[In Australia John Bennett is well known as a vigorous and outspoken defender of civil liberties and freedom of speech and inquiry. He is also known as a leading revisionist writer and publicist.¹]

[1991] Revisionism and Censorship Down Under by John Bennett

[1986] Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right? by John Bennett

Quotes
Dissident thinkers who challenge the accepted version of the past cannot expect a fair hearing in Australia, are subject to "unmeasured vituperation" and are not given a fair hearing. Thus my attempts to query the extent of the Holocaust of Jews in World War II have led to me being described as "more evil than Himmler and Pol Pot" (Quadrant), a "pathological raver" (New Statesman), "unhinged" (Commentary), "comic" and "bizarre" (The Age), "scum" (3AW) and "dangerous and foolish" (Derryn Hinch, 3AW). A play written by a Jew from Sydney called "The Diary of Anne Frank -- a Forgery?" describes me as a vicious evil neo-Nazi professional propagandist who poses as a civil libertarian and is utterly discredited. I am not afforded a right of reply to such attacks. [1991] Revisionism and Censorship Down Under by John Bennett

The fact that almost all media commentary, book reviews and feature articles about the book 1984 have ignored the crucial role of controlling the past indicates that Orwell's prophecy has already been partially fulfilled. The central theme of his book, the control of history, has already been largely written out of references to his book and has disappeared down the memory hole.....The extent of censorship of history is indicated by suppression of the fact that Orwell originally considered giving the title 1948 to his book because of widespread Big Brother tendencies already in the year 1948, including control of history. It is also indicated by the suppression of the fact that Orwell queried the allegation that there were gas chambers in Poland.
.... Orwell worked for the BBC for a time, and the Ministry of Truth is modelled to some extent on the BBC. Orwell noted that the BBC put out false hate propaganda during World War II, and controlled history by censoring news about the genocidal Allied policy of levelling German cities by saturation bombing. [1986] Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right? by John Bennett

The popular perception of history is based on brainwashing by the mass media, indoctrination by the education system, peer group pressure, self-censorship and television "docudramas." Docudramas such as Winds of War; Tora, Tora, Tora; Gandhi; Gallipoli; and Holocaust, which pervade people's 1984-like telescreens, are a blend of fact and fiction. They give a clear and believable, but usually completely misleading view, of historical events.  [1986] Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right? by John Bennett

Many of the books mentioned in this essay are, for a variety of reasons, including direct censorship, trade boycott and self-censorship by booksellers, distributors and librarians, difficult to obtain. .......Pressure from people with a thought-police mentality inhibits freedom of speech in my own country, Australia, and has helped to restrict the circulation of some books. Extreme cases of book censorship in the West have occurred in West Germany, where Professor Helmut Diwald was forced to delete revisionist portions from his History of the Germans. Retired judge Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich had his book on Auschwitz seized, and the University of Tuebingen, which had granted him his law degree, deprived him of it, ironically under a law passed by the Nazis. In Sweden, Ditlieb Felderer's writings were also recently seized and he was imprisoned for the "thought crime" of querying the Holocaust. His arrest and detention should alarm all people concerned with civil liberties. Mr. Felderer, who has questioned the extent of alleged German war atrocities and pointed out the extent of Allied war atrocities, including one million civilian deaths from saturation bombing of German and Japanese cities, was jailed because of his writings. Following the precedent of Soviet authorities in dealing with dissident thinkers, he was forced to undergo psychiatric examinations. The jailing of Felderer for querying the establishment version of history and his harassment by psychiatrists is clearly an attempt to intimidate him and other free thinkers who have dared to ask challenging questions about the past. The harassment or persecution of Felderer is part of a worldwide attempt to silence revisionist writers. An unsuccessful effort was made to silence Professor Robert Faurisson, a French revisionist historian, by court proceedings in 1983 involving potential penalties of $200,000, while moves are currently being made, supported by some so-called historians, to remove Professor Arthur Butz from his teaching position at Northwestern University. Canadian postal authorities denied the use of the postal system to revisionist publicist Ernst Zündel for a time. Various West German writers have been imprisoned, while a French revisionist was assassinated a few years ago. Many civil libertarians, such as the distinguished Jewish intellectuals Noam Chomsky and Alfred Lilienthal, have protested against the attempts to silence revisionist historians, while other so-called civil libertarians have been strangely silent, preferring to defend only the civil liberties of those whose views they agree with. [1986] Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right? by John Bennett

The extent of Allied war crimes is slowly being documented. Bomber Command by Max Hastings shows that saturation bombing of cities was initiated by the British and that some 600,000 German civilians were killed in the levelling of German cities. A review of Hastings' book in the London Spectator was headlined "Devastating and Exterminating" and described the aerial destruction of German cities and the killing of 600,000 German civilians as "the greatest war crime of the Second World War.".....The greatest war crime of the war, the bombing of German cities, is never dealt with in films, apart from very rare exceptions such as Slaughterhouse Five. [1986] Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right? by John Bennett

The central allegation made against the Nazis is that they exterminated six million Jews during the war, mainly by gassing in gas chambers. This claim has been established as false by Professor Arthur Butz in The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, by Dr. Charles Weber in The Holocaust, by Walter Sanning in The Dissolution of Eastern European Jewry, by Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich in The Auschwitz Myth, by Dr. Robert Faurisson in The Problem of the Gas Chambers, and by Professor Paul Rassinier in Debunking the Genocide Myth. Due to thought-police pressure and self-censorship by the media and book trade, these books are not readily available. These books demonstrate that there was no plan to exterminate Jews in World War II, no mass gassings in gas chambers, that fewer than 500,000 people died in concentration camps and that most Jewish deaths were due to diseases such as typhus. Numerous Jewish writers, including civil libertarians such as J. Cohn-Bendit, C. Karnoouh and J. Assons, accept the revisionist view of the Holocaust. Most academics dealing in modern European history are too cowardly even to investigate the revisionist evidence. [1986] Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right? by John Bennett

The attack against Pearl Harbor was the excuse for entry into World War II. Both of these attacks involved gross deception of the American public. The Watergate cover-up was nothing compared with the cover-up over Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt incited the attack with an oil embargo, and knew that the attack was coming. It was not a surprise attack. The Pacific war began in deception and cover-up and ended the same way. The Japanese offered to surrender prior to the bombing of Hiroshima on condition that the office of Japanese Emperor be retained, and after the bombing the war was concluded with that condition accepted. Why then was Hiroshima bombed? Most people's understanding of the Pearl Harbor attack is based on popular portrayals such as the docudrama film Tora, Tora, Tora, which presents the attacks as a surprise. The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor by Rear Admiral Theobald, which examines the days immediately preceding the attack, shows that it was not a surprise. It shows instead that Washington authorities had ample foreknowledge of the time and place of the Japanese attack, and that the failure to warn General Short and Admiral Kimmel was due to Roosevelt's order that no warning be sent lest their preparations for defense might deter the Japanese from attacking. Theobald also shows that Pearl Harbor was denied a "Purple" decoding machine lest the commanders there might independently decode Japanese messages and take steps to ward off the attack.  [1986] Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right? by John Bennett

 The Japanese offered to surrender prior to the bombing of Hiroshima on condition that the office of Japanese Emperor be retained, and after the bombing the war was concluded with that condition accepted. Why then was Hiroshima bombed?  [1986] Orwell's 1984: Was Orwell Right? by John Bennett