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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 29, No. 12. 1966.

Extremist from Australia was welcomed

Extremist from Australia was welcomed

Eric Butler—the director of the most extreme group of Australia's ultra-right—passed through Wellington during the university vacation.

Although His "League of Rights" is anti-Semitic, racist, and neo-Nazi, he won an enthusiastic reception from the local press.

The Group which sponsored the meeting at which he spoke, the NZ Democratic Society, also received laudatory newspaper coverage.

Mr. Butler, who was in New Zealand to rally support for the Smith regime, says that "Rhodesia is the front line against the forces of world revolution."

His political career is remarkably consistent. Before the war he wrote a book called the "International Jew," which accused the Jews of being responsible for the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Depression and the rise of Hitler.

Great Lie?

After the war he wrote another book, "The Great Lie." He claimed that Hitler's murder of 6,000,000 Jews was an invention of the Jews and that actually the Jews had always co-operated with Adolph.

Although this suggests that he was an opponent of Nazism, he was investigated and acted against by the Australian Government during World War II. The Government stated that his "activities were prejudicial to the war effort."

Mr. Butler mellowed and concentrated more on appearing to be a respectable citizen. At the same time he has been publicising a variety of "facts." His main claim is that the Fabian Society and the London School of Economics are the centres of operation for the international Jewish-Communist conspiracy.

Literature

He has distributed anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist literature by Sir Oswald Mosley, leading British Nazi, and Lincoln Rockwell, his American counterpart. More recently he has been the leading apologist for Dr. Verwoerd and Mr. Ian Smith.

Mr. Butler today claims that he no longer agrees with everything he has published ("Some of my best friends are Jews," he said recently).

However, late last year in a televised debate he defended his statements. He quoted a man of "authority" to show that there was actually an International Jewish Conspiracy. He explained that by "The Great Lie" he meant that the figure 6,000,000 was a gross exaggeration.

A lecturer in Political Science continually demanded that Mr. Butler give his estimate of deaths, and say whether he thought the murders were immoral.

Mr. Butler refused to answer.

A Jew in the audience leapt out and brandished in front of a camera a photograph of piles of dead bodies in a concentration camp. Mr. Butler looked disapproving.

The Jew said later that all his family had been killed in Auschwitz.

Both the Jew and the lecturer were told by a member of the League of Rights to "go back to their German-Jewish-Banker-Communist friends."

Uncritical

Local newspapers nonetheless gave Mr. Butler and the NZ Democratic Society wide and uncritical coverage.

The Sunday Times boasted of an "exclusive interview," while the Evening Post labelled dissenters at the public meeting as "student agitators."

A local press service contemporaneously released a profile of Mr. Fairlie Curry, president of the Democratic Society.

This lauded the society ("exploded on the public horizon," "shot into the lime-light") and denigrated its opponents ("Vietniks," "bearded wonders," "untidy, mop-haired exhibitionists," "the pseudo-intellectuals that infest the Committee on Vietnam," "the weirdie and beardie brigade").

This was published in several New Zealand dailies.

NZ-Rhodesia

Mr. Butler also spoke at NZ-Rhodesia Society meetings in other parts of New Zealand.

But New Zealand papers did not see fit to comment on his extremist background.

For the record, here is a brief summary, from the pamphlet "Voices of Hate."

Anti-semitic, anti-fluoridation, anti-Saik vaccine, anti-artificial fertilisers, anti-UN, anti-Roosevelt, anti-Churchill, anti Labour, anti Common Market, anti-Communism, pro-Social Credit and racism.

Civil Liberties

Melbourne student papers have waged a long war of exposure against Mr. Butler. Commenting on this, the Adelaide student paper "On Dit" said:

"With the prospect of a McCarthyist revival, it might be well for those who are concerned to protect civil liberties to turn their attention at least a little from the extreme left to the extreme right."