[NOISE] Sound bites re the Zundel German censorship thing (fwd)

[Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>]

[Bcc'd to the webcom.com guys FYI]

Sorry if you get duplicate copies, but I agree with Tim that mailing list
cross-pollution is bad. 

*Not* for broader redistribution, because they deserve privacy, but 
illustrative for, say, certain knee-jerk anti-PC forces here, is the fact 
that the two people who run webcom.com (Bcc'd) have been reported to be:

1. Grandson of a Holocaust victim
2. Activist with PEN and Amnesty International

I think we're all on the right side here, and for all the right reasons.

-rich

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 17:56:19 -0800
From: Rich Graves <llurch@Networking.Stanford.EDU>
To: fight-censorship+@andrew.cmu.edu
Newgroups: alt.censorship, comp.org.eff.talk, alt.internet.media-coverage
Subject: Maudlin sound bites re the Zundel German censorship thing

I put this together for the few journalists who actually bothered to ask
for quotes, rather than taking or manufacturing them without asking. 

Sent to CMU fight-censorship and relevant newsgroups (not counting
alt.revisionism, where this is not really relevant); will also send
separately to cypherpunks. I'm not on any other lists, but feel free to
pass it along, with PGP signature intact. 

-rich

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: Re: Quote for Guardian newspaper

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Please cite me as rich@c2.org without Stanford affiliation. Yes, I can 
handle any amount of mail, and I'd much rather have to answer questions 
than be misinterpreted.

Pick and choose and edit at will. The email address rich@beep.stanford.edu
goes to an alphanumeric pager (cellular beeper, whatever you call it on
your side of the pond) that takes 60 characters from the Subject: line;
please use it to confirm quotes at deadline.

Some material, from least to most maudlin:

I am not a free speech activist. As Rosa Parks explains her refusing to
move to the back of a racially segregated bus, "I was tired." The Internet
belongs to all of us, and if parts of it are cordoned off for even the
most noble political reasons, then we are all diminished, and totalitarian
regimes like China's are given another excuse. This was an important point
to underscore, but it should be noted that all I did was send a half dozen
electronic mail messages and copy a few files, which took less than an
hour of my time. 

No less important than the fight against censorship itself, for me, is
that hateful demagogues like Ernst Zundel be denied their spurious appeals
to "anti-censorship." Mr. Zundel is no more of a free speech activist than
are the leaders of the IRA. Repression only breeds criminality. 

As Tolkien or any good German fairy tale will tell you, the evil troll,
when exposed to the light of day, will turn to stone. Evil trolls like Mr.
Zundel might still frighten children, but as statues in the Wiesenthal
Center's Museum of Tolerance they can no longer harm us; and ultimately,
these statues will attract pigeons, weather with time, and crumble to dust.

Now that the power of the Net has been demonstrated, we have taken down
our mirror sites. Now the onus is on Mr. Zundel, in the spotlight of world
attention, to reveal his true friends by calling on them to come to his
aid. Now we know that Mr. Zundel's friends include Joe Bunkley, a
notorious racist at Georgia State University. Joe Bunkley's mirror site,
and those of other friendly mirror sites, cannot all be censored; in fact,
to my knowledge, no action has been taken against any mirror site. 
Indeed, the DFN/WiN network that serves most German universities 
restored access to Mr. Zundel's original site some days ago. 

Let Mr. Zundel's conspiracy theories about Jews and UFO bases in
Antarctica into the public domain, and let us see who will believe them,
and who will laugh. I am a great fan of Milan Kundera, who teaches us that
the only responses to a totalitarian buffoon are laughter and memory.
Nizkor: we will remember. (No, I'm not Jewish)

Zundel's hate should never be ignored, but it can be publicly refuted and
ridiculed, which has far greater moral and practical effect than
censorship. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" can be 
interpreted many ways. Let freedom ring.

- -rich

On Sun, 4 Feb 1996, Azeem Azhar wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm a journalist on the UK Guardian newspaper
> I'm doing a background piece the Zundel bnusiness.
> Could you give me a short quotable quote about why you're doing it:
> Extreme non-tech if you could.
> ASAP?
> Cool
> 
> Azeem
> 
> Azeem Azhar                            vx: 0171-713 4193
> The Guardian                           fx: 0171-713 4154
> 119 Farringdon Road                    azeem@dial.pipex.com
> London EC1R 3ER                        aa@guardian.co.uk (alt)
> All opinions are my own unless otherwise stated.


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