RCA & the Reston Festival: Fun, Games and Holocaust Denial

If you're wandering around the Reston Festival this weekend and happen to make time between visiting the gutter guard booth and the chili dog stand to stop by the Reston Citizens Association booth to do a little of that stone-cold votin', be warned: One of the RCA's unopposed candidates is a Holocaust denier. Wait, what?

Ken Meyercord has an Ivy League education, a high-tech job at Freddie Mac, a local public-access cable television show on international affairs and a long history of writing about what he says are "myths" of the Holocaust, including a piece called "(Holo-) History is Bunk."

Now Meyercord hopes to add a new entry on his résumé: winning an at-large seat on the board of the Reston Citizens Association, a quasi-governmental body that sets the agenda for the community of 60,000, which is not officially a municipality. The odds are in his favor, because he is running unopposed.

But some residents, mortified by his views on the Holocaust, have thrown together a last-minute write-in campaign to stop him. Former RCA Board Member Debra Steppel, along with five volunteers, is soliciting votes for write-in candidate Colin Mills, a member of the board who was not planning to seek reelection until Meyercord's views came to light.

All because of easily misconstrued comments like this:

"To hear eyewitnesses tell it, it took little more than a match for the corpses to spontaneously combust."

That's not from his RCA campaign literature, which advocates making sure Reston doesn't turn out like "Queens," but from one of his publications that got the attention of Steppel, the former RCA board member behind the write-in campaign. But we're sure Mr. Meyercord will clear up this whole wacky misunderstanding. Right?

In an interview yesterday, Meyercord described himself as "a Holocaust revisionist," taking pains to distinguish himself from Holocaust deniers.

"I believe millions of Jews were uprooted from their homes and died in droves," Meyercord said. But he dismisses as Allied propaganda the assertion that Nazi Germany embarked on a mission to annihilate European Jews, a plan known as the Final Solution. He also denies that Nazis used gas chambers to murder Jews, saying gas chambers did not exist, and expresses skepticism that the number of Holocaust victims reached 6 million.

Meyercord said he does not understand the fuss over his candidacy. "I would say it's a little off-topic," Meyercord said.

Among his other, more on-topic accomplishments: a "song parody" called "America the Doodiful." We're guessing there's some satire at play there, but we're not sure. Anyhoo, voting continues through Sunday, so be sure to grab a corn dog and do the right thing if you're in that neck of the woods.