[Botting letterhead]
19 April 1996
Mr. Douglas Christie
810 Courtney Street
Victoria, B.C. V8W 1C4
Dear Sir:
Re: Ernst Zundel, Samisdat, “Friends of Freedom” and
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The Canadian Free Speech League
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It has become increasingly clear in the past few years that
Ernst Zundel’s Samisdat and your own Canadian Free Speech
League are merely fronts for an antisemitic, pro-Nazi agenda.
I have little doubt, in retrospect, that this has always been
the case.
In 1985, on your urging, I testified as an expert witness at
the trial of Ernst Zundel. At the time, Ernst Zundel was
presented as a publisher who was being censured and censored
for merely publishing a Canadian edition of someone else’s
book, a book that had been successfully published in England
and America already.
As an author, professor and publisher, and as founding
president of the Alberta Publishers Association, I was very
concerned about censorship of this kind. As a former
journalist and Jehovah’s Witness, I was particularly concerned
about the section of the Criminal Code under which Zundel had
been charged: “Spreading false news”, since “news” by
definition is current, and the law had been used,
inappropriately, as a second line of attack in the infamous
Jehovah’s Witness sedition cases of the 1940’s and 50’s (see
R. v. Carrier (1951), 104 C.C.C. 75).
After I testified, Ernst Zundel taped me talking about
“culture myth” and censorship. At the time of the taping, I
had no idea that Mr. Zundel would use these tapes in an
attempt to lend credibility to his anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi
agenda.
His promotion of the interview under the rubric and logo of
Samisdat amounts to misrepresentation, and infringes on my
copyright. I therefore demand that Ernst Zundel and his
organization immediately cease and desist distributing the
tapes and promoting them on the Internet and elsewhere.
Failure to do so will lead to litigation in the Federal Court
of Canada.
Sincerely,
/signature
Gary Botting, Barrister
The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)
