I have been asked "why people are so reluctant to consider" the validity of "Holocaust" revisionism. I shall try to answer that, showing the relationship to Iranian President Ahmadinejad.

The principal obstacle to the propagation of revisionism is, simply, fear. At present, the entrenched legend is protected by a system of legal and extra-legal prohibitions ("taboos"). Nobody could dispute the truth of that statement in Europe, where laws in most countries specifically proscribe the expression of revisionist ideas as criminal offenses. For me, the most painful instance of that intellectual terror is the incarceration of my chemist friend Germar Rudolf, presently being held in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison near Stuttgart.

His heinous crime? As a chemistry graduate student he did a forensic analysis of the walls of the alleged gas chambers, didn't find the cyanide residues that ought to have been there and concluded they weren't gas chambers. The lack of such forensic evidence is well known in the field. For example, in the Wall Street Journal of July 7, 2004, Timothy Ryback wrote that "there is little forensic evidence proving homicidal intent" in the ruins of Auschwitz.

For Germar that was a 14 month rap in 1994, and he bolted rather than serve it. Last November he was finally deported back to Germany by the US government, despite his application for political asylum and his marriage to an American woman. For his subsequent writings the Germans are now charging Germar with a new 5-year rap, enacted into law after his original "crime."

This is not a strictly European reign of terror. The U.S. is definitely complicit. How many Americans know that our foremost execution technologist declared the alleged gassings not possible at the alleged sites? That was Fred Leuchter, who actually preceded Germar in the cyanide residue investigations. Leuchter was considered foremost in the execution field until 1990, when his views were widely publicized, and his business ruined by the refusal of authorities to work with him. I doubt he has any work in the field now. Illinois barred the politically unclean Leuchter from servicing the lethal injection machine he had designed and built. During the execution of John Wayne Gacy, there was a hitch attributed to incompetent operation of Leuchter's machine.

The terror exists in the U.S., but it is more subtle than in Europe. That brings us to President Ahmadinejad of Iran. For many years I ignored revisionism coming from Islamic countries, because I found it inept. With Ahmadinejad, I found something else; his statements were formidable in their perspicacity. My original statement on him has to be read to make the specifics clear. He understands the intellectual terror in the West. However, the best surprise came after I wrote my endorsement. British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a routine pompous suggestion to Ahmadinejad: Visit the camps and see for yourself. Ahmadinejad replied: Good idea, I'll bring a scientific team. He knows about the forensic issues too.

The most recent Iranian development has come from Hamshahri, Iran's largest newspaper. They will answer the offensive cartoons of Muhammad, defended in Europe in the name of freedom of expression, with a cartoon contest on the theme of the "Holocaust." Let's hear the Europeans preach "human rights" and "freedom" then! The cartoons will likely be criminal offenses throughout continental Europe and perhaps actionable in Britain as well. The hypocrisy is staggering.

In the present Iran, we have a formidable enemy of some Western trends that ought to be vigorously opposed by all who value "freedom" as more than a mere slogan. That, and not mere "denial," was the basis of my involvement with Ahmadinejad's statements. Beware. Present-day Iran has our number, and is giving it to others.

Arthur R. Butz is an associate professor of electrical engineering. He can be reached at butz@ece.northwestern.edu.

Article Tools