Review 21.18
11 November - 24 November 1996

Blowing the Whistle Blowers

One of the most over-used clichÚs concerning the Internet is that it is an enormous repository of material on every conceivable subject. While this is indeed correct, in many senses it is largely irrelevant to the Internets day-to-day use. As individuals and organisations concerned with sensible approaches to regulating the use of computer technology have pointed out, material does not leap out from the computer screen into the unsuspecting lap of the user but comes as a result of searching for information.

Propagators of anti-Semitism have used some basic techniques to maximise their exposure and seek credibility. Through "search engines" - programs which provides lists of places on the Internet in which certain key words appear - Holocaust Denial appears on sites for serious academic discussions on Nazism, Genocide and Jewish History.

While anti-Jewish sites find a virtual breeding ground on the Internet, it is much more disturbing when anti-Semitism is given a degree of credibility by appearing as what is known as a "link", a destination for information which appears on one site by name. When that name is activated by the click of a button the information on that new site appears on the screen.

Australia's most overtly anti-Jewish Internet site, maintained by the Adelaide Institute, has developed links with sites maintained by individuals who find their views abhorrent. This site, which trumpets its antagonism towards the Jewish religion, historians who have documented the crimes of Nazism and those who would speak out against racism, managed to gain admission to a small group of "other sites of interest for those wanting to know about organised crime in Australia."

Australia/Israel Review research has established that this link resulted from the intervention of Geoffrey Muirden, close associate of Melbourne lawyer and Holocaust denier, John Bennett. Muirden, who apparently made a habit of supplying anti-Jewish material to the manager of this site, had represented the Adelaide Institute as a site which dealt with a matter of suppression and, more importantly for the individual concerned, one which would provide a link in return.

Another site with a mutual link to the Adelaide Institute came after a conscious decision, and after some soul-searching, to not exclude a "volunteer" who had offered to speak out against "the suppression of intellectual dissent."

The Network for Intellectual Dissent in Australia, maintained by Dr Brian Martin of the Department of Science and Technology studies at the University of Wollongong, contains names and contact details for individuals who span an enormous cross-section of interests. The Network provides the Internet user with "dissenters" on issues such as disabilities, custody and access, mine safety, the Antarctic, journalism - in fact it is difficult to think of many areas free from criticism by at least one of the individuals on the list. Some of the "Dissenters" are university academics, others respected professionals and yet others individuals who have developed a passion for a cause. But not far below Professor Stuart Rees of the Department of Social Work and Social Policy at Sydney University, who enjoys serious respect for his work on bureaucracies, social justice and the "empowerment" of marginal sectors of our community, comes the Adelaide Institute's Dr Frederick Toben, promoted as an expert on "The Jewish-Nazi Holocaust to question the details of the alleged gassings of millions of people on homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz without being called a 'racist', 'neo-Nazi' or 'hate-monger'".

When the Review spoke to Brian Martin, who is also National President of "Whistleblowers Australia," he argued that the Network for Intellectual Dissent was "not an organisation" but a "list of people". Martin said that he and his colleague, Tasmanian Isla MacGregor, had decided they were not going to censor anyone who put themselves forward as willing to comment or take action on issues related to the suppression of intellectual dissent. "I have spoken to many people regarding the list and you are the first person to raise the issue of Toben being on the list," Martin said. "If someone using the list wants to know about the ABC they can call John Millard, and if they are a Holocaust denier they can call Dr Toben," he added.

When asked if there were any limits at all on what qualified dissent as intellectual dissent, Martin said they had not yet "bitten the bullet on that one. Look, we have everything from Toben to a Marxist." Martin, who explained that he had evaded the draft in the US and was an opponent of Operation Desert Storm as he was of "all violent solutions to political problems," said that he had "no personal sympathy for Holocaust 'Revisionism' in the slightest but he was for open debate with them." When the Review suggested that there was a huge difference between open debate and affording legitimacy to an individual by including them on a network with academics and others with a respected role in public debate, Martin's defence was to repeat that he maintained a list of names, not an organisation. While Frederick Toben misses out on a guernsey as the South Australian contact for Whistleblowers, this position is occupied by another notorious propagator of anti-Jewish myths, Jack King. King has made a number of notable public appearances, including an address to an ugly crowd from the steps of Parliament House in Adelaide on why "Zionism and Zionists constituted the main influence beyond our serious economic problems and also the main force preventing world peace," commenting to a federal government immigration conference session on Australia's social cohesion that he had "never known any Jew or Asian to make a useful contribution to Australia" and writing to politicians and journalists calling for the "identification" and then "commercial and social isolation of all Jews".

But, King's track record was of no real concern to Whistleblowers Australia, whose President told the Review that they "do not make an issue" of the views of members of Whistleblowers on matters not directly related to that organisation's activities.

The promotion of individuals and hate sites under principles that "dissent" is worthwhile in and of itself or that reputations for anti-Semitism are irrelevant to campaigns not specifically relating to Jews, are testimony to the deplorable judgement of individuals and organisations who seek to be taken seriously.