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. (more…)

As I previously wrote, President Frohnmayer recently issued a letter where he addressed, as he called it, the “gutter bigotry” of the Pacifica Forum. Here’s the full text pertaining to the PF:

In moving forward, there will always be a diversity of opinion about our approaches to equity by constituencies both on and off our campus. Our efforts benefit from continued open and honest engagement in these differing perspectives. Yet, even as we talk about our different perspectives, we must remain committed to advancing these efforts.

Even as we make notable progress, there have been challenges to the inclusiveness of the community we attempt to create here. Just last term, a student writer for the Oregon Daily Emerald was the subject of a viciously personal anti-Semitic posting for expressing her journalistic views on American foreign policy. In another incident, a group meeting on campus, in an unabashedly racist manner, mocked efforts by others to honor contributions by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And, finally, larger issues of First Amendment freedom of expression were raised once again by the Pacifica Forum, an outside group that holds its meetings from time to time on campus, and which hosted as a speaker the person who targeted the Emerald writer.

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President Frohnmayer recently issued a letter denouncing the Pacifica Forum for its sometimes “unabashedly racist” content. The letter came at the urging of the community board of Oregon Hillel, a Jewish student group on campus; they were prompted to action by a disturbing, anti-semitic screed written by PF regular Valdas Anelauskas attacking ODE columnist Deborah Bloom.

While Frohnmayer spent plenty of time denouncing the forum, he was careful not to call for their outright banishment from campus. From the Register-Guard article:

Frohnmayer said in his letter that groups such as the Pacifica Forum may use UO facilities but do not speak for the university. The appearance of any speaker on campus does not imply the UO’s “endorsement, support, or even its moral indifference to the content of a message,” he wrote.

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As promised, the Pacifica Forum revisited the topic of Martin Luther King, Jr. yesterday, the anniversary of his assassination. However, unlike last time, when a PF speaker called King a “moral leper and communist dupe“, this week’s lecture focused on the “right-wing, corporate, militarist conspiracy that targeted King in 1968 and that still controls our country and its policies with its propaganda today.”

Longtime Pacifica Forum member George Beres claimed that King’s assassination, as well as the Kennedy’s, were orchestrated by a powerful “shadow government.” Not only that, but he claimed the populace at large has been brainwashed by said shadow government’s subtle and insidious propaganda (perpetuated by a complicit mass media, of course). You should probably pop a couple of Valium before you (more…)

On Friday, the Pacifica Forum met to continue it’s discussion, “Pacifica Forum: Attacks on and in.” The meeting addressed media coverage of the forum, as well its recent controversial lecture on Martin Luther King, Jr. Unfortunately, the forum never got around to answering my question as to why it had allowed itself to be overrun by complete assholes, but there was plenty of other fodder for discussion.

After an introduction by PF founder Orval Etter, Michael Williams, a member of the Community Alliance of Lane County’s Anti-Hate Task Force, addressed the forum with the following written statement:

One reason for the persistent criticism of the Pacifica Forum is that the forum has provided an approving and affirming environment for the expression of bigotry and hatred aimed first at Jews and now at African-Americans.

[…]

These diseased expressions of bigotry and hatred find a safe harbor in Pacifica Forum. Instead of correction and healing, this sickness is given encouragement and support; hatred is legitimized. This is what the community sees when it looks this way, this is what journalists hear when they accept the invitation to come and listen. This is why Pacifica Forum has developed such an unsavory reputation.

I invite you to consider whether racism and anti-Semitism are qualities you want to encourage, are attributes you want associated with your forum and your name. Because this is not the doing of a plotting media - you are doing this to yourselves by your silence, by your approval, by your applause.

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The Eugene Weekly ran an article today on the Pacifica Forum, covering much of what I wrote about yesterday. However, here’s a nice tidbit I hadn’t heard yet:

[Michael] Williams, who has been monitoring Pacifica Forum meetings since 2003 on behalf of the Community Alliance of Lane County’s (CALC) Anti-Hate Task Force, distributed a leaflet including a comment Pacifica Forum regular Valdas Anelauskas made on the Oregon Daily Emerald website and his critique thereof. Anelauskas’ comment, in response to columnist Deborah Bloom expressing support for the Iraq War, argued that the war was only being fought for the security of Israel and included statements such as, “Even if the author’s name wasn’t Deborah Bloom, after reading your opinion piece in the Emerald (Feb. 7) there is no doubt that it was written by someone who is Jewish. Because only from people of that peculiar tribe can we expect such Talmudic hatred for humanity. There is even a famous saying that wars are the Jews’ harvest. And today it is truer than ever.”

Eva Sylwester, who wrote the article, has her ongoing coverage of the forum archived here.

This Friday, 4 p.m. in the Walnut Room of the EMU, the Pacifica Forum will be meeting to address recent OC coverage of the group.

According to several emails I received, Editor-in-Chief of the Eugene Weekly Ted Taylor sent Orval Etter, the founder and organizer of the Pacifica Forum, an email on Feb. 18 asking him to confirm several details from my story. On Feb. 27, Etter announced that the forum topic of that week was being changed to “Pacifica Forum: Attacks on and in.” (The Pacifica Forum’s immediate reaction when questioned or criticized for its often deplorable content is to claim it’s being attacked).

That Friday, Feb. 29, Jimmy Marr, the delightful fellow who previously called Martin Luther King, Jr. a “moral leper and communist dupe,” read the email from Taylor aloud to the forum. In it, Taylor asked Etter to comment on my question as to why the forum had allowed itself to, as I wrote, “be overrun by complete assholes.” Etter reportedly said this would addressed at the next meeting (March 7).

I will be there, of course, recorder in hand, dutifully capturing all the wackiness. To catch up on the Pacifica Forum, start here. Also, contributing writer to the Eugene Weekly Eva Sylwester has her coverage of the forum archived.

As I previously reported, the Pacifica Forum held a discussion on Friday titled “Martin Luther King: Communist?” Given the forum’s recent move towards white nationalist conspiracy-mongering, I predicted it would be a smear of the esteemed civil rights leader. Sadly, I was right. Jimmy Marr, a Pacifica Forum regular, opened his lecture, “Martin Luther King: The Man Behind the Media Mask”, thusly:

Look at your calendar. The founder of this country, George Washington does not have a federal holiday in his honor. Thomas Jefferson doesn’t. Abraham Lincoln doesn’t. Neil Armstrong […] doesn’t. What did King accomplish to merit or deserve to be honored above George Washington? Yet every year in January Americans endure the same propaganda blitz when the media go into a kind of almost spastic frenzy of adulation for this so-called Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King.

[…]

But the truth is that he was everything but that and certainly no hero that any American should look up to. To start with, even his name is a fraud.

And he’s just getting started, folks! (more…)

My curiosity was piqued by CJ’s last post, so I just looked at the Pacifica Forum site for the first time in God knows how long, and I was immediately struck by the following item from last year:

08/31 - Metting [sic] on the upcoming Tolerance/Intolerance Breakfast.

Immediately afterwards we have

09/07 - Further discussion about the Tolerance/Intolerance Breakfast.

Then there’s a brief spell of 9/11 conspiracy theories and whatnot, before the ominous/hilarious conclusion:

9/21 - Post-Mortem on the Tolerance/Intolerance Breakfast, (reports and discussion)

Now, apart from the fact that it sounds like the title of one of the experimental films from Infinite Jest, I can’t help but imagine what the minutes from that meeting were like. (Be it resolved: at future events, the intolerant people should not be allowed more than one bloody mary.)

The Pacifica Forum plans to hold a lecture titled “Martin Luther King: Communist?” today (Friday) at 4 p.m. in the Walnut Room of the EMU. The poster for the lecture describes it as “a discussion of whether or not Martin Luther King was a communist and of implications of the answers.”

That’s it. I am beyond disgusted with the Pacifica Forum. (more…)

The latest Eugene Weekly has a news piece on the Pacifica Forum, and (surprise!) the forum is still bat-shit crazy. If you haven’t read my piece on the Pacifica Forum in the Holiday Issue, go check it out. Anyways, here’s a little treat from the EW article:

Later, after denying that he was a conspiracy theorist, Douglas described how the burning of the Branch Davidians’ compound in Waco, Texas, and the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building were perpetrated by the U.S. government, and he said that the U.S. government was capable of using cable TV boxes as receivers to eavesdrop on people in their homes.

For those not familiar with it, the Pacifica Forum spends most of its time talking about how the Jews run the world, didn’t really die in the Holocaust, eat babies, etc. They try and cover their douchebaggery by claiming they are merely criticizing Israel and its policies, which apparently is a rock-solid defense these days.

On Nov. 2 the Pacifica Forum will host a lecture in 129 Mackenzie entitled “Free Speech vs. Zionist Power” by Mark Weber, “America’s most prominent revisionist historian.”

Weber is the director of the Institute for Historical Review, one of the larger anti-Zionist “institutes” around. This isn’t unusual for the Pacifica Forum, however; they routinely invite tinfoil hats, holocaust deniers and other mixed nuts to speak at their forum. For instance, a while ago they had a lecture on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a proven hoax that dumbasses still use as evidence of the Zionists’ plans for world domination.

On a completely unrelated note, the lecture is listed in the events section of the forum of stormfront.org, whose motto is “white pride world wide.”  Finally, something the hippies and white nationalists can agree on: a mutual hate of Israel.