Debunking Grover Furr's Katyn screed.

In this posting I will analyze Grover Furr's 2018 book The Mystery of the Katyn Massacre: The Evidence, the Solution. A copy can be found online. I've already dealt with Furr several times at this blog, demonstrating his ignorance and lack of honesty and I have already dealt with some key arguments from this book here and elsewhere. As it is still used by the deniers of history to whitewash criminals, it is useful to take a closer look at it.

It is not the aim of this post to educate beginners about Katyn - in fact, following the arguments in this post can at times require some relatively advanced knowledge of the issue. The discussion is often compact (readers are supposed to have read and understood Furr's arguments on their own) and sometimes the counter-argumentation is presented in form of links to my Russian Katyn website with more details. That said, let me give a relatively short overview of the Katyn evidence.

Czech Communists sentenced for Katyn denial

From a Communist website:

On 31 October 2022, Tomáš Hübner, single judge of the Prague 7 District Court, sentenced Josef Skála, a well-known Marxist intellectual and former vice-president of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM), together with Vladimír Kapal, and Juraj Václavík, all three indicted, to eight months’ imprisonment, under Article 405 of the Criminal Code of the Czech Republic, for having challenged the version attributing the Katyn massacre [...] to the Soviet leadership.

The first round of the appeal hearings started on Feb. 1. From a news item:

Judge Tomáš Hübner stopped Václavík after several tens of minutes. "We're not going to prove history here, because it's absolutely clear that the Soviet Union and its units did it," he said, adding that the same arguments as Václavík were repeatedly used by staunch Stalinists before Soviet politician Nikita Khrushchev revealed how the massacre really happened.

"If you want to explain to me for several hours that Katyn was committed by the Germans, you can, but I won't believe you," the judge added to the disapproving roar of the public in the courtroom.

(Nota bene: obviously, Khrushchev never revealed anything about the Katyn massacre.)

Here's the relevant article of the Czech Criminal code:

Section 405 - Denial, Impugnation, Approval and Justification of Genocide Whoever publicly denies, impugns, approves, or attempts to justify Nazi, Communist or any other genocide, or other crimes of the Nazis and Communists against humanity, shall be sentenced to imprisonment for six months to three years.

Several points:

1. Obviously, I'm against such laws.

2. These Commies are, naturally, falsifiers of history (just like their lying comrade Grover Furr). There's no historical doubt that the Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn massacre. Denial of this fact is intellectually equal to Holocaust denial. The Katyn deniers have been unable to muster any credible evidence for their claims and have been unable to account for the two key issues: if the Germans did it, where did the Polish POWs in question remain from May 1940 to July 1941 (we know they were neither in the POW camps, contrary to the official Soviet claims, nor in the GULAG) and which German units exactly committed the crime (we know it wasn't the unit that the Soviets officially blamed)?

3. The shouts from the Communist websites are hypocritical when the decades-long Communist suppression of the truth about Katyn using the criminal codes as a cudgel (numerous people were imprisoned for disputing the Soviet claims) is not acknowledged by the same websites.

4. The Western Holocaust deniers usually accept the Soviet guilt for the Katyn massacre (thus showing their intellectual inconsistency, since Holocaust and Katyn denial methods are identical) and try to use it to discredit the Allied evidence of the Nazi crimes (of course, without success). They also love to claim that if some historical claim needs to be protected by law, then it's at least suspicious, if not outright false. This case puts them in a bind.

Grover Furr’s lie about my claim about the Polish policemen’s tags found at Volodymyr-Volynskyi

Grover Furr is a neo-Stalinist falsifier of history well-known for his stunning incompetence, ideological myopia and fanaticism ("I have yet to find one crime that Stalin committed"). 

On 15.08.2022 he published an article accusing me of a "lie" on the issue of the police identification tags (he calls them badges, which is OK, but since we're not talking about the badges worn on the uniform, I will call them tags) found at Volodymyr-Volynskyi (a detailed explanation of the issue is here) in my 15.12.2021 article (about a Katyn denial propaganda film on the Russian NTV channel) in the Nobel-prize-winning Novaya gazeta (here in Russian; I will refer to it as "the NG article").

Ironically, Furr focuses only on this one claim, even though the bulk of the argumentation in his pseudoscholarly Katyn denial book The Mystery of the Katyn Massacre: The Evidence, the Solution has been debunked by me here, here and here (as well as all over the Katyn Files website; though mostly as arguments of other people; there's precious little original content in Furr's propaganda pamphlet). [Update: a full debunking of his book.]

Crimes and Mercies, by James Bacque

This article is not about Holocaust denial. Or maybe a different sort of denial, which consists in blowing up (or simply inventing) crimes committed by Nazi Germany’s opponents in order to play down those of Nazi Germany.

Looking for the Katyn lighthouses.

[Update: Grover Furr’s lie about my claim about the Polish policemen’s tags found at Volodymyr-Volynskyi]

We have already devoted a couple of posts to the neo-Stalinist apologetics, showing how it is qualitatively not different from Holocaust denial. In this one we will deal with an example showing how the denial methodology isn't much different from flatearthism.

Deniers Who Favour the Prosecution of Free Speech (Part 1)

The Inconvenient History blog prides itself on opposition to the prosecution of free speech. It is therefore odd that its articles on Zisblatt should be based on the research of Eric Hunt, who is bringing a libel case against Zisblatt and others. It is also notable that Hunt's complaint uses similar terminology to that which Inconvenient History blogger Paul Grubach uses here, where Grubach notes that laws could be used "to prosecute Jews for the pain they cause when they promote the Holocaust ideology".

"The Climate Swindle vs. the Holo-Lie"

Some RODOH Holocaust deniers' reactions to the latest manufactured "Climategate" nontroversy are interesting. Here's the old Nazi-Canadian Wilfried Heink:

Similarities between the "Great Climate Swindle" and the "Great Holo-Lie", taken from "timesonline":

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece

"[T]his weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: "Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data." (True for "The Holocaust", as well, besides, archives are still locked)

If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of the world's understanding of ("The Holocaust") climate change is based can never be revisited or checked. Pielke said: "Can this be serious? It is now impossible to create a (real Holo body count) new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying, 'Trust us'." (Are you listening, nickterry?)

WHERE does this leave the ("Holocaust") climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of scientists is that ("The Holocaust" happened) the world is getting warmer and that (Germans) humanity (are) is responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.

Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to "bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant" (this is yet to happen re. "The Holocaust").

Lawson said: "("The Holocaust") Climate change is not being properly debated because all the political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned ("The Holocaust") climate change from being a political issue into a secular religion."

But, the time will come when "The Holocaust" will also fall by the wayside.
Arme True Believers, armes Deutschland.

Then there's this, by another lemming:

Nick Terry always likened Global Warming Denial to HD when he was trying to tar us all with the brush of lunacy and conspiracy mania. I think GWD and HD sit together very comfortably. I say screw the totalitarian liberals and their desperate desire to control thought.

Yikes!

Update: there's more!

Meet Robert Stacy McCain, a neo-Confederate wacko extraordinaire

[See my comment about McCain's reaction to this article at the bottom.
Also, after you read this article, be sure to read this old item at Eschaton.]

[Necessary clarification, 22.12.2009: note that in this posting I never characterize McCain as a "white supremacist". White supremacism is a very specific subset of racism and one doesn't need to be a white supremacist to be a racist. One can even be a white separatist without being a white supremacist. I hold no position on whether McCain is a white supremacist, and this posting is targeting his wacky neo-Confederate views. I also think that his words and certain actions (like publishing an article about "racial suicide" in an openly racist publication) show that he has at least a racist past.]

While our little blog is devoted mostly to debunking the specific arguments of Holocaust deniers, from time to time we write on the topics only casually related to the Holocaust and Holocaust denial.

After all, when you're dealing with the Holocaust denial, you're dealing with a great many topics at once - the historical and scientific methodologies, antisemitism, racism, conspirology, etc.

Thus, we've skewered a Stalinist professor for his Katyn denial, we've compared evolution deniers and Holocaust deniers, we've exposed a far-right author Robert Boatman, who was hiding behind his alleged support for Israel (at FrontPageMag, no less!), for the vile antisemite he was (sic; thankfully, he has died since).

And now we will fire a shot in the blogwar that has recently erupted over the former Washington Times assistant editor and popular conservative blogger Robert Stacy McCain.

But I guess an explanation is in order.

Sergey the Goebbels Guy, or a Commie loon for a change

It's that Katyn issue again.

Today I've discovered old comments left by someone called "haisanlu" who tried to defend Grover Furr and Mukhin at seek-the-truth-serve-the-people.blogspot.com
Most messages seem to have been deleted from that blog, but here's Google cache. He calls me one of the "Goebbels Guys", "The anti-Russian Katyn Guys", etc. Here's his poem:

Goebbels Guys

Poem dedicated to Y I Mukhin

Defending Goebbels Lies is the task of anti- communist guys
The anti-Russian Katyn Guys - Sergei Romanov being one
Well they were having so much fun
That Goebbels himself smiled

Until a a man called Mukhin gave them all a surprise
Because 20 million dead Russians said don't bend your knee to Nazi lies
Mukhin heard this and his "Katyn Detective" nailed the lies of these Goebbels Guys

For that Mukhin wins the seeker after truth prize

Now Goebbels is feeling down and wears a frown
For Mukhin kicked him in the balls
He told the truth to us all !

There will be no 21st Century Goebbels Pall
Thanks Mukhin from us all

Take that, Romanov!!!

Read more!

Haisanlu focuses on my rejection of the alleged "Schellenberg interrogation". He repeats Furr's claim that, according to Doerries, some of the records have disappeared, but doesn't even give the page. But the main question is: who cares? If anything is missing, there is no evidence whatsoever, that these missing records contained anything about Katyn, much less Schellenberg's confession.

Here we have someone who rejects lots of authentic documents and testimonies proving that Katyn was NKVD's deed on Stalin's order in favor of allegedly unavailable records with unknown content! That's even loonier than Holocaust denial.

Haisanlu writes:

There are also personal attacks against Mukhin saying that he associates with anti semites - well I think you should read a summary in English of the Mukhin's Katyn Detective of 1995 to understand the basis of Mukhin's criticisms of the Russians who did it theory and see what Y I Mukhin's thinks of anti semites in his own words. This might also help you make up your own mind about the veracity of Mr Sergei Romanov.

Except if you search my article for "semit", you'll come up empty. What I do is show a photo of Mukhin in company of well-known Holocaust deniers Graf and Mattogno - and Mukhin is a denier himself. This should help you make up your own mind about the veracity of Haisanlu.

As for the question of Mukhin being antisemitic or not, in his books and articles he more than often uses the word "zhid", which is translated as "kike". True, he claims he doesn't mean Jews but rather some sort of parasitic social category. But the very choice of words betrays his true feelings.

In the library section on the site of his newspaper you'll find quite a lot of hardcore antisemitic literature, like "A note on ritual murders". Possibly, Mukhin himself doesn't believe in this crap, but he does keep it online.

Finally, Haisanlu wants to sway us with this powerful argument

I also give you an extract from Goebbel's Diary entry 8th May 1943 " unfortunately German ammunition has been found in the graves at Katyn .. it is essential that that this incident remains top secret. If it were to come to the knowledge of the enemy the whole Katyn affair would be dropped "

Again reading Y.I.Mukhin we can see why Goebbels was so concerned about the German munitions found at Katyn.

Um. Hello? Sure Goebbels would be concerned about the German ammo found in the graves, because common sense would've told him that this would give the Soviets a very great weapon against the German claims, and Goebbels' propaganda campaign would lose some force. As we know, though, the Germans did not hide the fact that they had found German ammo in the graves. And if Goebbels knew all along that it was the Germans who did it, why was the find such a shock to him?

Haisanlu also presents us with an outline of Mukhin's earlier book, which Western Holocaust deniers should find instructive. Mukhin's main positive argument is that absence of several thousands Polish POWs in internal Soviet documents dealing with POWs since spring of 1940 was caused not by their death, but by their change of status from POWs into prisoners. Except both Burdenko Commission report and internal NKGB report about preliminary investigation of the Katyn case always call them POWs. Moreover, the alleged "authentic" contemporary documents (like Menshagin's notebook or Vetoshnikov's report) quoted in these reports also designate the Poles as POWs. Sorry, that canard is dead.

Haisanlu then repeats all the bullshit Mukhin wrote, including his erroneous arguments about Katyn documents. E.g. Haisanlu says that the letter of Beria was dated 5.3.40, but it wasn't. There is "agreed" ("za") on the document, but Haisanlu says that there isn't. He says that Kaganovich's and Kalinin's signatures on the document are forged, because they were absent from that Politburo meeting. But exactly because they were absent, there are no signatures by Kalinin and Kaganovich - only notes by a secretary that they agreed with the decision. He says that on Shelepin's letter there is no registration number and no signature, except there is both number and a signature. Etc., etc., etc. The guy obviously doesn't know what he is writing about - just like Mukhin.

And now for something not completely different...

[Update: see a full debunking of Furr's Katyn book.]

[Update (30.03.2007): the page with Katyn discussion is now here on Prof. Furr's site (the URL has been renamed). Prof. Furr emphasizes on his site that I have put our exchange online despite his objections - you should read the whole posting to see why (the relevant info is near the end). Basically, he does the same thing to other people, so the emphasis is, let's say, misleading.]

The reason the Holocaust denial is the most prominent example of historical pseudo-revisionism in Western world is prominence of the Holocaust itself in the West. But whenever there's an "inconvenient" past to deal with, there's also an attempted denial of that past, sometimes on a state level (the Armenian genocide), sometimes on the grassroots level, as is the case with the Katyn massacre "revisionism" in Russia.

"Katyn responsibility deniers", as they may be called, are usually Stalin-admirers, but not necessarily Communists. Quite a lot of non-Communist (but pro-Soviet) nationalists and "statists" (derzhavniki) - many of them Orthodox Christians - see Stalin as a symbol of the mighty Russian empire. Thus the need for apology of Stalin's crimes - either by justifying (e.g., the purges of 1930s are often seen as "good" purges of "Old Bolsheviks" and "Jews") or denying them.

Katyn "revisionists" basically repeat the Soviet "interpretation" of evidence, blaming the German Einsatzkommandos or other units for the massacre. The Soviet version is slightly modified for "revisionist" purposes - thus, it is claimed that there was some deliberate disinformation in the Soviet Katyn report, but it was necessary for political purposes. Namely, allegedly the Polish POWs were no longer POWs since spring 1940, actually they had been sentenced to 5 years without the right for correspondence (thus the absence of letters to families after May 1940 is explained) and were sent to labor camps near Smolensk, where they were captured by the Germans and murdered. The lie about them no longer being POWs was allegedly necessitated by a need to cover up the breach of international conventions in sentencing the POWs for labor in camps. "Conversion" of POWs into sentenced prisoners also "solves" the problem of absence of these Poles in POW-related Soviet documents (whenever they were mentioned after the massacre, they were described as "sent to UNKVD in April-May of 1940"). See how neatly everything is explained?

Evolution denial, Holocaust denial. Same stuff, if you ask me.

A noted anti-evolutionist moonbat Casey Luskin makes a fuss about atheist anti-creationist Larry Darby, who also happens to be a Holocaust denier.

He also complains that some "Darwinists" have compared ID creationism to Holocaust denial. Well, boo-hoo! If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Orac urges to be cautious about such analogies. I respectfully disagree.

It is true that every time evolution denial methodology is compared to Holocaust denial methodology, both denier groups tend to be offended (that is, unless someone is both an evolution denier and a Holocaust denier).

That does not detract from the validity of the comparison. Moreover, the comparison is almost perfect - moon landing denial does not come close. Here are several most important similarities - as I see them.

1) No credible alternative (scientific/historical) theory.

Evolution deniers cannot account for existing evidence for evolution. At best they don't offer any alternative, at worst they appeal to some sort of miraculous Designer and implausible ad hoc arguments.

Holocaust deniers cannot account for the missing Jews. Stupid deniers simply say that none are missing, without explaining where millions of Jews deported to specific places, and not found there after the war, went. Smart deniers are silent on the issue.

2) "We don't deny micro...!" tactic.

With some exceptions, evolution deniers love to repeat that they accept microevolution, but not macroevolution.

Not quite in the same terms, but Holocaust deniers use the same rhetoric. You can often read that such and such does not deny the [micro-]Holocaust. Sure, bad things happened to, maybe, a million or so Jews - typhus, you know. But there were no gas chambers and no systematic extermination [i.e., no macro-Holocaust].

3) "No empirical evidence" whine.

Evolution deniers often claim that there is no empirical evidence for evolution, e.g. speciation, or transitional fossils.

Holocaust deniers claim that there are no credible documents proving the Holocaust, or that there are no mass graves.

4) "What do they have to hide?/Persecution!" demagoguery.

Evolution deniers sometimes claim to be persecuted, and charge that "Darwinists" are out to stifle the "debate", as if they have something to hide.

Holocaust deniers at least have grounds for claiming that they're persecuted (in several countries), and they also argue that this persecution has something to do with stifling the "debate", and hiding something.

5) Search for irrelevant "icons".

Evolution deniers are fond of complaining about the so-called "icons of evolution" (gill slits, Haeckel's embryos, peppered moths), which complaints, even if true, would not establish the falsifty of evolution. This has nothing to do with truth-seeking, these "icons" are used for purely rhetorical purposes.

In exactly the same fashion Holocaust deniers try to "debunk" the Holocaust by bringing up minor and irrelevant details, such as human soap and lampshades, Dachau gas chamber, or Auschwitz plaque with 4,000,000 victims.

6) "Show me, step by step!"

Evolution deniers (especially ID creationists) are fond of demanding to describe, step by step, evolutionary pathways leading to the biological systems of their choice (usually, the so-called "irreducibly complex" systems). When plausible, though maybe not "step-by-step", pathways are presented, they're routinely dismissed. If no pathway is presented, evolution deniers claim victory.

Many Holocaust deniers are fond of Robert Faurisson's "Show me or draw me a gas chamber!" slogan. Of course, when the drawing is presented, this changes exactly nothing.

7) "Exception disproves the rule" rule.

A widespread tactic. E.g., evolution deniers argue [PDF] that variant genetic codes prove that the genetic code itself is not universal, and that these codes actually present a challenge to common descent.

Similarly, Holocaust deniers argue that if Anne Frank was deported to Auschwitz, but wasn't gassed there, and rather died of typhus in Bergen Belsen, then the "story" about murderous selections in Auschwitz is not true (regardless of specific circumstances which may have caused the exception).

Addendum: 8) And, of course, both Holocaust and evolution deniers claim that, respectively, the Holocaust and evolution are religions, and blame all sorts of real and alleged social ills on them. Holocaust deniers usually blame the "Holocaust industry" for persecution of Palestinians and post-war liberalism. Evolution deniers usually associate evolution with moral decay, atheism and liberalism. Holocaust deniers sometimes produce an alleged quote by Claude Lanzmann that "Auschwitz is the refutation of Christ" to prove that the "Holohoax" is an attack on Christianity. In the same vein evolution deniers like to quote Dawkins' attacks on Christianity.

There are more similarities, but that's already enough to show the almost identical modus operandi of both denial groups.

Now, on a purely rational level it is absolutely irrelevant that Holocaust denial is extremely offensive. If it were a legitimate critique, it should have been taught without any regard for "offensiveness". If it is factual, it should be taught.

Therefore the question about why we can teach evolution denial ("the controversy") but not Holocaust denial (also "the controversy") is absolutely legitimate. Those evolution deniers who would try to change the topic and complain about unfair comparison to "the Nazis" are demagogues, pure and simple.

'Commentary' mangles Prof. Charny's letter

[Source]

`Protestcide' - The Killing of Protest of a Denial of Genocide

Armenian News Network / Groong
March 27, 2006

by Israel W. Charny

To what extent does a publication have the right to alter a Letter to
the Editor that criticizes the publication, and then to publish their
altered version of the letter without the full permission of the
letter writer, especially in light of his explicit refusal to approve
their revision?

In December 2005, Commentary published a lengthy article denying the
Armenian Genocide by one, Guenter Lewy, a retired professor who has
previously published denials of other genocides as well, including a
denial that the Gypsies were victims of genocide in WW II (Simon
Wiesenthal defended the role of the Gypsies as fellow victims of the
Holocaust, and on several occasions wrote and told passionately of
seeing the Gypsies in Auschwitz in the barracks right next to his);
and including a denial that the Native Americans (Indians) were
victims of genocide in America. It is clear that Lewy has established
himself as an arch specialist in denial who has now relegated no less
than three victim peoples to some kind of status of sufferers other
than victims of genocidal mass murder. I think that readers of this
current Commentary piece denying there was a genocide of the Armenians
had a right to know of the author's previous publications of denials
(one of which was also in Commentary), but not a word was mentioned.

Lewy's article in Commentary is entitled, `The first genocide of the
20th century?' Lewy himself mentions in his article that the
International Association of Genocide Scholars, of which I am the
current president, had passed a unanimous resolution some years ago
confirming the validity of the Armenian Genocide. When Commentary was
approached by a colleague as to whether they would publish a rejoinder
to Lewy's article by me, the editor agreed immediately to receive a
600-word statement from me. So far to their credit. But then in the
grotesque sequence of censorship and revisions of my rejoinder that
follows, Commentary at first refused to identify my connection to the
same Association that passed the resolution, and finally did in fact
identify me as somehow affiliated with the Association but eliminated
identifying my leadership role. A personal slight? Then it's
irrelevant. Or is it a diminution of the significance of my protest?
In the meantime, Commentary published a lengthy rejoinder by Lewy in
the same issue with the following statement that, by a wave of the
Lewy-Commentary wand removes any significance to our association's
informed judgment: `I am less than impressed by the unanimous vote of
the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Armenian
case `was one of the major genocides of the modern era' writes Denier
Lewy conclusively and then presumptuously slams the members of the
association that virtually no one (but him) has done real research.

No matter. Commentary commits more serious infringements to the point
of not allowing me to voice my definite judgment about their question,
`The first genocide of the 20th century?'

In my letter I write about how the Turks also killed other Christian
(therefore non-Turkish) groups such as the Assyrians and Greeks as
well as the Armenians (the first Christian people of Europe) and that
this was `outright genocidal murder.' Commentary removed this vital
statement from my letter. Remember, the article by Lewy they have
published is asking explicitly if this was genocide, and the section
of Letters to the Editor in February is re-entitled, `Genocide?' but
my clear-cut rejoinder that it was `outright genocidal murder' was not
permitted.

Moreover, what does Lewy do? I say in my letter that I wonder if
readers of the Jewish-sponsored Commentary (this remark by me is also
censored out) know that the Turks were also responsible for two forced
expulsions of Jews from Jaffa-Tel Aviv in 1914 and 1917, both of which
resulted in losses of life of the elderly, infirm and ill. As if
referring to this information, Lewy says to me in his rejoinder,
`Mr. Charny stops short of calling these occurrences `genocide,'' but
he and the hard-working editor who we have seen manages to censor my
writing so fastidiously, thus manage to get across a message that
seems to refer to the whole bigger original issue of the Armenian
Genocide. Now, not only have I not been allowed to say what I did say
that there was clear-cut genocide, but it is as if claimed explicitly
that I too don't call the Ottoman murders genocide.

Higher-class deniers, like Lewy and Commentary, are a fascinating
study in the propagandistic logic-defying language mechanisms they
employ -- Commentary also removed from my letter a reference to an
article that Daphna Fromer and myself published in the British
journal, Patterns of Prejudice in which we analyzed the language-logic
of earlier deniers of the Armenian Genocide.

Ultimately, my most serious criticism is that Commentary is fully
responsible alongside of its author for publishing a bald exposition
of denial of an established major genocide. Thus, I conclude my
letter, `Regrettably, Mr. Lewy and Commentary too have now earned
places in the pantheon of genocide Deniers,' but -- by now you guessed
it -- you will never see that sentence, or an earlier statement
similarly critical of Commentary in the letter they published.

I ask, do responsible publications in a free world have the right to
censor and arbitrarily revise Letters to the Editor beyond
considerations of space, bad language such as epithets, and ad hominem
attacks (but not legitimate major criticisms of an author or the
publication!)? Obviously a publication holds the ultimate power and
can simply decline to publish a letter (who will ever know?). But to
cut and revise and remove and distort the thrust of the original
message, and fail to advise and fail to get approval of changes? I
don't know if there are legal controls against such tampering with the
lowly institution of a Letter to an Editor and/or op-ed writing, but I
do know such tampering violates the `natural law' of journalistic
integrity, and I think Commentary should be told so by an informed
public.

--
Prof. Israel W. Charny, Ph.D. is President of the International
Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) Editor-in-Chief, Encyclopedia
of Genocide [www.abc-clio.com/product/109124] Executive Director,
Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem Prof. of Psychology
& Family Therapy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Tel & Fax:
972-2-672-0424 e-mail: encygeno@mail.com Author of forthcoming book,
Fascism and Democracy in the Human Mind, by the University of Nebraska
Press, May 2006

An e-mail transcript of all texts and correspondence between me and
Commentary is available immediately on request to encygeno@mail.com