Ecrits révisionnistes (1974-1998) BY ROBERT FAURISSON Chapter 2: PARTICULAR NATURE OF THIS BOOK: A REVISIONIST CHRONICLE

From 1974 to this day, I have had to fight so many legal battles that I have been unable to find time enough to compose the specific summing-up which one is entitled to expect from a professor who, over so many years, has devoted his efforts to one point, and one point alone, of the history of the second world war: the Holocaust or the Shoah.

Year after year, an avalanche of trials, entailing the gravest consequences, has thwarted my plans to publish such a work. Apart from my own cases, I have had to consecrate a good part of my time to the defence, before their respective courts, of other revisionists in France and abroad. Still today, as I write this introduction, two cases are being brought against me (one in the Netherlands, the other in France) while I must intervene, directly or indirectly, in proceedings pending against revisionists living in Switzerland, Canada, and Australia respectively. For want of time, I have had to refuse my aid to others, notably two Japanese revisionists.

Throughout the world, our adversaries tactic is the same: go to court in order to paralyse revisionists research work, if not to have them sentenced to prison terms or ordered to pay fines or damages. For those convicted, imprisonment will mean a halt to all revisionist activity, whereas those ordered to pay large sums will be compelled to set off on a feverish pursuit of money, goaded by the threats of bailiffs, writs of seizure, notices to third parties, and the freezing of bank accounts. From this simple point of view, my life over the past quarter of a century has been difficult; it still is and, in all probability, will remain so.

Let us add that, to make matters worse, my conception of research has never been that of the paper professor or historian. I consider it indispensable to see the terrain for myself: either the terrain of the material investigation or the terrain where the adversary is assembled. I should not be entitled to talk about the camps of Dachau, Majdanek, Auschwitz, or Treblinka without first having visited them in order to examine the buildings and the people there. I should not listen to accounts of antirevisionist actions (demonstrations, conferences, symposia, trials) without having attended them, or else delegated and instructed an observer for the mission, a practice which is not without risk but which enables one to get information from a good source. I have friends and associates produce countless letters and statements. I run to the battlements at every occasion. To cite but one example, I believe that I may rightly say that, if the impressive international Holocaust conference organised in Oxford in 1988 by the late billionaire Robert Maxwell (also known as Bob the Liar) aborted so pitifully, on the admission of its very instigator(4), it was thanks to an operation which I personally led on the spot with the help of a female French revisionist who lacked neither courage, nor daring, nor ingenuity: her action alone was certainly worth several books. But will the producers of books galore understand what I say there?

To the hours and days thus spent preparing either court cases or those various sporadic actions should be added the hours and days lost in hospital, recovering from the effects of an exhausting struggle or from the consequences of physical attacks carried out by Jewish militia groups (in France armed militias are strictly prohibited, except for the Jewish community).

Finally, I have had to stimulate, direct, or coordinate, in France and abroad, numerous activities or works of a revisionist nature, brace those whose strength has faltered, provide for the continuance of action, answer requests, warn against provocations, errors, driftings off course, and above all combat ill-conceived accommodations since, for some revisionists, the temptation is great, in such a struggle, to seek a compromise with the adversary and, sometimes, even to back down. Examples of war-weary revisionists who have sunk to public contrition are, sad to say, not wanting. I shall not cast the first stone at them. I know from experience that discouragement is liable to befall each of us because the contest is so uneven: our means are laughable; those of our opponents, boundless.

Making a virtue of necessity, the present collection is thus a mere selection of notes, articles, essays, prefaces, interviews, and critiques which I drafted between 1974 and 1998 and which are shown here in chronological order of writing or publication. The reader will perhaps get the impression of a disparate whole, tarnished by a good deal of repetition. I beg his forbearance. At least this very diversity will enable him to follow the revisionist adventure day by day in its vicissitudes. As for the repetition, I take some comfort in thinking that, after all, I have perhaps not repeated myself enough, for there persist today so many misconceptions as to the exact nature of revisionism.