versie: 11 december 2018 - NIOD-begin | beginpagina Droog



Hitler Historical Museum

San Francisco (CA, USA)

A Neo-Nazi grey propaganda site
 
By Jaap van den Born en Bart FM Droog

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A Neo-Nazi grey propaganda site

Whoever looks on Google for information about Hitler-the-artist is very likely to end up on the 'Hitler Historical Museum' site, www.hitler.org. On the opening page this is stated:

"The Hitler Historical Museum is a non-biased, non-profit museum devoted to the study and preservation of the world history related to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party. True to its role as an educational museum, these exhibits allow for visitors to understand and examine historical documents and information for themselves. The museum, while acknowledging the tragedy that over 50 million people died during World War 2, retains its non-biased status by refraining from making political judgments of any sort. Neither does it make the standard, uninformative, and cliched historical judgement that the victor of the war was "good" and that the loser of the war was "bad." Instead, all materials and resources are provided as a documentation of the time period and as scholastic resources with notes for clarification. No biased judgments, slanderous labels or childish name calling exist here as they do in most of the writings on this topic" [text in bold marked so by VdB and D]

The page 'Hitler's Art and National Socialist Era Art' ( http://www.hitler.org/art/ ) is a a song of praise of Hitler the brilliant artist. The information given there is nonsense and pure Nazi propaganda.

So how unbiased is www.hitler.org? Who is responsible for its content? On the site itself no information about its editors can be found.

So we consulted www.whois.net, and learned that the site was registered by:

Registrant ID: AITorgORG6984 Registrant Name: United . Thought Registrant Organization: Registrant Street: 527 3rd St Registrant City:San Francisco Registrant State/Province:CA Registrant Postal Code:94107 Registrant Country:US Registrant Phone:+1.4153673888

The Hitler Historical Museum site is registered behind the door at the right hand side of this building.

When we searched on the registrant’s name and address we encountered this:

"(...) United . Thought had an earlier address in Herndon, Virginia – an address that turns out to be a postal box at a store in a strip mall. We also learn that this same organization owns several domains that are devoted to Nazism and current National socialist politics, including siegheil.org and nazi.org. The latter website is the home of the Libertarian Nationalist Socialist Green Party (a Neo-Nazi organization).

This educated poking around online resulted in a picture of the Hitler Historical Museum as part of a network of websites devoted to current neo-Nazi politics in North America, and owned by a person or an organization in San Francisco. Finding out more about the site’s owner would require, among other things, traveling to San Francisco or hiring a private investigator – both clearly beyond the pale of any basic literacy lesson.

But simply knowing the owner(s) of the Hitler.org website also own a series of neo-Nazi websites calls into question the website’s claim to be unbiased in its presentation of information about Hitler and his career."

In: T. Mills Kelly. Teaching History in the Digital Age. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2013, page 39-42.
https://books.google.nl/books?id=hyT2CrnaVogC&lpg=PA40&dq=
%22united%20thought%22%20san%20francisco
&hl=nl&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q=%22united%20thought%22%20san%20
francisco&f=false

Flag of the Libertarian Nationalist Socialist Green Party

Grey propaganda

Grey propaganda is basically information that sounds reliable, but isn't. The receiver of this information is deceived by the sender about its origin. In this case the sender, a Neo-Nazi person or group, tries to influence how people think about Hitler.   

In this the 'Hitler Historical Museum' is quite effective, as several American and British newspaper and magazine journalists have used the information from this site in their articles, and even refer to this site - ignorant of its true nature. 

See for instance:

Toby Helm. Bunker typist tells of Hitler, the friendly boss. [With link to www.hitler.org]. The Telegraph, London, 04-02-2002

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1383734/Bunker-typist-tells-of-Hitler-the-friendly-boss.html

Rebecca Wilkin. Hitler's paintings to be sold at auction next week. New York Post, 30-06-2017. With link to www.hitler.org under the words 'estimated to have created' - see screenshot below:

https://nypost.com/2017/06/30/hitlers-paintings-to-be-sold-at-auction-next-week/

 
More on (grey) propaganda:

Stanley B. Cunningham. The Idea of Propaganda. A Reconstruction. Praeger. Westport, Connecticut, 2002.
Lee Richards. The Black Art. British Clandestine Psychological Warfare against the Third Reich. Psywar, Peacehaven, East Sussex, UK. 2010.

Both (partially) on Google Books.

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Sources

Sarah Left. A neo-nazi 'angel of death'. The Guardian, London, 22-03-2005.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/mar/22/usa.usgunviolence1

Randall Bytwerk. Do Historians Have a Responsibility to Warn the Public About Misleading Websites? History News Network, Columbian College of Arts & sciences. The George Washington University, Seattle, April 7, 2006.
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/23723

The BNP and US Eco Fascists. Raincoat Optimism, 19-04-2010.
https://raincoatoptimism.wordpress.com/tag/green-movement/

Rick Wyatt. Libertarian National Socialist Green party (U.S.). LNSGP. Flags of the World Web Site, 25-04-2015.
https://fotw.info/flags/us%7Dlnsg.html

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