By Richard A. Widmann.

Amazon joins the ranks of book burners

For twenty years, I have been commenting on how the themes and plot of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian tale of book-burning Fahrenheit 451 are coming to pass. My initial article on this subject was entitled, “How Fahrenheit 451 Trends Threaten Intellectual Freedom.”[1] My friend Bradley Smith initially published it on the original CODOH Website in 1997. From then, it was revised and reprinted several times. In 1998 it was translated and published in German. It was also included in the Greenhaven Press Readings on Fahrenheit 451 as part of their Literary Companion Series.[2] The article was also published in the short-lived journal The Revisionist[3] where it was distributed to college students as an insert in their campus newspapers. Ironically professors and students on the campus of St. Cloud University chose to burn the offending journal.[4] Indeed, acts of book burning and censorship are a threat to today’s supposedly democratic societies and our notions of intellectual freedom.

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By Richard A. Widmann.

CODOH becomes publisher of IH

Inconvenient History is pleased to announce that the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) has become our new publisher.  CODOH is the longest running organization struggling for a free and open debate on the subject of the Holocaust.  CODOH was founded in 1990 to encourage a free exchange of ideas with regard to the orthodox Holocaust narrative.

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By Richard Widmann-

Orwell’s 1984 was a major influence on historical revisionists including Harry Elmer Barnes

George Orwell was born on this day in 1903 in Motihari, India. George Orwell, the pen name of the English author Eric Arthur Blair was a great influence on Twentieth Century revisionism including revisionist pioneer Harry Elmer Barnes. In his important essay, “How ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ Trends Threaten American Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity,” Barnes documented the prophetic nature of Orwell’s classic. Barnes wrote:

Orwell’s book is the keenest and most penetrating work produced in this generation on the current trends in national policy and world affairs. To discuss world trends today without reference to the Orwell frame of reference is not unlike writing on biology without reference to Darwin, Mendel, and De Vries…

Orwell was educated in England at Eton College. After service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from 1922 to 1927, he returned to Europe to become a writer. He lived for several years in poverty. His earliest experiences resulted in the book Down and Out in Paris and London.
By 1936, Orwell had joined the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was critical of communism but basically considered himself a socialist. He was wounded in the fighting. Late in the war, Orwell fought the communists and eventually had to flee Spain for his life. He documented many of his experiences during the Spanish Civil War in his Homage to Catalonia.

Orwell’s experiences with totalitarian political regimes had a direct impact on his writing. His best-known books reflect his opposition to totalitarianism: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. In an article entitled, “Why I Write” Orwell explained:

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism… Animal Farm was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.

During the Second World War, Orwell wrote a weekly radio political commentary designed to counter German and Japanese propaganda in India. His wartime work for the BBC gave him a solid taste of bureaucratic hypocrisy. Many believe that this experience provided the inspiration for his invention of “newspeak,” the truth-denying language of Big Brother’s rule in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Throughout his lifetime, the great English author continually questioned all “official” or “accepted” versions of history. At the conclusion of the war in Europe, Orwell expressed doubt about the Allied account of events and posed the following question in his book Notes on Nationalism, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear… Is it true about the gas ovens in Poland?”

Orwell died on 21 January 1950 in London at the early age of forty-seven of a neglected lung ailment. He left behind a substantial body of work and a reputation for greatness.

Partial Bibliography

• Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
• Burmese Days (1934)
• A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935)
• Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
• The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
• Homage to Catalonia (1938)
• Coming up for Air (1939)
• Inside the Whale, and Other Essays (1940)
• Animal Farm (1945)
• Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
• Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays (1950)
• Such, Such Were the Joys (1953)

by Jett Rucker-

Should diversity of thought be tolerated when teaching the Holocaust?

Eighth-graders in the public schools of Rialto, California were (almost) treated to a view of the Holocaust probably never before presented in any school, public or private, in America. As a highly structured activity designed to be conducted over a period of seven days, the assignment presented material from three different Web sites with which students were to develop answers to questions such as “Was the Holocaust an actual tragic historical event or a propaganda tool?” and support the answers with citations of statements from both the presented material and other material, from two extensive websites and “the library,” to be used only if the student’s teacher “allows you to.”

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By Richard A. Widmann-

RIAN archive 897469 Handover of Katyn forest massacre materials to Poland

This week, Russian lawmakers passed a bill that would make Holocaust revisionism illegal.  The bill introduces criminal charges for “denying facts” established by the Nuremberg tribunal regarding the crimes of the Axis powers, as well as “disseminating false information about Soviet actions” during the war.  Punishment for such violations would range from a fine of 300,000 rubles ($9,230) and up to five years imprisonment.

While time is expected to reduce the emotions surrounding war, the Second World War is an exception.  The myths of the past are being canonized not only into popular expression but into law itself.  The Soviet Union’s atrocities during this period rarely fall under scrutiny.

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By History Behind Bars-

Inconvenient History Volume V

The softbound edition of Inconvenient History Volume V is now available! Our fifth softbound annual contains 516 pages of cutting-edge revisionist scholarship revealing the inconvenient truth on several aspects of recent history.

Inconvenient History Volume V contains all the content from our 4 issues from 2013. You will receive a softbound book with the Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter issues of INCONVENIENT HISTORY.

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By Richard A. Widmann-

The ALA should read F451

I take this moment on the anniversary of the publication of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 to make you aware of a chilling campaign to ban books and limit freedom of expression.

I have learned this morning of a campaign by the World Jewish Congress (WJC) to stop the online bookseller Amazon.com from selling several titles due to what the WJC deems offensive content.  Specifically the WJC has identified several titles on-sale that they assert promote “anti-Semitism,” “Holocaust Denial,” and “White Supremacy.”  You may find the story here: http://www.jwire.com.au/news/amazon-anti-semitism-and-holocaust-denial/37750

When we speak of banned books however, we always speak of “offensive books.”

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By Michael Hoffman-

Doug Christie

Though it could have been from an assassin’s bullet or a terrorist’s bomb so virulent and persistent were the threats against him, Catholic attorney Douglas “Doug” Christie, Canada’s premier defender of the damned, the marginalized and the downtrodden, has died at the age of 66 from cancer, which he had been battling for approximately two years. He worked virtually up to the time of his death. He is survived by his magnificent wife, Keltie, who shared in his battle for freedom, and two lovely children who are pursuing law and engineering careers, respectively.

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 By Nigel Jackson-

The Australian Press Council has declined to accept for processing a complaint against the Melbourne newspaper The Age which I laid before it on 2 October 2012. As the reasons given by the Council for so acting appear to me to be logically invalid and not in accord with its own principles, I believe that the situation should be presented for consideration to the general public, especially since very important ethical issues are involved. During 2012 the Finkelstein Report, chartered by the federal government, called into question the effectiveness of the Council and recommended that it be replaced with a government-regulated body. This generated enormous public interest and discussion. Thus a context exists in which the Council’s practice should be most closely studied.

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By Richard A. Widmann-

By the mid-1990s the term “Holocaust denier” had become part of the popular consciousness and vocabulary.  Likely catapulted into media newspeak by Deborah Lipstadt’s publication of Denying the Holocaust in 1993, the new term supplanted the earlier term “Holocaust revisionist.”

While certainly the phrase of choice for those who oppose the activities of that band of scholars and independent investigators who doubt the traditional view, revisionists (my preferred label) have hotly debated which label to associate themselves with.  While several revisionists have argued strongly against the term “Holocaust denier” others have embraced it and named their Websites and at times even their on-line aliases with the term.

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