Scottish justice or “due deference” to French-Zionist lobby? The Reynouard case hangs in the balance
On 21st September, a Scottish Crown prosecutor asked an Edinburgh court to show “due deference to France” and extradite a man who is accused of no crime under Scottish law. H&D’s assistant editor Peter Rushton reports from the court. This article and related material also appears at Peter’s Real History blog and now also in Spanish by clicking on this link.
The revisionist historian Vincent Reynouard was appearing at Edinburgh Sheriff Court for a full hearing of his extradition case. This was almost exactly ten months after his arrest in the Scottish fishing village of Anstruther, where Vincent had been working quietly as a private tutor and completing his most important historical revisionist work concerning the so-called “massacre” at Oradour.
He was arrested in a raid by Scottish police, working with Scotland Yard detectives, at the request of French prosecutors who wish to jail him for revisionist videos concerning both Oradour and the alleged homicidal ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz.
None of these revisionist works contravenes Scottish or English law, but the UK authorities were heavily lobbied by the Jewish charity ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ and by the ultra-Zionist peer Lord Austin (formerly Ian Austin MP).
The sheer absurdity of this situation – the criminalisation of a scholar – was brought home to me by two incidents (one trivial, one serious) at the Edinburgh Court while waiting for Vincent’s case to be heard.
A sticker for the Edinburgh branch of the St Pauli supporters’ club was displayed in the lavatory at the Court. Supporters of St Pauli (a football club based in Hamburg) are notorious worldwide for their violent ‘anti-fascism’ and Marxism. It is impossible to imagine that a sticker promoting any violent ‘racist’ or ‘fascist’ group (from, for example, supporters of a club such as Lazio, Chelsea, Millwall or Oldham) would have been allowed to remain on display at a court!
The other incident was more serious. Vincent’s case was being heard in a courtroom that specialises in extradition, which of course meant that more than two hours were taken up (before Vincent’s case began) by a long procession of procedural, pre-trial discussions of a range of unconnected defendants, including alleged gangsters from Eastern Europe.
By far the most serious of these procedural discussions involved a defendant appearing by video link. This was the notorious ‘Real IRA’ terrorist and assassin Antoin Duffy (aka Anton Duffy), who in 2015 was jailed for 17 years for conspiracy to murder two ex-UDA members (Johnny Adair and Sam ‘Skelly’ McCrory) exiled in Scotland after their expulsion from the UDA.
Duffy is still serving this sentence in a top-security Scottish jail, but he is also now wanted by police and prosecutors in the Irish Republic, to face charges of murdering Denis Donaldson, an MI5 agent inside the IRA, who was killed in 2006. This is why Duffy was appearing on the same day as Vincent, in the Edinburgh extradition court.
H&D cannot yet comment on the latest specific charges – but it is beyond dispute (based on earlier convictions and years of police and MI5 covert surveillance) that Duffy is one of the UK’s most dangerous terrorists. Extradition procedures are designed for those accused of actual crimes: yet this week in Edinburgh (and in fact for the past ten months) Vincent Reynouard – a scholar, not a criminal – has been subjected to these same procedures.
As we have also seen with persistent abuse of the Terrorism Act by the UK authorities, those who simply seek to tell the truth about European history are persecuted by UK authorities who choose to follow the instructions of shadowy international lobbyists rather than UK law.
Nevertheless, there are reasons to be optimistic about Vincent’s case. He was very ably represented by his solicitor Paul Dunne and advocate Fred Mackintosh KC (who also practices as a barrister in England). It should of course be emphasised that Vincent’s defence is (rightly and properly) based on legal arguments, not on his historical and political views per se. As in any other such case, it should not be inferred that either Mr Dunne or Mr Mackintosh is in any way sympathetic to Vincent’s opinions, or indeed that either of them have any views or expertise on historical or political matters. They are experts on extradition law, not on historical revisionism or national socialism.
Due to Vincent having already spent ten months in jail (for something that isn’t even a crime in the UK!) the initial French warrant has been discharged.
This initial warrant was based on his having already been convicted and sentenced (in his absence) by a Parisian court. But he is no longer extraditable on those grounds, because that sentence has (in effect) already been served in Scotland, while Vincent awaited this extradition hearing.
Having dealt with the discharge of the first warrant, Mr Mackintosh proceeded to address the second.
Since it involves new charges (rather than a prior conviction) the ‘ticklist’ of the old European Arrest Warrant (now operating in revised form post-Brexit) doesn’t apply. Mr Mackintosh therefore pointed out that the traditional extradition principle of “dual criminality” operates in this case.
In other words, the Edinburgh Court must be satisfied that the conduct of which Vincent is accused would potentially be criminal in Scotland as well as in France.
The judge should (Mr Mackintosh continued) draw inferences as to Vincent’s “intent”, by looking at his overall conduct, and by studying the entire transcripts of his videos, not merely accepting the prosecutors’ interpretation of certain phrases taken out of context.
He highlighted one video, on which the prosecutors had based a large part of their case, and emphasised that the judge should study the full translated transcript carefully. This was a video published on 22nd February 2020, whose title translates as “The Jewish Problem – what solution?”
Vincent’s counsel did not dispute that his videos contain what has been termed “Holocaust denial”, that some of them address the “Jewish problem”, and that one in particular “denies” the historicity of the “Oradour massacre”.
But Mr Mackintosh’s central argument as to why Vincent should not be extradited began with a judgment in 2015 by the European Court of Human Rights, in the case of Perinçek v. Switzerland.
The relevant aspect of this judgment (which involved a Turkish political activist accused of “denying” the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War), is that the European Court spelled out the very different laws among European states regarding “denial” of genocide.
Among those European countries that have signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, the Court noted:
“there are now essentially four types of regimes in this domain, in terms of scope of the offence of genocide denial: (a) States, such as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Romania, that only criminalise the denial of the Holocaust or more generally of Nazi crimes (Romania in addition criminalises the Nazi extermination of the Roma, and Greece criminalises, on top of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes, the denial of genocides recognised by an international court or its own Parliament); (b) States, such as the Czech Republic and Poland, that criminalise the denial of Nazi and communist crimes; (c) States, such as Andorra, Cyprus, Hungary, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Malta, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland, that criminalise the denial of any genocide (Lithuania in addition specifically criminalises denial of Soviet and Nazi crimes vis-à-vis the Lithuanians, but Cyprus only criminalises the denial of genocides recognised as such by a competent court); and (d) States, such as Finland, Italy, Spain (following the 2007 judgment of its Constitutional Court cited in paragraph 96 above), the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian States, that do not have special provisions criminalising such conduct.”
The European Court was clear, Mr Mackintosh said, that the UK had not chosen to make any form of “Holocaust denial” a specific criminal offence.
He added that in Vincent Reynouard’s case, the prosecution therefore had to satisfy the Scottish court that Vincent’s conduct (as alleged in the extradition warrant) met the test either for a S.127 Communications Act offence, or a breach of the peace (a common law offence).
The question of what behaviour can constitute a “breach of the peace” under Scottish law has been revised several times during recent decades – and is a matter on which Mr Mackintosh has special expertise, having for example written an article for Scottish Legal News on this very topic.
Such conduct must be serious enough to “cause alarm to ordinary people”, and it must “threaten serious disturbance to the community”. The relevant judgment was delivered in 2014 by Lady Clark of Calton, and Mr Mackintosh said that Lady Clark had reminded the lower courts that “for conduct to be likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm there has to be something further than annoyance and distress”.
Mr Mackintosh explained that the test of whether conduct “threatens serious disturbance in the community” necessarily involves considering the full context. He quoted several cases in Scottish courts involving racial and sectarian abuse at football matches, where a crucial element was that this abuse had been directed at (or delivered in close proximity to) rival supporters, in the incendiary context of a football match attended by supporters of opposing teams.
In a 1981 case against communist activist Mike Duffield, the Sheriff Court had ruled that shouting pro-IRA slogans while selling the Marxist newspaper Fight Racism Fight Imperialism and the pro-IRA newspaper Hands off Ireland was a breach of the peace, despite this being carried out at the stadium of Glasgow Celtic, where many fans hold similar views.
And on the other side of politics, there had been a breach of the peace case involving a National Front activist selling the Young NF paper Bulldog outside the Hearts stadium in Edinburgh.
But in all these cases – and especially bearing in mind recent clarifications of the law in Scotland – it was essential to assess the wider context of the words used – in Vincent’s case, words used in videos broadcast online.
There were eight such videos referred to by French prosecutors in the present warrant. The first related specifically to Oradour. The second, third and fourth presented detailed arguments as to why (in Vincent’s considered opinion) there had been no homicidal ‘gas chambers’ at Auschwitz, explaining that conventional ‘Holocaust’ history is based on specious evidence. The fifth and sixth discussed the “Jewish problem” or “what to do about the Jews”. And the seventh and eighth returned to the topic of Auschwitz, the ‘gas chambers’, and broader ‘Holocaust’ themes.
Mr Mackintosh emphasised that in the case of six of these eight videos, Vincent Reynouard had not been calling for any form of action. None of the content potentially qualified as personal abuse, and none of it could be seen as “threatening”. The videos amounted to a historical critique – which might well be controversial, but not illegal in Scotland.
In the case of videos 5 and 6, Vincent was responding to a correspondent. The prosecution had chosen to isolate certain phrases out of context, but Mr Mackintosh said that once seen in context it was clear that Vincent was stating his opposition to any policy of “exterminating” the Jews.
The test that the court had to apply was not whether “reasonable people” would reject Vincent’s views, but whether these views threatened “serious disturbance to society”. Were the court to accept the prosecution’s argument, it would amount to ruling that discussion of controversial arguments regarding the ‘Holocaust’ had become a crime in the UK. Mr Mackintosh said it was open to Parliaments in London and Edinburgh to make ‘Holocaust denial’ a crime, but they had (so far) chosen not to do so.
Therefore to be criminal, Vincent’s words would have to cross a further line, a further evidential test, in order to be regarded as a “breach of the peace”.
Mr Mackintosh then turned to the alternative test, S.127 of the Communications Act. For Vincent’s videos to be considered criminal in this context, they would have to be not merely offensive, but “grossly offensive”.
Prosecutors had rested much of their argument on the precedent of the Chabloz case, as tried in the London courts during recent years – not a binding precedent, but, they argued, very much a “persuasive” precedent in this case. [Chabloz has in recent years been excluded from British revisionist circles, due to her treacherous and malicious conduct in betraying Robert Faurisson’s final meeting to the ‘anti-fascist’ publication ‘Hope not Hate’. But her earlier actions have, as we predicted at the time, served as a precedent to threaten the liberty of Vincent Reynouard.]
On appeal, Chabloz’s conduct had been found to go beyond satire, having crossed the legal line into deliberate, malicious abuse. By contrast, Mr Mackintosh argued, the judge in the present case would find (if he examined the full transcripts of Vincent’s videos) that his arguments – even when highly controversial – were delivered as a calm, academic analysis, not as crude anti-semitic abuse in the Chabloz style.
Mr Mackintosh referred to the leading S.127 case in relation to interpretation of what is “grossly offensive”, namely the Collins case, and the judgment of Lord Bingham.
This had made clear that what is “grossly offensive” has to be assessed in the context of the standards of an “open, just, multiracial society” – a contemporary context that is “reasonably enlightened, but not perfectionist”.
In other words, Mr Mackintosh emphasised, the words complained of had to cause gross offence, not simply “to people who care about the Holocaust” and who, for whatever reasons, hold different views to Vincent, but to broader society.
Were ‘Holocaust denial’ or disputing the historicity of Oradour to be deemed criminal per se, the question would necessarily arise – what about the Amritsar massacre, what about the Armenian genocide, and many other controversial historical subjects?
Mr Mackintosh concluded his argument by addressing the question of proportionality. An extradition court is required to consider whether the alleged offence is sufficiently severe to attract a custodial sentence. For example, recent instructions to the lower courts had emphasised that defendants should not be extradited for minor public order offences.
He noted that even in the Chabloz case – where the defendant had been convicted for gross offensiveness which was of a very different character to Vincent’s videos – this had not led to custodial sentences.
It would therefore, Mr Mackintosh argued, be both wrong in law and disproportionate for the Edinburgh Court to extradite Vincent Reynouard to France.
In his argument, the prosecutor (Advocate depute Paul Harvey) insisted that Vincent’s videos did pass the evidential test for the Court to regard his conduct as either (or both) a breach of the peace, and/or “grossly offensive” under S.127.
He invited the judge to consider Vincent’s words in one of the video transcripts, where he had stated that “there is a Jewish problem”, and that in his analysis of this problem he would “go further” than Adolf Hitler. “Naturally, the Jews exploit the situation: to dominate, even to subjugate us.”
Mr Harvey described these words as “the most appalling anti-semitism”, and asked the judge to view all of the videos complained of in the French warrant, in the light of this “anti-semitism”.
Questioned by the judge on this point, Mr Harvey said that (in the prosecutors’ submission) each video should be looked at as a separate breach of the peace offence, but should also be interpreted overall as a “course of conduct” by Vincent.
The mere fact that the UK had no special provision criminalising “Holocaust denial” did not in itself absolve the defendant. When expressed in the terms used by Vincent, Mr Harvey insisted that “Holocaust denial” could be interpreted as criminal under UK as well as French law.
Quoting the case of Rangers fan William Kilpatrick, who had posted on Facebook endorsing the sending of “bombs and bombs” to Celtic manager Neil Lennon, Mr Harvey argued that under Scottish law, intending or inciting a specific action was not necessarily relevant to whether certain words were a “breach of the peace”.
Mr Harvey maintained that some of Vincent’s words in the video could reasonably have led to his being charged with a breach of the peace under Scottish law, because they were calculated to provoke a disturbance of public order.
In fact, he argued that Vincent’s words were potentially a more serious crime than breach of the peace in a football stadium: because they could be viewed online at any time, anywhere in Scotland. Incitement to specific criminal action did not, the prosecution argued, have to be proven.
Mr Harvey added that Vincent’s “crimes” had to be looked at in the context of the very different cultural context in France, and the more serious risk of “anti-semitism being incited”. While the words Vincent used could, Mr Harvey argued, be prosecutable even in Scotland, the Court should take account of the fact that in a French context, they were even more serious.
Unsurprisingly, the prosecutor rejected the defence argument that Vincent’s words were calm, academic discourse. He said they were comparable to the Chabloz case, where it had been established that once a clearly anti-semitic motive had been established, espousal of “Holocaust denial” was ipso facto grossly offensive.
Mr Harvey accepted that (under UK law) not every instance of “Holocaust denial” was criminal, but he maintained that in the cases of both Chabloz and Vincent Reynouard, denying the “Holocaust” did amount to “gross offensiveness”, and therefore contravened S.127.
The prosecutor said the judge would need to apply the proportionality test very carefully. Unlike, for example, a drugs or theft case, Vincent’s criminal conduct was highly context-specific, where the appropriate sentence might differ enormously between Scotland and France. The judge should therefore “respect and give due weight” to French circumstances involving their history, and even present day “racial relations”, which meant that a French court “is justified in taking a severe approach to this”.
Given Vincent’s long and repeated record of “criminal conduct”, Mr Harvey concluded that a custodial sentence in France was not only possible but highly likely: “I urge you to show due deference to France and their different traditions.”
In a brief reply concluding the hearing, Vincent’s counsel Fred Mackintosh said that if the judge accepted the prosecution’s argument, it would amount to saying that any “racist” statement on Facebook or YouTube, regardless of context, would be a breach of the peace. He urged the judge to reject this argument and to recognise that “Holocaust denial” when expressed in Vincent’s terms, is not a crime in Scotland – neither a breach of the peace, nor grossly offensive.
The judge said that he aimed to have read all relevant material and considered the arguments fully, in time to pass judgment on 12th October.
Clearly, the Vincent Reynouard case has become a vitally important test of whether historical revisionism will be criminalised in the UK via a ‘back door’ route, without any honest and open discussion in Parliament.
We shall make a further assessment of the broader context soon. But it should be recognised by all concerned that there will be no surrender of the basic principles involved. In the UK, Spain and Canada, European traditions of free historical inquiry are under attack. We shall defend those traditions, by any and every method that proves necessary.
Vincent Reynouard reports from his Edinburgh jail on the eve of his extradition trial
Scottish justice will soon decide whether to extradite me to France or release me. Knowing that, if I am extradited, I will probably spend years in prison, we can say that my fate will be decided on September 21st.
My lawyers are optimistic. Indeed, having served the entire prison sentence which earned me the first arrest warrant, only the second remains. Paris is asking me to judge me for several videos. However, to be extradited, these videos must constitute crimes in both France and Scotland. My lawyers’ argument is clear: my comments do not transgress UK laws.
My opponents invoke the precedent set by the conviction of singer A. Chabloz in 2018. However, A. Chabloz was convicted for having composed, performed and broadcast “grossly offensive” songs. In question here were the vocabulary chosen, the tone adopted and the criticisms formulated against the Jewish people in general. My videos are totally different. Although they may shock and offend, they are never grossly offensive and, therefore, remain within the bounds of freedom of expression as conceived in the United Kingdom.
Many of my relatives are therefore optimistic about the outcome of this hearing. For my part, I am neither pessimistic nor optimistic, because I have learned not to hope for anything and not to fear anything. The reason is always the same: I trust in Providence. So far, she has protected me in my mission. I am therefore convinced that the decision of September 21 will be the most likely to serve the revisionist cause. Certainly, for me, it will undoubtedly be the occasion for new trials, but the trials are there so that we improve by overcoming them.
I will therefore accept the final truth, whatever it may be, and will continue to place the revisionist cause above my personal destiny, because revisionism serves the Common Good and, as a National Socialist, I have always advocated the primacy of the common good over particular interests. Therefore, I will not back down now. My personal destiny is of no importance.
Some will call me a fanatic. However, when we see how the anti-revisionists treat us, we understand that only diehards can endure the fight on the front line. If I wasn’t one, I would have given up a long time ago. Providence raises up the right people where they are needed. Our adversaries being fanatics, She opposes fanatics to them. It’s in the natural order of things.
So I calmly wait for September 21st. In the calm of my cell, I continue my activities of reading, writing, meditation and drawing. After ten months, a daily routine was established. I hardly notice that I am in prison anymore. I’m like on a ship where life unfolds peacefully. For the past few weeks, I have been the oldest on my wing. I know the staff and the inmates know me, because I am a somewhat unusual prisoner.
I should have been released on August 10th, once my prison sentence was fully served. However, the Scottish justice system decided to keep me in prison on the grounds that I could take advantage of my release to escape again. Knowing what I have done since October 2021, this fear is understandable. I would add that, even if this extension of my detention were illegal, I would not claim any compensation, because I did not suffer – far from it – in Edinburgh prison.
Besides, in Edinburgh prison, the deprivation of liberty as it affects me is entirely relative. Certainly, my body is held in a penitentiary establishment, but my mind remains free. Here, I read a lot: I discovered authors like Denis Marquet (on spirituality) and Jacques Ellul (on technique). I corresponded freely with wonderful people. I was able to exercise every day, including three times a week in a well-equipped gym. I enjoyed an excellent diet that many people would envy. Finally, I improved my drawing techniques, especially watercolour.
In my eyes, I am much freer than the citizen forced to get up every morning to do an uninteresting job. My freedom is a thousand times greater than that of people without an inner life, glued to their screen and slaves to social networks.
As for the prison guards, they were very kind to me, probably because they think that there is no legitimate reason for me to be in prison. Not long ago, in fact, a guard told me: “You have been in prison for almost a year, because France does not respect the right to freedom of expression!” I think she was expressing the thoughts of the guards in general…
It is true that, from this vantage point in Scotland, we observe, incredulously, the climate of hysteria which reigns in France around real or imagined anti-Semitism. The causes of this frenzy are undoubtedly multiple.
First of all, I think a lot of Jews are worried. In this changing and crisis-ridden world, they fear a new persecution, even a new “Holocaust”, on the grounds that they would always have been the scapegoats. The associations which represent them therefore act to eradicate anti-Judaism from society. However, knowing that, in our part of the world, “racism” has become the capital sin, the government – whoever it may be – is obliged to support this action.
To this is probably added another fact: at a time when the Rassemblement National (RN – National Rally) is considered, rightly or wrongly, as a force capable of influencing politics, attacking the ultra-right induces Marine Le Pen increasingly to dissociate herself from the ideals of the national right. And as we always end up becoming what we say, whether by conviction or by strategy, then the more the government attacks the ultra-right, the more the RN becomes normalised .
Finally, I think that for some, hitting the ultra-right is another way of attacking the RN, with a view to preventing a possible electoral victory for Marine Le Pen. Indeed, when a government has no positive record to its credit, its only political strategy consists of presenting itself as the ultimate bulwark against the foul Beast. He can then say: “See, the foul beast is not dead. Don’t be fooled; the de-demonisation of the RN is only apparent. If Marine Le Pen comes to power or even comes close, the ultra-right will take the opportunity to resurface.” In my eyes therefore, these various causes contribute to the ambient hysteria.
As for me, I represent an intellectual danger for the government, because I demonstrate that the crimes attributed to the Foul Beast are propaganda lies. My action appears all the more dangerous to him because I denounced a particularly fragile myth: the alleged massacre of women and children in the church of Oradour by the ‘barbaric’ Waffen SS. Without denying the deaths of these people, I demonstrate that the circumstances of this tragedy were very different.
However, if the myth of Oradour falls, some might wonder about Auschwitz. The link will be all the more natural since, since 2017, the challenge to the official History of Oradour has also been repressed by the anti-revisionist law. People will then say: “The myth of Oradour was protected by the same law which prohibits contesting the existence of the gas chambers of Auschwitz; therefore, are these gas chambers also a myth?”
The guardians of Memory cannot therefore retreat: they must defend tooth and nail the myth of Oradour. Hence their interest in silencing me. This doesn’t bode well for me. However, here again, my personal destiny is unimportant. I don’t expect anything down here. The reward will come after this earthly life. This is my conviction (which I do not impose on anyone). Therefore, I am calm.
H&D will report further on Vincent Reynouard’s case and additional reports will appear in English at the Real History blog and in French at Vincent’s own blog Sans Concession.
Historic RAF site to be demolished for ‘refugee centre’: will Gary Lineker intervene?
During the past week, BBC presenter Gary Lineker has deployed wartime rhetoric to condemn government policy on immigration. He suggests that ‘asylum seekers’ are similar to refugees from 1930s Europe. As with so many liberal arguments in favour of immigrants, all the usual ‘anti-Nazi’ rhetoric is mobilised. Lineker suggests that Britain’s ‘heroic’ wartime record implies that we must roll out the welcome mat for those disembarking on our coast daily in small boats.
Yet a story has since emerged that might give even Lineker pause for thought.
RAF Scampton is one of Britain’s most historic wartime sites. In May 1943 Wing Commander Guy Gibson and his 617 Squadron led the famous ‘Dambusters raid’ from this airfield. In recent years it has been used as a base for the Red Arrows, the RAF’s aerobatic team.
A £300m deal had been agreed with the local council earlier this year that would preserve a museum at Scampton, restore the Officers’ Mess into a hotel, and provide 1,000 jobs to local residents.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman is keen to make propaganda about immigration, hoping that the Conservative Party can again deceive British voters. Yet it is her department that is committing this vandalism at Scampton, destroying listed buildings and riding roughshod over British heritage.
Can we expect any word on Twitter from Gary Lineker about this issue?
RAF Scampton was of course also the home of Wing Commander Guy Gibson’s famous dog ‘Nigger’, whose name has been removed by censors from all recent broadcasts of The Dambusters film. Even YouTube now restricts a video featuring this famous dog!
Nigger featured in the film partly because of the coincidence that the dog (a much loved mascot of 617 Squadron) was killed in a car accident on the very night of the Dambusters raid: he was buried at midnight as his owner was en route to Germany. Nigger is buried at RAF Scampton, but in 2021 following ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests, his original gravestone was destroyed. Paying tribute to the black American criminal George Floyd was judged more important than Britain’s own wartime history.
Vincent Reynouard case latest: new warrant, delayed extradition hearing
French revisionist scholar Vincent Reynouard – who has been jailed in Edinburgh for almost four months despite not being accused of any crime under Scottish or English law – was handed further charges today while in the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
As with the previous charges, these have been issued by French prosecutors who are seeking Vincent’s extradition to be tried under the ‘Gayssot Law’, introduced in 1990 by a French Communist MP.
This bans the expression of sceptical historical views about the ‘crimes against humanity’ defined at the Nuremberg Trial and in the 1945 ‘London Charter’ that established that trial.
Most obviously, the Gayssot Law prohibits sceptical research into ‘Holocaust’ history, which is banned in several European countries, though perfectly legal in the UK.
Vincent Reynouard has previously been convicted several times of such ‘crimes’, and is best known for his investigation into the ‘Oradour massacre’ of June 1944. His published work about Oradour dates back to the 1990s, and he recently wrote a comprehensive investigation of this topic, now available (in French) from his website.
The latest warrant seems to reflect an admission by French prosecutors that they made an error in their initial warrant, under which Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Anstruther, Scotland, on 10th November last year. He has been held in Edinburgh Prison ever since his arrest.
An interview with Vincent Reynouard, by H&D‘s assistant editor Peter Rushton, will appear in the May-June edition of Heritage and Destiny. Vincent will next appear in court for a pre-trial hearing on 20th April, and the full extradition trial is presently scheduled for 8th June, again in Edinburgh.
Updates on the Vincent Reynouard case will appear here soon.
Europeans mark two contrasting anniversaries
H&D‘s friends and comrades in Europe have marked two contrasting anniversaries in recent days.
In Dresden commemorations were held for the greatest crime of the Second World War – the terror bombing that destroyed this ancient city in February 1945. As discussed in a new article by our assistant editor Peter Rushton at the Real History blog, no one knows the true death toll at Dresden, partly because the city was packed with refugees who had fled from Stalin’s Red Army as it advanced into eastern Germany. Based on his detailed archival research, the British historian David Irving has estimated 135,000 deaths.
Dresden was the culmination of a deliberate policy of terror bombing – a deliberate decision to flout pre-war agreements (and to abandon the policies of the British government at the start of the war, maintained until Churchill took office).
The most famous British military historian, J.F.C. Fuller wrote in 1948:
“It may seem a little strange, nevertheless it is a fact, that this reversion to wars of primitive savagery was made by Britain and the United States, the two great democracies… With the disappearance of the gentleman as the back-bone of the ruling class in England, political power rapidly passed into the hands of demagogues who, by playing upon the emotions and ignorance of the masses, created a permanent war-psychosis.”
Fuller went on to acknowledge that as a consequence of the seizure of power in Britain by such “demagogues”, notably Churchill, “the obliteration of cities by bombing was probably the most devastating blow ever struck at civilisation”. Fuller wrote of “the moral decline which characterised the war.”
The Spanish nationalist group Devenir Europeo carried out a campaign of leaflets and posters targeting universities and military academies in an effort to raise awareness of the events of the Second World War and how they shaped our world. Our correspondent Isabel Peralta was very much involved in this campaign: she also marked this week’s other important historic anniversary.
In February 1943, 4,000 Spanish anti-communist volunteers – the División Azul (‘Blue Division’) – successfully fought off a vastly greater force of Stalin’s Red Army at the Battle of Krasny Bor, near Leningrad, allowing their German allies to regroup and maintain the Leningrad front.
Speaking beside the División Azul memorial at the Almudena cemetery, Madrid, this week, Isabel pointed out that her compatriots won at Krasny Bor not because they had greater numbers or greater weapons, but because they had greater faith in their cause – the noble ideals of the true Europe.
Spain is now at the front line of the struggle to maintain freedom of research and freedom of speech on historical and political questions. Under their new ‘democratic memory law’ some forms of historical revisionism are now illegal, although in other respects Spanish laws on ‘incitement of racial hatred’ are less restrictive than in the UK.
Isabel herself is presently facing trial in Madrid for a speech at an anti-immigration rally outside the Spanish Embassy last year.
Vincent Reynouard extradition update
Yesterday there was another court hearing in Edinburgh on the case of Vincent Reynouard, the French revisionist scholar who despite having committed no crime under UK law, was arrested at his home in Scotland on 10th November. Since then he has been held in Edinburgh Prison.
The French authorities demanded Vincent’s extradition to face charges under their law which forbids challenges to orthodox versions of 20th century history, including the ‘Holocaust’.
Vincent Reynouard is best known for his detailed investigation of the alleged ‘massacre’ at Oradour, in west-Central France, on 10th June 1944, as well as further revisionist research and analysis that can be read at his website.
The law under which he would be tried in France (and under which he has previously been convicted and served a prison sentence there) was introduced in 1990 by the Communist MP Jean-Claude Gayssot and the Jewish Socialist former prime minister Laurent Fabius.
Its original target was the French scholar Professor Robert Faurisson who was prosecuted and heavily fined several times under the ‘Gayssot Law’, and its main target today is Vincent Reynouard.
The court in Edinburgh will have to decide whether Scottish law allows for a man to be extradited for something that is not a crime in Scotland – and the case is therefore an important test of the new extradition arrangements that replaced the European Arrest Warrant system after Brexit.
In 2008 the German authorities attempted to extradite the Australian revisionist Dr Fredrick Töben from London using a European Arrest Warrant, after he was arrested while in transit at London’s Heathrow Airport. However this extradition attempt was defeated in the London courts, and after several weeks detention at Brixton Prison, Dr Töben was freed to return home to Australia.
In Vincent’s case a further preliminary hearing is due on 9th March, with the full case presently scheduled to be heard (again in Edinburgh) on 6th April.
Further reports will appear soon, both here at the H&D site, in our magazine, and at the Real History blog.
Vincent remains in good spirits. H&D readers wishing to send him a letter of support (in English or French) should write to: Vincent REYNOUARD, Prisoner Number 160071, HMP Edinburgh, Scottish Prison Service, 33 Stenhouse Road, Edinburgh, EH11 3LN.
Robert Faurisson on Auschwitz: the facts and the legend
The great revisionist scholar Professor Robert Faurisson was born in Shepperton, West London, 94 years ago today. Immediately after returning to his home in Vichy from a conference organised by H&D in that same town of Shepperton, the Professor died aged 89 on 21st October 2018.
In January 1995, just before the much-heralded 50th anniversary of the capture of the camp by Soviet forces – which is now the basis for ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’ in many countries – Professor Faurisson published an essay summarising his revisionist research separating facts from legend concerning Auschwitz.
This essay can now be found at The Faurisson Archive, a comprehensive online resource compiling his essays on revisionism and other topics. The late Professor’s “unofficial blog”, containing an extensive archive – the entirety of his collected works in nine volumes and numerous translations in English, German and Italian – was destroyed by Google at the behest, of course, of the usual suspects last October on the fourth anniversary of Faurisson’s death, but has been rebuilt and enhanced by the Professor’s longtime translator and assistant.
As we reported a few days ago, the Archive also now includes an important rediscovery: an audio recording of a speech delivered by Professor Faurisson in New York in 1980, to a group of revisionists convened by Fritz Berg. Click here to read about this rediscovery and its importance to revisionist historiography.
And now for ‘Holocaust Memorial Day’, the Archive has published a new English translation of an important essay by Robert Faurisson: see the Holocaust Day update at the Real History Blog.
Work continues on re-editing and uploading material to the Faurisson Archive. And what Robert Faurisson termed the great intellectual adventure of revisionism also continues. Robert Faurisson would have been 94 years old today, but he remains ever young, ever relevant, ever at the forefront of the challenge to mystification and outright lies. Happy Birthday Robert!
Robert Faurisson Archive restored – including newly rediscovered audio
On 21st October last year – the fourth anniversary of the death of the historical revisionist and literary scholar, Professor Robert Faurisson – the usual suspects removed the online blog hosting a comprehensive archive of his writings in several languages.
Thanks to the work of Professor Faurisson’s righthand man and translator, the blog has been restored at a new address, robert-faurisson.com
This blog remains under construction with material being added and adapted to the new format.
Among the most recent additions is an important rediscovery: an audio recording of a speech delivered by Professor Faurisson in New York in 1980, to a group of revisionists convened by Fritz Berg.
This period was a turning point in revisionist history. As implied by the meeting chairman, this was the early days of what has since become the established religion of Holocaustianity.
The American miniseries Holocaust had first been broadcast only two years earlier, in April 1978, and then rebroadcast in September 1979, just a few months before this meeting. It was first broadcast in Germany in January 1979 and undoubtedly had more impact than any of the more ‘serious’ treatments of the topic by the likes of Claude Lanzmann, with far more brainwashing effect on Germans than the immediate postwar propaganda by Anglo-American occupiers.
Robert Faurisson’s first reaction to this Hollywood production appears on the blog (in French) here. In English his comments, headed “The docudrama Holocaust or the end of a taboo”, translate as follows:
Hitler’s “gas chambers” never existed.
The “genocide” (or: the attempted “genocide”) of the Jews never took place.
Those so-called “gas chambers” and that so-called “genocide” are one and the same lie.
This lie is of essentially Zionist origin.
It has allowed a gigantic political-financial swindle of which the State of Israel is the chief beneficiary.
This lie was denounced by the Germans as early as 1944.
From 1945 to the present day it has also been denounced by Frenchmen, Britons and Americans.
For thirty years, the general public knew nothing of the fact that the lie had been exposed. The mainstream media said nothing about this. On the contrary, they repeated the lie in an ever more deafening way.
From 1974-1975, they started talking about those who exposed the lie. With insults, and distortions of their words. They said, for example: “These people are Nazis, madmen, cranks. They deny the obvious. They dare to say that the Nazi concentration camps and their crematory ovens didn’t exist.”
In 1977, the mass media continued still more vigorously. They put out cries of alarm. They said that Nazism was reappearing in Germany and a bit all over the world.
Not once have they agreed to give those whom they accuse a chance to speak.
Not once have they made known the precise opinions of the people accused.
Why is this?
Because they are afraid that the general public, on seeing what these people actually are and what they actually say, will realise that they have been lied to.
The general public would see that they are serious people, well informed, concerned with the truth and not with propaganda. They have never denied the existence of the concentration camps and the crematory ovens. They say that those camps existed and they add that the Germans were neither the first nor the last to use concentration camps. They say that those crematory ovens also existed and they add that there is nothing bad about burning corpses rather than burying them, above all in places where there is a risk of epidemic.
Moreover, they say that never did Germany’s leaders either give the order or equip themselves with the means to kill anyone simply because of his or her race or religion. The alleged “holocaust” of six million Jews is a lie orchestrated, like it or not, by the media. The American film Holocaust, described as a “docudrama”, is nothing but a farce and a political and commercial operation to boot. It constitutes the admission that now, in 1978, the Zionist taboo can choose only between sex-shop Nazism and show business hype.
Yet in the thirty-five years since Holocaust was first broadcast, cultural ‘occupation’ has proved more relentless than literal military occupation. Reportedly around half of the West German population watched the series.
Robert Faurisson pioneered the resistance to this brainwashing, and in 2023 his work is more relevant than ever before, as the reach of Holocaustian laws spreads even to countries such as the UK, Spain and Canada that were once relative havens of free historical investigation.
The Vincent Reynouard extradition hearing in Edinburgh next month will be an important stage in this steady encroachment of tyranny. It will be said that this is not backdoor criminalisation, because Vincent’s ‘crime’ was committed in France and it is ‘simply’ a matter of extraditing him to face French justice, regardless of the fact that he infringed no UK law.
But the effect is to move towards acceptance by the British media (and by British police and border control officers who collaborate with their European counterparts) that ‘Holocaust deniers’ and ‘Nazis’ are ipso facto criminals.
Here and at the Real History blog, a campaign of resistance to this tyranny is being prepared. Keep watching these two sites for further details, coming soon.
Udo Walendy: soldier, patriot and scholar (1927-2022)
Udo Walendy – German patriot and pioneering revisionist scholar and publisher – died last night aged 95. The following obituary is reposted from the Real History Blog.
Born in Berlin, he was among the last of the wartime generation, having served as a teenager in the Reich Labour Force, then as a Luftwaffe auxiliary, and finally as a soldier in the Wehrmacht, turning 18 less than four months before the end of the war.
After an early career in education and business, Udo became one of the very first pioneers of revisionist history, publishing the first edition of his book Wahrheit für Deutschland – Die Schuldfrage des Zweiten Weltkriegs (‘Truth for Germany: the guilt question of the Second World War’) in 1964, a decade before the 1970s explosion of revisionist scholarship. This book appeared in many subsequent editions in several languages.
Among his most significant contributions to that scholarship was his long-running series Historische Tatsachen, published latterly by Siegfried Verbeke’s VHO in Flanders.
A major figure on the international revisionist scene, Udo was a long-time board member of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), and was a witness at both of the groundbreaking trials of Canadian-German revisionist publisher Ernst Zündel, in 1985 and 1988.
When the NPD was formed in 1964 as the main nationalist party in what was then West Germany, Udo Walendy became one of its first members, serving on the party’s federal executive from 1967-73, and as state chairman of the NPD in North-Rhine-Westphalia from 1971-73.
In 1996-97 Udo Walendy served prison sentences under Germany’s notorious debate-denying Volksverhetzung law, and was prosecuted on many other occasions, as well as suffering frequent official harassment and the seizure of his books and magazines.
Until his eyesight failed in his final years, Udo Walendy remained extremely active as a revisionist and as a patriot, standing as mayoral candidate for the NPD in his home city of Mönchengladbach in 2014, when he was already aged 87.
The last of the wartime generation are leaving us, as are many of the pioneering revisionist generation of the 1960s and 1970s. The great intellectual adventure of our times (as Robert Faurisson called it) continues, as the torch is passed to new revisionist leaders such as Vincent Reynouard, now battling extradition to France where a new prison sentence would await him, and then on to a new generation of brave and articulate European intellectuals.
The truth – or as Professor Faurisson preferred to put it, “exactitude” – will never be silenced. Wahrheit macht Frei!
French scholar arrested in Scotland by ‘anti-terrorist’ police
French revisionist scholar Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Scotland on Thursday 10th November. He is presently in an Edinburgh prison cell, where he will remain at least until 23rd February next year, when a court will determine whether he should be extradited to France, where he would be jailed under that country’s laws restricting historical and scientific enquiry. (There will be a further hearing in Edinburgh on 8th December this year, but the main case will not be heard until February.)
Vincent Reynouard built his scholarly reputation with a detailed re-examination of what had been termed the ‘Massacre of Oradour’, and went on to become one of the world’s leading sceptical investigators of the ‘Holocaust’. Francophone readers should visit his excellent website.
British and American readers might be shocked that a specialist squad of police from SO15 – the Counter-Terrorism Command, directed from London – swooped on a small Scottish village to arrest this 53-year-old scholar, who is not accused of anything that would be a crime in the UK.
Yet in fact this is simply the latest example – though an especially important example – of an increasing trend across Europe, where politicised courts and prosecutors, aided by politicised police forces and intelligence agencies, are seeking to crush any dissent and enforce a quasi-religious obedience to one particular view of 20th century history.
We shall report on the case as it develops. Scottish readers able to assist Vincent should contact H&D as soon as possible.
15th November update: As a sequel to my article about Vincent Reynouard’s arrest, this morning I expose the background of the veteran politician who acted as intermediary, lobbying the British authorities to spend time and money pursuing this law-abiding French scholar.
There is no “anti-nazi law”: the French authorities are seeking Vincent Reynouard’s extradition under a law banning critical enquiry into ‘Holocaust’ history. No such law exists in the UK and it is shameful that Police Scotland collaborated in this arrest.
