David Cole on Dov Hikind's Credit Card Pressure Play

[Idaho Kid]

Paul Eisen posted this:

This is from David Cole's website  Big Infidel (http://www.countercontempt.com/archives/5045)

NY DEM STRONGARMS CREDIT CARDS TO BAN "RACIST SPEECH"
Posted by David Stein on Monday, January 6, 2014 ·

File this one under "underreported stories of 2013." A New York Democrat state assemblyman successfully lobbied to get Visa and Mastercard to withdraw credit card processing privileges from organizations he opposes. Surely this story was covered far and wide in the conservative press. I mean, the scope and severity of this matter dwarfs Bloomberg's Big Gulp ban. Certainly, conservatives were all over this oneBreitbart style, decrying such an abuse of power!

Shhhh......you'll wake the conservatives, who slept through this story like a Casey Anthony daughter on Benadryl.

It's 2014. It's a new year, and a new Dave. I'm freed from the yoke of having to be politically correct, or liked. And – as I promote my upcoming book (available onAmazon, Barnes & Noble, and Walmart...sorry for the shameless plug) – I'm more than happy to draw attention to stories that the conservative and GOP sites that used to carry my work are too scaredy-cat to mention.

The truth is, no one – left or right – will have much interest in this story. Why? Because the organizations and publishing houses that New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind has targeted are revisionist history organizations that question certain claims regarding World War II and the Holocaust.

Full disclosure #1: As David Cole, I became notorious in the late '80s/early '90s as the "Jewish Holocaust revisionist." I never "denied" the Holocaust, but I did feel that there were things in the historical record that needed to be corrected (especially as the loosening of travel restrictions in the Soviet Union allowed Western researchers better access to archives and historical sites). Full disclosure #2: Several of the groups targeted by Hikind still carry my old work, but, after I recanted and changed my name and identity in 1998, I renounced any income from my revisionist books and videos. Money-wise, I don't have a dog in the fight. Full disclosure #3: Hikind is a member of the Jewish Defense League, the organization that put a $25,000 bounty on my head in 1997 and pressured me to recant. But that's not why I'm writing this story. I have sought as much as possible to avoid conflict with the JDL since I recanted and paid them off to leave me in peace. I'm not trying to spark a renewal of eighteen-year-old animosities.

But what Hikind has done is shameful, as is the reluctance of the press to cover it.

In summer 2013, Hikind began pressuring credit card companies to prevent certain publishing houses and websites from using credit card processing services. I'll quote at length from Hikind's press release:

    Assemblyman Hikind (D-Brooklyn) is calling on the major credit card companies to withdraw their support from numerous hate groups operating in the United States and abroad. It was discovered that eight Holocaust denial organizations are currently selling racist, anti-Semitic and Holocaust Denial products (books, videos) via websites through credit card sales.

    "Unfortunately, it is no longer shocking in this day and age to find those who deny the Holocaust—those who espouse openly racist, hateful ideologies," said Assemblyman Hikind. "What is shocking is to find prestigious credit card companies doing business with them and enabling these groups to raise money to spread their hateful messages."
    The Holocaust Denial organizations offering credit card sales are:
    - Institute for Historical Review (Amex, Visa, MC, Discover)
    - Noontide Press (Amex, Visa, MC, Discover)
    - Inconvenient History (Visa, MC)
    - Barnes Review/Foundation for Economic Liberty (Amex, Visa, MC, Discover)
    - (David) Irving Books/Focal Point Press (Amex, Visa, MC, Discover, Paypal)
    - The International Conspiratological Association (Amex, Visa, MC, Discover, Paypal)
    - Castle Hill Publishers and CODAH (sic) (Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust) (Visa, MC)
    Some of the many anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denial books sold by these organizations include Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, The 'Gas Chambers' of Dachau, Mauthausen and Hartheim, which states that "none of these facilities were ever used, or could have been used, as lethal 'gas chambers'" and The Rudolf Report which states, "The alleged gas chambers of Auschwitz could not have existed."

Hikind's campaign worked. One by one, the organizations targeted by Hikind lost the ability to process credit cards. A follow-up press release from Hikind's office:

Unlike in certain European countries, where selling racist and Holocaust-denial materials is illegal, hate literature is protected speech in the United States. As such, MasterCard is limited to "educating" its merchant banks with regard to who they are issuing merchant accounts to. "But MasterCard has been a Master Educator," said Assemblyman Hikind who noted that nearly every hate group that he reported last month for selling Holocaust Denial products has now been dropped by their individual merchant banks.

In late December 2013, one of the targeted organizations, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), successfully fought to regain its credit card processing privileges. In a letter to MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga, IHR director Mark Weber made the point that his organization is recognized by the IRS as a 501 (c)(3) public interest educational enterprise with no history of criminal wrongdoing, whereas Hikind's Jewish Defense League, which has been described by the FBI as a terrorist organization, has been accused of numerous illegal activities. Weber also pointed out that like any publishing company, "the IHR does not necessarily agree with the content or outlook of published, posted or distributed items."

Okay, so why should you care about any of this?

A couple of reasons. Consider the precedent that was set in this matter. A New York state legislator got credit card issuers to revoke processing privileges to groups that this one legislator claimed are "hate groups" (not that other people don't agree with that assessment, but the processing revocations were not in response to a mass movement, but rather one single person's demand).

So what happens once CAIR and other Muslim groups make the same demand of Visa and MasterCard and Paypal regarding the organizations that they consider to be hate groups? What happens when CAIR demands the revocation of processing privileges for Pam Geller and Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson and David Horowitz? If the credit card companies give in to Hikind but not to Muslim groups, they'll be accused of "discrimination."

I'm talking about a precedent that will inevitably lead to other groups demanding equal punishment against people or organizations they claim are hate-mongers.

Every law currently being enforced in Europe and Canada to punish "hate speech" against Muslims began as a law to punish "Holocaust denial." That's how these things get started. The initial approach is always, "don't worry – we only want to revoke the rights of those evil deniers. You have nothing to worry about."

There's a line in Goodfellas, in which Henry Hill describes how a member of a crew gets whacked: "Nobody ever tells you that they're going to kill you, it doesn't happen that way. There weren't any arguments or curses like in the movies. See, your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends."

I personally know people who think this country is on the verge of a military-style invasion by snarling Obama UN Gestapo shock troops marching down main street. But that's not typically how it happens. When the government wants to seize more power, it "comes with smiles," it "comes as your friend." It might offer you "free health care," or it might promise to "smite your enemies."

Saying you're going after "deniers" is the easiest way to get people on-board with censorship. The desire to pound deniers transcends political left or right. When Congressman John Conyers and the NAACP and a bunch of academic elites held a conference at Hofstra University to craft legislation that would ban "hate speech" in the U.S., what villain did they choose to put on trial in the moot court that was held to test the model legislation? A Holocaust denier.

But, as one of the authors of the model legislation admitted to me in an interview, the legislation would actually affect anyone who's accused of "insulting" any racial/ethnic/religious minority. The law – and this was explicitly stated to me in my exclusive interview with the person who crafted it – would ban a leftist like Michael Moore from releasing a book titled "Stupid White Men," and a conservative like David Horowitz from claiming that American blacks aren't entitled to reparations.

Both sides, left and right, would suffer, all from a law that was to be sold to the public as a way to combat "Holocaust denial."

That law never passed. Hence, Hikind's attempt to take a different route by forcing credit card companies to make moral judgments regarding who can use their services. Let's be clear on exactly what happened. A state politician – a "public servant" – has successfully lobbied major credit card companies to prevent American citizens from using their services based merely on the opinions that those Americans hold. If you say, "so what? Those opinions are odious," then congratulations, you've taken the bait. Thanks for being so easily manipulated; you're a real hero.

I could stop here, but I want to take it a bit further. You wanna know something? Publishing houses like the IHR, and historians like David Irving, are not just a boil on the ass of the First Amendment. They actually contribute something positive to the historiography of the Second World War. After my outing as David Cole, a bunch of nitwits who wouldn't know Mauthausen from Mickey Mouse decided that I was the dictionary definition of the worst thing on earth. Actor Nick Searcy (co-star of the hit FX series "Justified"), a former good friend, likened me to the "Grand Kleagle of the KKK" in a Facebook post. And one of the biggest visual effects guys in Hollywood, who worked on everything from "Avatar" and "Iron Man 3" to "Twilight: Breaking Dawn" and "The Avengers," called me "worse than a Nazi" and "as bad as a pedophile."

The impulse to compare historical revisionists to things that are irredeemably repugnant (like pedophiles) is understandable considering the torrent of negative press surrounding folks like me who have the odd notion that our understanding of major historical events might sometimes need adjusting as time passes, as Iron Curtains fall, and as new information comes to light.

But the information uncovered by historical revisionists is, in fact, widely used by "respected" historians. People like David Irving, whose conclusions I might not always agree with, have uncovered many important documents and shed light on some of the most vital issues of WWII and the Holocaust. I myself have been accused of such scandalous light-shedding, although I'm not sure that David Stein agrees with everything David Cole does (it's tough to get a dialogue going between the two, as they're rarely if ever in the same room together).

My forthcoming book is filled with information to debunk the belief that there is some hard line in the sand that separates "revisionists" from "real historians." I'll give just a few examples here.

On an episode of the Charlie Rose Show from May 8, 1996, this exchange regarding revisionism took place between Christopher Hitchens and Eric Breindel (editorial page editor of The New York Post):

    Hitchens: Most of what I know, I've learned from arguing with people with whom I disagree, often very violently.
    Breindel: Well, this is true, but there are levels of the game. I mean, I assume that there are serious scholars, or people you would find serious in the sense that they unearth new information, who publish in, for example, the journal of The Institute for Historical Review, which dedicates itself primarily to proving, for example, that there were no gas chambers at Nazi death camps. There has been scholarship, Christopher, in those journals. Let there be no doubt about it. They have uncovered train records that many of us who study this field didn't know existed. They go to the actual archives.
    Hitchens: I also quote Raul Hilberg, who you, I know, know is one of the senior historians of the Holocaust story – in many ways, the original historian of it. His book in 1961, The Destruction of European Jewry, is considered to be the standard. He said to me, "Look, David Irving has made me go back and look at things again. David Irving has made me re-examine things I thought I knew for sure. David Irving has made me go over some ground, ask me how I know things, and I welcome this kind of challenge."

Twenty years earlier, in Canada, at a criminal trial of a man accused of "revisionism," the aforementioned Raul Hilberg admitted on the stand that revisionists play an important role in Holocaust history:

    Lawyer: It appears, then, that even today some of the relevant documents to give us a clear understanding of this massive situation are still missing. would you agree?

    Raul Hilberg: Oh yes

    Lawyer: And some of them might very clearly contradict some of our firmly fixed views.

    Hilberg: I can never exclude the possibility of contradiction. After all, there are people who maintain (at the recent historians conference) at Stuttgart that Hitler did not give any orders (for the extermination of the Jews).

    Lawyer: Yes. so in fact people questioning these types of situations can be of use to you and to others in stimulating further research.

    Hilberg: Obviously.

I caution people against equating an organization like the Institute for Historical Review with odious enterprises like NAMBLA or the Westboro Baptist Church. Good research does indeed come from revisionist historians. Indeed, currently there are many important contemporaneous documents relating to the war and the Holocaust that can be found in English only on some of the sites that Dov Hikind blacklisted (theIHR, David Irving's site, Castle Hill and CODOH, and Inconvenient History).

Does that mean I vouch for everything on those sites? Of course not. Does that mean I vouch for the character of everyone who buys material from those sites? Of course not. The cowardly nature of the silence of my former conservative allies regarding Hikind's activities may perhaps be better understood if one imagines how the right would react if a New York Democrat pressured Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, Discovery, and Paypal to withdraw services from gun dealers, on the grounds that some customers of gun shops might be "bad people."

What an outcry there'd be (and, indeed, what an outcry there was when something far less severe than what Hikind did happened to a gun seller last year).

I expect no outcry against Hikind from hypocritical and gullible "conservatives" who have no problem with a New York Dem punishing publishing companies and websites purely because of their opinions. It's tragically ironic that some of those who claim to be standing watch against assaults on liberty are helping it along by their silence.

[Christopher Marlowe]

Rev 13:16-18

And he shall make all, both little and great, rich and poor, freemen and bondmen, to have a character in their right hand, or on their foreheads. [17] And that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. [18] Here is wisdom. He that hath understanding, let him count the number of the beast. For it is the number of a man: and the number of him is six hundred sixty-six.