News from Institute for Historical Review
September 3, 2018. Updated Sept. 13, and Oct. 2, 2018.

An unusual public service ad by the Institute for Historical Review at two San Francisco transit stations has generated wide media attention. The electronic display board, which proclaims “History Matters!,” was up during the month of September at the city’s downtown Powell Street and Montgomery Street stations.

The Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority (BART) came under criticism for accepting the billboard. But the agency explained that it has no legal basis for rejecting the IHR ad, which complies with its guidelines.

The Anti-Defamation League — an influential Jewish-Zionist group — “raised concerns” with BART about the allegedly “offensive” ad, according to the Jewish News of Northern California. The ADL and the Jewish Community Relations Council, the weekly also reported, will “keep up pressure on BART” over the IHR ad.

The ad prompted considerable media coverage, including reports by several California daily newspapers, local television stations, Fox News, Jewish community outlets, and other US based media, as well as by The Guardian, Daily Mail and The Independent in Britain. Most of these reports are hostile to the IHR, often citing the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) or the Zionist Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to portray the IHR as a “hate group” or a “Holocaust denial” organization.

“The stridently hostile nature of much of the media coverage of the IHR, and the readiness of journalists to accept without question the views of clearly biased groups such as the SPLC and the ADL, underscore a pervasive media bias and journalistic laziness,” says IHR director Mark Weber.

A good example is the report that appeared in The Guardian. In a letter to the British daily (text below), Weber wrote that the article “relies on manifestly biased sources to give an inaccurate and misleading portrayal” of the IHR. The bias of the Guardian report also drew the attention of southern California author David Cole. In a column, “Black BART and the Freedom Riders,” he also calls the IHR billboard a “small victory for free speech.”

The “History Matters!” message is very much in keeping with the Institute’s work and purpose, says Weber. It’s especially relevant now, he adds, because “President Trump, together with prominent politicians of both major parties, seem to have learned nothing from the record of failed US military interventions over the past half century.”

“Only by learning from the mistakes of the past,” says Weber, “can Americans chart a sane, just and progressive path for the future.” The deployment of US troops in Syria and Afghanistan, and the Trump administration’s belligerent threats against Iran, “show that politicians of both parties have seemingly learned nothing from the country’s calamitous military interventions in Vietnam, Iraq and other countries,” he says.

The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) is an independent educational center and publisher that works to promote peace, understanding and justice through greater public awareness of the past, and especially socially-politically relevant aspects of modern history. The IHR strives to increase understanding of the causes, nature and consequences of war and conflict.

Last year the Washington, D.C., transit authority rejected a public service notice similar to the one that’s been accepted by the BART system. That notice was to appear on digital display screens in mezzanine areas of the District’s subway system.

Zionist groups, such as the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, regard the IHR as harmful to their interests, and for years have called the Institute as a “hate group” or “Holocaust denial” organization. Major media outlets have sometimes spread demonstrably false statements about the IHR and its director.

In fact, the IHR opposes bigotry of all kinds. The Institute is proud of the support it’s earned from people of the most diverse political views, and racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. The IHR does not “deny” the Holocaust.

Founded in 1978, the IHR is recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) public interest, educational, not-for-profit enterprise. Its offices are located in Orange County, southern California. (More information about the Institute and its work is posted on the main IHR website. )

The Institute has been a target of authentic hate groups. It has come under repeated assault from the Jewish Defense League — identified as a terrorist group by the FBI. On July 4, 1984, the JDL destroyed the Institute’s office and warehouse in a major arson attack.

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Misleading Report Relies on Biased, Inaccurate Sources

To the Editor
The Guardian

A recent Guardian article about our “History Matters!” billboard at two San Francisco transit stations relies on manifestly biased sources to give an inaccurate and misleading portrayal of the Institute for Historical Review.

To support his depiction of the IHR as a “hate group” and heretical “Holocaust denial” organization, Sam Levin cites groups and individuals who are fiercely hostile to the IHR, with hyperlinks to polemical webpages. He provides no link to the IHR website.

Levin approvingly quotes the Southern Poverty Law Center, an outfit known for reckless name-calling. In June, for example, the SPLC issued an apology and made a payment of $3.375 million to the Quilliam Foundation and founder Maajid Nawaz for including them in a guide to “anti-Muslim extremists.”

A coalition of 45 prominent conservative groups and figures, which the SPLC had labeled as “extremists” or “hate groups,” then issued a joint statement saying that the Center “fully deserves the infamy which it has lately earned.” This coalition also called on “government agencies, journalists, corporations, social media providers and web platforms … that have relied upon this discredited organization to disassociate themselves from” it.

In August the New York Post editorial board warned that the SPLC’s “overly broad definition of `hate’ often goes far beyond truly vile outfits to include people and groups that simply don’t toe a politically correct line.”

The Post editorial also quoted a recent victim of the SPLC, who said that the Center is now more focused on “profiting off the anxieties and white guilt of Northern liberals” than in actually upholding civil rights.

Given that information about the SPLC’s record is readily accessible, there’s no excuse for Levin’s citation of it as a trustworthy source.

He also approvingly links to a webpage of the Anti-Defamation League, an influential Zionist organization that has made demonstrably false statements about the IHR, and which has a long record of ardent support for Israel and its policies of oppression and discrimination based on ethnicity. If any organization mentioned in Levin’s article deserves to be called a “hate group,” it’s the ADL.

Levin’s article is a regrettable example of the kind of slanted or lazy journalism that erodes public trust in the media.

Sincerely,

Mark Weber

Director
INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW