Head of Rightwing California-based Institute Identified As Former Member of British Neo-fascist Grou

The head of a rightwing “think tank” disseminating what it calls “scholarly evidence” that the Holocaust was a Jewish myth is a former British neo-fascist who edited anti-Semitic and racist publications in England before becoming a resident alien in the U.S. in 1978.

Lewis Brandon, 29, director of the Institute for Historical Review in the Los Angeles suburb of Torrence, was identified by the Board of Deputies of British Jews as William David McCalden, a former member of Britain’s neo-fascist National Front.

The Board of Deputies, which represents the Jewish community in the United Kingdom, provided documentary evidence of McCalden’s identity and activities to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith at that agency’s request, according to Russell Chandler, Religion Writer of the Los Angeles Times. The present whereabouts of McCalden, alias Brandon, are unknown, Chandler reported.

He left the state apparently to avoid a law suit by Mel Mermelstein, 54, a Los Angeles businessman and Holocaust survivor. Mermelstein, who saw his mother and two sisters taken to the gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1944, issuing the Institute for Historical Review for the $50,000 it offered recently to anyone who could prove that at least one Jew was put to death in the gas chambers during World War II, and for $17 million in damages.

ACTIVITIES IN RACIST ORGANIZATIONS

Material provided by the Board of Deputies of British Jews showed that McCalden was born in Belfast and was a writer and editor of anti-Semitic and white supremacist tracts. He defected from the National Front in 1975 to help form the National Party which espouses “British racial nationalism.” He is married to a U.S. citizen. Russell reported that it was not known exactly when McCalden came to southern California and became associated with the Institute for Historical Review where he was paid $22,000 a year.

The Institute is directly associated with the far right-wing rabidly anti-Semitic and racist Liberty Lobby, a Washington-based pressure group headed by Willis Carto. Carto’s German-born wife, Elisabeth, is treasurer of the Legion for the Survival of Freedom, the holding corporation for the Institute for Historical Review and Noontide Press.

The latter is a Carto publishing enterprise which puts out ultra-conservative and anti-Semitic books. Liberty Lobby also publishes Spotlight, a weekly that has carried sensationalized articles claiming that the Holocaust was a hoax.