Gilad Atzmon promotes speech on Holocaust denial website

Gilad Atzmon is using a notorious Holocaust denial website to advertise a speech and performance he is giving tonight at a Methodist church in Oakland, CA. (Read here.) The website, which is maintained by Michael Santomauro, publishes articles propounding what Santomauro euphemistically refers to as "historical revisionism" concerning Naziism and the Holocaust, as well as anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist articles, and promotional material for books with the same themes. A notice on the website indicates that Atzmon himself sent the promotional notice to the Santomauro website for publication there.

Santomauro made a small fortune by creating a service which helps New York City apartment dwellers find roommates. His clients have reported that they were surprised to receive Holocaust denial propaganda emails after using his roommate service. (Read here.) Earlier this year, Santomauro got some local press by emailing Holocaust denial material to everyone on the mailing list associated with the Upper East Side public school attended by his 9-year-old son. (Read here.) That email promoted a book entitled Debating the Holocaust, which Santomauro published at his own expense and possibly authored under the pseudonym "Timothy Dalton, PhD". (Read here.)

Santomauro has worked as an advance man for David Irving's New York appearances, sometimes under the pseudonym "Michael Singer", under which name he has booked venues for Irving to promote his books. (Read here.) Emails between Irving and Santomauro planning a speaking engagement were copied from Irving's website by hackers and leaked to Wikileaks. (I wrote about that here. The hacked emails are online here. A prior post mentioning Santomauro's link to Irving is available here.)

Santomauro is also reported to have run the Holocaust denial website VHO during the imprisonment of it's founder Germar Rudolf for violation of Germany's laws against promotion of racism. (Read here.)

In addition to the book written by him or "Dalton", Santomauro currently promotes and sells a book called The Riddle of the Jew’s Success, which was written by the German anti-Semitic ideologue of the pre-Nazi and early Nazi era, Theodor Fritsch, author of The Anti-Semitic Chatechism. Santomauro advertises the book as follows:

An amazing book, originally written in 1927, revealing how the Jews and the Jewish culture, for many centuries, have used deception, treachery and immorality in business, trade and economic life to amass WEALTH – their ONLY “god” and to destroy the honest businesses of the non-Jews.

(That advertisement can also be found on a website called GoodNewsAboutGod.com.) Santomauro's use of his Amazon store to sell this book led to his being banned from Amazon. Santomauro was later accused of issuing threats to and releasing private contact information for the person who brought the matter to Amazon's attention. (Read here.) For a number of years, Santomauro published a long list of Holocaust denial books and papers which he sold or made available free online via another website, tadb.org. That website is no longer active. (Archived example here.)

Gilad Atzmon is using Santomauro's website to advertise his appearance at a fundraiser for an organization promoting a prospective convoy of boats to Gaza. The fundraiser will take place at the Lake Merritt Methodist Church in Oakland, CA , and is associated with the organization US Boat to Gaza - West. (Read here.) In addition to the promotional material, Atzmon provided Santomauro with video of a recent anti-Israel panel which Atzmon held in London, which Atzmon calls with characteristic modesty "Must watch video: Gilad Atzmon in action..."

A commenter to a prior post on this blog concerning Atzmon's appearance at Lake Merritt Methodist Church has indicated that a demonstration against anti-Semitism will be there to greet him. The demonstration is being scheduled to take place this afternoon, May 10, from 4:00-5:00PM at Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, 1330 Lakeshore Ave, Oakland, CA.

Will David Irving violate the Civil Rights Act on his upcoming U.S. speaking tour?

Buried within the mass of documents disclosed via Wikileaks are a series of Holocaust denier David Irving's emails concerning his 2009 speaking tour of the U.S. (Read here.) Along with embarrassing details of Irving's unsuccessful passes at his assistant, an Indianapolis-based far-right activist and former official of the Indiana Libertarian Party named Jaenelle Antas who is 50 years younger than Irving (read here and here and here), the leaked emails included details of Irving selling tickets for his speeches.  These emails appear to show that, when a prospective audience member contacted Irving's website for tickets to one of his speeches, they were vetted by Irving himself, and those who were suspected of being Jewish were flagged with the word "ACHTUNG" (in all capital letters). Here are some examples (with the names, phone numbers and email addresses of the applicants redacted):

Xxxx Wilson Xxxx
298 Gates Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11216
United States
555 555 5555
wilson.xxx@gmail.com


1 Not known to us

ACHTUNG, Jewish?

PayPal paid $15.00

November 4, 2009 @ 10:33 PM
I registered for the November 14th speaking engagement in New York City via
PayPal and received a confirmation e-mail and receipt, but nothing more. Please
confirm that Mr. Irving is scheduled to appear on Thanks,
Will
Will Xxxx
336 East 13th Street Apartment Xx
New York, New York 10003
(555) 555-5555
wilson.xxx@gmail.com
On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 10:54 AM, wrote:
We issue the actual location much closer to the event, for security reasons. I
can be reached by cell phone at 305 923 6779 in the event of difficulties.
Understood. In advance, thanks.
Best,
Will

Xxxxxxxx Patty Xxxxxxxx
235 Naples Terrace
Apt. Xx
Bronx, NY 10463
555-555-55555
freedompatty@xxxxx.com Not known to us

ACHTUNG is quarter-Jewish

October 31, 2009 @ 1:49 PM

Comments
I would be honored to hear and be in the presence of Mr. Irving. He is a lion of
truth.
She phoned 1.11.09 also pleading for details, says has no c.c., Paypal etc; I
explain problem.

Has not yet registered

Xxxxxx David M Xxxxxx
73-12 35th Ave. #x
Jackson Heights, New York 11372

555-555-55555
xxxxxxxx@yahoo.com
1 ACHTUNG: Jewish, notify of location at last moment only

While there is no indication in the leaked emails that Jews were denied entry to his speeches (they may have been, but these emails don't say), those thought by Irving to be Jewish were certainly treated differently from others attempting to purchase tickets.  At the least, for so-called "security reasons", the locations of the speeches were withheld from those he thought to be Jewish.  Non-Jews were not subjected to this.  (*See note below.)  That different treatment on the basis of religion has a name.  Discrimination.   Here's what the Civil Rights Act says about such discrimination:

SEC. 201. (a) All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.

United States law does not permit those holding events in public accommodations to treat people differently based upon their religion or ethnic group.  Not only must everyone be allowed access to speeches given in public places, they must be treated equally as well.  Federal law does not allow those selling tickets to public events to have different procedures for getting tickets or finding out where the event is taking place based on the audience member's race, religion or nationality.

David Irving's 2009 speaking tour of the U.S. featured events at public accommodations such as churches, restaurants, American Legion halls and motels, as well as at private homes.  I would be interested to know whether those events held at public accommodations violated the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against Jews.  I would also like to know if Irving's upcoming U.S. tour, which is scheduled to begin in a scant two weeks, will similarly discriminate.  Shouldn't either the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department or the Attorneys General of the states in which he spoke or intends to speak investigate past religious discrimination by Irving and act to prevent it from happening again?  Although the webpage for ordering tickets to Irving's upcoming speeches currently indicates that they all take place at "private locations", this claim can't be verified because event locations are kept secret until the applicant is approved to attend.  Moreover, if a private home were to be used for a publicly advertised, for-profit event, would that be defined as a public accommodation under the Civil Rights Act?    If  the Justice Department or state AG's offices are interested in attempting to purchase tickets to Irving's speeches under Jewish and non-Jewish names, they can do so at the following link:

https://irvingbooks.com/xcart/home.php?cat=250

The following tour schedule has been posted on an anti-fascist website:

February 28: Miami, FL
March 1: Orlando, FL
March 2: Savannah, GA
March 3: Columbia, SC
March 4: Raleigh, NC
March 5: Richmond, VA
March 6: Washington DC
April 9: Indianapolis, IN
April 10: St. Louis, MO
April 12: Dallas, TX
April 13: Houston, TX
April 15: San Antonio, TX
April 16: El Paso, TX
April 17: Albuquerque, NM
April 20: Las Vegas, NV
April 21: Phoenix, AZ
April 22: Sherman Oaks, CA
April 23: Orange County, CA
April 28: San Francisco, CA
April 29: Sacramento, CA
May 1: Portland, OR
May 2: Seattle, WA
May 3: Spokane, WA
May 4: Kalispell, MT
May 6: Billings, MT
May 8: Bismarck, ND
May 9: Fargo, ND
May 10: Minneapolis, MN
May 11: Madison, WI
May 12: Chicago, IL
May 13: Detroit, MI

Law enforcement officials can very easily verify whether Irving is continuing his apparent practice of discriminating against Jewish applicants for tickets to his speeches, and they should do so.


[NOTE:  With respect to Irving's treatment of non-Jews, the 2009 emails leaked to Wikileaks indicate that an applicant for tickets whose name was Turkish was tagged by Irving with the notation "Probably OK; BUT Not known to us".  No "ACHTUNG" for him.

Other applicants wrote brief statements indicating their credentials as pro-Nazi, a simpering fan of David Irving or at least non-Jewish. At least one person purchasing tickets was all three:

I attended your Miami talk in May 2005. My great-grandfather was a member of theGerman [sic] Intelligence Services overseas during WWII, and my grandfather was a member of the Waffen-SS. Currently I'm a college student, and my goal is to obtain a PhD in History, and another PhD in Philosophy. Needless to say, I GREATLY admire your work.

Other applicants got Irving's terse notation "Is OK" next to their names.  Among those was Jacques Pluss, a former professor at New Jersey's Farleigh Dickinson University who has proclaimed himself to be a Nazi, as if you couldn't already tell.  (Read here.)


Former professor Jacques Pluss: "OK" in David Irving's eyes.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation in the leaked David Irving emails is an email apparently sent to Irving by Col. Thomas W. McGuire Jr. of the U.S. Air Force.  This email asks

If I could arrange it, would you be interested in speaking at the US Air Force top professional military officers school the Air War College located here in Montgomery at Maxwell AFB on some future visits? The college has about 300 colonels/ lieutenant colonels in attendance. I was a senior faculty member at the College when I retired.

That email goes on to ask Irving's opinion of Pat Buchanan's loathsome work of historical revisionism "Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War", Buchanan's latest mainstreaming of pro-fascist propaganda.  McGuire, whose resume states that he "(f)lew 100 missions over North Vietnam in McDonnell Douglas F-4C Phantoms, leading 31 missions over Hanoi area known as Route Pack Six", is retired from active service, and is currently active in Military Officers for 9/11 Truth and Pilots for 9/11 Truth (read here).]

Below is a photo of David Irving's assistant and former official of the Indiana Libertarian Party, Jaenelle Antas, who posts on the racist website Stormfront under the screen name "Tristania".  In an interview with a neo-fascist website (read here), she describes herself as working full time running Irving's online bookstore.  Antas was key to organizing Irving's 2009 tour, and she appears to be working with Irving on his upcoming U.S. tour.  She also says that she is working to secure funding for republishing Irving's out-of-print books, and recently assisted Irving in conducting a tour of World War II sites in Poland  "for a group of about a dozen select guests".

Antas is working on Stormfront to sell tickets to Irving's core audience.  (Read here and here.)  She writes there that

This year's talk should be pretty good. He's written about 12 chapters of the Himmler biography so far and these talks will be a foretaste of what is to come in that book. He's got a lot of interesting documents and anecdotes to share.

Traficant to testify for Demjanjuk; working for neo-fascist website

Reposted here: http://adamholland.blogspot.com/2009/11/traficant-to-testify-for-demjanjuk_04.html

The Hungarian far right and David Irving's U.S. tour

Eva S. Balogh's blog, Hungarian Spectrum, has a very interesting post on The Hungarian far right and David Irving, about which read more below.

You may or may not be aware that Irving has been on tour in the U.S., having been hosted by the likes of the University of Oregon's Pacifica Forum, led by Professor Emeritus Orval Etter and columnist George Beres (read here and here and here). Pacifica Forum billed Irving as a "legendary British historian and martyr for free speech". (Read more about Pacifica Forum's journey through the rabbit hole from leftist peace activism to far right racism here.) Someone who heard Irving speak at Pacifica Forum said he used the term "Jewish tragedy" instead of the term "Holocaust", explaining that "he meant the tragedy was not that all those Jews were killed, but rather that 'Jews never asked themselves why they were killed … why they are hated so.' " (read letter to editor here: "Irving statements reprehensible". The Eugene, Oregon Register-Guard naively reported (read here) only that Irving called the Holocaust a tragedy, missing the point of the statement entirely.)

The logistics for Irving getting an audience can by tricky. His technique for speaking in public generally goes something like this: 1) anti-Semitic nut job sees ad for Irving appearance on racist website (like this or this); 2) nut job submits application for ticket and prepays by credit card (tickets available here or here, Hitler posters available here); 3) having been approved, nut job receives notice of the details of Irving's appearance and is told to keep them hush hush.

Before his July 16 speech in New York City, Irving's website announced the location as the Primavera Restaurant, an upscale Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. When ticket holders arrived, however, they were directed instead to the St. Stephen of Hungary Catholic Church, located nearby. (Read a news account here, Max Blumenthal's blog account with video here including a virtually identical statement to the one quoted above blaming the Jews for the Holocaust, and a brief piece on the L.A. Jewish Journal blog here.) Below is Blumenthal's video. Money quotes from Irving: "Hitler...was probably not at all anti-Semitic..." and "(t)he Jews are the architects of Auschwitz".



With that, you should read Eva Balogh's post at Hungarian Spetrum for her view of who and what was behind Irving's appearance, and also to check out the deluge of right wing lunatics in the comments. According to Balogh, Hungary's far right, including neo-fascist and neo-Nazi elements, has a significant, pernicious influence in Hungarian politics. She presents the evidence that Hungarian rightists in New York City helped set up Irving's speech. Here's her take on David Irving and the far right's New York - Hungary connection:

David Irving made several trips to Hungary where there are no laws against those who deny the Holocaust. Loránt Hegedüs, a Hungarian Reformed minister, was his host, and it was in Hegedüs's church that he spread his ideas.

...and...

New York Hungarians claim that an extreme right-wing Hungarian group headed by Ernő Hóka often uses (New York's St. Stephen of Hungary Parrish) for some of his gatherings and that Hóka has close relations with Ákos Szilágyi, the founder of the New York Polgári Kör, part of the network of civic circles of right-minded people who were supposed to rally when the call came from Viktor Orbán. These civic cells at one point seemed to be critically important vehicles of Orbán's political strategy. Orbán put Csaba Hende, formerly an MDF member of parliament, in charge of the network of cells. Hende by now is so far to the right that only a few days ago he shocked the country by suggesting that when Fidesz takes over the government they will fire all 45,000 policemen and build the force from scratch. Obviously, only those who share the values of Fidesz will be rehired. The establishment of the New York civic cell was inspired by Hende during one of his visits to New York. From the beginning the cell espoused extreme right-wing ideas and had close ties to kuruc.info.hu, a notorious neo-Nazi site advocating the overthrow of the Hungarian government. Recently the American server hosting both of these sites shut them down.

This morning Zoltán Szabó, an MSZP member of parliament, responding to the news from New York had a few choice words about Fidesz's cozy relations with extreme right-wing groups. What Szabó wanted to know was how far Fidesz is willing to go. How long can a so-called "moderate" right of center party maintain close ties with the extreme right? Szabó said that he understands that hard-core right-wing voters are important to Fidesz since they make up between 8% and 10% of the electorate, but surely, he continued, a serious party can't afford such nefarious association with neo-Nazis.

On György Bolgár's call-in show this morning Zoltán Szabó reiterated his assessment of the situation. A split second after the conversation with Szabó ended, Ákos Szilágyi, straight from New York, phoned in. He denied that he had anything to do with the invitation. That, he alleged, is the figment of the imagination of László Bartus, editor-in-chief of the Amerikai-Magyar Népszava Szabadság, who, according to Szilágyi, is a liar whom he is suing because of another article he wrote. I checked Amerikai-Magyar Népszava and there was no mention of either Szilágyi or the New York Polgári Kör. It simply said that "according to many people, the St. Stephen Parish of New York has long been a meeting place of people with Nazi sympathies." Szilágyi, by the way, also claimed that it wasn't even Hungarians who invited Irving. That is hard to believe. I became especially suspicious when ARA supporters were described as homosexuals and communists. It sounded all too familiar.

First Eva Balogh's facts, then the deluge of hate. Michael Santomauro (founder of a New York website designed to find people roommates) one of the city's most vocal anti-Semites (view his websites here and here) and also a Ron Paul supporter (read here), quickly submitted a comment defending Faurisson and Holocaust denial. Santomauro was followed in short order by Danish Holocaust denial blogger Balder (also an apparent Ron Paul supporter, his website features a portrait of Paul as its banner). (View Balder's websites here and here.) After this, a multitude of others voicing overt hatred of the sort that all too often occurs under cover of screen name. (I know I'll hear from people asking "why bother covering bigotted comments?" I understand that hate-filled blog comments are commonplace, but, in this instance, two of the commenters are bloggers, and the content and context of their comments seem notable. I also felt bad for the recipient of these comments, having received similar comments here.)

Let me give the voice of reason the last word. The pastor of St. Stephen of Hungary Parish apparently knew nothing about the nature of the talk before it began, beyond the fact that it was a talk about a book. Father Angelo Gambatese, speaking on behalf of the church, said "(w)e are outraged because we do not cater to this kind of bigotry, and we are sorry that it happened."

New Yorkers at David Irving speech, July 16, 2008

Irving greeting well-wishers after speech