoned the usual rules of evidence, with any report submitted by any of the four victorious powers (including Stalin's Russia) having to be accepted as truthful. Nor was the Red Army the only culprit in using torture and forgery to acquire evidence. The U.S. Judge Edward Van Roden discovered that the Americans had routinely tortured prisoners: "All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was Standard Operating Procedure with American investigators."

Eight years ago, just before he took over as leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin was himself prosecuted under Britain's notorious race laws for publishing a magazine called The Rune. Although then as now we did not have a law in Britain specifically prohibiting questions about the Holocaust, one of the charges against Griffin sought to bring Holocaust references within the orbit of the race laws. During his own trial Griffin was happy to accept the financial and moral support of revisionists such as Ernst Zündel, and Robert Faurisson testified on his behalf at Harrow Crown Court. As recently as 2005 Griffin spoke on the same platform as Lady Renouf at David Duke's conference in New Orleans.

Nick Griffin spoke alongside Lady Renouf at David Duke's 2005 conference, then banned her from speaking at a BNP meeting the following year

Politicians alas have short memories. Nick Griffin is no exception. A few weeks ago the Croydon branch of the BNP invited Lady Renouf to address one of their meetings. One might have thought that Griffin would welcome this, especially after the production of this excellent DVD and given the fact that Griffin and Mark Collett had so recently emerged from the shadow of the courts. In fact Griffin banned the meeting, thus showing where he now stands in the battle between those who seek historical truth and those who seek to suppress it by any means necessary. Heritage and Destiny readers should waste no time in demonstrating that they also know whose side they are on - they can start by buying this DVD.