by Kevin Alfred Strom

WHEN I PUBLISHED an updated and annotated version of Benjamin Freedman’s speech “A Jewish Defector Warns America” a few weeks ago, it generated many hits, links, and comments. Thanks to those who wrote about the improved audio quality over previous incarnations of the sound file (and yes, I do know that there are still a few skips that I couldn’t correct), and also to those who sent in thoughtful remarks about Freedman’s ideas and my criticism of his version of the Khazar hypothesis.

The Institute for Historical Review just published an excerpt and link to the speech, the Riddles of the Universe science and politics blog republished the speech in full two days ago — and all in all, more than 500 sites have republished the article in one form or another.

Freedman’s speech was issued as a vinyl LP record by a patriotic group in 1961, but by 1995 when I rediscovered it, it had fallen into almost total obscurity. It all began for me when Jim Thomas, a publisher, sound-currency advocate, and long-time amateur radio friend, sent me a copy of the recording. I published it in ’95 as a two-part American Dissident Voices radio broadcast (then heard in almost every state of the Union via several 50,000-Watt clear channel AM stations) and also published it in text form in the magazine I founded the same year, Free Speech. I also put the speech online via the rudimentary ‘Net facilities I had available to me at the time (Usenet, the then-proprietary Compuserve network, and an FTP site), and even offered it (along with other articles of interest) via postal mail ( ! ) on your choice of 3.5- or 5.25-inch floppy disks. Not too much later, of course, we published it on the World Wide Web. Most of the sites featuring Benjamin Freedman material stem from these ADV and Free Speech efforts, but I’m also glad to see that some folks rediscovered the vinyl record or old copies of Freedman’s main venue, the Common Sense newspaper, on their own. It gives you the feeling that, in the long run, the censors are going to lose.

Well, as the Chinese communists and the ADL are learning, digital media are very hard to suppress. Those pesky files have a habit of copying and recopying themselves, almost like life forms. They may be suppressed on one server in one government’s (or pressure group’s) area of influence, but quickly reappear on another server, sometimes halfway around the world. I’ve even found literally hundreds of people sharing Benjamin Freedman text files and audio files on peer-to-peer networks, as if they were “hot” items like the latest Taylor Swift single. Well, they are “hot items.” They’re engaging, interesting, and may well change the history of the world. One can’t say that about too many pop songs.

I’m very pleased that this man’s important speech is finding a larger audience than ever. I’m proud to have had a part in that. In future weeks I’ll be posting some more material by Mr. Freedman, whose life’s work — once relegated to Orwell’s “memory hole” by the major media and would-be censors — is getting easier and easier to find, thanks to the enthusiasm and hard work of those who have found value in it.