Is the Press freer in the United States than in Europe?

What follows below is the author’s translation of his piece in French (Fall 2012). The original text in French can be accessed here or here. It is published in Réfléchir et Agir, a political-cultural quarterly published in France. It can be roughly categorized as non-conformist “national-anarchist” journal with critical articles on art, literature and politics. The journal has published interviews with prominent French personalities from cultural and political life (Brigitte Bardot, Jean Raspail, Alain de Benoist, Vladimir Volkoff, etc).

America does not yet know freedom-killing laws that have by now become the trademark of the Federal Republic of Germany and France. Compared to the French Penal Code, especially the Fabius-Gayssot law, or the dreaded Section 130 of the Criminal Code in Germany, the famous First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution opens up avenues to freedom of expression that one could only dream about in Europe. Intellectuals who write for newspapers labeled “racist” or “extreme rightwing”, or heads of U.S. institutions who voice doubts about the official casualty figure of the Jewish Holocaust, such as The Barnes Review or The Institute of Historical Review, could be liable to a 4-year prison sentence in Germany, or subject to heavy legal fines in France. None of this exists as of yet in America, where one can see even proscribed European scholars such as Robert Faurisson and David Irving as guests of honor of different revisionist groups. Moreover, openly anti-Black, indeed racist gatherings are not uncommon in America, just as wearing the Waffen SS uniform, or sporting the swastika by U.S skinheads, or for that matter displaying the Celtic cross in one’s own back yard — all this baggage, all of this behavior is strictly protected under the U.S. legal system.

One must not be fooled, however. American media and especially the mainstream press attuned to the System, such as The Huffington Post, The New York Times, The Washington Post, let alone the major television channels, such as CNN, are careful not to venture into open discussions of the great taboos of our postmodernity: the Jewish question and the race question. It is not fear of judicial censorship that rules over the intellectual landscape in America; fortunately there is none for the time being. Rather, self-censorship among journalists and well-known professors, or the paranoid anticipation of inadvertently crossing paths with an “evil thinker” produces unprecedented psycho-anthropological knee-jerk reflexes. Fear of social ostracism and fear of being consigned to professional oblivion turn out to be stronger antidotes than fines, imprisonment, or the loss of job [American professors with tenure can’t be fired for expressing their views on politics or scholarly issues].

Similar to the French political and media environment, there are few American journalists and tenured professors who muster the courage to tackle in a critical and scholarly manner the topics of Judaism and multiculturalism. The founding myths of postmodern America, such as its self-assigned role of the supreme guardian of Good, its evangelical struggle against the supreme Evil, named the Shoah, as well as its belief in the myth of eternal economic progress, are carefully internalized by the media and the political class. Even the slightest misstep of an impulsive journalist or a nonconformist teacher means the kiss of death for his or her career.

The climate of self-censorship in the media and in the institutions of higher learning in America does not require state censorship as is the case in France. In America, journalists quickly learn to censor themselves. In fact, in the liberal system in Europe and across the Atlantic, there are differences in degree, tone, shape, and especially in style in the workings of the Inquisitorial System, but never any difference in substance. 

The SPLC: The Afterthought Police

The thought police in America, with its numerous outlets, are much less visible and much more subtle than in Europe — and therefore more efficient. For example, The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) claims to be a think tank but is essentially an assembly line for smearing those who have “evil thoughts” on topics such as race and Jewish influence.  It receives millions of dollars from anonymous sources with its prime goal being the blacklisting of all groups it labels as “extreme rightwing” and of all intellectual nonconformists daring to criticize the System. Indeed, the SPLC resembles a private spy agency whose ideological lines are drawn in the vicinity of cultural Marxism, and which is headed by Morris Dees, Mark Potok and Richard Cohen.

Long ago, it was the SPLC itself that launched the new rules of the language engagement and which continues to employ abusively the expressions such as “hate groups” or “white supremacist” for individuals of European ancestry voicing opinions critical of multiculturalism and opposing the disproportionate role of the Jews in the American media. In the French language, words such as “hate groups” or “white supremacists” have not yet assumed the same inquisitorial significance, in contrast to America, where these terms have a paralyzing effect on any intellectual or a politician daring to touch the modern Holy of Holies—i.e. the Jewish Question or the Metaphysics of Multiculturalism. Although in the Penal Code there is not yet a legal provision referring to “hate speech,” this expression, however, is propagated by the U.S. media on all wavelengths, and has by now become part of the new media jargon, serving as an increasingly powerful deterrent against all free spirits. Indeed, the locution of “hate speech” is so vague that it can easily lend itself to any interpretation; hence the label may strike anybody at any time.

The SPLC or the powerful explicitly Jewish lobby, the ADL, [(whose counterpart in France is the CRIF (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France ) (“Council of French Jewish Organizations”)] are not just intellectual espionage machines. The SPLC is also an outlet which informs the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security in the United States about White heretics suspected of spreading “hate speech” and who — by the process of guilt by association — are likely to become “terrorists” — a denotation with far more serious implications in America. Worse, the SPLC has also set itself the task of monitoring academic institutions, sniffing out and cataloguing “evil-minded” teachers whose syllabi depart from the Gospel of Multiculturalism. Not only are its targets young wacky self-proclaimed Nazis, but also many prominent scholars in the field of sociobiology, as for instance Professor Kevin MacDonald, or even politicians and writers, such as the former presidential candidate and the bestselling author Patrick Buchanan.

Of course, everybody in America is legally entitled to criticize everything on numerous websites and in fringe nationalist papers of the so-called extreme right, but in most cases, the intellectual scope of these papers and sites is limited and can in no way harm the System. It is clear that those different websites or webzines, run by racialist or nationalist groupings, with rare exceptions (such as high quality racialist magazines like The Occidental Observer and The Occidental Quarterly, or a newly launched political party The American Third Position Party) resort to a “binary language,” replete with vulgar, anti-Semitic and racist words, with no cultural veneer. It is therefore understandable why they can never be taken seriously by either the thought police, or by the U.S. government itself. Indeed one might even speculate that those countless extreme rightwing groupings are often used as a pretext by the U.S. government to scream from all Washington DC rooftops that America, in comparison to the rest of the world, is the only country of free speech. 

A new intellectual nervous tic: self-censorship

By contrast, in the mass media in league with the System, the rules of engagement are quite different. A correspondent of a television channel or an apprentice journalist wishing to reach lofty peaks in his career must heap eulogies on behalf of Jews and Israel. Former CNN host Rick Sanchez and the dean of the White House press corps, Helen Thomas, have recently been fired from their positions for comments considered critical of Israel and the Jews. Their sin was not considered a minor sin, as for instance when somebody criticizes undocumented mestizos. Theirs was a mortal sin. The very old and the very famous Helen Thomas had to pack up her bags for having uttered on, May 27, 2010, during the celebration of the Jewish heritage at the White House, that “they (Jews) should get the hell out of Palestine and go home.”

It is an unwritten rule, even in the American newspapers engaging in serious debates about the dogma of multiculturalism (e.g., the conservative daily The Washington Times) never to criticize the Jews or Israel. In this context one could detect, perhaps, a slight advantage regarding the freedom of speech in the left-leaning European press, such as Le Monde diplomatique and The Guardian, in which the reader can spot once in a while articles, if not critical of the Jews, at least critical of the state of Israel. This is something unthinkable in any major American newspaper of any persuasion. The slightest critical reference to the state of Israel, even without any allusion to the Jews in America, can easily lead to professional dismissal.

Professor Kevin MacDonald of California State University Long Beach, who himself was subject of professional harassment on the part of the ADL and SPLC for his allegedly anti-Semitic writings, notes in his book The Culture of Critique, which has become a bestseller in the non-conformist America and elsewhere:

By all accounts, ethnic Jews have a powerful influence in the American media—far larger than any other identifiable group. The extent of Jewish ownership and influence on the popular media in the United States is remarkable given that relatively small proportion of the population is Jewish.

Hence the paradox. On the one hand one is allowed to say and write anything in the United States, even things that are completely stupid and sometimes openly preach the overthrow of the American system. On the other hand, however, everyone, including the Jews themselves, live in perpetual self-denial, assuming that the influence of the Jews is non-existent and that the role of Jews vis-à-vis non-Jews is always the Same. This seems to be a typical American projection in observing the Other as the mirror image of its embellished Double. In reality, though, there are powerful Jewish lobbies in the media and in Hollywood who exert a tremendous pressure on public discourse and on the imagination of the American masses — as well as on the masses in Europe.

Dr. Tom Sunic (www.tomsunic.com) is former professor of political science and a Board member of the American Third Position Party. http://a3p.me/leadership/. He is the author of Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age ( 2007).