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Martin
Peltier:
Good evening, Professor.
I must
explain to the listeners why I’ve decided to invite a notorious
law-breaker into this studio. We’re different in every way: you’re
a university professor, I was always a dunce; you’re half-British
and Great Britain is my political bête noire; you’re an atheist,
I’m Catholic. Why, then?
Well,
there are reasons that can’t be admitted to – first, people always
like to appear clever. And then there are frivolous reasons: you
like Nerval and you consider Isidore Ducasse a trickster, which is
quite agreeable.
And then
there are two reasons that are wholly acceptable:
The first:
to begin with, I heed the Gospel where Christ says: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye
have done it unto me." However today, in our society, "the least" isn’t the jobless worker, it’s not the illegal immigrant who’s
enjoyed the benevolence and support of loads of "right-thinking" organisations; the least is the revisionist, the scurvy wretch who
spreads the worst of plagues: that affecting remembrance.
And
there’s a second reason for this invitation: today we won’t be
talking about your ideas or your work, Professor Faurisson,
because it’s forbidden by law. But the manner in which you’ve been
treated by the media and organs of the State is disgusting and
shocking. One can very well maintain that thought and its
expression must be limited, must be guided — maybe it’s even
desirable; who can be sure? But for a society that’s made a virtue
of blasphemy, and proclaims at every occasion its desire for total
freedom, for this society to repress forbidden opinions with the
utmost ferocity is intolerable from the points of view of both
reason and morality. It’s therefore necessary to denounce this
fact forcefully and precisely: we cannot remain our whole lives
prostrate before the ukases of the mighty and the [inaudible]
they impose. For the honour of the press and of the French people
we must from time to time lift up at least the tip of an ear.
So today
we’re going to do some history, a little history of revisionism.
It will absolutely not be a question of justifying any claims
whatsoever but of relating what has happened.
That said,
let’s be clear: we are not going to talk about gas chambers! The
1990 Gayssot Law forbids dispute of the "crime against humanity"
as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946. And unless I’m
mistaken, it forbids such dispute even by insinuation.
What is
the exact text? Can you quote it for me, from memory?
Robert
Faurisson:
It’s correct that this law of July 13, 1990, which has come to be
called, usually, the Fabius-Gayssot or Gayssot Law, forbids
dispute of what are called crimes against humanity such as these
have been defined, judged, and punished, in particular by the
international military tribunal in Nuremberg in 1945-46. But this
law of July 13, 1990 has been applied in such a way that today
there exists case law making it so that not only have you not the
right to dispute but, to sum things up, you haven’t the right to
appear to dispute. It’s said exactly, in the Penal Code,
that you haven’t the right to proceed with such a challenge, even
by way of insinuation. Consequently, anything can, or just about
anything can be interpreted as dispute.
MP:
Absolutely. And it’s there that — I’ll pick up here — it’s no
secret for anyone, Professor, that you have called into doubt the
existence of homicidal gas chambers in the Europe occupied by
Hitler and that you revise considerably downwards the generally
accepted number — six million — of Jews who died during the Second
World War. Therefore I won’t question you on this subject and if,
on the spur of the moment, you should feel like going into it I’d
cut you off quite firmly and without the least courtesy, I’m
warning you. You are here on probation — it’s the best I can offer
you — and we shall limit ourselves to three topics that were
strictly defined before the programme. Furthermore, to be honest
with you, even without the Gayssot Law I wouldn’t have let you
expand on your revisionist arguments: apart from the legal
sanctions provided by lawmakers and handed down by judges there
are others, spontaneously applied, demanded either tacitly or
quite openly: there are pressures on families, harassment at work,
physical attacks on those who think the wrong way as well as
against those who let them express themselves. There are
extra-legal powers in our country operating in complete
tranquillity; there are militias above the law and I admit I’m
afraid of them; I’m scared of the more or less veiled power to be
seen at work on the subject of remembrance of the so-called
darkest years of our history.
And the
first thing I’d like you to go into is precisely the persecution
against revisionists in France and in the world. You yourself have
been beaten and left for dead by a band of louts that the police
preferred to leave alone. You’ve lost your job and several legal
proceedings have ruined you. But still, you consider yourself
lucky, because, in the end, you’ve never been in prison for
revisionism. What is… how do you judge
yourself in all this
business?
RF:
To answer your question: "to judge is to compare"; I compare my
lot with that of many other revisionists, especially German and
Austrian ones. I judge the legal system that has ruled against me
but I also judge it against the German, Austrian, Swiss, and
British legal systems, the system in English-speaking Canada, the
American system, and others — the Australian legal system, for
example. And I feel I’m fortunate to live in a land of plenty
called France. I’ll add that, as I see it, the French State is
well-enough behaved when it’s not at war, or in a civil war, open
or latent. And finally, I must confess, I’m lucky.
MP:
You’ve given a little overview. I’d like to return, point by
point, to… Is it… It’s precisely some teaching that’s needed here.
Again, the history of the various persecutions. Can we fill the
listeners in on the various countries? Can you say, for example,
how things are in Switzerland? What are the cases that there’ve
been against revisionists, what are the persecutions they’ve
endured? I’m thinking perhaps of Amaudruz…
RF:
Well, there’s Amaudruz who, at the age, I think, of 82 was in
prison, for about three months — but there’ve been others. I admit
this is a subject I don’t really feel like dealing with, because
talking about persecutions endured is a kind of complaining. The
real question is to know whether, at bottom, we are right or not,
and there you forbid me to talk.
MP:
Absolutely. On that I’m very clear. But, by definition, things
that can’t be talked about can’t be talked about. It’s a
tautology. But I love tautologies: they’re my favourite sport. And
so I think it’s still interesting — you don’t feel like
talking about it but I want to make you talk about it
because I believe the public, even the educated public, hasn’t…
You, you’ve been immersed in it, a bit like Obelix, ever since you
were little but the broad public, even educated, even
well-informed, has not gauged the extreme… I won’t say severity,
but the extreme bizarreness of legal sanctions brought against a
number of people. All right, let’s have a look at Austria. I have
two cases I’d like you to talk about: the case of Mr Honsik and
that of Mr Fröhlich. I’m not asking you to tell me about them for
three hours, but in two minutes, there, you can do a good job.
RF:
Gerd Honsik is indeed a revisionist, who used to live in Vienna;
he was convicted for revisionism; he took refuge in Spain and, not
long ago, Spain extradited him, handed him over to Austria and so
Honsik is in prison.
MP:
They extradite people, for that offence…
RF:
There you are!
MP:
It’s a minor offence or a serious one? It’s a minor one, after
all.
RF:
Well, "minor" or "serious" offence, it all depends, doesn’t it?
For example, in Anglo-Saxon systems they speak of "crime"; that
can be a minor offence; it’s a question of vocabulary, no matter.
The fact, the important fact — you’re right to stress it — is that
a country should succeed in extraditing someone. Now, in this
regard, I’ll continue, therefore, to respond, since you’ve spoken
of Honsik but also of Fröhlich; I’ll talk quickly about Fröhlich
then I’ll come back to this business of extradition because,
you’re right, it’s important. Fröhlich is a specialist of
disinfection gas chambers, and he said the Nazi gas chambers,
for him, were impossible for reasons…
MP:
Yes but, there we’re really going…
RF:
Wait… there we are. Therefore, as a revisionist he was convicted
and, I believe, has been sentenced to something like six years and
five months in prison.
MP:
All right.
RF:
Coming to the question of extradition. You know, it’s pointed out
that France has anti-revisionism laws.
MP:
Yes.
RF:
It’s also the case with Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Germany
obviously, and still other countries. It’s maintained that in the
English-speaking countries there are no anti-revisionism laws.
Pure hypocrisy! And it’s here that I get to the question of
extradition. Take the United States. There you have one country
where, I must say, personally I felt free. It’s about the only
country in the world where I felt free. Well, that’s finished. For
if we take the case of one of the main revisionists, Ernst Zündel,
he lived in Tennessee and one fine day saw five burly cops arrive
who put him in handcuffs, who led him away to jail, then handed
him over to Canada; Canada — listen to this — put him in prison
for two years in positively abominable conditions…
MP:
That is ...RF:
That is: in his cell, where he froze in winter, no right to have a
chair, no right to have a pillow, no right to anything, constant
rectal searches and intimidation with the use of dogs – they would
lay him on the floor, and their dogs – can you imagine? –
slavering on him: that’s how he was treated for two years in
Canada; then…
MP:
A technical question, while it occurs to me: he’d been brought to
Canada from the U.S. on an international arrest warrant, a request
for extradition?
RF:
Not even. Yes indeed, it was a request; it wasn’t international:
it was Canada that demanded and got him, it was by agreement
between the U.S. and Canada. So, the United States, where you have
the First Amendment, where you’re supposed to be able to express
yourself freely, treats a revisionist like a gangster, and with
gangster methods. He was therefore handed over. And he went before
a special court – I do mean: special – called "Human Rights
Commission". And I know from experience what that is, and I think
the listeners will, after all, be interested in this point.
MP:
So then, just what is a "Human…
RF:
This: it was said, when in 1992 Zündel had ended up winning his
amazing cases of 1985 and 1988 through a decision of 1992, certain
persons — I won’t name them — said: this is intolerable; something
has to be done. They said: we need Human Rights Commissions. And
the good people of Canada said Yes. At least the legislators said
Yes. Then, second step — but wait: it would need human rights
tribunals, not ordinary ones, and they created special courts
where the judges are recruited according to their sensitivity
[in English in the original — translator’s note] — I needn’t
translate — to a certain problem — and you come before these
courts — it happened to me when I went to defend Ernst Zündel.
They have you raise your right hand, they have you swear to tell
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and the next
minute, if you have the misfortune to say: "But there’s nothing to
blame on Ernst Zündel, since what he says is exact, it can be
demonstrated, and I myself am sure I can demonstrate it," then the
court intervenes and tells you: "Be advised that here, truth is no
defence." That’s to say that here, "It doesn’t matter to us
whether or not what you say is exact, what matters to us is the
pain you are potentially liable to cause to a segment of Canadian
society."
MP:
Very well. You were saying what happened then, – so, he was tried
in Canada, in that way…
RF:
Then Germany demanded him, and he was handed over to Germany,
tried in appalling conditions…
MP:
A second extradition…
RF:
A second extradition and, in Germany not only was he convicted and
sentenced to five years in prison but also they refused to take
into account the two years he had done in Canada and, what’s more,
one of his lawyers, a woman, is now in jail…
MP:
And she’s called…?
RF:
Sylvia Stolz. "Stolz" means "proud" in German. She’s regularly
called "the German Joan of Arc." And another of his lawyers will
be going on trial. His name is Jürgen Rieger.
MP:
That’s quite a lot, actually.
RF:
Yes. But you know, if you consider the physical hardship that’s
befallen some revisionists, it’s actually not so much!
MP:
We’ll come back to that a little later…
RF:
I don’t know if it’s really worthwhile…
MP:
But for the moment we’re on the purely judicial question. There’s
the case of Australia I think, there’s a Mr Toben; in [Belgium]
there’s a former Vlaams [Blok] senator; and in Greece there’s
Costantinos Plevris… Apart from the purely judicial questions, if
we stick to sanctions that aren’t brutal or court-imposed ones,
there are disciplinary or academic sanctions. I’m thinking, in
France, of people like Notin, Plantin, Bruno Gollnisch …
RF:
Of course!
MP:
Could you still tell us a few words about them? It doesn’t seem at
all negligible to me.
RF:
Take the case of Notin. For having, in a truly confidential
scientific review, slipped in just a little thought whereby he
showed his scepticism as to the question you don’t want me to tell
you about, for having done that, Notin went through hell. It began
with the killing of his house pets: his dogs were killed…
MP:
His cats.
RF:
Yes, excuse me, his cats [in fact, after a failed attempt to kill
the family dog, the Notins’ cat was killed — translator’s note].
Then they went after his wife, his children, himself, and then…
MP:
Insults? Threats?
RF:
Everything you like. I have to be quick; I’ll give you the results
of his little run-in: his colleagues took the liberty, of course,
of judging him, condemning him. The unfortunate journal that had
published his article was pulped: copies of it were tracked down
in all the libraries; then, he himself could no longer exercise
his profession of lecturer at the University of Lyon-3; and
thereupon, finding himself done for, and with a court case coming
up against him, he, well, had the misfortune of selecting a lawyer
— whose name I won’t give but who is one real trickster — who had
him sign a recantation. I should add that Notin — today he
no longer makes a secret of it, I think — apologised to me for
that recantation, telling how he’d been advised to make it: it
ended up serving no purpose at all: when he wanted to land a
position abroad, he thought he was going to get it; "they" found
out and, naturally, there was no longer any question about it. It
must have been in Morocco. He finally ended up in Mexico and, of
course, divorce: wife, four children — finished. And that’s one
example.
And then
you mentioned another case, that of Plantin. It’s extraordinary.
Plantin is a very serious, prudent, moderate man. He had presented
a thesis which got him the mention "Very well done" from a
professor called Régis Ladous, L-A-D-O-U-S. It wasn’t, strictly
speaking, revisionist but it did touch on the matter. Then the
following year he took another degree. But never mind. Ten
years later, when Plantin had gone his own way and it was quite a
while since he’d been at the university, the matter of his thesis
came up somehow. Here’s what they had the nerve to do — listen to
this, it’s absolutely extraordinary; I don’t think it’s ever
happened anywhere else in world history and it happened in Lyon, [département
of] Rhone [, France]: they set up a phoney viva voce
session 10 years afterwards! That is, they made Ladous come there,
they summoned Plantin — who, of course, didn’t come — and there
they pretended to carry out a viva voce! It took, I think, 10
minutes; Ladous withdrew to deliberate, and then came back
declaring that the thesis, which had earned the mention "Very well done", now, ten years later, got the mention… I don’t recall the
adjective but it was something like "intolerable"! [the word in
question was "inacceptable" — author’s note].
But we
have some outrageous examples. I’d like
to give you, as you’re interested…
MP:
Yes, this subject interests me.
RF:
I’m not particularly interested but if you are I’ll make you
happy; while you’re making threats, I’m going to try to make you
happy.
MP:
And so there!
RF:
So there. Well, take what happened to me last year: I’m invited by
an esteemed Italian professor to come and deliver a little lecture
— "deliver" is an Anglicism — give a little lecture.
MP:
That’s better.
RF:
Isn’t it better indeed?! I’m with you on that.
And so I
go to the University of Teramo. Do you see Rome on the map? Good,
well then, shoot an arrow straight towards the Adriatic and you’ve
got Teramo. I go to the university complex, it’s planned that I
show up there early in the morning. And what does the university
president do? I don’t know if a similar precedent exists. Well, he
has the university shut!
MP:
That’s very Italian. They’re very clever, because a solution had
to be found.
RF:
(Laughing) You practically approve!
MP:
No, but a bit of imagination is sometimes called for.
RF:
And then, what follows is interesting: well, we went on towards a
hotel where we thought we’d be able to hold this little
conference, and there I encountered a group of Italian reporters.
The Italian, you know, has a tendency to be subtle…
MP:
Yes indeed!
RF:
… and he’s human. I found myself at the door of the hotel,
which wouldn’t let me inside, and there, next to one of those
pretty Italian town squares, the journalists questioned me, I
answered and not the way I’m doing with you: straight to the gist
— I took out my magnum, that is, the 60-word sentence which I
won’t say to you…
MP:
No!
RF:
And at that point I told them, "But you know, what’s happening
right now is extraordinary. Because in France it’s inconceivable
that I should be able, like this, practically on the public
thoroughfare and with journalists, to have an exchange on this
subject." I told them, "Up to now! So far it’s gone all right." No sooner had I finished that sentence than I heard an uproar — it
was a bunch of a particular sort of persons whom I won’t define,
who’d come by train from Rome, led by a very brawny butcher’s
assistant who threw a punch — and a punch that could’ve been
deadly — at the professor who’d invited me, and… [abrupt cut "at the request of the CSA" (?), then continuous music]. |
