By Fredrick Töben. When I received Elisabeth Carto’s email headed: Willis died, I felt a rush of great sadness overcoming me and immediately replied by requesting her phone number so that I could personally speak with her. She replied: Here is our phone number.
In this sentence one word reveals so much about the relationship that existed between Willis and Elisabeth Carto: our!
Over many years I have found that there is a difference of approach in relationships between the utilitarian and idealistic mindset – the former speaks of ‘I’ and ‘my’ while the latter says ‘we’ and ‘our’, and ever since I first met the Cartos and their Revisionist enterprise in California and Washington, D.C., during my extensive first Revisionist world trip in 1997, I cannot really separate Willis from Elisabeth, nor Elisabeth from Willis.
Such partnerships are rare, especially so when I reflect on my own battles and experienced first-hand how stressful this psychological war of independent thinking can become, and how debilitating it is for those who cannot stand the stresses and strains such a battle brings with it. The first casualty is always the personal and intimate relationship.
In fact, over a decade ago I wrote an item that addresses this very same matter, which Willis and Elisabeth have had to endure since they married in ……
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Conspiracy, coincidence, or merely bureaucratic stuff-up?
Subtle Elimination Process
By Fredrick Töben 24 September 2002
Throughout my wanderings I met a number of individuals who have impressed me by their candid, fearless and refreshingly honest approach to life. They had constructed for themselves a world view within which I could breathe easy. There was no envy, no excessive pursuit of any material possessions, but a determined will to see that justice and mercy prevailed. They were no angels either, but they had not lost their humanity, something I find so lacking in those individuals who now attempt to silence me because I seem to pose a threat to their held world-view.
Interestingly, the following Australians all topped that proverbial three score and ten years by another decade at least, and remained mentally alert until they passed on.
Sir James Darling was an educator who practised what he preached; Sir Edward Barber was a practising legal eagle whose sense of justice and compassion benefited many individuals. It was Sir Edward who managed to get a small settlement for the then widow of former University of Tasmania philosophy lecturer, S S Orr; Sir Douglas Wright was a man whose moral and intellectual integrity remained in-tact.
When in September 1990, The University of Melbourne Gazette, celebrated its own Sir Douglas, I wrote the following:
“In 1961 Sir Douglas Wright wrote a Prologue to the disturbing W H C Eddy book Orr. This Prologue has provided many victims of conspiracies with much-needed moral support because it offers a succinct analysis of this subtle elimination process.
Sir Douglas identified its elements thus:
- Defame the victim’s professional competence, mental balance, truthfulness, etc.
- Reward collaborators from the victim’s group.
- Weld together the pack of prosecutors.
- Proclaim authority of the corporation.
- Spread defamation through the victim’s personal links and loyalties.
- Isolate the victim by giving him the silent treatment.
- Usually this leads to the victim’s resignation which is taken as proof of guilt. Dismissal occurs if the victim refuses to resign.
- A strong victim highlights the moral standards of society.
- People in authority perpetuate their own types because no one wishes to be shamed by his successor.
- Employees are as courageous as their security of livelihood and reputation permits.
- A governing body of an institution devoted to truth and justice is corrupt if it obstructs enquiry into its stewardship.
Sir Douglas concluded his analysis with a timeless warning: ‘Such state of affairs is the antithesis of democratic processes and places the society in imminent danger.’
It is in this sense that I personally ask: Where are our present-day Wrights?”
Both Elisabeth and Willis knew well these steps, which once trusted colleagues used against them. I shall only mention the IHR episode because had it not happened, then Revisionists would have had their own tertiary degree granting institute by now. It was this dream that Willis failed to realize because of his one quality, which ironically, enabled his relationship with Elisabeth to stand the test of time: TRUST.
Yes, Willis did trust too readily, something the opportunist, the utilitarian mindset will readily exploit as a character weakness, if not to celebrate it as a personal flaw. We all know the maxim: Trust is good, control is better. Yet, the latter leads to a power obsession, and Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungen illustrates so well how in this eternal battle between Power and Love, it is a balance between the two that enables creativity to flourish.
I am reminded of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimism emerging from a sense that the act of willing causes pain, and which led him to pursue the Oriental ideal of negating the will, of seeking pure spirituality without volition.
Or there is philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who was afflicted by hedonistic inversion and who celebrated Der Wille zur Macht – the will to power.
Both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer could not match Richard Wagner’s creative output because they could not cope with the concept of love – as Wagner did so well in expressing it through his operas.
In this sense, despite the setbacks – the stabs in the back, the obstacles deliberately placed in his way – Willis retained a sense of balance, and continued on his nationalist course, always resisting the taking of an easier way out of challenging situations. Without Elisabeth by his constant side all this could not have been possible.
Willis was a rare individual who stood by his convictions, and he spread his symbolic American Eagle’s wings far and wide – even into Australia when in 1979 at the founding of the Institute for Historical Review he invited Australian lawyer, John Bennett, on board – and the rest is of course history because without John Bennett I would not have begun my full-time Revisionist work at Adelaide Institute, and without Willis and Elisabeth Carto I would not have met those many individuals who attended their IHR/TBR conferences where contentious matters were thrashed out without fear or favour.
Willis, you inspired me and many others through your own pioneering Revisionist written and publishing work because you generated a movement that dared to ask the big questions where the ideals of truth, honour, justice, and love are ever present, and so from Australia we salute you and one day we’ll meet again at Walhalla!
Fredrick Töben – 1 November 2015 – Adelaide, Australia.