Real History and the enemies of Free Speech

Posted Wednesday, July 11, 2001

Martin We spend a second warm summer evening on the riverfront, dining on a boat-deck with ringside seats for the most lavish fireworks display in the mid-West; we hear Tony Martin, left, Professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, reveal the shocking origins of the Black slave trade (and who the culprits were).
from the 2001 Cincinnati conference publicity brochure

News, Wednesday, July 11, 2001

Traditional enemies of Free Speech try to torpedo the Cincinnati conference

Dr Andrew Mathis tries to frighten off Professor Martin

[Who is Dr Andrew Mathis?]

Dear Prof. Martin:

THERE is an old saying -- I don't know who coined it -- that goes like this: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Such thinking led to such alliances as the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939, in which the parties agreed to partition Poland between themselves. Each nation had its own reasons for hating Poland: The Soviets despised Polish nationalism as contrary to their hegemony in Eastern Europe, while the Nazis were angered over German territory lost to sovereign Poland in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. So two nations, the ideologies of which were polar opposites and whose dictators had flung invective at one another for close to a decade, agreed to make friends for the greater goal. Of course, less than two years later, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, and in the following four years, tens of millions of soldiers and civilians on both sides were brutally murdered on the Eastern Front.

Why am I telling you this? You have a Ph.D. in history, so this is surely nothing new to you. My reason for writing to you now is to suggest that by agreeing to appear on a platform with Holocaust denier David Irving, you are playing into the same trap used by the Nazis sixty-two years ago.

Never mind that I disagree wholeheartedly with your conclusions about Jewish involvement in the African slave trade. Never mind that I'm a Jew myself. Put our own personal differences on hold for a moment and consider a very basic fact: David Irving does not like people of African heritage. How do we know this? Mr. Irving, while pressing his failed libel suit against Prof. Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University last year, read a diary entry of his very own into the court record -- a short poem composed by the man himself upon seeing an interracial couple walking down a London street. He shared this poem with his pre-school-aged daughter:

I am a baby Aryan / Not Jewish or Sectarian / And I shall never marry / An ape or Rastafarian

Charming, no? Furthermore, Mr. Irving has consistently decried the influx of non-white immigrants into the U.K. In addition, in the late 1990s, he addressed the National Alliance, which is our nation's largest neo-Nazi organization. (Incidentally, when I call the National Alliance "neo-Nazis," I'm not engaging in empty rhetoric. The organization is run by Dr. William Pierce, who was a lieutenant in Commander George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party.) If Dr. Pierce had his way, you'd be on the next slow boat back to Africa, despite the fact that I'm reasonably sure you are probably a native-born American citizen. These are the kind of individuals that Mr. Irving associates with, and these are the kinds of individuals that you will be sharing a dais with in Cincinnati.

If it satisfies you to share a forum with such a rogues' gallery, then please do. I have no problem with people expressing their beliefs, however wrongheaded and hateful they happen to be. And there will be plenty of that at Mr. Irving's conference in Cincinnati. Nor is your appearance in Cincinnati likely to hurt your academic or professional reputation at all. All I ask is that you consider for a moment if you want white racists -- the same sort of people who fought tooth and nail to keep Africans enslaved throughout the world -- to be the promoters of your research.

I'll close with another historical anecdote -- another that I'm sure you're aware of. In the early 1960s, Malcolm X helped organize a meeting between the Nation of Islam and the aforementioned American Nazi Party of Rockwell. However, when Malcolm returned from the Hajj, he realized the meaning of true Islam and not the manufactured version of W.D. Fard and Elijah Muhammad. Hearing through the grapevine of a possible plan on the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm warned the Nazis that, should any harm befall Dr. King, the revenge on the Nazis would be swift and brutal. Malcolm learned the lesson that Stalin never did. The enemy of your enemy might be your friend, but there's no guarantee that, once the short-term goal is achieved, your new-found friend will become your newest enemy.

Respectfully, Andrew E. Mathis, Ph.D. Villanova University.