SMITH'S REPORT
 

Contents

• New Campus Project blitzkrieg -- Student newspapers publishing address of holocaust revisionism's high-tech headquarters.
• Carlos Porter, sentenced in Germany, says "Nuts" from Belgium.
• SR bullet-in-briefs
• Major media turns its attention to Arthur Butz's Web page.
• Showdown in Cyberspace by Richard Widmann
• and more!

and now... our front page!

New Campus Project blitzkrieg-- Student newspapers publishing address of holocaust revisionism's high-tech headquarters

    It's never been more apparent. Something very deep is shifting in the way campus newspapers are reacting to the Campus Project. In campus editorial rooms there remains much of the old public hostility and unwillingness to face revisionist theory generally. But behind the scenes, a sea change appears to be welling through the psyches, the understanding of campus journalists.

    Campus newspapers are increasingly open to running the advertisements I submit to them. Five and six years ago I had to submit an ad to as many as 20 and more campus newspapers to get one published. Reporters were always asking me how many papers rejected the ads as opposed to how many accepted them, and I always felt a need to keep that information to myself. It was a much more difficult, time-consuming and disappointing proposition than I felt it necessary for the press to be aware of.

    While I've been aware for some time that access was becoming easier--in the 1994-1995 academic year I was able to insert the 10-column-inch ad criticizing the U.S. Holocaust Museum in 35 college newspapers--I was not prepared for the ease of access I am facing now. Of course the ad is small, only two column inches, critical of nothing and no one, with not a single word in it that could be said to be controversial, and in fact carries no revisionist information at all--but then, that may be exactly what the doctor ordered. I don't even have my post office address in the ad.

    The ad simply references the revisionist "controversy," which the overwhelming majority of students and faculty are now aware exists. Ten years ago, when I first got into this contest, neither students nor faculty understood that a controversy actually did exist. Now they know it exists. Now they are no longer able to pretend it does not.

    Ignore the Thought Police: what college student, what professor, does not hold in contempt the idea that they need Thought Police to tell them what to read, what not to read, what to think and not think about, which ideas to accept and which to reject?

    Read the evidence: this is too easy. Students, even faculty, understand that if you are going to make a judgement about an historical event you really must read the evidence addressing it. If the evidence is being criticized you understand you must read the criticism as well. You don't have to read everything, but you really must read some of it. You must take a run at it.

    Judge for yourself: the college freshman has spent 12 years or more learning to read and think and to judge texts for herself. This is right up her alley. This is what makes girls and boys into women and men. The kids understand this. Many will not act on it, but many will--particularly if they have access to the information they need.