by Stephen Lemons
PHEONIX NEW TIMES BLOGS
THE FEATHERED BASTARD

Despite state­ments on 911Accountability.org that Eric D. Williams had “stepped down from involve­ment in the 9/11 Account­abil­i­ty Con­fer­ence,” Williams was present today (Fri­day) at a “press con­fer­ence” for the open­ing of the sym­po­sium at the Crown Plaza San Mar­cos in Chan­dler, and I have been informed that Williams will actu­al­ly have a ven­dor booth at the con­fer­ence on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day. This is aston­ish­ing con­sid­er­ing the con­tro­ver­sy that’s swirled ’round Williams and the con­fer­ence since it was revealed that Williams had authored the Holo­caust-deny­ing tome The Puz­zle of Auschwitz, which asserts that there were no killer gas-cham­bers at Auschwitz, and that there was no Final Solu­tion planned and imple­ment­ed by the Nazis against Euro­pean Jews.

Because of Williams’ involve­ment, sev­er­al speak­ers dropped out of the con­fer­ence, includ­ing Dylan Avery, the boy-won­der behind Loose Change, the one gen­uine star of the 9/11 con­spir­a­cy move­ment. The fact that the con­fer­ence, head­ed by con­vict­ed felon Kent “Cow Killer” Knud­son, has allowed Williams to par­tic­i­pate despite dis­avow­ing him in the past and claim­ing (wrong­ly) that he had nev­er been the Con­fer­ence Direc­tor, should com­plete­ly dis­cred­it this con­fer­ence and Knud­son, and serve as proof of the conference’s will­ing­ness to accept Holo­caust-deniers and anti-Semi­tes into their midst. Fur­ther demon­strat­ing the movement’s tol­er­ance of anti-Semi­tes was pan­elist Jim Fetzer’s defense of Eric Huf­schmid, whose site Erichufschmid.net is filled with anti-Semit­ic tripe.

“In my opin­ion Eric Hufschmid’s work — his book Painful Ques­tions, for exam­ple, is an exem­plar of excel­lence in research,” assert­ed Fet­zer at one point dur­ing the media event. “He was a pio­neer. He tack­led this dif­fi­cult sub­ject. I real­ize that on var­i­ous grounds, he’s a con­tro­ver­sial guy. That part I’m not address­ing.”

This freak Huf­schmid argues that “Zion­ists” pull the strings of white suprema­cists in the U.S. He also states that: “The Jews are lying about the gas cham­bers and ovens;” ” The Jews helped Hitler and the Nazi par­ty get con­trol of Ger­many;” ” The Jews insti­gat­ed both world wars;” and “The Jews cre­at­ed anti-Semi­tism in Ger­many to dri­ve Jews out of Europe and into Pales­tine, and to uni­fy Jews, and to bring pity to Jews.”

And this dood is “an exem­plar of excel­lence”? Hey, don’t hog that tailpipe, Jim, give me a whiff too.

For the most part, the “press con­fer­ence” was a pep ral­ly for the con­spir­anuts. At one point the mod­er­a­tor asked those who were actu­al­ly from the news media to raise their hands, and about three hands went up out of a room full of 60 per­sons or so. And it’s not like the oth­er two guys were from The New York Times. At one point I got boot­ed from the room by some pre­tend secu­ri­ty guards work­ing for the “troofers.” But to the cred­it of the mod­er­a­tor, whom I believe was Phil Berg, he had me ush­ered back in and allowed me to ask a cou­ple of more ques­tions. After the press con­fer­ence, such as it was, I spoke civil­ly with a num­ber of activists, includ­ing Don Harkins, who admit­ted writ­ing an edi­to­r­i­al in his Ida­ho Observ­er news­pa­per defend­ing for­mer KKK Grand Wiz­ard David Duke for attend­ing that Holo­caust-deniers’ con­fer­ence in Tehran last year. I also went up to Eric Williams and asked him why he was present, and he genial­ly stat­ed that he had a right to be there, though he would answer no ques­tions about his Holo­caust-deny­ing ways.

A lot of those present accused me of engag­ing in guilt by asso­ci­a­tion, but my retort to that is some­times birds of a feath­er flock togeth­er. Also, it’s one thing to accept, say, Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty as a source, and it’s anoth­er to accept some fruit­cake Holo­caust-denier as a source. The cred­i­bil­i­ty of a source does count for some­thing. I mean, if a mem­ber of the Aum Shin­rikyo cult asserts that Shoko Asa­hara has been rail­road­ed by the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment and is actu­al­ly a man of peace, then I might sus­pect that the source for that infor­ma­tion is a lit­tle com­pro­mised. The same thing hap­pens if a rabid anti-Semi­te assures me that the Israeli mossad was behind 9/11.

Final­ly, as I’ve men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, the 9/11 moon­bats and Holo­caust-deniers have the same m.o., as far as cher­ry-pick­ing the facts they’ll believe or dis­be­lieve, the cir­cu­lar rea­son­ing, the con­spir­a­to­r­i­al mind­set, the use of half-truths, and so on. The pres­ence of Eric Williams and oth­ers with ques­tion­able views of the Holo­caust at this con­spir­a­cy con­ven­tion does tend to bol­ster the charge by Paula Zahn of CNN and oth­ers that there is a vir­u­lent strain of anti-Semi­tism which runs through­out the move­ment.

More on the 9/11 Con­fer­ence as the event con­tin­ues. I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it down there on Sat­ur­day, but I am plan­ning to go Sun­day. Also present as an inter­est­ed observ­er and inter­roga­tor was Pat Cur­ley of ScrewLooseChange. The guy’s prac­ti­cal­ly a walk­ing, debunk­ing ency­clo­pe­dia. I wish I could trans­plant all of his knowl­edge of these nut­bars into my brain for future use. He knows the facts so well he dances rings around ‘em. He’s the Yoda of 9/11-denial debunkers. And he has an awe­some, detailed, blow-by-blow descrip­tion of what went down today on his site, so please check it out.