Pacifica Forum speaker Marr soft-pedals Holocaust rhetoric

By JOSEPH A. LIEBERMAN

article created on: 2010-02-25T00:00:00

While a handful of individuals in swastika-decorated T-shirts sat quietly in the back of the room in a building on the University of Oregon campus Feb. 12, Springfield resident Jimmy Marr spoke in a subdued voice, apologizing for any discomfort caused by his past remarks.

It was the regular meeting of the Pacifica Forum, a self-styled free-speech group established by a retired UO professor who, under UO rules, is allowed to use campus facilities.

Pacifica Forum has been labeled one of eight Oregon hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

On a previous appearance before the Pacifica Forum on the UO campus Marr reportedly uttered racial slurs and shouted “sieg heil” while making the Nazi straight-arm salute.

Asking everyone to “please give his presentation a chance,” Marr showed a 30-minute video that, among other tactics, took small details from the Nazi war-crime trials at Nuremberg and questioned their veracity in order to cast doubt upon the entire Holocaust.

The film’s narrator spoke in a relaxed, reasonable voice that made farcical propaganda sound like logical possibility.

Former Pacifica Forum member Billy Rojas, a break-away objector to Marr’s viewpoint, wrote a six-page critique of what he called the “wholly deceptive” presentation.

“Marr’s apologies for his previous excesses allowed him to present himself as reasonable and well-intentioned and, in the process, express a number of outrageous comments based on blatant prejudice as if they were rational historical points worth scholarly consideration,” Rojas wrote.

The video portrayed Ugandan dictator Idi Amin as heroic and disparaged the Christian and Jewish faiths.

“Marr claimed the film would provide valuable information that everyone needs to know,” Rojas said, “but what was presented consisted of distortions of fact, gross misrepresentations and half truths. There was a deceitful pretense of being fair-minded and objective: Jews, he conceded, are not evil. It’s just that they pursue a ‘group evolutionary strategy’ that makes them do evil things.”

Rojas expressed disappointment that some students in the room seemed unable to identify fallacies in Marr’s arguments and lacked solid information about historical events. While “quite capable of confronting blatant Nazi evil, they appeared less competent in recognizing disguised evil,” he said.

Someone asked Marr, “If you think the Holocaust is a myth, how do you explain the personal memories of those who lived through it?”

Marr replied, “I haven’t met any.”

Joseph A. Lieberman of Eugene is the author of “School Shootings—What Every Parent and Educator Needs to Know to Protect Our Children” (Citadel Press).