Pacifica Forum responds to Frohnmayer
On Friday, the Pacifica Forum met to discuss President Frohnmayer’s recent letter denouncing the forum and one of its more notable members, Valdas Anelauskas. PF founder Orval Etter drafted a letter to Frohnmayer, telling him to “get over it.” There was also talk of bringing “revisionist historian” Mark Weber back to campus on May 16. Finally, today’s ODE has a good write-up of the meeting. I’ll address all of this after the jump, in case you’re getting sick of reading about the Pacifica Forum.
The meeting began quite appropriately when Jimmy Marr, the man who delivered the speech on Martin Luther King Jr., handed me a copy of Imperium by Francis Parker Yockey and told me I should check it out. Flipping open the book, I noticed it was dedicated to “the hero of World War II.” Hmm, I wonder who Yockey was referring to?
Etter then presented his proposed letter to Frohnmayer, titled “Doctor Heal Thyself: ‘Get Over It.'”
Last fall at Northwest Christian College, in a lecture on tolerance in human affairs, you stressed a fundamental distinction between mere opinion or belief, on the one hand, and action on the other. perhaps with an eye to Anglo-American criminal law, in which occurrence of crime depends on concurrence of action and criminal intent, you emphasized that people may properly remain relaxed in the face of bad intent that has not evolved to the point of action – that they may simply “get over it.” The reason presumably is that as soon as the bad intent resolves into action, the vast body criminal law becomes instantly available for security.
This distinction bears on the distress that has recently been engendered in the is town over certain beliefs expressed at Pacifica Forum. these beliefs have engendered charges of racism and anti-Semitism. The charges have involved no instance of asault or battery, property damage, disturbance of the peace, or threat thereof.
Concurrently with these charges a local synagogue has been burglarized and some of its property damaged. No forum attendant was among the vandals.
Forum leaders have never sought personal injury or property damage through forum activity, and their record in the is realm appears to be perfect. Forum leadership can be counted on to continue along this line. So long as it does, the public may properly “get over” expressions of politically incorrect ideas at the forum.
Sorry, but that’s not how the marketplace of ideas works. No one is obligated to “get over it.” As Michael Williams noted in the meeting, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism. If you have the right to spout your ideas, then the public has the right to disagree with them, sometimes vehemently.
The other big news is that the forum might bring Mark Weber back to campus on May 16. Jimmy Marr brought up the idea, saying that he was willing to pay Weber’s airfare out of his pocket. Etter replied that the forum’s planning committee would take the idea “under serious consideration.” I’m sorry (actually I’m not), but this is the worst thing that the Pacifica Forum could do if it wants to clean up its image.
On to the ODE article, Jill Aho did a great job of covering the current controversy. The main thing I noticed in the article, though, is that Etter has significantly reversed his earlier position on what constitutes anti-Semitism. When I interviewed him back in December, he refused to admit that anything or anybody in the forum was anti-Semitic, including Anelauskas. Even when I showed him the ad for the Mark Weber lecture, which featured a hissing snake coiled in the shape of the Star of David, he would only call it anti-Zionist.
“I wouldn’t regard [the ad] as anti-Semitic in the sense of being anti-Judaism,” Etter said. “Maybe anti-Zionist or anti-Israel, but there’s an awful lot more to Judaism than Israel and Zionism. And I have a hunch that the people who put [the ad] together would claim it’s anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic.”
And later in the interview:
“An important fact about public life in recent years is that the word ‘anti-Semitic’ has grossly expanded in meaning.” Etter said. “It means a lot more than it used to.”
Contrast this with Etter’s statements in Aho’s article, and you’ll see that he is now trying to clean his hands of Anelauskas:
Etter said, “I found myself, quite a while back, divorcing myself, separating myself, from Valdas’ anti-Semitism, but when you read criticism of the forum, including in the Oregon Commentator, you’d never know I was one of the first to part company with Valdas when he became anti-Semitic.”
It should be obvious to everyone that Anelauskas did not recently become anti-Semitic. Of course, people like him tend to fall farther and farther down the rabbit hole as time goes on, but you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see what his Zionism and Russia lecture series back in 2006 was all about. I’ll just quote a brief snippet from the opening paragraphs of part eight:
The Zionists keep rubbing our noses in Auschwitz, because they want us to feel guilty, they want us to feel that we owe the Jews something for letting it happen. The media rarely mention Gulag because Jews were the guilty ones there. Besides, today they make a lot of money by promoting the “holocaust.” As saying goes, “There is no
business as good as Shoa business.” […] The “holocaust” story is used as sword and shield for IsraHell, that cancer tumor on Middle East.
An R-G article on the lecture series quoted Etter as being “unable to say” if Anelauskas’ lecture was anti-Semitic. Ironically, Anelauskas describes himself in the article as “a nationalist and white separatist and racialist.” It was Etter who invited him to present that lecture series, Etter who defended the decision and Etter who continued to involve Anelauskas in the Pacifica Forum. It’s a little late in the game to try and distance himself now. (According to Aho’s article, Anelauskas recently left the forum in a huff, vowing never to return).
This brings up another point that needs addressing: the complicity of the Pacifica Forum as a whole in recent events. Some people, myself included, have been guilty of lumping everybody in the forum together with Anelauskas and Marr. This is somewhat unfair. The majority of the forum attendees disagree with the anti-Semitic material that is sometimes presented at the forum. In fact, many longtime members of the PF left in protest over the Mark Weber lecture. However, a small minority of anti-Semites continues to have an inordinate influence over the discussions and presentations of the forum. As long as they do, people will not make a distinction between them and the Pacifica Forum. Furthermore, the decent, informed discussions that do occasionally happen at the forum will not be reported on, while the awful things will. For better or worse, that’s the way news works, and that’s what the public’s perception of the forum will be. If the Pacifica Forum does not want a negative, biased image in the community, maybe it shouldn’t invite “revisionist historians,” conspiracy theorists and rabid anti-Semites. If it does, maybe it should also bring qualified speakers to debate them. That would actually be informative and entertaining.
However, Etter indicated towards the end of the meeting that this flap is far from over: “It’s quite obvious to me that this discussion of racism and anti-Semitism in Eugene has to go on for much longer than it has,” he said.
(sigh)
