WITNESS STATEMENT OF ERIC K WARDI, ERIC K WARD of [address withheld by Website] Seattle, Washington 98104, USA WILL SAY as follows-
1 . I am employed by the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. The Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment works with communities and organisations in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming to end malicious harassment and violence by countering individual and organised bigotry and anti-democratic movements. The Northwest Coalition provides assistance to victims, organisations, communities and leaders to address organised bigotry and prevent acts of malicious harassment and promote a collaborative response by communities and the justice system. The Northwest Coalition monitors the activities of groups which advocate racial supremacy or which harass persons because of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and national origin. I have been employed by the Northwest Coalition since April 4, 1994. I am employed as the Regional Co-ordinator of the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment. My primary responsibilities are to develop community based human rights organisations. These activities include: providing training for human rights leaders and members; serving as a resource link between state human rights organisations; and monitoring white supremacist activity and acts of malicious harassment.
2. The Northwest has long been called an “Aryan Homeland” by white supremacists groups. The continued influence of Richard Butler‘s Church of Jesus Christ Christian-Aryan Nations, by 1983, had finally taken root in the Northwest and began cultivating the violent activities of various white supremacists in the region.
By 1986, the Northwest had come to a boiling point. Already the casualty list was growing. The assassination of Jewish talk show host, Alan Berg led to the arrest of numerous members of a far right terrorist cell known as The Order. Two years later another group calling itself The Order II went on a bombing spree in the city of Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho where a local clergyman’s home was bombed along with the local city hall. It was in response to these and subsequent outbursts of violence that the Northwest Coalition was born. Over ten years later, the struggle to live free from the fear of violence, intimidation, and bigotry still continues.
The vehemence of hatred still persists; bank robberies, murders, death threats and bombings by the far right have not only escalated in the Northwest, but throughout the United States. The Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment has joined together over a thousand individuals and organisations who have dedicated themselves to creating a moral barrier against hate. The Northwest Coalition monitors far right activity to better able portray, in a more accurate and balanced way, the real dynamic personality of white supremacy and its relationship to conspiratorial world-views, such as Holocaust Denial.
3. Around the beginning of April 1998, the Northwest Coalition received notification from a participant at the Western Regional Initiative on Community Oriented Policing Conference, Spokane, Washington, that David Irving, the British revisionist writer, was intending to give a lecture at Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington on 13 April 1998.
4. Mr Irving is, and has been for some time, well known to the Northwest Coalition for his associations and connections with racist, white supremacist individuals and organisations. In my capacity as Regional Co-ordinator, I attended the lecture on 13 April 1998 and made a contemporaneous note of my experience (please see Appendix). I have refreshed my memory from this note and am able to give an account on what and whom I heard and saw.
5. When I arrived at the venue, a student of the University and a friend of mine, identified to me the individual who had organised the event. The organiser was Justin Reid. Justin Reid was at the time, and may be still, a student at the University and was the driving force behind the Student Revisionist Resource Site (“SRRS”). The SRRS profess to be interested in Revisionist theories of history in the name of progress and enquiry. However the material that the SRRS post on its website clearly betrays a much more sinister and ugly motivation. The website (at http://www.edu:8080/~pauling/index1.html) carries material that suggests that Jews are the cause of the prejudice against them along side items that attempt to diminish the moral outrage of the Holocaust. Justin Reid had (and still has) the appearance of a racist skinhead, as did the other individuals who were evidently his associates. Some of these men were acting as security for the event.
6. There were nearly 300 individuals at the speech, the majority of whom were students. The general atmosphere of the event shifted over the evening. In the earliest stages, individuals in the audience seemed simply curious about the controversy surrounding Mr Irving. As the evening came to a close, however, the students appeared ready to accept that Mr Irving was simply an explorer of truth and an advocate of free speech. As most students did not know Irving’s background, many were swayed by this portrayal. Also in the audience, were a group of older participants (60 years old-plus) who gave Mr Irving loud verbal support and applause throughout the evening.
7. The topics on which Mr Irving talked were not confined simply to those of Hitler and Churchill; he also spoke broadly on revisionism and free speech. Mr Irving dwelt on the Holocaust, questioning the number of Jews murdered and the fact that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mr Irving manipulated the audience by defending his right to deny the Holocaust in the name of freedom of speech. This is a ruse in order to lend validity to his racist, anti-Semitic motivations as was made obvious by an incident at the speech; when a group of individuals stood up and turned their backs on Mr Irving, in a protest of his belief in Holocaust denial, Mr Irving, instead of recognising their participation in free speech, said that they were “assholes“.
8. Mr Irving during his speech, played upon historical anti-Semitic themes. For instance, be suggested to the audience that Jews brought the hatred upon themselves by being successful in areas of media, entertainment, business, law and banking. He justified anti-Semitic bigotry on the grounds that persecution is predictable in the face of such hard work and success. After the speech there was a question and answer period and during the questions and answers a German exchange student challenged Irving his association with German far-right extremist activity. His response in perfect Orwellian double-speak was to suggest that she was a Nazi for challenging his associations.
9. Having a father who fought in World War II it was upsetting for me to watch Irving manipulate young students with his so-called “quest for truth” knowing that most students are not informed enough about the events of World War II to discern the sleight of hand he used to cast doubt on the Holocaust. The event, including the presentation by Irving, question and answers, and book signing lasted several hours. The most unsettling image was a teenage woman buying one of Irving’s books and asking him to autograph it for her. On April 13, 1998, Irving successfully held America’s commitment to free speech up with one hand while crushing it with the other.
The contents of this statement are true to the best of my knowledge and belief.
Dated 01 / 08 / 99
Eric K. Ward
