Twenty years ago, Holocaust revisionists in Canada were a handful of middle-aged men, like Jim Keegstra. They were relatively harmless -- lacking any media savvy, organizational skills or funding.

How I long for those days again.

Today's Holocaust revisionists are the opposite. They're left wing -- so they know the language of victimology, which is more effective than Keegstra's blunt hate. They're young -- perversely, they thrive on campuses, not in the boondocks of a would-be "Aryan Nation." They're well-funded -- often from the coffers of Canada's tax-subsidized left-wing activist coalitions.

Imagine if Keegstra could have done that!

I speak, in particular, of the Palestinian-Canadian Student Society at the University of Calgary. Their name is a misnomer, not just because many of their members are Canadian leftists or Arabs from everywhere except for "Palestine," but because their major events don't seem to be about Palestinians.

They're about Jews. More specifically, they're about discrediting Jews, Judaism, and Judaism's claim to the Holy Land. And last weekend, they were about discrediting the Holocaust, too. Just like Keegstra did.

The first PCSS event I attended was stunning.

It was about how true Jews couldn't be Zionists. As I wrote in the Sun last February, the crowd cheered when an Arab student said "Jews planted bombs in synagogues. Do you think the same thing was done on Sept. 11?"

So Jews aren't victims of terror -- they bomb themselves and blame the Arabs. 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy.

No talk of "Palestine." No talk of Israel. Just talk about those damn Jews, Jews, Jews, and how they lie, lie, lie.

Keegstra would have loved it -- and he would have been impressed that such a meeting was held in the bosom of a university, with a Jewish president, no less.

Last week, the same club brought in Norman Finkelstein to speak. His greatest asset is that he has a Jewish last name, and that his parents survived the Holocaust. What a perfect deodorant for his toxic views.

Like Keegstra, Finkelstein denies that six-million Jews died in the Holocaust. He calls it The Holocaust Industry -- indeed, that's the title of his book -- and he claims that Jews trump up the Holocaust for profit, and as moral cover to be Nazi-like themselves.

Again, this has very little to do with "Palestine." But if you find someone with a Jewish last name who is willing to do your anti-Semitic work for you, why not?

Keegstra doesn't get a lot of speaking invitations. But Finkelstein does. Not by scholarly panels or conferences -- his "studies" have been roundly discredited, even by scholars Finkelstein himself relies upon.

For example, Finkelstein praises Professor Peter Novick, and cites him in The Holocaust Industry.

Novick, however, knows the difference between controversial scholarship and hate-mongering. He called Finkelstein's work a "hate campaign" and accused him of "a paranoid belief in some sort of global conspiracy of the Jewish elites."

And that's Finkelstein's friend talking.

Neo-Nazi groups and Holocaust deniers aren't so picky. At Calgary's PCSS, they know a good thing when they see it. Finkelstein can say what they feel -- and he can get away with it, because he's named Finkelstein.

A quick look at his upcoming speaking engagements shows that he's become the favourite amongst the anti-Semitic set -- and he will tell them what they want to hear for his significant speaking fee.

Anti-Semites should not be arrested. But they should not be tolerated, and excused, and subsidized, as Finkelstein and his university hosts have been.

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Levant is the publisher of Western Standard