Author Archives: Defending History
Lithuanian Fascists Checking Lists of Citizens who Oppose Fascism
O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
Ričardas Čekutis, an organizer of the March 11th 2011 neo-Nazi march through central Vilnius and the head of public relations at Lithuania’s Genocide Research Center, an institution nominally tasked with (and paid for by the taxpayers) to promote genocide research and education, recently answered some criticism of himself and his ideas, a neo-fascist political party and neo-Nazi marches, questions that were posed by Darius Kuolys.
Posted in Free Speech & Democracy, Geoff Vasil, Human Rights, Opinion
Comments Off on Lithuanian Fascists Checking Lists of Citizens who Oppose Fascism
Delfi.lt publishes (pseudonymous) defense of neo-Nazi youth
Delfi.lt, Lithuania’s principal internet news portal, publishes on its website pseudonymously signed long comments in the format of proper news and opinion pieces. Such items, sometimes bereft of any actual author’s name (and responsibility), are thereby given the higher status of signed articles that carry the aura of an editor’s hand or editorial approval, in contrast to the free-for-all characteristic of numbered comments or talkbacks added at the end of a proper article. In other words, such items ascend to higher respectability, irrespective of Delfi.lt’s disclaimer confirming that opinion pieces represent only the writer’s views.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Events, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, News & Views
Comments Off on Delfi.lt publishes (pseudonymous) defense of neo-Nazi youth
Foreign Ministry cooking another one-sided ‘open forum’, this time in — Kaunas
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
Yet again, Lithuania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is misinvesting assets in cooking up one-sided events that are designed to pose as open and honest forums for a variety of opinions, treating audiences as if they were idiots who will not notice something is amiss.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Israel, News & Views, Opinion
Comments Off on Foreign Ministry cooking another one-sided ‘open forum’, this time in — Kaunas
How to hold an academic conference in a Soviet (and occasionally, in a post-Soviet) milieu
O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
1. Line up the names of people who agree with you and are ideologically reliable or beholden to you for their ticket there and back. Best to use locals as far as possible with a big-wheel foreign invitee or two, provided they’re safe.
2. Do some stuff, make a program, maybe provide a tour to foreign academics, get them sauced. The program of events can be created on the fly, tailored to meet the needs of attracting the right set of people, using up funds allocated, etc. Be creative.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Geoff Vasil, Human Rights, Humor (Of Sorts), Opinion
Comments Off on How to hold an academic conference in a Soviet (and occasionally, in a post-Soviet) milieu
Genocide Center Official defends neo-Nazi march
A high official of the Genocide Research Center, Ričardas Čekutis, today published an article defending the recent neo-Nazi march in central Vilnius. Lithuania’s major daily, Lietuvos rytas, had identified him ten days ago as one of the key participants and organizers of the 1000-strong March 11th 2011 neo-Nazi march that proceeded through the center of Vilnius on the country’s Independence Day, with the participation of a member of parliament, and a permit from the municipality of Vilnius. The Jewish Community of Lithuania has protested the march on its own website (English translation here).
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Events, Human Rights, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Comments Off on Genocide Center Official defends neo-Nazi march
New Documentary Film
Rewriting History (Marc Radomsky & Danny Ben-Moshe) challenges East European governments’ “Double Genocide” politics and the 2008 “Prague Declaration”
◊
The film highlights the 2012 arrival of the Seventy Years Declaration at the European Parliament, where it was received by EP president Martin Schulz
Promo on YouTube; Website; at Classic Cinemas; Facebook
◊
Reviews by the Critics
Posted in Boxes
Comments Off on New Documentary Film
Didier Bertin replies
O P I N I O N
by Didier Bertin
Reply to the letter of 14 March 2011 from the Chief of Staff of Viviane Reding by Didier Bertin (Society for the Promotion of the European Human Rights Model)
ENGLISH VERSION
PREFACE: We have started to exchange letters with Viviane Reding, Vice President of the European Commission and her Chief of Staff Martin Selmayr regarding our opposition in the name of European Values to the dangerous tendency to consider that the former Communist regimes committed crimes equivalent to those of Nazism and thus undermining the uniqueness of the Holocaust.
We have noted in your last letter that European Union has allocated resources to finance programs safeguarding the memory of the crimes committed by totalitarian regimes including Nazism. We thus understand that Nazism is now considered as a totalitarian regime among others and has lost its usual specificity of symbol of the highest degree of horror reached in our civilized word.
Posted in Didier Bertin, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Opinion
Comments Off on Didier Bertin replies
Baltic Media: Covering the Fascist Marches, or Covering Them Up?
O P I N I O N
by Geoff Vasil
This year Lithuanian neo-Nazis organized by Marius Kundrotas, Ričardas Čekutis and Julijus Panka with Lithuanian MP Kazimieras Uoka as their mascot marched in Kaunas on February 16 and through central Vilnius on March 11. February 16 is the old, pre-World War II national day of independence while March 11 is the date in 1990 when the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet voted to restore national independence and exit the Soviet Union.
Posted in Celebrations of Fascism, Estonia, Geoff Vasil, Human Rights, Kaunas, Latvia, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Opinion, Riga's Waffen SS Marches, Vilnius
Comments Off on Baltic Media: Covering the Fascist Marches, or Covering Them Up?
595 Bold Lithuanian Citizens Condemn 2011 Neo-Nazi Independence Day March in Central Vilnius
Five hundred and ninety-five Lithuanian citizens today published their public letter to the president, the parliament and the government of Lithuania, and to the Vilnius City Council. The letter condemns the ‘march of the extreme right and the spread of hatred in public’. The document appears on the Demos website in English (an earlier Lithuanian version appeared on Peticijos.lt here).
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Bold Citizens Speak Out, Celebrations of Fascism, Free Speech & Democracy, It Pays to Defend History: Success Over the Years..., Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Vilnius
Comments Off on 595 Bold Lithuanian Citizens Condemn 2011 Neo-Nazi Independence Day March in Central Vilnius
Neo-Nazis March in Central Vilnius on Lithuania’s Independence Day (with government permission and police escorts)
- EYEWITNESS REPORT
- by Sebastian Pammer
- PHOTOS BY SEBASTIAN PAMMER
From the internet site www.tautos-balsas.lt I learned that the march of Lithuanian nationalists would start today at 4 PM (1600 hours) at Cathedral Square in the very heart of Vilnius, where the city’s central boulevard, Gedimino Prospect, begins its ascent toward the nation’s Parliament at its other end.
Kazimieras Uoka, at right, a member of the Lithuanian parliament from the Conservative party in power, was one of the leaders of the massive neo-Nazi march on the capital’s main boulevard on the country’s Independence Day.
I was shocked to see that one of the march’s leaders was a member of parliament from the ruling Homeland Union faction of the Conservative alliance in power (whose prominent Jewish member actually signed the Prague Declaration in 2008!). MP Kazimieras Uoka was marching at the very front. In 2010 Uoka’s pro-neo-Nazi activities were in evidence more than once. He had taken out the permit for last year’s Nazi march (Leonidas Donskis’s comment on that here) and then in May, he jumped the barricades to disrupt the wholly peaceful Gay Pride parade in Vilnius.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Human Rights, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Swastikas in Lithuania, Vilnius, Vilnius's Genocide Center and the Genocide Museum it Manages
Comments Off on Neo-Nazis March in Central Vilnius on Lithuania’s Independence Day (with government permission and police escorts)
Reply to Rokas Grajauskas: Condemnation of Communism Does Not Require Submission to Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, or the Recent Deterioration in Civil Society and Free Speech in Lithuania
O P I N I O N
by Dovid Katz
NOTE: This reply to the Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review paper by Rokas Grajauskas first appeared on the website of LFPR (direct link here).
[UPDATE of 1 March 2013]: The journal refused to publish a reply, but after an intervention from Prof. MEP Leonidas Donskis it was uploaded on the journal’s website for a time, and then removed.]
◊
Rokas Grajauskas cites me in his recent article on these pages as invoking the notion Holocaust Obfuscation (a term I proposed at a London seminar in February 2008, then formally in 2009) to refer to “the efforts of the post-Communist countries to revive the memory of Stalin’s crimes.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The web journal I edit, DefendingHistory.com, although dedicated primarily to the battle against trivialization of the Holocaust and the concomitant racism and antisemitism of the new Far Right in Eastern Europe, contains a page on Soviet crimes, where I wholeheartedly embrace such Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly resolutions as 1096 (1996) and 1481 (2006), which wisely and rightly condemn Soviet crimes. It is vital that the full extent of these crimes be documented, the victims honored, the subject properly taught in international curricula, museums and memorializing institutions established, and justice pursued to the full extent of law. It is every bit as vital that Western commitment to Baltic security and independence remain unwavering, what with a huge unpredictable neighbor “with a certain past” (and unclear future) situated to the immediate east.
Posted in Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, Dovid Katz, EU, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Hungary, Lithuania, Opinion, Politics of Memory, US State Dept Manipulated?
Tagged Double Genocide, Double Genocide + Communism, Dovid Katz Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review, Holocaust Obfuscation, Leonidas Donskis, Lithuanian Foreign Policy Review, origin of the term Holocaust Obfuscation, Prague Declaration, Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, Prague Process, Rokas Grajauskas, Rokas Grajauskas + Jewish issues
Comments Off on Reply to Rokas Grajauskas: Condemnation of Communism Does Not Require Submission to Double Genocide, Holocaust Obfuscation, or the Recent Deterioration in Civil Society and Free Speech in Lithuania
Latvia (back in 2011): 2,500 Turn Out to Hail Country’s Waffen-SS
Increased Turnout for This Year’s Waffen-SS March in Riga
COMMENT HERE AND HERE
———
PLANS TO HONOR HOLOCAUST MASS MURDERER AND RE-INTER HIS REMAINS IN RIGA
Posted in Boxes, Celebrations of Fascism, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, Riga's Waffen SS Marches
Comments Off on Latvia (back in 2011): 2,500 Turn Out to Hail Country’s Waffen-SS
Two Conferences in Late March: Red-Brown Brigades and — on Antisemitism. . .
According to a 17 January 2011 report on The Baltic Course, the foreign ministers of the Czech Republic and of Lithuania agreed to ‘continue cooperating with an aim to properly evaluate at the EU level the crimes of totalitarian regimes’ (Obfuspeak for the red-brown movement in the European Parliament) as well as ‘the agenda of Lithuania’s chairmanship [of the OSCE] and plans for the conference on antisemitism, which is co-organized by Lithuania and the Czech Republic in Prague’.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Double Genocide: The New Form of Holocaust Revisionism & Denial, News & Views
Comments Off on Two Conferences in Late March: Red-Brown Brigades and — on Antisemitism. . .
Vilnius Municipality’s Response to Wiesenthal Center’s Comments on Planned Neo-Nazi Parade on March 11th
The Vilnius city administration (municipality) said today that it had ‘no intention of responding to the statement’ issued by the Simon Wiesenthal Center on 17 February condemning its decision to provide a permit for yet another city-center Neo-Nazi parade in the capital on the occasion of its March 11th Independence Day.
The statement, issued by Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office quotes Dr Zuroff as follows:
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Events, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, Vilnius
Comments Off on Vilnius Municipality’s Response to Wiesenthal Center’s Comments on Planned Neo-Nazi Parade on March 11th
‘Today on the Street, Tomorrow in Parliament’ is neo-Nazi Rallying Cry in Kaunas
Neo-Nazi marchers in Kaunas today, Lithuania’s February 16th Indendence Day celebration, carried a banner reading (in translation): ‘Today in the Street, Tomorrow in Parliament’. The reference was both to the general goal of the movement, and in reference to a neo-Nazi employed as an assistant to a prominent member of parliament (the Seimas), herself formerly the head of the antisemitic Genocide Center, who has announced his own candidacy in forthcoming municipal elections.
'Today on the Street, Tomorrow in Parliament' reads this sign displayed during the neo-Nazi march in Kaunas on 16 February 2011. Photo by N. Povilaitis (Lrytas.lt).
By apparent agreement with authorities, the marchers brandished swasticals rather than classical swastikas.
Report and images on Lrytas.lt.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Free Speech & Democracy, Human Rights, Kaunas, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views
Comments Off on ‘Today on the Street, Tomorrow in Parliament’ is neo-Nazi Rallying Cry in Kaunas
Fascism in National Cellophane
O P I N I O N
by Nida Vasiliauskaitė
There is a view that pro-fascist tendencies in Lithuania are nothing more than a bubble blown by the New Left, an informal intellectual and political movement (not a party), that it is a case of “Communist slander” aimed at peaceful and likeable patriots: those who simply love their Homeland, are proud of it and who—unlike the angry folks from the New Left who are “attacking” good people for no reason at all—do not seek enemies (and do not find them), degrade nobody and are a threat to nobody.
No, for them everyone is a friend. (How different they are from, for example, Nida Vasiliauskaitė, who, as they will tell you, “hates everyone” simply and purely at her own whim and out of bad will, or because she has been “paid” by all the comrades of “Brussels” and “Moscow” banded together. They emphasize that which unites, not that which divides…)
Posted in Bold Citizens Speak Out, Celebrations of Fascism, Human Rights, Nida Vasiliauskaitė, Opinion, Racism
Comments Off on Fascism in National Cellophane
London Fog: Lithuanian Foreign Ministry invests in a London ‘Graywash’
Letter of Protest signed by Lord Janner, MP MacShane, Professor Dov Levin, Rabbi Barry Marcus & 17 Others
———
DIGNIFIED MORNING PROTEST
Member of the UK Parliament, human rights champion and author RH Denis MacShane (right), led a good-natured moment of protest Monday morning, 7 February in London at the Lithuanian Embassy, 84 Gloucester Place, London W1.
MP MacShane presented a letter of protest to the embassy, drafted and organized by Professor Danny Ben-Moshe (center), who flew in from Melbourne to be at the event. At left is Danny Stone, director of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism. The letter was signed by 21 people, including academics, political figures, those involved with the fight against antisemitism, representatives of Litvak organizations, and Lithuanian Holocaust survivors. The ambassador declined a written request to meet to discuss the letter.
PRESS: REPORT IN THE JERUSALEM POST ♦ IN THE ECONOMIST (REPLY HERE) ♦ ALFA.LT (8 Feb) ♦ BNS ♦ CLEMENS HENI (DH) ♦ DOVID KATZ (DH) ♦ LRYTAS.LT ♦ JONNY PAUL (JP) ♦ SIMON ROCKER I (JC) ♦SIMON ROCKER II (JC) ♦ SIMON ROCKER III (JC) ♦ NITZA SPIRO (JN) ♦ EFRAIM ZUROFF (JC)
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Double Games, Events, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Rothschild Foundation Europe (Hanadiv): Lithuanian Issues, UCL Manipulated?, United Kingdom, What Do Fake Litvak Games Look Like?
Tagged Efraim Zuroff, Hebrew and Jewish Studies London, Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, Litvaks, Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Comments Off on London Fog: Lithuanian Foreign Ministry invests in a London ‘Graywash’
Winner of Lithuanian Government’s “Gold Star” Makes Accusations against Government’s Critics
O P I N I O N
REPRINT FROM “David’s Blog” at: http://davidpaulbooks.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/99/.
As duly noted by the blog’s editor, the author, Professor E. Zimroth, is the recipient of the government’s Lithuanian Millennium Star, awarded to her by the foreign minister in a ceremony at the Lithuanian consulate in New York. That foreign minister’s subsequent comments on the period of Nazi rule in his country are available here.
Professor Zimroth is one of a number of Western Jewish dignitaries honored by the Lithuanian government. The public letter referred to by the author is available here.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, News & Views, Politics of Memory
Comments Off on Winner of Lithuanian Government’s “Gold Star” Makes Accusations against Government’s Critics