So, get this, the latest scuttlebutt about Eric "Holocaust-denier" Williams' participation in the Chandler 9/11 Accountability Conference is that he allegedly had a freakin' ginormous swastika screensaver on his laptop while set up in his vendor booth at the Crown Plaza San Marcos during the weekend of Feb. 23-25. My source for this? None other than Brooklyn-based 9/11 activist Sander Hicks, who's written the New Times a couple of novel-length letters in the wake of the Chandler confab. (No one's ever accused Sander of being monosyllabic.) We finally got him to cut them down to a publishable length. Below is a paragraph that was in an initial draft that caught my eye:
Here's some new insights into the fascism question: I was personally disturbed by the swastika that came up on Eric Williams' lap top screensaver when I passed by his booth. Anti-fascist activism is an essential part of the 9/11 truth movement. Or, at least it should be. My own research confronts the historical relationship between the far right in Europe and U.S., and the "Muslim Brotherhood", the international pseudo-Islamic network behind "Al Qaeda" that worked with Hitler and later, international neo-Nazis. I don't have the space to explore that fully here, but I did post a well-sourced, free chapter from my book online about this. The relationship between these far-right international elements and today's neo-conservatives is startling. See: http://www.sanderhicks.com/chapter9.html
Sweet mother of Elvis! Williams was sporting a swastika on his 'puter? Talk about letting it all hang out. I'm sure that if I made this observation, the 9/11 conspiranut brigade would be coming after me full force, accusin' me of some serious fabulation. But the source here is Hicks, one of the more intelligent and reasonable members of his movement, who's also the dood behind publisher/coffee house VoxPop. I called Sander after I saw this letter, and he told me that while he was visiting Williams' booth, he was signing one of these little visitor cards Williams was asking folks to autograph as some sort of souvenir or something. Because of the controversy over Williams' participation in the conference and his Shoah-shirking tome The Puzzle of Auschwitz, Sander signed the card with the old slogan/symbol from the Dead Kennedys' "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" song. That's when Sander caught sight of the swastika on Williams' computer. He says it gave him a feeling of "vertigo" and made him question why Williams had been allowed to be at the conference, and why he was even there himself.
After several phone calls and e-mails to Williams for a comment, he finally responded with this e-mail missive:
This is the first email I have received from you regarding this swastika story. I think it is absurd to think that I would have a swastika screen-saver on my computer. Come on, give it a rest! And please do not contact me further for any other stories or contact me again period. Any further attempts to contact me will be considered harassment and forwarded to the proper authorities.
The sentence, "I think it is absurd to think that I would have a swastika screen-saver on my computer," is what's referred to in journalism as a non-denial denial. And this stuff about reporting me to the authorities is really rich. Williams writes controversial books, puts his e-mail and phone number up on his Web site, and then he doesn't want journalists to call him? Sorry, Eric, it doesn't work that way. I'll call you whenever I have to report on something that has to do with your sorry Shoah-shirking ass.
Funny, too, that Williams is trying to convince people that he's just a "truth seeker," and that he's not really a Holocaust denier. ScrewLooseChange has a video up from the conference in which Williams attempts to dodge the Holocaust denier issue by saying he has a problem with the Nuremburg Trials, just like some people have problems with the 9/11 Commission Report. Way to make the link between troofers and Holocaust deniers, Eric! He also seems to imply that because there was a swimming pool at Auschwitz, then no Jews were gassed there. What an idiot! The pool was for the SS, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in L.A. Wouldn't surprise me if the kapos used it too, BTW. If you read The Kingdom of Auschwitz by Otto Friedrich, you'll find that the SS and the kapos who served them as enforcers lived like kings at the concentration camp. All while the gas chambers and the ovens were working overtime.
But Williams doesn't believe Jews were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz. Nor does he believe that there was a systematic murder of Jews by Nazis during the reign of Hitler. Indeed, according to Williams, the Holocaust story is nothing but Zionist propaganda. Read Williams' book, it's all in there. Oh, I forgot, Williams took it off his site www.whatreallyisthematrix.com, so you can't read it now. Well, I do have a PDF file of the book that I downloaded. If you have a legitimate journalistic reason for perusing it, e-mail me at [email protected]. I don't want to proliferate this trash, but I do think journos and select others should see it so Williams can't hide and pretend that he did not write what he wrote.
PS: Just a note to say that I personally have no idea whether or not Williams has or had a swastika screensaver, I'm just reporting what Hicks has said. Nor am I saying that Williams is a Nazi. I mean, I know neo-Nazis believe the same sort of b.s. about the Holocaust, but that doesn't make Williams a Nazi, necessarily. And I suppose you could even make the point that the swastika is an old, old symbol that need not be linked to Hitler and the Third Reich. But, you gotta admit, if Williams did have a swastika up on his 'puter, it would be particularly disturbing in light of recent events.
