"Nazi-schmazi!"

My, Kathy Shaidle and Jay Currie are oddly quick to side with a notorious neo-Nazi when he makes claims on the Internet. Erstwhile Heritage Front chief Marc Lemire is challenging the authenticity of a photograph that has appeared here as well as at many other sites, identifying him as the fellow standing to the left of Ernst Zündel, his former employer. I hope that his conservative buddies, reflexively jumping to his defence, are more critical about his Holocaust revisionism, but at this point I'm afraid to ask.

The source of the photo is the well-respected Nizkor site, dedicated to rebutting--with a mountain of facts and documents--the claims of Holocaust-deniers. It has been displayed there since at least 1999, without a hint of complaint from Lemire. We have only his word for the alleged date of the photograph, and for his claim that he did not know Zündel at the time. (There is an odd resemblance, one might note in passing, between the photo of Lemire as a teenager that he posted at his site, and the fellow to the right of Zündel.)

The alacrity with which conservatives and the, uh, far right link arms has been noted here before (in my "Sympathy for the Devil" series). Lemire worked for one of the most notorious neo-Nazis in recent history, he has lied about the Holocaust, he has quoted Adolf Hitler approvingly, he has been the leader of a neo-Nazi party, but hey! Don't call me a Nazi! Nazi-schmazi! I'm a free-speech martyr! And his conservative allies just lap it up.

Some folks have been "pwned" all right, Jay. Just have a look in the mirror to see one of them for yourself.

UPDATE: (March 31)

Jay Currie, inquiring about the photo, elicited this response from the legendary Ken McVay of Nizkor:

Lemire may be right, and I no longer identify the image as his because of his insistance that it isn't him.

I haven't seen Marc for 11 years, so cannot contest his assertion that it isn't him.

In that case, I can no longer insist that it is. Note to that effect at my earlier post, and, I hope, we can now all move on to better things.