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Jean Plantin, thirty-four years of age, unemployed and residing near Lyon, publishes the review "Akribeia" (a Greek word meaning "exactitude"). This review bears the subheading, "Histoire, rumeurs, légendes (History, Rumors,Legends"), and appears twice yearly. It is not revisionist concerning the Second World War, (i.e., does not explicitly doubt the homicidal gas chamber claims), but it has the merit of examining with equal impartiality both exterminationist and revisionist publications, as well as quite diverse studies dealing with subjects of no relevance to the ongoing controversy between exterminationists and revisionists.
It so happens that, in the first issues of "Akribeia," Jean Plantin simply mentioned three revisionist publications whose sale, display, and advertisement are forbidden by the interior ministry. He did not advertise them.
On 13 January 1999, he was arrested at his home and taken to a police station in Lyon, France where, for 24 hours, he was subjected to ignominious treatment.Then, back at his house, he saw his two computers and the disks containing his archives seized by French police, who also turned his collection of books and documents upside down.
Some journalists then set about launching "the Plantin affair", mainly in "Le Journal du dimanche" ("The Sunday Journal"), the local press, and the Communist Party's "L'Humanité" of 21 April (p. 1, 6, 7) under the headline "Filière noire pour revue brune" ("A Brown Review's Black Path;" -- it should be noted in passing that the cover of "Akribeia" is a vivid red hue).
These newspapers revealed that Jean Plantin had in 1990 obtained a master's degree in history for his paper entitled, "Paul Rassinier (1906-1967), socialiste, pacifiste et révisionniste" ("Socialist, Pacifist and Revisionist").
In the following year he earned the prestigious "diplôme d'études approfondies" ("diploma of advanced studies", known as the "DEA"), with his thesis, "Les Epidémies de typhus dans les camps de concentration nazis" ("The Typhus Epidemics in the Nazi Concentration Camps"). Neither of the two works exhibited a revisionist character. But suddenly, in 1999, certain organisations, particularly Jewish ones, have made it known that they consider that fact to be immaterial and that two professors (the first at the University of Lyon-III, the second at the University of Lyon-II) who supervised J. Plantin's work, were guilty of revisionism (of "negationism", as they derisively term it).
At first, the professors who were implicated, Régis Ladous and Yves Lequin, protested their good faith. Fallen prey to panic, both dodged their responsibilities. R. Ladous, for his part, went so far as to say that, if he had graded Plantin's thesis as "Très bien" (very good), it was only to show his scorn for a job which, in his eyes, was, it seems, "grotesque" (!)
Then, the professors spontaneously tendered their resignations from their posts as overseers of the "DEA" studies program. These resignations were immediately accepted by the presidents of their respective universities.
Prof. R. Ladous had previously "distinguished" himself on 29 April 1993 by publicly endorsing the judicial repression imposed on his revisionist colleague, Bernard Notin, (who, from that moment onward, has never been able to resume his lecture program in economics at the University of Lyon-III).
As for Y. Lequin, he presides over the committee of historians at Lyon's Centre d'histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation ("Center for the History of the Resistance to the Deportations"); he is also a member of a commission recently established by the Lyon council to investigate the wartime "despoilment of Jewish property".
The local press has come out with a multitude of pieces on J. Plantin's trial, held in Lyon on 22 April, 1999, and on the two professors' resignations. It has also revealed that some groups, notably Jewish ones, are now demanding the revocation of Plantin's two university degrees obtained in 1990 and 1991 (a Master's degree and the "DEA" in history).
A committee of historians and academics are to attempt to ascertain why the Lyon universities have become, in their view, "the French capital of negationism" (where from 1978 to 1999, the chain of repression against Robert Faurisson as well as Zind, Allard, Notin, and François Robert arose).
The authorities are making preparations for a one-day seminar in October 1999 to look into that question. An international symposium on the problem of "negationism" is to be held next year as well. As of now, consideration is being given to the setting up of a system for vetting prospective students at French universities, in order to prevent any person suspected of revisionism from getting any degree whatever. The University of Lyon-II has put Bernard Comte, a theology expert, in charge of drafting a "detailed and exhaustive chronology of all the events, since the Faurisson affair, which have, in one manner or another, put the university into contact with negationism, whether by a showing of support or of condemnation".
The judges of the Lyon court were to deliberate for five weeks before handing down their verdict of guilty on 27 May, 1999. They sentenced J. Plantin to a suspended sentence of six months' imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 francs (approximately US$1,800) and ordered him to pay 39,000 francs (approximately US$7,100) in damages and costs to three Jewish associations. The computers and archives on disks seized at his house have been apparently permanently confiscated.
According to media reports, it seems that another case against the young historian is in the offing, this time for the contents of the latest issue (#4) of "Akribeia." For its part, the University of Lyon-II board of trustees has decided to initiate the procedure for the revocation of Jean Plantin's "DEA" degree.
Yet, since the thesis he wrote for this degree is no longer to be found in the university's library, and since no-one, consequently, can say anything about its substance, it is on the basis of "administrative technicalities" that the revocation is to be sought! Such is the board's decision, in a vote of 30 to 0 in favor of the revocation, and eight abstaining.
...Contrary to journalistic rumour, Jean Plantin has not been involved in historical revisionism. He has striven, in "Akribeia," to be exact and impartial. There is his crime; his sole crime.
In Lyon, a new anti-revisionist witch hunt has begun, with the leading French newspaper "Le Monde" taking part in it (perhaps with a bit less venom and duplicity than usual). But it is taking part nevertheless. (It must be said that "Le Monde" seems to have a congenital repugnance to exactitude, to "akribeia").
Jean Plantin is an intellectual, trained at the university in historical research. He is conscientious, unassuming, unselfish; engrossed in a Benedictine-like routine of labor. Bereft of all financial resources, unemployed, he decides one day to launch a highly erudite history periodical. He takes note of the fact that in France and in the rest of the world there exists a lively historical controversy pitting the disciples of a certain orthodoxy against those who resist that orthodoxy. He sees that between the two no public debate appears possible.
A modest man, he is not one to try to create the conditions for an impossible encounter. He will simply catalogue and discuss, amidst his other varied studies, the bibliography and diverse research materials and publications, of both the exterminationists and the revisionists. He will proceed with the greatest possible impartiality. He will relate what he finds, in detail and with a sometimes intimidating precision; in neutral, if not drab, language.
But lightning will one day strike this adventurer in archives and libraries. There suddenly appear groups and splinter-groups which are offended, choking with rage and indignation. They complain to the university, the police, the courts. The "evil foe" must be crushed. The jobless young man will lose, to confiscation, what professional equipment he still possesses and the rich will force him to borrow in order to pay them "compensation".
The researcher will be forbidden to do research. The scholar, if ever he makes another "slip", will be told to go immeditately to prison to serve a six month sentence. His degrees will be revoked. Soon to be arranged will be the ceremonies of atonement, ritual gatherings, crusades. Jean Plantin has had a rough start. He is not yet through with the affair which bears his name.
1. One might also cite the suspicion of revisionism of two Lyon historians: Gérard Chauvy (because of his book Aubrac, Lyon 1943 , in which he uncovered certain disagreeable facts concerning a well known résistant couple) and Michel Bergès (following his testimony at the trial of Maurice Papon).
2. It is not "since the beginning of the 1980s" that the university of Lyon-II has experienced controversy arising from revisionism but since January 1978; as concerns me personally. This writer was not a "maître de conférences" there but a full professor (first forbidden from giving classes, then deprived of his chair by an unexplained administrative decision). Still other points in articles by "Le Monde" for example, could, in some degree, be corrected.
Afterword by Michael A. Hoffman II
Repeatedly, scandalous horror stories like the preceding, about which the loud-mouthed "guardians of academic and intellectual freedom" such as the N.Y. Times, Washington Post et al have almost nothing to report or editorialize upon, but are content to suppress and cloak in the murkiness of their Jewish hypocrisy and double-standards, hammer home the crucial utility of the U.S. First Amendment. None of what happened to Jean Plantin could happen to any revisionist or revisionist printing facility in America.
This underscores the fact that a revisionist printing factory in the U.S., once established, would have French and German departments, where foreign language revisionist publications would be printed and mailed to tens of thousands of subscribers and interested parties throughout Europe. How our enemies would boil at that! The spectacle of their rabid foaming will be the sauce with which we cook their goose.
Meanwhile the "gloom and doom" lobby here in the U.S., paralyzed by Jewish-seeded prophecies of imminent calamity and apocalypse, who cling to their soiled security blanket of defeatism like toddling infants; who chant "it's too late" and cower like whipped dogs in their caves and kennels, are put to shame by the raw facts of the Plantin case.
The undeniable reality is that we Americans still have First Amendment freedoms and to enhance and protect those freedoms we must use them to the maximum. Now, more than ever, we must pledge to build, in the congenial environs of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, an international revisionist publishing powerhouse! (See the June 15 Hoffman Wire).
It is illegal under French law to assist defendants in paying fines and damages which have been ordered by the court. But it is legal to furnish financial aid to Jean Plantin to recompense him for his lost computers and archives and who, in his legal defense, has incurred heavy costs, and is likely to incur still more. In order to come to his aid one may send him, by regular post, either a check, money order or cash. An acknowledgement of receipt will be addressed to all donors. Please inform him that you learned of his case through The Hoffman Wire.
Jean Plantin, 45/3, route de Vourles, 69230 ST GENIS LAVAL, France. Tel.: 33 - 4 78 56 36 48.
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