WITNESS
STATEMENT OF ERIC K WARDI, ERIC K WARD
of [address
withheld by Website]
Seattle, Washington 98104, USA
WILL SAY as follows-
1 . I am employed by the Northwest
Coalition Against Malicious Harassment.
The Northwest Coalition Against
Malicious Harassment works with
communities and organisations in
Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon,
Washington and Wyoming to end malicious
harassment and violence by countering
individual and organised bigotry and
anti-democratic movements. The
Northwest Coalition provides assistance
to victims, organisations, communities
and leaders to address organised
bigotry and prevent acts of malicious
harassment and promote a collaborative
response by communities and the justice
system. The Northwest Coalition
monitors the activities of groups which
advocate racial supremacy or which
harass persons because of their race,
religion, gender, sexual orientation
and national origin. I have been
employed by the Northwest Coalition
since April 4, 1994. I am employed as
the Regional Co-ordinator of the
Northwest Coalition Against Malicious
Harassment. My primary responsibilities
are to develop community based human
rights organisations. These activities
include: providing training for human
rights leaders and members; serving as
a resource link between state human
rights organisations; and monitoring
white supremacist activity and acts of
malicious harassment.
2. The Northwest has long been
called an "Aryan Homeland" by white
supremacists groups. The continued
influence of Richard Butler's
Church of Jesus Christ Christian-Aryan
Nations, by 1983, had finally taken
root in the Northwest and began
cultivating the violent activities of
various white supremacists in the
region.
By 1986, the Northwest had come to a
boiling point. Already the casualty
list was growing. The assassination of
Jewish talk show host, Alan Berg
led to the arrest of numerous members
of a far right terrorist cell known as
The Order. Two years later another
group calling itself The Order II went
on a bombing spree in the city of Coeur
d' Alene, Idaho where a local
clergyman's home was bombed along with
the local city hall. It was in response
to these and subsequent outbursts of
violence that the Northwest Coalition
was born. Over ten years later, the
struggle to live free from the fear of
violence, intimidation, and bigotry
still continues.
The vehemence of hatred still
persists; bank robberies, murders,
death threats and bombings by the far
right have not only escalated in the
Northwest, but throughout the United
States. The Northwest Coalition Against
Malicious Harassment has joined
together over a thousand individuals
and organisations who have dedicated
themselves to creating a moral barrier
against hate. The Northwest Coalition
monitors far right activity to better
able portray, in a more accurate and
balanced way, the real dynamic
personality of white supremacy and its
relationship to conspiratorial
world-views, such as Holocaust
Denial.
3. Around the beginning of April
1998, the Northwest Coalition received
notification from a participant at the
Western Regional Initiative on
Community Oriented Policing Conference,
Spokane, Washington, that David
Irving, the British revisionist
writer, was intending to give a
lecture
at Washington State University, in
Pullman, Washington on 13 April
1998.
4. Mr Irving is, and has been for
some time, well known to the Northwest
Coalition for his associations and
connections with racist, white
supremacist individuals and
organisations. In my capacity as
Regional Co-ordinator, I attended the
lecture on 13 April 1998 and made a
contemporaneous note of my experience
(please see Appendix).
I have refreshed my memory from this
note and am able to give an account on
what and whom I heard and saw.
5. When I arrived at the venue, a
student of the University and a friend
of mine, identified to me the
individual who had organised the event.
The organiser was Justin Reid.
Justin Reid was at the time, and may be
still, a student at the University and
was the driving force behind the
Student Revisionist Resource Site
("SRRS"). The SRRS profess to be
interested in Revisionist theories of
history in the name of progress and
enquiry. However the material that the
SRRS post on its website clearly
betrays a much more sinister and ugly
motivation. The website (at http://www.edu:8080/~pauling/index1.html)
carries material that suggests that
Jews are the cause of the prejudice
against them along side items that
attempt to diminish the moral outrage
of the Holocaust. Justin Reid had (and
still has) the appearance of a racist
skinhead, as did the other individuals
who were evidently his associates. Some
of these men were acting as security
for the event.
6. There were nearly 300 individuals
at the speech, the majority of whom
were students. The general atmosphere
of the event shifted over the evening.
In the earliest stages, individuals in
the audience seemed simply curious
about the controversy surrounding Mr
Irving. As the evening came to a close,
however, the students appeared ready to
accept that Mr Irving was simply an
explorer of truth and an advocate of
free speech. As most students did not
know Irving's background, many were
swayed by this portrayal. Also in the
audience, were a group of older
participants (60 years old-plus) who
gave Mr Irving loud verbal support and
applause throughout the evening.
7. The topics on which Mr Irving
talked were not confined simply to
those of Hitler and
Churchill; he also spoke broadly
on revisionism and free speech. Mr
Irving dwelt on the Holocaust,
questioning the number of Jews murdered
and the fact that there were gas
chambers at Auschwitz.
Mr Irving manipulated the audience by
defending his right to deny the
Holocaust in the name of freedom of
speech. This is a ruse in order to lend
validity to his racist, anti-Semitic
motivations as was made obvious by an
incident at the speech; when a group of
individuals stood up and turned their
backs on Mr Irving, in a protest of his
belief in Holocaust denial, Mr Irving,
instead of recognising their
participation in free speech, said that
they were "assholes".
8. Mr Irving during his speech,
played upon historical anti-Semitic
themes. For instance, be suggested to
the audience that Jews brought the
hatred upon themselves by being
successful in areas of media,
entertainment, business, law and
banking. He justified anti-Semitic
bigotry on the grounds that persecution
is predictable in the face of such hard
work and success. After the speech
there was a question and answer period
and during the questions and answers a
German exchange student challenged
Irving his association with German
far-right extremist activity. His
response in perfect Orwellian
double-speak was to suggest that she
was a Nazi for challenging his
associations.
9. Having a father who fought in
World War II it was upsetting for me to
watch Irving manipulate young students
with his so-called "quest for truth"
knowing that most students are not
informed enough about the events of
World War II to discern the sleight of
hand he used to cast doubt on the
Holocaust. The event, including the
presentation by Irving, question and
answers, and book signing lasted
several hours. The most unsettling
image was a teenage woman buying one of
Irving's books and asking him to
autograph it for her. On April 13,
1998, Irving successfully held
America's commitment to free speech up
with one hand while crushing it with
the other.
The contents of this statement are
true to the best of my knowledge and
belief.
Dated 01 / 08 / 99
Eric K. Ward
