SA PRESS CLUB
September
Luncheon Wednesday, 18th September 2002
Guest Speaker: Phillip Adams AO
Phillip Adams,
millionaire socialist and sometime Marxist, addressed the Middle East
tragedy, praising Robert Fisk’s work there as a reporter, and scathingly
attacked President George Bush’s unilateralism. In particular he cited
Charles Krauthammer as a spokesperson for a dangerous policy. Krauthammer
will be interviewed in Adams’ Thursday evening’s program, 19 September
2002.Adams didn’t, of course, say that Krauthammer is a Zionist Jew who
blindly supports the existence of the State of Israel.
Rex Jory, The
Advertiser’s senior stafer, asked the first question. Jory raised
the Federal Court of Australia’s judgment against Fredrick Töben,
and he asked Adams what he thought of the Racial Discrimination Act. Adams
replied that he had always opposed it; and this had lost him many friends.
Both Jory and Adams supported Töben’s right to free speech, and both
expressed their disgust at Toben’s views – the usual disclaimer that
guarantees security of job and social profile, at least for the time
being.
Fredrick Töben
asked Adams the final question. He thanked Rex Jory for giving him the
welcomed right-of-reply introduction. One of the SA Press Club’s ageing
leftie committee members interjected with the usual, “Ask the
question!” – and fortunately David Brockschmidt was there to oppose
this spent force of left-wing authoritarianism.
Töben
then addressed Phillip Adams, “Phillip, me old mate!” because a number
of Töben’s
supporters actually love to listen to Adams’ program on ABC Radio
National, ‘Late Nigh Live’.
Töben
asked him, in the light of the Federal Court decision, what he should do.
Adams replied
that owing to the weight of historical evidence, “the best thing you can
do is commit voluntary euthanasia and switch off.”
OPINION
EDITORIAL, The Advertiser, Thursday, 19 September 2002
Not freedom but
perversion of speech
Freedom of
speech is essential to a functioning democracy. But everyone except
absolutists, accept there are constraints. Many are imposed by (too
constrictive) defamation laws. In Australia there are also the parameters
provided by racial discrimination legislation.
It was the
Federal Racial Discrimination Act which caused the Federal Court to order
removal by the Adelaide Institute director Dr Fredrick Töben, one of the tiny and deluded
band of Holocaust questioners, of offensive material from his Internet
website.
The Internet is
awash in fringe and downright crazy sites. Some are beyond jurisdiction to
the rage, distress and sometimes fear of the targets of hate and
vilification.
Whatever may be
said about free speech in principle it is reasonable that Australians,
born or resident, should comply with Australian law regardless of whether
material in clear breach of the law is published on paper, broadcast on
press and media, by word of mouth or disseminated through cyberspace.
The Internet
factor added a novel element to Justice Catherine Branson’s finding but
in all other respects it was consistent with the letter and spirit of law
against material which is not only wrong but absurd, distressing and which
is synonymous with the worst – by size and its vile, systematic
organization – genocide in recorded history.
This was not
freedom of speech but perversion of speech. In those terms, the court’s
decision can be greeted as a victory for free thinking.
Fredrick Töben
Replies
The editorial of
19/9 accuses us of ‘perversion of speech’ when, in fact, it is the
other way round: Our work rests on physically proven facts.
Censoring our
website’s content via the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) proves the
perversion of those that hold the Jewish people are a race – they are
not.
Our historical
research should never be subject of any court action because our legal
system does not look for historical truths.
However, under
the powers of the RDA we have
now a state-sanctioned ideological interpretation of an historical event.
Individuals from
former Communist countries know that this kind of legal precedent leads
directly to the dissident prison camps called Gulags.
That The
Advertiser endorses this totalitarian mindset by labeling our work as
a “perversion of speech” indicates a grave moral and intellectual
crisis – a bankruptcy.
The
truth-content of our message has never been challenged.
Dr Fredrick Töben
, Director
, Adelaide
Institute
Editorial, The
Australian, Thursday September 19 2002
Banning Hate on
the net won’t work
Jeremy Jones,
the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, did only what
could have been expected. Fredrick Töben,
an obsessional Holocaust denier sometimes called Australia’s David
Irving, had continued to publish material disputing the existence of gas
chambers at Auschwitz, and other material highly offensive to Jews. Dr Töben’s
Adelaide Institute website was filled with what the council described as
“malicious anti-Jewish propaganda”, such as blaming Jews for
Stalin’s crimes.
Under the 1995
Racial Hatred Act, “public acts” that are “reasonably likely to
offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” a person or group because of
race or colour, national or ethnic origin, are illegal. There is a very
high proportion of Holocaust survivors in Australia, and no doubt
Australia’s Jewish community was highly intimidated and offended by Dr Töben’s rantings. So Mr Jones took
the case to the Human Rights Commission, then to the Federal Court.
But is tinkering
with the bizarre internet site where Dr Töben spouts his incoherent, hateful
drivel the best way to respond to such views, offensive though they are?
The Federal Court has ordered Dr Töben
to take the offensive material off his website within seven days, or face
contempt and possible jail. This upholds a 2000 finding by the Human
Rights Commission. Yet, by issuing the woolly order that he “do all acts
and things necessary” to remove the racist material from his website,
the Federal Court has conferred on Dr Töben
the publicity and notoriety he clearly longs for.
Balancing the
need to protect minorities from racial hatred with the right to free
speech in a democracy is fraught with complexity; however, ordering the
removal from a website of hate material is not the only option. Freedom of
expression can be upheld, along with the rights of minorities. The NSW
Council for Civil Liberties has suggested forcing Dr Töben to publish a detailed
disclaimer on his site so that visitors know it contains lies that offend
and intimidate Jews. They suggest he would be so incensed, he would rather
take down his website altogether. The case highlights the difficulty and
subjectivity of policing racial vilification legislation. The
Australian’s columnist Phillip Adams, has been investigated for
alleged racial vilification of Americans. French novelist Michel
Houellebecq, an outspoken libertarian who says Islam is a stupid
religion,is on trial for inciting racial hatred. But the writer likes to
offend Jews, Arabs, Chinese and Americans too.
Fredrick Töben
is a fringe-dwelling German-born peddler of anti-Semitic lies. It is not
clear, however, that he was directly inciting people to commit racial
violence. It is unfortunate that a man of Dr Töben’s dubious credentials should be made
a martyr for free cyber-speech. But he should be able to print his
nonsense, perhaps with qualifiers, rather than be forced on to an offshore
site, or “underground” offline, where we can’t refute him. Robust
public debate should be allowed, and heavy-handed censorship avoided at
all cost – especially on the internet, which is more often than not a
boon for the kind of free, intelligent expression that can trump Dr Töben
and his anti-Jewish cronies. An open society is the best chance for
tolerance.
Fredrick Töben
replies
Shut
up or put up! Please detail the lies on our website
Your editorial
writer is rather confused and somewhat lacking in moral and intellectual
courage. In fact, the defamatory comments, designed to denigrate my work,
border on stupidity – and the author of this column must know this. Some
time ago a journalist was assigned to do a hatched job on me – then
later confessed to me that it was ‘ordered from above’. This is how I
view the editorial in today’s Australian.
It indicates to
me that there are individuals who are prepared to stoop to any level in
order to retain their job and dubious social standing within a profession.
Three decades ago journalists were considered to be “ink pissers”, but
with the Internet, liberation has occurred where individuals could free
themselves from the media dictatorship. Again we have emerging from the
ruins of a ‘gutless’ profession (using Phillip Adams’ phrase) the
prototype of a fearless journo, thanks to the Internet – and that is
good for our moral and intellectual vigour.
I may ask the
writer, what is my “incoherent, hateful drivel”? Where are my lies?
Please detail then, point by point. If you can find one lie on our
website, then please let me know. But
don’t be so silly and follow the Talmudic dialectic of the NSW Council
for Civil Liberties.
We are the ones
who oppose lying. For us telling the truth is wholesome because lying
destroys trust – and without trust, relationships begin to break down,
and societies fracture. But this is what the control freaks want to
achieve because they cannot stand anyone who tells the truth. Without
trust, there is no freedom of speech. We attempt to set an example of
honest reporting!
If the term
‘Holocaust’ is defined as the systematic extermination of European
Jewry in homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz, then all I am doing is
rejecting the belief that a ‘Holocaust’ happened. I have not been
convinced of the facts, and my two visits to Auschwitz have confirmed for
me that physically it was not possible to gas so many people – in
secret!
Further, those
that believe this statement are accusing the Germans of a terrible crime
– and anyone has the right to demand that the murder weapon, among other
things, be produced as proof that such a murder took place.
Professor Robert
Faurisson still waits for anyone to fulfill his challenge: “Show me or
draw me the homicidal gas chambers!” Why, I ask, has this to date not
been done? My answer is that it cannot be done because the gas chamber
story is a lie!
Remember, a
space museum has a rocket standing there as an exhibit. The Holocaust
museum does not have a homicidal gas chamber as an exhibit. Why not?
Because they never existed, and anyone who asserts anything about gas
chambers is either ignorant of the facts, or they are lying.
Further, what
was once sold to tourists as gas chambers – Krema I and Krema II – has
now been admitted was not true. Now, it is alleged, the alleged gassings
took place in two farmhouses outside of the Auschwitz-Birkenau
concentration complex. The story keeps on changing and changing.
And now
Australian law forces us to believe this new version – and that is
mental rape. We are back to the days of the Soviet Union where
Revisionists were sent to the Gulag prison system because they could not
uphold the lies propagated by the state.
Sydney
University has a Masters of Arts course in Holocaust studies. Now the
so-called ‘Holocaust deniers’ will be fair game for them. The
Australian’s editorial writer has now supported such a
witch-hunt. Welcome Gulag Australia where dissenters will languish because
they refuse to believe in the ‘Holocaust’ dogma-religion.
The disclaimer
at the end for free speech rings hollow. We are not anti-Jewish. The
so-called ‘Holocaust’ dogma should never have been the subject of any
court order, certainly not under the Racial Discrimination Act – because
being Jewish is a religious and not a racial matter.
Dr Fredrick
Toben
, Director
, Adelaide
Institute.
