Jewish dissident Gerard Menuhin's foreword to renowned Holocaust Revisionist Fredrick Töben's book, "50 Days in Gaol"

Here follows Jewish dissident Gerard Menuhin's foreword to renowned German-Australian Revisionist Fredrick Töben's book, "50 Days in Gaol - Dr Fredrick Töben’s Global Battle for Free Speech".

Note that Gerard Menuhin is the son of world-famous Jewish violinist, Yehudi Menuhin. Until 2005 Gerard was the CEO of the German chapter of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, but was then sacked for his dissenting political views.

Foreword:

When Did Speaking Your Mind Get So Dangerous?

By Gerard Menuhin

When I was asked to write a foreword to Dr.Fredrick Töben’s book about his experiences in the UK late last year, I welcomed the opportunity to voice certain convictions of my own. However, in view of the puerile but virulent decrees that have gradually undermined traditional law and the courts in all the so-called democracies, I bethought myself to consult a lawyer. His advice has been clear and indubitable: my utterances would land me before a court on a charge of “racial discrimination,” under Article 261 of the Swiss Penal Code, which carries a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment. Even sensible Switzerland has lost its way and its faith in the independence which has served it so well, and has submitted to pressure to alter its laws. Accordingly, not having Dr. Töben’s admirable courage and steadfastness, instead of presenting well-founded and far-reaching arguments, leading to an inescapable conclusion, I have restricted myself to commenting on such curious laws and on the duplicity of governments which live by public funding but betray this selfsame public, their countrymen, at every turn, by progressively reducing their freedom of expression. Today, the concept of democracy has lost all meaning.

Discrimination, in whatever context, is a necessary part of almost every human action; a mature society calls it “choice.” In a mature society, the law is grounded in ancient legal systems, tested by time. These systems are brought up to date, as circumstances demand and for the general good—not to cater to the prejudices of one section of the community only. The endeavor to criminalize thoughts and to forbid them by law has given birth to the legislation of conscience, which aberration is bizarrely reminiscent of heresy trials under the Inquisition. Such “laws” have no connection to European penal codes. In other words, they are contrary to the nature of a constitutional state.

Considering the plight of imprisoned activists and patriots in Germany—as lawyers and scientists and all educated professionals—who have been convicted of “hate crimes” or “incitement of the people,” an irony came to me. All of us from respectable backgrounds have been brought up by our parents to tell the truth and not to consort with criminals. However, if one tells the truth today, one is forced to consort with criminals. I am sure this makes sense to those who make the laws, but it makes no sense to me.

In the better informed, educated and more sophisticated countries, so-called hate crime laws are being passed as fast as legislatures composed of fools and hypocrites (the same folks who urged and legalized the mass immigration of economic and often criminal “refugees”) can be influenced to pass them. In Germany, the infamous Paragraph 130 provides an almost infinitely flexible weapon against “incitement of the people.” In Germany, Austria, France, Canada, among other countries, it is an offense to deny “the Holocaust.” The maximum penalty for doing so in Germany, for example, is five years imprisonment. (Convicted offenders often receive longer sentences than those imposed for murder and usually must serve their full sentence.) At the moment, there are at least four people in Germany serving long sentences for this “crime.” In the U.S., the hate crimes bill has been defeated five times since 1998, but the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives approved an expansion of federal “hate crime” laws on April 29, 2009. Those who commit “speech crimes” in the U.S. will face harsh fines and even imprisonment, as is the case with the politically incorrect in Europe and aforementioned countries.

These laws establish a dual-justice system. Traditional law still covers general crimes, but a parallel “bias-motivation” system has been invented, to suit a very small but vociferous minority, which at every opportunity claim that their sentiments have been offended. Crimes of “prejudice” are vigorously prosecuted. Such crimes include “verbal violence” (i.e. criticism) against protected groups, such as Jews. Because these new so-called “hate crime” and “anti-racism” laws are founded on sentiment and bias, they are open to the interpretation of the courts, which must themselves be presumed to be prejudiced in favour of current political trends.

It becomes all the more difficult for the informed citizen to protest what he views as a transgression of his right of free expression, when his own government slavishly submits to external pressure and voluntarily suppresses its own free expression. For example, probably due to the intervention of Israel’s government, a planned debate about Israel’s war against Gaza, on ARD, Germany’s most important public television channel, was summarily canceled (11/1/2009). The risk that Israel could have been criticised was evidently too great. Official German policy towards Israel includes self-censorship and thus the suppression of basic democratic rights. “When a body’s inner death is manifest, outside elements win the power over it” (Richard Wagner).

These days, a miasma of self-censorship covers Europe. It happens that the members of parliament of some parties leave the chamber en masse when the representative of a troublesome opposition party speaks. At the opening of the “Antiracism” Conference or “Durban II” in Geneva, the delegates from several European countries, clearly by pre-arrangement, collectively left the room during the speech by President Ahmedinejad. No doubt, they were under pressure to do this, but by their behaviour, these publicly paid flunkeys were imitating the antics of sulky children. Have these people forgotten that the purpose of a parliament is to hold debates and that the purpose of a conference is to listen and to exchange opinions, without resorting to insult?

In 2007, Germany made a bid to make “Holocaust” denial a crime across the EU. The last such attempt failed in 2005, after objections from several governments which apparently felt uncomfortable about imprisoning people for their opinions. Justice applied selectively is a form of injustice. “Denial” laws prohibit dissident opinions about only one subject, from which it must be clear who is agitating for such laws. These laws claim to fight discrimination, while being themselves discriminatory.

Presently, German authorities claim the right to prosecute anyone anywhere for expressing dissident views on “the Holocaust” that can be accessed online in Germany, even when such expressions of opinion are entirely legal in the country where they are posted, and regardless of the language in which they are written. It was this intention to universalize Germany’s peculiar tendency to self-chastisement that threatened Dr. Fredrick Töben, as he transited the UK in October 2008, and landed him in an English prison for 50 days.

It is unfortunate that the German “68ers” and others of the re-educated generation are now in positions of authority, and, through their self-imposed thraldom to Israel, take it as their duty to spread their sadly biased view of their own country’s history, in an attempt to perpetuate on to eternity their own people’s guilt, for acts of which present generations can have no knowledge, and for which they cannot be held responsible. But it is of course precisely because they are ignorant and misinformed that they can be victimized. (Following total defeat in 1945, German society underwent greater change as the result of four years of military occupation than it had experienced during twelve years of National Socialist rule. The idea of collective German guilt was often viewed as the first step toward re-education.)

So the world has demonstrably entered the Orwellian realm. Why should laws against “thought-crime” exist? Because such laws serve to control and limit freedom of expression, and directly support the mechanism by which one kind of criticism is suppressed under the general heading of “anti-Semitism,” while the same eagerly seized-upon “anti-Semitism” is simultaneously relied upon in order to claim victim status and to demand yet another new legal interdiction. The advantages of such laws are considerable. Instead of requiring concrete evidence to prosecute a violation of customary law, “anti-racism” statutes allow a judicature compliant to external pressure to concoct an infinite variety of allegations and interpretations, and to level trumped up charges at anyone who has voiced a politically incorrect opinion.

It is difficult to understand how professional legislators could pass such inexact concepts into law. These decrees, based alone on the insistence of a few well-funded agitators, make a mockery of the courts and the judicial process, of evidential burden, and the standard of proof. They disregard exculpatory, demonstrative and scientific evidence. On the contrary, in Germany, evidence introduced by a defense attorney is not only rejected in favour of the abstract ideas of “public incitement” and “prejudice,” it may be used to prosecute him too. Naturally, this threat reduces the availability of lawyers willing to defend such cases. Where cowardice and self-interest rule the courts, justice suffers. Under the confused and hazy notion of “hate crime,” biased judges interpret the law according to the will of their political masters. These politicians, in turn, are only handy men who respond with knee-jerk alacrity to a higher authority.

There is only one way to reverse this trend. That is for citizens to understand the urgency of informing themselves, while there are still some independent, trustworthy sources of information left. The fools and the hypocrites and political prostitutes like Angela Merkel are beyond help. For the rest, those still unconvinced, dumbed down by propaganda, or radically prejudiced against common sense, but with a tendency to run off half-baked at the mouth anyway (the colloquialism seems appropriate), I respectfully recommend the following rigorous regimen: shut up—read—learn—act.

Why? Because everything you know or think you know is wrong. It’s not your fault that, like me, you were taught the standard versions of major historical events. We are all, collectively, the victims of received information. But it could be our fault and mean our doom if we do not revise these impressions. It helps to ask the right questions. For instance, how and why did Cromwell come to power? What was the background to the French Revolution? Who fomented the Russian Revolution? Was Pearl Harbour an unexpected “Day that will live in infamy”? Was Hitler a madman and a monster?

Why does “history” matter? Is it not a dry, abstract body of knowledge about earlier times, from which we have (thankfully) distanced ourselves? Far from it. History is an unbroken trail that has led us to where we are today. Properly explored, history is the fascinating explanation of our individual predicaments. It concerns every one of us. It is not abstract but concrete. It is also often awkward and unpleasant.

Schoolbook history has not only become outdated, it has also often been falsified to suit the rulers of the time. Moreover, it continues to be falsified, to suit the rulers of today. It is not only the occupation and the duty of historians continuously to revise history, as archives are opened and new information comes to light, but our duty to ourselves to learn why events occurred and how they have affected us and may affect us in the future. The historian who fails in his duty deceives his readers and dishonours the dead. More convincing elucidations are available and may be substituted for the simplistic trivia that have been inflicted on us. More convincing, for instance, than that Charles I was an arrogant king who lost his head because he believed in rule by divine right. Or that the most bloodthirsty upheaval in Western Europe since the Thirty Years War was organised in 1789 by a few underprivileged French folk who took against the aristocracy. Or that the next most bloodthirsty upheaval was organised in 1917 by a few underprivileged Russian folk who etc, etc. Or that Emperor Hirohito suddenly took it into his head to send kamikaze squadrons to sink the Pacific Fleet. Or that Hitler’s goal was to conquer the world. So the first step towards enlightenment is an active search for information from trustworthy sources.

How does one recognise a trustworthy source? The best guides are common sense and corroborative data, coupled with unremitting scepticism. Counter-culture sources are usually the best antidote to the controlled and censored mainstream media, but even the system can be tricked into revealing truths behind its propaganda. The official accounts of every novel event, especially of atrocities, must be questioned and revised to discount bias. For instance, school massacres, whether random or instigated, serve to accelerate gun control. The reports about major outrages, like the Mumbai attacks, or alleged right-wing violence, are invariably calculated to sow prejudice. Once corporate codes are penetrated, it becomes easier to deconstruct and reinterpret reports. Key words such as “tolerance/intolerance,” “racism,” or the notorious misnomer “anti-Semitism,” usually denote “newspeak” and betray the user’s need to disseminate a view at variance with the truth. They must be given a contrary implication.

The second step is how to go about with our new-found knowledge. Each one of us has to decide how to react when faced with the undisguised historical truth. Usually, initial exposure to historical truth is so shocking that denial may be the automatic response. One can duck and run, meaning, one might look away quickly and get on with one’s life. One might accept a partial view and let it go at that. Or one might be intrigued to the point where one begins to research history, going ever further into the past. Or one might even try to make a difference.

How much truth can you take? Without it becoming a daily, even hourly burden in your life? The search for truth must go through several stages before it becomes digestible and useful. Raw information, of the kind spewed out on the internet, is sometimes highly questionable. One may as easily chance on a reliable source, as on a “blog” run by rabid and prejudiced ignoramuses—or worse, by paid propagandists. So information must be compared and refined before it becomes knowledge. But knowledge in itself is not useful either, until it has been subjected to reflection. Knowledge added to experience may become wisdom. Wisdom is never burdensome but enriching. The attainment of wisdom does not carry an obligation to act on it, but some may consider it their duty to do so. A very few have dedicated their lives — at risk to their own health and freedom — to activism in the service of the truths they have learnt, among them Dr. Fredrick Töben.

One thing becomes clear to such enterprising people. They realise that what happened then has a direct bearing on what is happening now. It does not matter whether our grandparents were personally affected by war and forced to flee their home country or not, we may be sure that their lives and their children’s lives were changed by such cataclysmic events, as ours are being affected today. One insight that dawns on those able and curious enough to reflect on these topics is that no war can take place without contrivance, that is, without propaganda, or lies. No non-psychopathic human being is keen to kill another. He needs a reason. His government must exert itself to manufacture reasons for him to kill his government’s enemy. He must be convinced that all those in another coloured uniform are his enemies; that they will kill him, if they get a chance; that they habitually commit atrocities. If such propaganda had not been invented by the equivalent of advertising agencies and used to bombard populations around the clock, citizens would have discerned the truth: that they had no enemies. They would have refused to fight to defend what did not need defending, and to attack what did not need attacking. Without world wars I and II, an estimated 72 million lives would have been saved.

The hiatus of world wars interrupted the organic flow of life in all the countries concerned. They fell prey to governments and systems that would not in all likelihood have acquired power, if these wars had not occurred. All life on earth depends for its coherent development on organic evolution. That includes a normal human life trajectory, just as it includes the life-cycles of animals, insects and vegetation. Humankind’s most dangerous and unnecessary characteristic is its interference in all spheres of life. Whether in the name of religion, improvement, modernisation or, simply, of “might makes right,” there often seems to be no other consistent collective determinant of our race than interference. From U.S.-instigated imperialistic wars, over multiple international interference organizations—the United Nations, NATO, the World Bank, the IMF, the BIS, the WHO, the WTO — down to gene-manipulation and the attempted engineering of our children’s thoughts, we seem compelled to meddle; we cannot let well enough alone.

Individually, humans have many hindering characteristics, often defined as weaknesses. They can be envious, jealous, and greedy; they can succumb to the lures of sex, drugs and alcohol. These weaknesses can be and are used against them, by those who, because they occupy a position apart from society, have no stake in it and are unfeeling towards those who have. Many business and political leaders have achieved their wealth and their prominent positions by succumbing to bribes and/or blackmail. The third step towards enlightenment is therefore always to ask the question: “cui bono,” or who benefits from such manipulation?

The cliché has it that “ignorance is bliss.” Like all clichés, this one is true too. The citizen who sees nothing demeaning in being called a consumer, in amassing debts he is incapable of repaying, in wasting his free time mindlessly, may die with a blissfully ignorant smile on his face. His irresponsibility towards himself is his right. However, whether he recognises it or not, this humanoid has a responsibility within the system. His responsibility is to consume more than he needs and can afford in order to maintain and increase his country’s GNP. But, if we continue on our present path, we will owe our doom as a race of potentially freethinkers to such automatons, for, through their ignorance, they enable the manipulators to run our lives. However unwitting, they are fellow-travellers, accessories of evil.

“Evil” is a biblical word. It carries the stigma of religious condemnation. As such it also seems dated. But how else would you describe a movement that is concerned, nay obsessed, with concentrating as much power and wealth in as few hands as possible, even if this means the perpetual suffering of whole populations, the pollution of air and water and foodstuffs, constant inflation, indoctrination of generations of schoolchildren, and the squandering of public money against the public good? It is in fact an intrinsic part, a willed element, of this movement, that millions should die of disease and starvation. Their number is superfluous to requirement; they are officially called “useless eaters.” (Compare Robespierre’s advocacy of “depopulation” during the French Revolution.) Control of food and weather, by means of HAARP—High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program—a true weapon of mass destruction, capable of destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems globally, is among the arsenal of those concerned to reduce the planet’s “over-population.” Looked at from their perspective, the millions of deaths in two world wars could be counted a subordinate benefit.

Some people are not very bright, some are feckless. But few are dangerous. Whatever their abilities, they should be allowed to pursue their existences as best they can. Some will succeed; some will fail. That is the result of happenstance, as opposed to interference. Well-meaning or would-be beneficial human engineering is bad enough. The kind of monstrous machinations to which the planet is presently subject, and the people who are behind them, are dangerous. Those who decide what proportion of the world’s population is composed of dispensable “useless eaters” are simply evil. They foment wars and are directly responsible for unimaginable privations. They are therefore the only humans of whom it can truly be said that they are unnecessary and that the world would be better off without them. Ironically, they are precisely the ones who are best-protected. They are the ones we see every day on the news, being escorted by bodyguards to their armoured cars.

In fact, these familiar faces do not belong to the truly wicked. They only foment trouble on commission. They are mere marionettes and readily interchangeable, should they fail. The truly wicked are rarely visible. Should they appear, it is with a humble smile. They are above suspicion and beyond criticism because they have caused their marionettes to draft into law “declarations” and other self-serving injunctions which render them immune from censure. They endeavour to suppress curiosity about the actual state of our world, among children as well as adults. Ideally, instead of seeking self-fulfilment according to their individual needs, children should from earliest days be prepared to serve unquestioningly within the hamster wheel of a life restricted to suit people of whose existence they may forever remain unaware.

Yet, every child has the necessary curiosity, with parental guidance and support, and education, to set it on its way to selffulfilment. A self-fulfilled people are a contented people. Why then are there so many discontented, violent, ignorant people? Because education is so expensive? As the saying has it: “If you think education is expensive, consider the cost of ignorance.”

The cost of ignorance is ubiquitous. It is manifest in the governments that the so-called democracies vote for, whose corruption and contra-indicated legislation citizens endure without protest. It shouts at us boldly, shamelessly from every television set, stares at us from every billboard. It feeds and flourishes on unhappiness and emptiness. It engenders progressive degradation. Its enemy is free thought, of the kind that is fostered by enlightened parental guidance and independent education. To the regimes that ensure and perpetuate universal darkness of mind, the advantages of ignorance are obvious.

Lacks of parental guidance and education are only part of the problem. Even without these, a cohesive society, based on a shared culture, might function adequately. However, there are ever fewer cohesive societies, because their cultures are systematically being infiltrated and undermined by others. This disintegration of established and traditional societies is willed. A multicultural, non-cohesive society is easier to influence and to exploit and to stir up to war. The majority of citizens in the developed nations may feel grateful not to have to fight in world wars, as their ancestors did. But they ignore the signs around them that point increasingly towards other kinds of wars, civil wars between cultures and religions, wars over water, food and fuel.

Why are people subject to such conditions at all? Sometimes they are the victims of earthquakes and floods. But apart from such acts of God, all occurrences are man-made and therefore, if not the results of incompetence, planned. (Some “acts of God” are also man-made; see HAARP “Holes in Heaven” video.) Most people, wherever they may live, whatever language they may speak, whatever their religious beliefs, share the same needs and ambitions. They wish for food and shelter, and to raise and educate their children in peace. All else is secondary. Given that there is enough food, that enough fresh water can be produced for all, why do children starve? A fraction of the cost of modern warfare would cover these needs (as it would cover the costs of a genuine health or education system). But when millions are prevented from fulfilling these fundamental desires, when whole populations are deprived of such basics as clean water, they turn in desperation to desperate measures, hence “terrorism.” What extremes of despair must a woman, a mother, suffer before she resorts to blowing herself up?

By resorting to violence however, this woman plays into the hands of those whose goal is to fuel and maintain a “War on Terror,” which in turn permits the curtailing of civic freedoms, the furtherance of crises and wars, the sale of arms, and conveniently distracts people from noticing that conditions are worsening, while power and money is being concentrated in ever fewer hands. It is therefore essential for these interests to keep as much of the world in a state of unrest as possible.

Although the official justification for this “War on Terror” has been recognised as a false flag operation by the informed public, and the official “9/11” report challenged by over 190 senior military officers and government officials (“Patriots Question 9/11”), this has not made any difference to those responsible. This kind of false flag operation has been a reliable tactic ever since the sinking of the Maine (1898) which gave the U.S. imperial power, and the Lusitania (1915), and probably well before. (In 1915, a German submarine torpedoed the Cunard liner Lusitania. 28 of the 1,198 who drowned were U.S. citizens. By allowing the ship to sail without escort into an area in which British ships had recently been sunk, the British government hoped to provoke the U.S. into joining the war against Germany. Indeed, the anti-German feeling that was stirred up by this event no doubt helped to induce America’s eventual entry into World War I. In 2008, the Lusitania was confirmed to have been carrying munitions.) It is worth remarking that the cost in human lives of false flag operations has risen. Almost 3,000 had to die on 11 September 2001, to set the “War on Terror” in train.

The question arises, of course, how in a time of news saturation, the perpetrators of such acts manage to get away with them. This mystery is solved when it becomes clear that most sources of information are owned by a very few companies, which are dominated by the same powers that have a stake in maintaining the status quo. Briefly put, they lie to us all the time. As the U.S. (in the name of democracy) and Israel (in the name of self-defense) are almost exclusively responsible, directly or indirectly, for global and unceasing bellicosity (the U.S. maintains anywhere between 700 and 1,000 military bases around the world), and for kindling “terrorism” and the ensuing slaughters (Bali, London, Madrid), it is essential for domestic propaganda to disseminate accounts accordant with their governments’ official policies, while suppressing all news that could impinge negatively on same. In this, the U.S. government is assisted by the U.S. population, nearly a third of which is illiterate or barely literate. Their numbers are growing by an estimated two million a year. This means that these folks are unable to understand even the superficial fictions published by the mainstream press. It takes an enterprising citizen to explore the internet for credible information and a sophisticated one to separate wheat from chaff.

Why do entire nations and their citizens today live in a state of perpetual debt? Why are our taxes used primarily to pay the interest on the national debt? Why is an income tax necessary at all, when independent nations could provide amply for their own citizens? An independent nation controls its own money. It does not need to borrow from private, central banks. Before the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve was created in 1913, and, hardly coincidentally, the modern income tax was introduced, the American economy had enjoyed over a century of prosperity. There were customs and excise taxes, but there was no income tax. However, no nation is independent anymore, because all have been forced under the yoke of debt. The world has been fitted with a straitjacket. So many people owe their livelihoods to the debt economy and the few who control it have amassed such wealth that no other system is thinkable. Any national leader who even proposed to attempt to regulate his country’s money supply would be ostracized and his country subjected to sanctions until he repented, or else he would simply be assassinated, as was the case with Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy.

We have the choice between qualities which have always been considered to be the cornerstones of democracy, among which, peaceful co-existence and freedom of expression and association — or being perpetually muzzled and fettered; exploited for financial gain through manipulated interest rates and stock markets; bankrupted by pre-arranged electronic runs on banks; the taxes of forthcoming generations already now forfeited through gigantic looting operations like the “Public-Private-Partnership” recently proposed by the U.S. Treasury; incited to war by propaganda — all for the benefit of a tiny minority.

Ordinary people, despite their overwhelming majority and wish for peaceful coexistence, cannot defeat this paltry minority, for they cannot see the truth. They simply cannot conceive of such organised malevolence, raised to the level of a religion. They cannot accept the existence of a movement committed to destroying all legitimate government, religion and nationhood and to replacing these with a so-called New World Order (cited by Bush Sr., Sarkosy and Brown), ruling the world by terror.

The only hope for a return to a mature society is for every citizen to learn to think for himself—to doubt what he is told. “The first principle is doubt. Doubt is the beginning of knowledge. He who doubts nothing tests nothing. He who tests nothing discovers nothing. He who discovers nothing is blind and stays blind” (attr. Teilhard de Chardin).

— GERARD MENUHIN
December 2009

FURTHER READING:

Douglas Reed, The Controversy of Zion
L. Fry, Waters Flowing Eastward
Nesta H. Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements
A.H.M. Ramsay, The Nameless War
Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah
Robert John, Palestine Diary
Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry
Ellen Hodgson Brown, Web of Debt

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