Here’s another story con­cern­ing what appears to be a trend: pur­ported “peace activists” pro­mot­ing Holo­caust denial and anti-Semitic con­spir­acy the­ory. In this case, a Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon peace orga­ni­za­tion called Paci­fica Forum, which was founded and is led by a retired pro­fes­sor and a retired admin­is­tra­tor from that uni­ver­sity, is mark­ing Kristall­nacht with two days of speeches and con­fer­ences this week­end con­ducted by Mark Weber direc­tor of the Holo­caust denial group Insti­tute for His­tor­i­cal Review. Weber, the for­mer edi­tor of the National Van­guard, the main pub­li­ca­tion of the neo-Nazi National Alliance Party, has spent the past 30 years as a pro­fes­sional advo­cate of Holo­caust denial and anti-Semitism. His open­ing lec­ture on Fri­day is enti­tled: “Free Speech vs. Zion­ist Power”. Adver­tise­ments for the event fea­ture the image of a snake in the shape of a Star of David with the leg­end “The Israel Lobby: How Pow­er­ful Is It?” Novem­ber 9 marks the 69th anniver­sary of Kristall­nacht, which is con­sid­ered by many his­to­ri­ans to be the begin­ning of the Holo­caust. (Paci­fica Forum sched­ule avail­able here.)

In 2006, the Paci­fica Forum spon­sored mul­ti­ple talks by Val­das Anelauskas. Anelauskas, who was born in Lithua­nia, is an author and inter­net jour­nal­ist who calls him­self a “white sep­a­ratist and racial­ist”, and has affil­i­a­tions on both the far left and far right. In an email to a reporter for the Eugene, Ore­gon Register-Guard, he stated “I believe peo­ple have to live among their own kind ... I feel no supremacy — I just want to be sep­a­rate and live in my own envi­ron­ment.” In Octo­ber, 2006, Anelauskas gave a lec­ture on “Zion­ism and Rus­sia” in which he blamed Jews for the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion, call­ing them “the great­est killing machine in his­tory” and stat­ing that Amer­i­can Jews sup­press dis­sem­i­na­tion of this infor­ma­tion through their con­trol of acad­e­mia and the media. He ded­i­cated this lec­ture to Holo­caust denier Ger­mar Rudolf. (Read here; more here and here).

Accord­ing to a news report (read here):

Dur­ing a question-and-answer period, Aviva Sainz called Anelauskas’ lec­ture “anti-Jewish garbage in a tra­di­tion that has lasted for cen­turies.” His talk, she told him, “is in the tra­di­tion of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf.’ ““There’s a lot of truth in ‘Mein Kampf,’ ” Anelauskas responded. After­ward, (Paci­fica Forum co-leader Orval) Etter said he was “unable to say” if Anelauskas’ lec­ture could be char­ac­ter­ized as anti-Semitic.

Anelauskas is a friend and sup­porter of Ward Churchill, who assisted Anelauskas with his book Dis­cov­er­ing Amer­ica As It Is. He has endorsed in print Churchill’s state­ment call­ing 9/11 vic­tims “lit­tle Eich­manns”, going so far as to use the same phrase with respect to the admin­is­tra­tion of the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon when they rescinded an invi­ta­tion for Churchill to lec­ture there (read here). [By the way, Amer­ica As It Is has been endorsed by Howard Zinn, David G. Gil, and Ward Churchill (read here).]

The founders and lead­ers of Paci­fica Forum are Orval Etter and George Beres. Beres, who was the man­ager of the UO Speak­ers Bureau and was UO Sports Infor­ma­tion Direc­tor, has retired from those posi­tions and is cur­rently a colum­nist for a num­ber of inter­net pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing Coun­ter­punch and is a mem­ber of the Ore­gon Inter­re­li­gious Com­mit­tee for Peace in the Mid­dle East. Just two days ago, a pro-free speech piece he authored was pub­lished on the anti-Semitic ziopidia.com. (Read here) In the midst of his piece is a fund rais­ing ad reading:

“Help us increase aware­ness of Jew­ish suprema­cism (sic)and the sick(ening) evil­ness of Zion­ism. Donate US$10 US$20 US$50 US$100 US$200 more.... or send us an email [email address deleted] with the details of your pledge.”

Beres’ Coun­ter­punch writ­ings include one (read here) which, along with some seri­ously defi­cient his­tor­i­cal back­ground (he writes that Mus­lim anti-Christianity began in response to the Cru­sades, ignor­ing sev­eral hun­dred years of Mus­lim con­quest and oppres­sion of Chris­tians), details some of his rea­sons for being anti-Israel. He says that he per­son­ally feels him­self to be a vic­tim of Israel. He says that he is of Greek extrac­tion and grew up with many Arab East­ern Ortho­dox Chris­tians. “Few in Amer­ica real­izes (sic) how the East­ern Church, along with inno­cent Mus­lims, is under attack in Lebanon and Pales­tine by (a) rare alliance between Judaism and fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­tian­ity. I also am a tar­get, and am over­due in speak­ing out.” Just how he has been a tar­get of Judaism, he doesn’t make clear.

With respect to Orval Etter, who is a 90 year old emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of pub­lic affairs and admin­is­tra­tion, the Eugene, Ore­gon Register-Guard reports (read here) that

he orga­nized the forum after he “became con­vinced that Israel was a very tyran­ni­cal state.” He said he recalls read­ing a pam­phlet that asserted that “what Israel is doing to Pales­tine is a holocaust.”

That same arti­cle states that

Paci­fica Forum top­ics (in 2006) included a lec­ture by Etter on British his­to­rian David Irv­ing, a Holo­caust denier who in Feb­ru­ary was sen­tenced to three years’ impris­on­ment in Aus­tria for his views. Crit­ics say they attended another forum that fea­tured a video­tape on William Luther Pierce, founder of the National Alliance white sep­a­ratist group.

It was the lec­ture on David Irv­ing which first attracted Anelauskas to the group.

I have pre­vi­ously recently writ­ten about “9/11 truth” advo­cates and (alleged) peaceniks in the Aspen, Col­orado area pro­mot­ing Holo­caust denial and anti-Semitism (read here and here and here and here). I found that story of small-town big­otry shock­ing, but I con­sider this one to be more so. While both sto­ries deal with crack­pots seek­ing atten­tion for them­selves on the periph­eries between far left and far right, the Paci­fica Forum story involves aca­d­e­mics legit­imiz­ing those periph­eries by pro­vid­ing the most extreme forms of anti-Semitism and con­spir­a­to­r­ial para­noia a forum within a major uni­ver­sity (alb
eit in an unof­fi­cial forum). They have done this with the assis­tance of friends and allies on both the far left and far right and the tacit approval of those who do noth­ing to oppose them.

My con­cern with all these sto­ries is that we must not allow racism and anti-Semitism to be legit­imized in our pub­lic dis­course. If we ignore these peo­ple because they’re crack­pots, they may or may not just go away, but the ideas they pro­mote won’t. We must expose them and counter their lies force­fully with the truth.

Thank­fully, I am not alone in this think­ing. Accord­ing to the Register-Guard:

Local crit­ics affil­i­ated with Com­mu­nity Alliance of Lane County have sched­uled a free speech vigil to be held just out­side the UO hall where Weber will speak. “We are oper­at­ing under the the­ory that the best response to hate speech is more speech,” vol­un­teer Michael Williams said. “We want an oppor­tu­nity for the com­mu­nity to show its oppo­si­tion to the kinds of things that Mark Weber stands for.”

Williams said oppo­nents don’t plan to shout slo­gans or pre­vent peo­ple from hear­ing Weber’s talk. “We will have a pres­ence that is unavoid­able but not obstructionist.”

David Frank, a pro­fes­sor in the Hon­ors Col­lege at the UO, said he and two fac­ulty mem­bers are plan­ning a Holo­caust sym­po­sium in response to Weber’s talk.

Weber “has the right to come to cam­pus and make pre­pos­ter­ous state­ments,” Frank said. “But we have a respon­si­bil­ity as schol­ars to demon­strate the exper­tise and research that shows his claims are not only false but dangerous.”

Now that’s sound thinking.

Read more about this story here: Foes tar­get Paci­fica Forum: The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.

Insti­tute for His­tor­i­cal Research pro­mos for the event in pdf here and here [WARNING– HOLOCAUST DENIAL WEBSITE]