The Holocaust Historiography Project

The Holocaust Debate

John Bennett

Since I was a speaker at the convention here in this city of Los Angeles last year, it seems to me very little has changed in America since that time. You seem to be still living in a “1984” situation where important public issues can’t be debated in the media. Perhaps you need some guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of press in your Constitution? Ah, you have it don’t you? Well, it doesn’t seem to be working very effectively!

You might think of Australia just as a place where kangaroos hop down the main streets, that it is a bit of a quarry for raw materials, and a place where you can plant your military bases so we can become a nuclear target. But, we also seem to be a country where there is a fair amount of freedom of speech on important issues and in particular a very important issue-the Holocaust.

One reason that I've become involved in the worldwide debate about the Holocaust, is that it is, as Zionist Jews say, “Israel’s number one propaganda weapon,” and the feelings of guilt inculcated in Western society about the Holocaust led to uncritical support of Israel which in turn could lead to world war, and has already contributed to a sevenfold increase in oil prices. So, obviously, the Holocaust is an important issue. It is not a relatively trivial question such as why the ship the Lusitania was sunk in 1916 or why particular incidents happened in the First or the Second World War.

The suppression of truth about the Holocaust could more or less directly contribute significantly to a real Holocaust, a world war in which many people, including Australians and Americans-in particular White people-would suffer grievously. As a matter of some interest: why in a country such as America where most people can say anything they like (the laws of obcenity here being what they are) and do practically anything they like, the one thing Americans can’t do is to publicly challenge the Holocaust, or the “Holy Cause,” as it perhaps may be more accurately described. When I was over here last time in America, I sent a letter to eighty important newspapers here in the U.S. and to most of your television networks. There was only one paper that published that letter and it was The Spotlight. It was, I thought, a fairly good letter relating in essence to the survival of the human species in the terms I have already indicated; the possiblility of a world war due to mass mind-manipulation especially in relation to the Holocaust. Although we don’t have a Constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech in Australia, we do in fact seem to have a greater degree of of freedom of speech than you do in America. However, the very wide-ranging debate about the Holocaust in Australia may be very largely due to the fact that I to a large extent initiated it and I have a reputation of being somebody who defends freedom of speech, and it became very difficult for people trying to shut me up to say that I was a neo-Nazi or an anti-Semite or a pathological case, etc.

In Australia the Holocaust has been debated on three of our four nationwide television stations. It has been widely debated in important papers such as the Melbourne Age and important (by Australian standards) weeklies and monthlies. To draw some American comparison; if you could get a debate going on the NBC, the ABC and the CBS, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and Mr. William Buckley’s magazine, the National Review, you would then have something like the debate that has happened in Australia. Of course, as I have indicated by my reference to the eighty letters that I sent when I was over here the last time and only one being published, it is very difficult to get this important issue discussed in the media and perhaps other issues as well; which of course leads directly to the issue, or the question, as to who controls the media in the United States. Just looking at the credits of the appalling TV programs and appalling films we usually get in Australia from America, it is to me quite obvious who controls very significant parts of the media here in America. The people who control the media here are of course Zionist Jews, and anti-Zionist Jews such as Alfred Lilienthal and other very courageous people have all sorts of difficulties in getting their views ventilated.

I think that in fact there are many more anti-Zionist Jews then is apparent on the face of it, because Jews, like Gentiles, have been brainwashed into accepting a certain view of history, and they, like Gentiles, find it very difficult to buck peer group pressure, think for themselves, and ignore verbal threats to themselves, and don’t worry about their job prospects. There are some Jews in Australia, and some in America, who are prepared to look into the question of the Holocaust, and it is really just a question of starting to ask the right questions. Because if you don’t ask the right questions or if you don’t ask any relevant questions, you can’t get any answers or you certainly can’t get the right answers. You've just got to ask questions such as “Why do we have so much propaganda about the Holocaust?” “Why do Americans know that six million Jews died in the Second World War, but don’t know how many Americans died?” “Why do we get so much propaganda from Hollywood about Jewish suffering and so little information about the suffering of other peoples?” Of course, Jews did suffer during the Second World War, Germans suffered during the Second World War. Just about everybody suffers in war. If there is to be another world war arising from suppression of truth about the Holocaust and arising from Israel, of course that will be a real Holocaust, a massive holocaust in which all people -Australians, Germans, Americans-will suffer.

Of course, I am from Australia: which is virtually a colony of America, and America is virtually a colony of Israel, so we don’t particularly wish to be on the receiving end of a war arising from censorship in America and arising from the gutlessness of (especially) American academics and indeed academics everywhere, to discuss this issue. Anybody who’s had very much to do with trying to get a debate going in relation to the Holocaust- (and there is a Mr. Smith here who put out a little magazine called Smith’s Journal who would perhaps know what I am talking about) -would know that there all sorts of strategems and mechanisms to try to silence debate. One of the most effective strategems is just what could be called, I suppose, the silent treatment-not to have any debate at all. But there is a great responsibility lying upon historians in this issue.

The first thing I did as a fairly logical lawyer when I first read the Butz book (The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, IHR, $10.00; paperback, $6.00) I thought to myself as I reeled about (because it rather upsets the mind to think that one could be conned for. so long on such a basic historic issue)-the first thing I did was to post off copies of Butz to historians around Australia asking for their comments. Some of them wrote back saying I was a neo-Nazi and an anti-Semite, that sort of thing. Others might have made a few perfunctory points, which I answered. I then answered their answer and then there was silence and I would write more letters saying “Would you care to elaborate on this, etc.” So I think the main reason that there isn’t a debate on the Holocaust is that if there is a debate, if there were free trade in ideas on this issue, there would be no doubt as to what the truth is. The truth is set out more or less in the Butz thesis or the Faurisson thesis. But it is impossible to have freedom of speech and then free debate and arrive at the truth where you have people persecuted, where you have people becoming perhaps unnecessarily afraid, where you have a controlled media preventing a free discussion of these issues.

I said before that the problem is not so much that the wrong answers are being given, but that the right questions are not being asked. Because you only have to start asking questions such as “Why Zyklon B was used?” “Why were there concentration camps?” “Why was Auschwitz there?” “Why was it established? I I I 'What industrial functions took place at Auschwitz?” “Were the Germans short of labor in 1944?” “Was it logistically feasible to move so many people say from Hungary to Auschwitz in 1944?” Just ask a series of questions and the answers are quite obvious, I think, from even a fairly perfunctory reading of the available data. If you keep on asking the right questions, you will eventually get the right answers.

I've ceased asking questions about the Holocaust because I find it rather boring. I would find it equally boring had the Germans won the war and had the Germans a great deal of control over the media here; if I was facing Holocaust films twice a week about the bombing of German cities. That was to my mind about the closest thing to a genocide policy in the Second World War, but we hear very, very little about that in the media. I think it was the type of war where total victory led not to total falsehood (because there is a great deal of truth in the Jewish version of the Holocaust legend, as Butz points out) but, also to a significant degree of lies in relation to the Holocaust.

Normally, of course, people such as myself wouldn’t bother looking into the Holocaust, wouldn’t bother getting into some of the sort of trouble I got into in Australia, were it not for the fact that it is, as Zionist Jews say, “Israel’s number one propaganda weapon” and Israel and its policies could quite easily lead to a world war.

I'm not religious myself and it is a bit hard for me to understand what motivates religious people. But in Australia, where we have a huge amount of desert, it would strike me as being extremely strange if a group of fanatics tried to get control of a few square miles of desert because of some book written a long time ago saying that they were entitled to it. But, unfortunately, this little bit of desert called the West Bank is important to them; Jerusalem is important to them. Unfortunately, it is also important to the Muslims and the Arabs, and perhaps unfortunately the Arabs control a great deal of the world’s oil. And unfortunately for most of us who drive motor vehicles, as we have to pay the price. And indeed, Dr. Lilienthal wrote a book, What Price Israel? and indeed what a price we are paying. And I think it was Dr. Lilienthal, and other anti-Zionist Jews, who pointed out a very long time ago that trying to plant a Western type colony in a Muslim world would inevitably lead to the sort of trouble that it has led to.

When I was over here last time in America, it was my first trip overseas because I don’t believe people learn very much from travel; I only came because I thought it was an important issue. I stressed the importance of trying to overcome the censorship problem of which you have so much more here in America than we have in Australia, by action by individuals, and I am a great believer that individuals can do a great deal-quite apart from what groups might do. Individuals can send out fliers to the media, as I did when I was here last time. They can donate various books to libraries, they can write letters to newspapers. I know it is very disheartening if you write off ten letters to newspapers and none of them are published. People tend to give up. But I think it is very important just to be dogged and persistent on an issue which could lead-fairly directly or indirectly-to world war.

I have been Secretary of the Council for Civil Liberties in Victoria for fourteen years and I know that your view of civil liberties is perhaps colored by the ACLU, which consists mainly of trendy left liberal do-gooders, I suppose, who tend to believe in freedom of speech for the causes that they espouse but not otherwise; whereas I personally believe in freedom of speech for everybody unless there is a clear and direct threat to public order or national security. I've tried to encourage freedom of speech in Australia on the issue of the Holocaust, and I've perhaps attracted less flak in Australia and I've had greater access to the media because my bona fides are not in doubt and I have developed a reputation for defending people’s freedom of speech. In fact, about ten years ago I defended the right of several selfstyled Nazis in Australia for freedom of speech, believing then that they were associated with a movement that had led to the deliberate killing of six million Jews. I suppose like so many other people, I was so conditioned not to ask questions that if anybody queried any aspect of the Holocaust, I would tend to believe that the person must be a Nazi, that he must be the sort of person who would gas Jews-sort of a rather ridiculous Catch-22 situation.

If you say that there was no plan of genocide in the Second World War and there were no mass gassings, people tend to say “Oh you're a Nazi or a neo-Nazi, you're the sort of person who believes that there should be a plan of genocide and there should be mass gassing.” There is so much illogicality in this area that I, as a lawyer, am amazed and as I've indicated, I try to indulge in some sort of debate with Australian academics and I've never come across so, many desperate attempts to obscure the issues, ignore the issues, and refuse to indulge in dialogue. I think the reason is fairly obvious, that it is, as a Zionist Jew in Australia said in relation to the Holocaust, “It is Israel’s number one propaganda weapon” and they are not going to lose it very easily or gracefully.

Unfortunately from the point of view of Jews, the main or one significant group of victims of the Holocaust mythology are Jews themselves because it is used to buttress the state of Israel which doesn’t give Jews security and never will. It just leads to insecurity for all people and all countries because of the prospect of a world war arising from Israel’s seemingly, to me, a non-religious person, mad policies of trying to grab a bit of desert because a book some time ago said that they should be able to have control of it. They can have the entire Australian desert, if they like, and build their kibbutzes or whatever there.

So, I think one should bear in mind that Jews are as conditioned as non-Jews on this issue and perhaps there will only be a free discussion in America on the issue when people such as Alfred Lilienthal and perhaps Mr. Rothbard, and other Revisionist Jews, can have access to the media and make their views known.

Well, as I have indicated, I have had a fairly easy time of it in Australia, but as you know all Australians do is lie on beaches and laconically talk and talk with a drawl and keep their lips together so the blow flies won’t get in-that’s why we have our accent, you see. So I have had a fairly easy time of it in Australia by comparison. But in other countries -and this is one reason why it’s so difficult to get to the truth on this subject-there’s the prospect of say group libel for people such as professor Faurisson in France, there’s the prospect of jail and social ostracism in West Germany, and there’s the prospect in England of being socially ostracized and losing a job and being called a Nazi or an anti-Semite or whatever. It is fairly easy to shut people up. A lot of people who go around saying “Oh yes, I believe in freedom of speech and I agree with Voltaire, even if I disagree with what you say I will defend to the death your right to say it.” When the chips are down, there are not too many people who go along with Voltaire. It is a pity really that the ACLU in America hasn’t, for instance, criticized the so-called Libertarian journals here for refusing to take advertisements for the Butz book. It is a pity that the ACLU hasn’t drawn attention to the suppression of the Palestinian case in the American media.

I really don’t wish to sound too anti-America, I understand one should try to be pleasant in countries which one visits. I poked fun at Los Angeles in most of the speech which I gave at the convention last year. I suppose I shouldn’t do likewise here, even though it’s such a delightfully easy city to poke fun at; so I won’t do that.

But if people in America who put themselves forward as defenders of freedom of speech actually got out and did something about the suppression of ideas and the degree of political censorship in America, perhaps America could be more objective in relation to Israel and less likely to be seen as Israel’s colony.


Bibliographic information
Author: Bennett, John
Title: The Holocaust Debate
Source: The Journal for Historical Review
Date: Spring 1981
Issue: Volume 2 number 1
Location: Page 12
ISSN: 0195-6752
Attribution: “Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA.”
Please send a copy of all reprints to the Editor.