California public transportation company allows adverts from Holocaust denial group

'BART does not endorse the ads placed in our system by the Institute for Historical Review,' says the transit company.

The decision by the firm has caused an outcry (Getty)

California public transit company, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), has decided to allow advertisements from a group that promotes Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic rhetoric.

The Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an independent publisher, features various conspiracies aimed at denying historical facts on the genocide of 6m Jewish people.

BART has decided to allow advertisements from IHR, citing the group’s compliance with free speech laws.

Anna Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the transit company, released the following statement to The Independent: “BART does not endorse the ads placed in our system by the Institute for Historical Review. As a government transit agency, we are bound by law to carry the ads as written since they comply with free speech laws that allow advertisers to express a point of view without regard to the viewpoint. Past court rulings reinforce the fact that we cannot deny the ads.”

IHR’s website features titles to posts and videos, such as: “What Did Israel Know in Advance of the 9/11 Attacks” and “The Faking of Adolf Hitler for History.”

The website frequently promotes the work of David Irving, a well-known Holocaust denier who had served time in prison in Austria for speeches denying the Holocaust.

Mark Weber, IHR’s director, told the Guardian that he personally accepts “millions of Jews were killed during the second world war” but that whether the number is “10m or 6m or 2m is an argument among historians”.

He also claimed that IHR is not a denial group but that his website has “published articles and items that reasonably could be called Holocaust denial”.

The electronic ads are running in two BART stations for most of September. They reportedly say “History Matters!” with the name of the institute displayed.

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) has identified IHR, founded in 1978, as a hate group and a “pseudo-academic organisation” whose purpose is to “promote Holocaust denial and defend Nazism”.