David McCalden

David McCalden
McCalden in 1980
Born(1951-09-20)20 September 1951
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Died15 October 1990(1990-10-15) (aged 39)
El Segundo, California, U.S.
Other namesLewis Brandon
EducationGoldsmiths College
OccupationsPolitical activist, publisher, writer
Known forInvolvement in British politics and Holocaust denial
SpouseVirginia McCalden

William David McCalden (20 September 1951 – 15 October 1990), also known by his pseudonym Lewis Brandon, was a British far-right political activist, publisher, and writer, primarily known for Holocaust denial. He became active in the British neo-Nazi scene in the 1970s as a member of the National Front. He was an active member of the Hunt Saboteurs Association and an editor of their journal, but was expelled in 1978 for being a member of the National Front.

After moving to the United States, he was the co-founder of the Institute for Historical Review in 1978 alongside Willis Carto. He became its first director and helped found their Journal of Historical Review. He left or was fired the IHR in 1981 after getting into a dispute with Carto, founding his own organization, Truth Missions, and periodicals in the aftermath, including his Revisionist Newsletter.

Early life

William David McCalden was born in 1951 in Belfast, Northern Ireland.[1] He left Northern Ireland in 1972 to study at Goldsmiths College in London.[1][2] He graduated in 1974 with a Certificate in Education (Sociology).[1]

British far-right politics

McCalden first became involved in British neo-Nazi politics[2] as a member of the National Front,[1] where he became editor of the party newspaper Nationalist News. A leading supporter of John Kingsley Read, McCalden transferred his allegiance to the National Party soon after Read and other NF members founded the party in 1976. He became a leading contributor to the party journal Britain First.

He was an active member of the Hunt Saboteurs Association and edited their journal HOWL for a few years. After his involvement made the news, he was expelled from the HSA in June 1978, after a debate and vote at their Newcastle AGM, for his contributions to "racist magazines".[3] His other works at this time included Beacon, another journal, and allegedly the book Nuremberg & Other War Crimes Trials (1978), although this was initially written under the pseudonym Richard Harwood, one shared with another Holocaust denier Richard Verrall.

Emigration to US and Holocaust revisionism

After reading the Holocaust denial pamphlet Did Six Million Really Die?, he shifted towards Holocaust denialism, though he later assessed the book as flawed.[4][1] McCalden emigrated to the United States and arrived in California in 1978 to work for the Holocaust denier Willis Carto.[1][2] He worked on Carto's magazine The American Mercury and for his publishing company Noontide Press.[5][6] He attempted to adapt the tactics of Noontide to make them more popular on the radical right, encouraging Carto to de-emphasize the more straightforwardly aggressive and racist books they published, to instead focus more totally on Holocaust denial books. At the time, they only published one, The Myth of the Six Million by David L. Hoggan; McCalden despised Hoggan's book, and said that it was "so full of mistakes it was a perpetual embarrassment" to Noontide. Carto refused to stop publishing the more generally racist books, but agreed to increase the focus on Holocaust denial.[2]

The two men also founded the Institute for Historical Review,[6][7] of which McCalden was appointed the first director.[8][9] According to the later director of the IHR, Mark Weber, founding it was McCalden's idea.[2] McCalden hoped that the Institute would help to validate Holocaust denial ideas and to make it seem academic in approach.[10] He often used the name Lewis Brandon in these roles. The pseudonym was the name of the first husband of LaVonne Furr, who had inherited the Mercury.[2][11] He also helped found their Journal of Historical Review, serving as editor.[7][12] As a publicity stunt thought up by McCalden, the IHR offered a $50,000 reward for proof that Jews were gassed to death in the Auschwitz concentration camp.[8][5][13] After McCalden declined an acceptance by Auschwitz survivor Mel Mermelstein, a lawsuit against Carto, McCalden, and the IHR was filed by public interest attorney William John Cox. In October 1981, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that "this court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944."[8][14][15] The IHR were ordered to apologize and pay $90,000 in damages.[8][15]

McCalden and Carto had a falling out in 1981 McCalden left the IHR,[7] or was fired by Carto.[16] McCalden wrote that by 1980 he felt like Carto was pressuring him to do things a certain way.[2] In 1982, Carto began to write articles in his newspaper The Spotlight which accused McCalden of being an agent of the Anti-Defamation League (a pattern of Carto's), while McCalden became bittered that Carto did not acknowledge his involvement in the founding of the IHR.[2] Carto eventually declared himself as having been the sole founder of the IHR; McCalden and Carto were thereafter engaged in a "lengthy" and "vitriolic" public and legal dispute for the rest of McCalden's life.[2][7]

McCalden went on to found another organization in Manhattan Beach, Truth Missions, which issued two periodicals: David McCalden's Revisionist Newsletter and Holocaust News.[7][17] According to Kevin Coogan, "McCalden attacked anyone involved with the IHR".[18] In his newsletter, McCalden outed his former friend Keith Stimely, another Holocaust denier and member of the IHR, as a gay man; McCalden also criticized H. Keith Thompson.[16] Stimely in turn accused McCalden of authoring the notorious Deguello Report.[19] This feud ended when Stimely also quit the IHR after also getting into a personal dispute with Carto.[16]

In 1985, McCalden sued the California Library Association (CLA) for damages for refusing to display his Holocaust denial materials at their conference.[7] In 1989 McCalden attacked a man at the Congregation Mogen David Synagogue in Los Angeles and was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, civil rights violations, and property destruction.[7]

Personal life and death

He was married to Virginia McCalden.[1]

On 15 October 1990, at the age of 39, McCalden died in El Segundo, California, from complications due to viral pneumonia caused by AIDS. He had been suffering from AIDS since November 1988.[5][1][20] His widow continued the lawsuit against the CLA.[7]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Atkins 2009, p. 169.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Lobb 2005, p. 199.
  3. ^ Hochschartner, Jon (11 April 2017). The Animals' Freedom Fighter: A Biography of Ronnie Lee, Founder of the Animal Liberation Front. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-2746-5.
  4. ^ Lobb 2005, p. 203.
  5. ^ a b c Folkart, Burt A. (25 October 1990). "David McCalden; Failed to Disprove the Holocaust". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 26 April 2025.
  6. ^ a b Lobb 2005, p. 198.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h Atkins 2009, pp. 169–170.
  8. ^ a b c d Atkins 2002, p. 138.
  9. ^ Coogan 1999, pp. 43, 256, 525.
  10. ^ Lobb 2005, pp. 198–199, 203.
  11. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 529.
  12. ^ Lobb 2005, p. 205.
  13. ^ Lobb 2005, p. 204–205.
  14. ^ Beck, Melinda (19 October 1981). "Footnote to the Holocaust". Newsweek. Vol. 98, no. 16. New York City. p. 73. ISSN 0028-9604.
  15. ^ a b Lobb 2005, p. 204.
  16. ^ a b c Coogan 1999, p. 525.
  17. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 43.
  18. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 259.
  19. ^ Maizels 1999, p. 47.
  20. ^ Coogan 1999, p. 530.

Works cited

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.