David Duke speaks in Tehran at the Holocaust Conference

David Duke speaks in Tehran at the Holocaust Conference
http://www.davidduke.com/general/david-duke-delivers-speech-in-tehran-calls-for-free-speech-on-the-holocaust-issue_1532.html
12/11/2006

David Duke speaks in Tehran at the Holocaust Conference

"There are many false reports about my speech in Tehran, here is the actual text of my speech on December 11, 2006 at the Holocaust Conference." - David Duke

Freedom of Speech and the Holocaust
Address by David Duke, PhD at the Holocaust Conference in Tehran, Iran
Former member of the House of Representatives
State of Louisiana, United States of America
http://www.davidduke.com email: dukeeuro@hotmail.com

Distinguished friends,

Thank you Dr. Mohammadi and all the distinguished scholars who are here at a conference that history shall one day deem as one of the most important of the 21st century.

I and all the conference participants must be especially thankful to the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has had the knowledge, the foresight and the courage to convene this conference to offer free speech for the world’s most repressed idea, Holocaust revisionism. We must remember that the main themes of this conference as stated by Iran’s President are the vital human right of freedom of speech and the condemnation of the shameful imprisonment of European scholars and academics who simply dare to state their opinions of historical events that occurred over 60 years ago.

This conference embraces the idea of free speech, thought, and conscience. The U.S. State Department, under thorough control of International Zionism, in a formal statement called this conference a quote, “disgrace.” The real disgrace is that free men are imprisoned and silenced in Europe and in other European-descended nations around the world. The disgrace is that no leaders of our own nations seem have the courage to defend free speech.

I also want to thank your President for inviting me, as controversial as I am, to be here. The Zionist-influenced media lies about me with the same enthusiasm as they lie about him.

He will be condemned for having me here, and I as a former American elected official will be condemned by the Zionist influenced press in America for coming here in peace and friendship to a nation that they hate: the nation of Iran.

But, we at this conference have decided that no longer will we let the Zionists dictate to us. They shall not dictate to us who will be our friends, who will be our enemies, nor will we permit them to dictate to us only their version of the past, and we will certainly not let them dictate our future!

Let me say from the outset that I am no disloyal American, I love my country and my people, but I know that the Zionist extremists lead my country to catastrophe in the Mideast and elsewhere around the world. I know that the Palestinian people, the Lebanese people, even the American people have been sacrificed on the altar of the Holocaust. It is the chronic media and government playing of the Holocaust that has blinded our eyes to new holocausts and new outrages.

As a truly patriotic American I oppose Americans being killed or maimed by the thousands in Iraq in a war not for America, but for Israel. I am here because I love my country and oppose those who lead America and the world to ruin on behalf of Zionism. In Iraq too, Americans and countless Iraqis have been sacrificed on the ideological altar of the Holocaust, for the Holocaust and its chronic recital is used as the justification of any Israeli treachery or crime against humanity.

The Zionist-influenced media in America and Europe is trying to mislead the U.S. and Iran toward a war that would be catastrophic for your country, for my country and for the world. Here too images of a Holocaust against Jews are used to justify and promote a terrible war against Iran that would constitute a new Holocaust, one against the Iranian people and indeed for all of us in the world.

I believe the people of Iran want peace, and I can tell you that the average American also wants peace.

This conference is based on freedom of speech, true freedom, not the lip service brokered in the mass media. Freedom of speech will take on the Holocaust. But, freedom of speech also relies on a free press.

Perhaps how little we can trust the establishment press on the Holocaust is illustrated by the lies told about your esteemed president.

This morning, I read a story about this conference from a European newspaper that stated and I quote, that Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for wiping Israel off the map. This assertion has been made in literally thousands of newspaper articles and radio and TV news reports.

But, all those here know that such a translation of his speech is nothing but a big lie. He never said anything of the kind. Any proper translation of his speech shows that he never called for Israel to be quote, “wiped from the map”! But millions of people in the West and around the world have heard this so many times they believe it. Whatever might be the ultimate truth of the Holocaust, how can we learn it from a press that repeats 5,000 times a lie about your President that anyone with an Iranian-English dictionary can disprove in 5 minutes? In short, their ability to sell this easily disproven lie shows that the media can get away with any lie, even of the largest proportions. The only way to learn the truth about any idea is free speech, free discussion, and free debate.

The conference will include academics who embrace the prevalent historical conception of the Holocaust and those who have a revisionist view. Revisionists question parts of the official Holocaust story. In some Western nations, to diverge even slightly from Holocaust orthodoxy will cause an historian to face not only a loss of academic career but also imprisonment.

Right now as I speak, three names come to mind immediately. David Irving, Ernst Zundel, and Gemar Rudolf. These three men, scholars, researchers, intellects who their opponents dare not debate, these nonviolent, kind and gentle men sit behind dark prison walls at this very moment for simply daring to speak their conscience, for expressing the world’s most forbidden opinion, the idea that the historical event trademarked as the Holocaust as it is popularly presented, is not an accurate historical portrayal, that it needs like all other events of history to be questioned, researched freely and constantly revised.

Perhaps the hypocrisy is illustrated by devotion of Europe to freedom for the vilest kinds of pornography. Every kind of the sickest pornography is allowed in the Western world today, including pornography that delves into the worst forms of sadism and masochism and the vilest degradation of women, many of whom have been drug addicted and truly enslaved in what the world calls White slavery. Yet, these sickest, evil forms of porn are not only legal in Europe, they are lucrative! Yet, if you dare to research and offer a dissenting opinion about any aspect of the event singularly called the Holocaust, it’s off to prison for you, its bankruptcy for you and your family.

In Europe you can freely question, ridicule, and deny Jesus Christ. The same is true for the prophet Muhammed, and nothing will happen to you, heck you might even get to star in your own weekly TV show, but offer a single question of the smallest part of the Holocaust and you face prison!

David Irving one of the world’s most famous and well-read historians, a writer who many mainstream historians have praised as brilliant and accurate, at this moment sits in a prison near Vienna, Austria for simply stating his historical opinion about Auschwitz in a lecture in Austria in 1989. German researcher/chemist Gemar Rudolf faces years of imprisonment for simply publishing a detailed forensic analysis that challenged the authenticity of alleged Auschwitz gas chambers. Ernst Zundel, a resident of Canada and the U.S was ripped from his wife and home because he had politically incorrect opinions about the events of the Second World War.

I have been honored to know personally all three of these men. They are kind, witty, humorous, men of family, of kindness and decency. None of these men were hateful or advocated hate, none were violent or advocated violence, none of these men were terrorists or supported terrorists, none of these men did anything other than express an intellectual opinion at variance with high priests of the Holocaust. All these men did was have the courage to express their opinions even though they knew that by doing so everything they held dear was endangered, their safety, their sustenance, their freedom, but they chose their conscience and their honor, even at the risk of life, that their own heart might be stilled forever. They still stood tall.

I am not here to argue the truth or untruth of their claims, that is for the other speakers here, but I am here to add my voice from America from free men and women everywhere that the fact that these men are imprisoned is a scandal and injustice. The whole world knows that imprisoning men for their opinions is tyranny; that such is the opposite of everything that we mean by the word freedom. As some nations of Europe jail men for their opinions, these same nations boast about their supposed freedom and hold themselves above many other nations they view as repressive and backward.

Some of the brave men here today at this conference have been jailed, even physically attacked, lost reputation, freedom, property, career, simply for speaking their conscience. I see a number of them as I look in the audience. And none of these men write or speak hatefully or intemperately, but how can the world even know that, when they and their beliefs are repressed by government and media.

I want to honor one of the men here for his sacrifices over the years in his obedience to conscience and to truth, a man who has laid in a hospital bed with his bones crushed, his pain-racked body burned by acid, all for doing what his intellect dictated and his conscious demanded. He is Dr. Robert Faurisson, and we here and the world owe him a debt that we can never adequately repay. Lesser men would have given up and lived the quiet life, but he gave his all and he still gives us his all even now. I would like to ask you to stand up for him ladies and gentlemen. Robert Faurrison, the best-known revisionist in the world today.

The main theme of the Holocaust Conference is that there must be freedom of speech on this subject as on all others. Free speech, inquiry and debate are the only way to learn the truth on any issue.

In prosecutions of Holocaust questioners, authorities have not allowed introduction of any evidence supporting the defendant’s claims. The courts have even announced in their guilty verdicts that “The truth is no defense,” i.e. that even if the defendant can be shown to be honest and accurate, and even if his claims can be substantiated by physical and documentary evidence, he has broken the law by simply questioning aspects of the official Holocaust Story.

I take no hard position on the historical accuracy of the Holocaust, I leave that to those whose whole lives are devoted to the study of the issue, but I take an unshakeable position on freedom. Obviously, Jews, as well as other nationalities suffered great losses during the Second World War.

Repression, dispossession or murder against any group is wrong.

Revisionists don’t deny that many Jews died and suffered greatly in the war, they condemn any and all injustices done to Jews in that period.

It must also be understood that throughout history, the historical treatment of atrocities or crimes against humanity have often been colored by political purposes. Throughout history some crimes against humanity have been exaggerated and emphasized to justify political agendas or even war. Other crimes against humanity have been completely ignored or downplayed.

An example is the contrast between the crimes of National Socialist Germany and that of Soviet Communism. Most researchers readily acknowledge that Bolshevism imprisoned, tortured and slaughtered many times more people in Russia and in Eastern Europe than even the high numbers alleged in the Holocaust. Yet, the Soviet Holocaust receives not one-hundredth of the attention of the Jewish Holocaust. Can anyone here name even a single movie you have seen about the Bolshevik slaughter?

Isn’t it sensible to think that this disparity is because of the strong Jewish influence in Western media from the entertainment establishment of Hollywood to the news media centered in New York and across the European world? Revisionists suggest that an exaggeration and saturation of the Holocaust has been essential to establishment and support of the Zionist state in Israel and that it offers a psychological excuse for the large scale ethnic cleansing, repression, torture and genocide against the Palestinian people.

Revisionists argue that this vested interest of much of the pro-Zionist media and pro-Zionist governments affords a danger that the Holocaust can be distorted and politicized just as many historical crimes against humanity have either been exaggerated or diminished in pursuit of political agendas.

Whether the revisionists scholars are right or wrong is for you to decide, not those who want to crush free thought and free speech.

I and every speaker at this conference believe in freedom of speech on all historical and contemporary issues.

We believe in freedom of speech, conscience, opinion, and expression.

It is the opponents of this conference who clearly don’t believe in freedom of speech and conscience. It is they who have thrown elderly men and women into prison for years for simply expressing their opinions.

Yet, instead of condemning these tyrants, the media even celebrates the imprisonment of human beings who dare to question.

Dr. Bruno Gollnisch, a professor of Literature at the University of Lyon, and a member of the European Parliament was convicted of Holocaust Denial.

Speaking in Lyon, France, in October 2004, Gollnisch said: “I do not deny the existence of deadly gas chambers. But I’m not a specialist on this issue, and I think we have to let the historians debate it.” He did not contest the “hundreds of thousands, the millions of deaths” during the Holocaust, but added: “As to the way those people died, a debate should take place.”

For simply advocating free speech, Gollnisch was convicted of Holocaust Denial. Has Europe gone crazy?

Freedom of speech is important for two reasons.

First, freedom of speech is a vital human right. It is the cornerstone of all other rights, because without freedom of speech no one has to the right to even freely know and learn of the abrogation of other rights affecting human freedom and survival. That is why the American founding fathers put freedom of speech, press and religion as the first and highest of the Bill of Rights.

Second, freedom of speech and debate are absolutely vital for the truth to prevail. If one side of any controversial issue can suppress the voice of opposition, we cannot arrive at the certainty of any truth. If academics and citizens can be blackmailed monetarily and in career; if they can be threatened with firings, loss of income, or imprisonment for simply sincerely pursuing an historical inquiry and publishing it, how can the truth be discovered?

How does one even know the real revisionist opinion, if that opinion is repressed?

A perfect example of the biased treatment of the Western press is the recent adoption of the term “Holocaust denier” to slander anyone who may question any part of the complex and expansive Holocaust story. The term “Holocaust denier” was created by Simon Wiesenthal to denote any one who dares to question any part of his version of the Holocaust. To “deny” is usually associated with an allegation of a personal crime. For example, “John Doe denies that he committed the robbery.” It has a very negative connotation. It is not commonly used to denote people holding a contrary historical opinion.

In truth, revisionists are not deniers, they are simply questioners who are being imprisoned and slandered for simply questioning with research and reason this tragic period of history during the Second World War.

The Holocaust Conference in Iran is truly about respect for intellectual freedom.

Iran has organized the first international conference dedicated to freedom of speech and inquiry on this important historical matter that has so many ramifications on the Mideast and many other present political realities.

I am here in Tehran as a speaker in this conference because I am dedicated to freedom of speech, conscience, and thought. I am honored, as are all of you, to be here at this historic conference.

I urge the fair-minded people of the world, before they condemn this conference, the Iranian President, all the speakers and me, to ask the question: who are the patrons of freedom and who are the real deniers, the deniers of our precious human right of freedom of speech!

–Dr. David Duke
Former member of the House of Representatives
State of Louisiana, United States of America