Progress Report: Building On A Productive Year

An Update From Mark Weber
Director, Institute for Historical Review
January 2013

This past year has been one of our most productive and influential ever.

It included talks to audiences in Canada, the US and Iran. In February I addressed meetings in Vancouver, Victoria and Edmonton, and I spoke at a conference of writers and activists in northern California. In May I spoke to gatherings in Ottawa and Toronto. And in August I addressed another conference in northern California. In September I spoke to a gathering of several hundred university students in Tehran. (An audio recording of that talk, titled “The Zionist Lobby in America,” can be heard and downloaded on the IHR website.)

My nine-day visit to Iran also included a guest appearance on an influential prime-time public affairs television show, a meeting with the country’s president, several interviews, a short address to more than a hundred people at the presidential center in Tehran, informative talks with writers and film-makers from different countries, and useful discussions with Iranian journalists, scholars, students and officials. (A report, with photos, of this expense-paid visit is posted on the IHR website.)

Also during the past year, we produced, distributed and posted more than 30 podcasts by me on a range of historical topics and current affairs issues. (These audio recordings can be heard or downloaded through our website’s “Audio” section. )

In April we launched a re-designed IHR website, with a “cleaner” and more modern look that I think bolsters our effectiveness as an important online source of reliable information and sound perspective. For an impressive number of issues and topics, a Google “key word” search calls up one or more IHR items on the very first page. And for online videos as well, IHR items rank impressively well.

Many IHR items have been distributed and posted by others, and some have been made into online videos. Video presentations of many dozens of IHR talks, interviews and lectures are available online. For example, dozens of independently produced videos based on my podcasts are available through YouTube.

Translations of a large and steadily growing number of IHR items are available online in a range of languages.

In 2012 we organized six spirited IHR meetings here in southern California that brought together new people as well as long-time supporters. These gatherings included a film evening, events with guest speakers from Britain and Canada, and a festive Christmas get-together.

At our September IHR meeting I spoke about my recent visit to Tehran. This talk was especially timely, given Israel’s alarmist propaganda in recent months for war against Iran. (The talk, titled “What I Learned in Iran,” can be heard or downloaded from the IHR website, and is also available as a CD disc.)

Our fellowship of friends and supporters here in southern California, strengthened by our meetings, has made the IHR a “rallying point” of like-minded men and women in this area.

In October British historian David Irving and I addressed a meeting in Irvine, California, at which he lectured on “Hitler and I” (available on CD from the IHR), and I spoke about the reasons for the German leader’s enduring legacy.

During 2012 I conducted numerous telephone interviews on current affairs with US and international media, and I appeared as a guest on broadcast shows to talk about historical and topical issues.

Throughout the year we compiled and distributed by e-mail, two-three times each week, timely roundups of selected news, analysis and commentary items to subscribers of our free “IHR News and Comment” service. (If you don’t already subscribe, just let us know and we’ll make sure you get these interesting roundups.)

And of course, we carried on through the year our routine work of selling and distributing books, booklets, leaflets and audio and video discs.

As so often in the past, we were again targeted in 2012 by the “Anti-Defamation League” and other Jewish-Zionist groups. Of course, we regard such hateful attacks as a badge of honor, and as confirmation of our effectiveness.

Week after week, we reach activists, students, educators and opinion-makers with solid information and sound perspective on World War II lies, distortions of American history, myths about the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Jewish-Zionist hold on our cultural and political life, the corrosive impact of Holocaust propaganda, and much more

No wonder that the Jabotinsky International Center, a militant Zionist “think tank” based in Israel, calls the IHR “particularly dangerous” because – it complains — our website has “a professional layout and well-written material.

Building on what we achieved in 2012, we look forward to the challenges and opportunities of this new year.

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