[Note: this post inspired an OC Weekly story.]File this one under “perhaps interesting” and also “probably trivial.”
But who knows.
You’ll recall that Holocaust denying and conspiracy theory-loving SOCCCD trustee Steve Frogue (of Lake Forest), who resigned from the board in 2000, was a fan of
(1) the “Institute for Historical Review” (IHR), a major supporter of Holocaust denial “scholarship,” and
(2) the publications/reports of Liberty Lobby, a publishing group run and funded by notorious anti-Semite Willis Carto.
Frogue was particularly interested in the Orange County-based IHR, which had been founded by Carto in the late 70s, though IHR management later had a falling out with the fellow (some time in the 80s, as I recall).
Frogue, of course, was very nearly recalled. Arguably, his serious troubles began when, as a trustee, he organized a Saddleback College “forum” on the JFK assassination/Warren Commission Report. The forum comprised four guest speakers, including ace Liberty Lobby “reporter” and tanning-booth enthusiast, Michael Collins Piper. Some of these guests, including Piper, seemed to express, or were associated with publications that did express, Holocaust denial, among other conspiracy theories. Piper had just written a long and silly book attributing the JFK assassination to the CIA and Israel (with the involvement of the Anti-Defamation League, as I recall). Some of the other speakers had equally incompetent views about the JFK assassination (ex-Nazis killed JFK, etc.).On the day that approval for travel expenses for Frogue's four guests was on the board agenda, I phoned the ADL's Joyce Greenspan (her office was in Long Beach), alerting her to Piper’s association with Liberty Lobby (I had become familiar with LL and Piper while researching Frogue and his curious interests; Frogue, of course, had been supported in the 1996 trustees race by the Faculty Association). She did some of her own research and consequently came to the board meeting, urging trustees to not approve travel expenses for Piper and the other three "forum" speakers, whom she judged to be unsavory.
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| Willis Carto |
I made some phone calls. Perhaps Greenspan did so as well. Within one or two days, Saddleback College was in the news around the country: "College to hold forum including conspiracy nuts and Holocaust deniers." (That was the gist of it.)
During one board meeting, Frogue described visiting Piper in Washington, D.C., where Carto's Liberty Lobby is headquarted. During another board meeting at about the same time (in 1997), Piper came to an SOCCCD board meeting to defend his views and scholarship--but his presentation was lost in the noise and chaos caused by clashes and tensions between his racist, conspiracy-loving Liberty Lobby/IHR pals and the equally loony but perhaps more dangerous Jewish Defense League (JDL) crowd, including its founder, Irv Rubin. (See A motley crew of Nazis VS. JDL thugs: oh, what a night! and Night of the Nazi.)
(Horribly, Rubin later committed suicide--or was murdered--at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles awaiting trial.)
It didn't help that, during the same meeting, I read aloud a letter to me from Piper in which he offered veiled threats and repeatedly called me a "m*ther f*cker."
"Gosh, I don't know any scholars who use that word," I noted. (Something like that.)
So why do I bring all of this up? Because the Reb just sent me an article from the Lede—Noam Cohen’s “Traces of Gunman’s Online Life Begin to Vanish”—which, among other things, explains that the internet record of James von Brunn, the guy who shot a guard at the National Holocaust Museum yesterday, is being erased--presumably by those who'd rather not be associated with such infamy (or maybe they don't want the FBI on their doorstep).Von Brunn, it turns out, has long been a member of this country’s racist, anti-Semitic, conspiracy-mongering, black-helicopter-dodging community.
BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
Cohen refers to another blogger: Zachary Roth. According to Roth (of the TPM blog), “Von Brunn tried to use Wikipedia to promote the work of Willis Carto, the right-wing Holocaust denier and founder of the Liberty Lobby.”
In an update, Roth notes that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) added Van Brunn's website “as a hate site last year….”
Adds SPLC (according to Roth),
In the 1980s or early 1990s, von Brunn was employed by Noontide Press, a part of the Holocaust denying Institute of Historical Review [IHR], which was then run by Willis Carto, one of America's most prominent anti-Semites.
Did you get that? The loony Mr. von Brunn was associated with--evidently indirectly worked for--the very Orange County organization (IHR) that Steve Frogue promoted a dozen years ago in the midst of the controversy surrounding his Warren Commission "forum."
What does it all mean? Dunno.
ALSO IN THE NEWS:Silverado Elementary holds last graduation (OC Register)
By RASHI KESARWANI
The big yellow school bus pulled into the parking lot of Silverado Elementary School for the final time today. ¶ The school, which serves 75 students from Silverado and Modjeska Canyon, will be shuttered by June 19 … due to budget cuts facing the Orange Unified School District.
Next year, some students will be bussed from the Canyons to Chapman Hills Elementary, which parents say is at least an hour bus ride that may begin as early as 6:30 a.m….
Parents and teachers said the closure of Silverado Elementary, a school that first opened over 100 years ago on Santiago Canyon Road, is a great loss to the community.
…
Lisa Alvarez, [a] parent, said she feared the effect that a long morning bus ride to Chapman Hills would have on young students' performance and behavior.
"I know the last thing my 7-year-old boy needs is a one-and-a-half hour bus ride in the morning," Alvarez said. "That's setting him up for failure."
Alvarez also criticized Prop. 13, the 1978 California ballot initiative that capped property taxes, a move which critics argue led to a reduction in school spending.
She called on corporate property owners to pay more in taxes. "These people should be facing higher taxes so we don't have to close down a century-old school," Alvarez said….
