When they came for the neo-Nazis,
I remained silent;
I was not a neo-Nazi.

When they locked up the anti-Semites,
I remained silent;
I was not an anti-Semite.

When they came for the Holocaust deniers,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Holocaust denier.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Simon Sheppard, scientist, former recording studio engineer, and webmaster of heretical.com, and Stephen Whittle, a columnist for heretical.com writing under the pen name Luke O’Farrell, are being detained in a California prison. Sheppard and Whittle, both British citizens, fled to the U.S. seeking political asylum after having been convicted of speech crimes in a UK court. Some of the charges, which by all accounts were trumped-up, were related to the following material on the heretical.com website: Tales of the Holohoax, a comic book which pokes fun at the outrageous lies told by so-called “holocaust survivors”; and legendary underground artist Robert Crumb’s comic strip When the Goddamn Jews Take Over America (French version available here). [UPDATE – Nov 11, 2012: Tales of the Holohoax has been removed from the heretical.com website, but is now available here.]

Tales of the Holohoax

For more of the background to this situation:

• Yorkshire Post: Race-hate pair flee to US for political asylum
• John Grogan: Send racist back to face justice
• Heretical Two Letter from Prison
• NorthWestNationalists blog search
• Requests for Political Asylum

The best way to show your support for the ‘Heretical Two’ is to make a donation to their legal defense fund. The fund is trying to raise $10,000 to pay for attorney’s fees. If you care about free speech, consider giving whatever you can, whether it be $10, $100, or $1000. The repercussions of this case are likely to extend far beyond the UK, since heretical.com is hosted on an American server. In other words, it’s not just a domestic issue that will only affect UK citizens; cases like these will determine whether the Internet remains free for everyone. Donations may be made anonymously by cash, cheque, or PayPal.