Mark Dankof Interviews "ein Kämpfer für eine arische Rasse"

Mark Dankof hosts a radio program on the Republic Broadcast Network. I don't know much about Dankof, but I know a lot about his guest on December 29, Mark Weber of the Institute for Historical Review. During the interview, which you can find on the top of this page, Mark told some of his usual whoppers.

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Hour I

The discussion of the Holocaust begins about three-quarters into the first half of the show, when Weber speaks about laws against Holocaust denial.

[44:00] Let's get a few things straight here. First of all, you can go to jail in Poland for saying that the Soviets did not commit atrocities there. And you can now go to jail in France for denying the Armenian genocide of 1915. So it isn't just the Nazi Holocaust, although it is predominantly the Nazi Holocaust where such laws are in place to punish "dissidents." Second, these laws are not in place in "most of the countries, or many of the countries of Europe." There are laws against Holocaust denial in twelve European countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, and Switzerland; there are forty-five countries in Europe, if we include Turkey (which actually has laws enforcing the denial of the Armenian genocide, i.e., you can go to jail in Turkey for saying that the Turkish government killed a million Armenians during World War I). So, in reality, there are laws against Holocaust denial in a little over a quarter of Europe -- less, in fact, if we exclude France and Poland for the aforementioned reasons.

[44:30] "Remarks offensive to Jews" are not exclusively punishable in any of the aforementioned countries. Several countries have laws against group libel and/or inciting racial hatred (I believe Mr. Weber might have faced the latter charge in Germany in the mid-1970s -- he said the German phrase that is part of the title of this post when arrested in Munich distributing neo-Nazi propaganda), but these laws do not apply exclusively to Jews. They are applied regularly to Turks in Germany and North Africans in France.

[45:25] Ernst Zundel is not in prison. He is in jail. Prisons are where convicted prisoners go; jail is where people go during trial. Mr. Weber quickly glides over the fact that Zundel spent a year in detention in Canada, but he doesn't mention why. Zundel was held because the government of Canada wanted to determine whether he was a threat to their national security. Concluding that he was, they deported him to Germany. Among the reasons that Zundel was deported from Canada was his relationship with Tom Metzger, the leader of White Aryan Resistance, a neo-Nazi group operating out of Southern California. Metzger has been to jail more than once and lost a several million dollar civil-rights suit for incitement to murder in the case of a killing of an Ethiopian exchange student in Portland, Ore., in the 1980s. I'd say such associations, indeed friendships, are reason for concern on the part of the Canadian government. No country should be forced to accept immigrants that it believes may compromise their safety.

[46:00] Here Weber begins his "version" of the Holocaust with the "Jews . . . suffered terribly" line. But, he tells us, "a great deal about the Holocaust story has changed over the years." He says this as if it's some great revelation. Of course the historiography has changed. The first major study on the Holocaust was published in 1955. Much of it contains information that we now know is not true. This is to be expected in every field of history. The longer any event or series of events is studied, the more people are going to learn and the more precise and exact the historiography is going to become. Period.

Hour II

[2:55] David in California had called in before the end of the hour, and now Weber has the opportunity to respond. David had implicated that Weber was acting as a kind of Pied Piper, leading people down the wrong road. (He's correct, of course.) Weber's answer is that the Iraq War's principal cause is the benefit of the State of Israel. Is he not aware that Iraq sits on rather a large oil supply?

Let's put the question clearly: If the largest export of Kuwait were figs, would we have intervened militarily sixteen years ago when Iraq invaded Kuwait? And isn't the current war merely an extension of that earlier conflict?

I'm not going to say that Israeli security didn't play a role in the lead-up to this war. Instead, I'll point out what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has said: It's a three-pronged assault on behalf of O (oil), I (Israel), and L (logistics, i.e., the location of future U.S. military bases in the region). Why does Weber focus solely on Israel? Because Weber hates Jews.

[4:15] Just as a side note, Mark Dankof is wrong about Orthodox Judaism. Religious Judaism does, in fact, place Israel and Jerusalem very particularly as being holier than other places in the world in the same way that Islam places that significance on Mecca and the Ka'aba in particular. Mr. Dankof is mistaking Zionism for a religious movement or as presenting itself as one.

[25:10] A man calls in about the IHR bombing a few decades ago and about the Mermelstein trial. He claims a "Jewish judge" (the judge's name was Thomas T. Johnson) took judicial notice of the Holocaust and ruled against the IHR.

Weber responds by saying that he wasn't part of the IHR at the time of the Mermelstein case (which he wasn't), but he also says that there was "not much the IHR could have done" to prevent the ruling. This is false.

The IHR and Mermelstein agreed to a summary judgment rather than a jury trial. Judicial notice was only taken after the judge had ruled for Mermelstein.

So what could the IHR have done? They could have taken the issue to a jury if they were so sure of their case. Oh, I'm sorry, I forget: The "Jewish judge" would have ruled against them anyway...

For more on the Mermelstein affair, visit Nizkor's section on the case.

[35:30] Asked directly by the same caller (before the break) to say whether or not the Nazis had death camps, Weber stumbles. For some reason, he won't answer this question this directly. Could it be because when he denies such camps existed he's lying and he knows he's lying?

Weber says that the six million figure is an exaggeration. It is not, at least not to any great extent. The number has been consistently verified by reputable historians and demographers going all the way back to the original Anglo-American Commission of Enquiry that established that over 5.7 million Jews had disappeared without a trace during World War II.

[39:00] Weber objects to use of the term "Holocaust denier." Why? Weber has all the hallmarks of Holocaust denial as identified by Justice Grey in Irving v. Lipstadt: He states that far fewer than six million Jews were killed; he denies that the Nazis employed gas chambers; he denies that there was any central Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe during World War II; and he believes the Holocaust is a "story" created to benefit the Zionist cause.

Mark Weber is the kind of Holocaust denier who affirms the famous line from Ecclesiastes: There is no new thing under the sun. He's been spinning the same crap for decades, and he just keeps going, no matter how many times he's proved wrong.