The overblown, hyperkinetic and interminable film trailers shown in movie theaters these days often elicit boos and jeers — but at least they don’t deny the Holocaust.
That couldn’t be said when prominent denier Eustace Mullins spoke at Oakland’s venerable Grand Lake Theatre on Tuesday, March 13 as part of his “Money Trumps Peace” tour.
While the Virginia octuagenarian was brazen enough 50 years ago to write articles such as “Adolf Hitler: An Appreciation” — and once sickeningly paraphrased Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” as “Kikes to the right of me, kikes to the left of me” — he has now retreated behind code language in his screeds about the Federal Reserve and international monetary policy.
“Eustace Mullins has become incredibly sophisticated over the years. Largely what he’s talking about when he discusses the Federal Reserve is an international cabal of Jews who allegedly control all the money in the world,” said Tami Holzman, the ADL’s regional assistant director.
“But if you look at his earlier works, he’s just putting it into code. He’s been blatantly anti-Semitic in the past. It’s the same rhetoric.”
The appearance of a well-known Holocaust denier at his theater was an unpleasant surprise for Allen Michaan, the Grand Lake’s owner and a Jew of Arabic descent.
“To be honest, I’ve never heard of [Mullins] before. He took a speaking date; he took the theater out. We do rentals here. If he’s inflammatory, you can be sure he’ll never be here again,” Michaan said.
Notified of Mullins’ history a day before the speech, Michaan said he had no intention of canceling the event because he feared he would be sued.
Holzman said Mullins does have a history of suing venues that dump him, though the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Redwood City did just that on short notice when it learned of Mullins’ past. Instead of appearing there on March 9, he spoke at a yoga center in Burlingame.
Mullins’ tour is organized locally by a group called the Ministry of the Truth. Its contact, Edward Spencer, did not return j.’s calls.
Among Mullins’ past musings:
• In 1988 he wrote that Bruno Hauptmann, who was convicted and executed for the kidnapping and killing of the Lindbergh baby, was a fall guy for a group of Jews who slaughtered the baby in a Jewish ritual murder covered up by New Jersey Attorney General David Willentz. “As a Jew it was a duty to his tribe,” he wrote.
• Writing of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision that paved the way for school desegregation, Mullins stated that “the anti-segregation decision of the Supreme Court was dictated by one of the most sinister men in America, an Austrian Jew named Felix Frankfurter. Chief Justice Warren as governor of California spent so much time at Jewish banquets it was said he lost his taste for Christian food.”
Michaan noted that only around 10 people showed up to Mullins’ Grand Lake speech. The theater-owner added that booking a Holocaust denier was not the sort of controversy he would have sought. He told j. the only sort of discordant speech he welcomed at his theater was “Bush-bashing.”
“I think we’re going to start phasing out this sort of thing. It’s getting to be too difficult to do these sorts of events. For what I rent the theater for, it’s not worth it,” he said the day before the speech.
“At this point, I’m sorry I’m having him in here.”