From: mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 04:14:44 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: The Unintended Consequences of Suppression
Message-ID: <199601281959.LAA16755@netcom18.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


WARNING: This message contains Bad Thoughts.  The Surgeon General
         has determined that Bad Thoughts cause Critical Thinking,
         which may be illegal in Canada, Germany, and other
         countries too numerous to mention.

I just visited the Ernst Zundel Webcom page, which given the
number of server overload errors I experienced trying to browse
it, is now the Numero Uno Web Site on the entire Internet, thanks
to some anonymous and largely clueless official running
telecommunications services for the former Third Reich.

Like most sites run by "Infamous Holocaust Deniers", this one was
largely unimpressive, and would have garnered little attention
from anyone were it not for the noisy public villification
lavished upon it by its detractors.

After the furor this site is alleged to have percipitated, I
fully expected to see pictures of skinheads with explosives and
automatic weapons holding up pictures of Nazi atrocities and
libelous screeds blaming the Jews for all the misfortunes of
mankind.

You can imagine my surprise when I found only a few rather
simplistic historical questions, and that Mr. Zundel had even
included links to rebuttals of his points contained within the
Simon Wiesenthal Center's own Web Pages.

All of this might have gone completely unnoticed by the majority
of humankind, or have been the subject of dry boring debates at
occasional universities, were the topic not constantly dragged
into the public eye by stories about anti-free speech laws,
shrill cries by organizations like the SWC for censoring the
entire Internet, and officials who summarily unplug major chunks
of the Net and disrupt legitimate business while trying to stuff
a sock into the mouth of some individual whose views they find
embarrassing.

In doing this, the Speech Nazis, the Wiesenthalistas, and the
Clueless Bureaucrats have drawn more attention to the views of
people like Mr. Zundel than he ever could have on his own, and
have alienated many of the people who would cheerfully have
argued against Mr. Zundel on their behalf.  This goes beyond
simple stupidity, and clearly approaches the lobotomy level of
impaired mental functioning.

--
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $