[NOISE] Sound bites re the Zundel German censorship thing (fwd)
[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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 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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Rich Graves