Holocaust denial investigated by Shrinkwrapped and Neo-neocon. (Maybe Fukuyama can explain her name too.)
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Note: I posted this on another forum when Irving was arrested. Responses were mainly of the smear variety. So get this straight: I am not
a Nazi, an anti-semite or even a holocost denier. I’m just a fool who thinks that if you’re going to condemn Islamic extremists for behaving
in a vicious manner in defense of their religion, that perhaps you shouldn’t be doing the same thing yourselves.
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I met David Irving in California some years ago. He’s a quiet, intelligent, harmless “eccentric
professor” type of Englishman. The day I met him, he was rather shaken. Minutes before, a bunch of young JDL (Jewish defense league) folks, all dressed in blue t shirts with the star of David on the front, had just stopped by his table at the Pomona Militaria show and were rather understandibly rude before leaving. One of them screamed on the way out “We’re going to kill you!”.
His comment on this, after arranging for police protection so he could leave, was “Now what usually happens is that some media outlet will come by and ask me if I’m an ‘anti-semite’.”
If memory serves, his books relate that something like 1.5 million Jews were exported to the east and purposely murdered via firing squad by the Nazis. That millions more were rounded up and held in typhus ridden concentration camps where a large percentage died. His controversial opinions are mainly based on his contention that the documentation of the time seems to imply that there were no death camp gas chambers. His reputation as a “denier” stems from his appearance as a defense witness for Fred Leuchter
(see the movie “Mr. Death”). NOTE: He has NEVER written a book about the holocaust.
Irving is a respectible and original historian who, instead of doing historical research
by cribbing from other people’s books, went to the original source material. He studys German and Russian archives and the diaries of the participants of the history
he is studying. I’ve read some of his books and for the first time I can relate to not
just the events of the time, but also the people behind the events and what they were
thinking. (Similar to Toland) He’s written over a dozen books over several decades, which
are often used as source material for modern historians. He was the man who exposed the
fake Hitler Diaries a number of years ago. His picture was on the front page of the
German newspaper “Der Speigel” (SP?) for that.
Irving’s major flaw is that he’s got a Don Quixote complex. When I met him, he was just
about to go to trial after he had sued an American author for writing that he was
a holocaust denier. The reason was that publishers were refusing to publish his books because due to what he saw as an attack on his reputation. His faith in freedom of speech and “The truth will out” were both touching and amazingly naive. In the trial, he represented himself and had no council while his opponents in court spent millions of dollars researching his books and notes, hiring experts and looking into his backround with a fine tooth comb. In the end, the court found that he was a denier after all and a racist to boot. The latter charge was substaniated by the fact that they found a poem in his numerious boxes of notes refering to a a particular child as an “aryan” and “rastafarian” as well previously published anti-immigration remarks. The court also found that he was a remarkable and professional historian.
As a result of having to pay the court costs, all his notes were confiscated and he and his family ended up bounced out of his apartment into the street. He supports himself now with old book sales and a website which details his histories, his books and his troubles. Unfortunately, his troubles have pushed him over the edge to
where his anger with what he calls “traditional enemies of a free speech” makes him behave
like the crackpot everyone said he was. I don’t have much respect for Mr. Irving’s common
sense, but he is without a doubt the bravest man I have ever met.
What’s my take on this? I agree with one reporter at an Irving lecture: if someone wants to advocate UFO abductions or holocaust denial, who cares? That should be their right. If nobody had bothered to try and hush up Irving, nobody would have even heard of him. So what Austria has done, is to make a martyr of the man.
Kay,
His controversial opinions are mainly based on his contention that the documentation of the time seems to imply that there were no death camp gas chambers.
Sorry, but if the guy made that contention he is not a historian. The existence of gas chambers, as well as other means of industrial scale slaughter, is not a historically arguable matter. The documentation is, and long has been, overwhelming.
Irving did not make some innocent mistake. There was some method to his madness and he’s paying the price. I just don’t buy for a second that he was unaware of what he was saying.
My own best guess regarding Irving is that he fancied himself a historian but let his admiration for the Wehrmacht and Hitler’s generals cloud his thinking. Anybody fond of military history will recognize, begrudgingly or otherwise, that the Wehrmacht was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, military machine ever assembled (similar to the “greatest fighter, pound for pound” kind of argument). But an honest fan of military history cannot let that sort of admiration for Germany’s military (and industrial) capabilities color one’s thinking to the point of trying to rehabilitate the public’s perception of the entire Nazi system.
I’ve read a couple of Irving’s books in the distant past and they were interesting but I don’t see how anyone can claim that he was just some “eccentric”. The guy is quite fond of the Nazis – it shows in his work and his audience eventually skewed very badly toward the anti-semites and nazi-lovers (not always precisely the same thing but way too close to comfort). Did and does he have an audience beyond the skinhead crowd? Of course. Some of his work had some value. His Trail of the Fox offers insights into Erwin Rommel that are not common.
Irving’s later career switched from something of an apologia for the Nazis to screeding about the horrible Allies. Notfuhnuttin’ but Irving is largely responsible for the popularity of the “I hate the US and England because of Dresden” fashion. There is, in fact, a serious bit of revisonist history going on to try and, if not rehabilitate the Nazis, then at least to paint the Allies as having gone way over the top and wreaking infinitely more violence upon the world in WWII than could ever be justified relative to the fascist threat of the time. That is nonsense.
The Germany of the Nazis did not, of course, arise in a vacuum. The history of the world through and between the two wars is complex and all Germany’s fault all the time leaves a bit to be desired. But that case can be made without going into the sort of revisionist stuff Irving engaged in. Other historians, notably Donald James Goodspeed, have pulled it off without becoming Nazi apologists.
Irving may not fully deserve the harshness of the treatment he has received but he is the one who picked the battles he engaged in. He got his butt kicked. Perhaps the crowds cheering against him have been a bit over-enthusiastic but damn, Sam, he never needed to step into the rings he stepped into. His career and reputation had withered and he seems to have decided it would be a good idea for his pocketbook to file a libel suit in which he got his clocks cleaned. And he knew darned well that the Austrians would arrest him if he gave them the opportunity. The guy isn’t “eccentric”, he’s quite foolish.
The Arab press weighs in, predictably: http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=78162&d=21&m=2&y=2006
This decision is great news for those who want to ban speech that (some) Muslims consider defamatory.
ìThe documentation is, and long has been, overwhelming.î
The Nazis were meticulous record keepers. It was official policy to hide the mass murders from the typical German Citizen. Nonetheless, there are enough written documents and witness accounts to choke a horse. The holocaust deniers donít have a leg to stand on.
Holocaust deniers often go berserk over the errors in the testimony of some survivors. They see this as proof of lying instead of mere forgetfulness. A little child, for instance, may have perceived a Nazi soldier as a large and frightening monster when in reality he was only a modest size man. Human beings do not have tape recorder brains. Our memories are not perfect. Professional historians know that they must take this into account.
You know what is more pathetic? Didn’t Irving decide just before court decision that he made a mistake about denying holocaust? That is why he was SHOCKED that he can actually go to jail for such “crimes”. Such unpricipled individual, apparently all that was just gestures to sell his book and speaking tours.
Now his cronies/friends are raising funds for him to “defend free speech”. Nope, not buying it and I won’t be donating money for his defense.
My own take on the “freedom of speech” is already covered in another thread.
Kay, I’m not sure whether you are just ignorant of the facts or whether you have a different agenda.
But if it’s the former, you need to read up on Irving and on the trial. That “harmless eccentic” thing is certainly what Irving would have people think, but he is far from that.
Here is an article that discusses that fact.
As far as your contention that “The court also found that he was a remarkable and professional historian,” it is disingenuous at best.
Take a look at this document. It is the court’s findings in the Lipstadt trial. There is one tiny section stating that as a military historian (Irving’s early works, which have nothing to do with the issue at hand) Irving was good. The rest of the document–many many thousands of words on many different historical topics that Irving researched–says, over and over again, that he lied and misrepresented the facts. In other words, that he was a miserable historian. It then concludes he did it deliberately:
I find myself unable to accept Irving’s contention that his falsification of the historical record is the product of innocent error or misinterpretation or incompetence on his part. When account is taken of all the considerations set out in paragraphs 13.140 to 13.161 above, it appears to me that the correct and inevitable inference must be that for the most part the falsification of the historical record was deliberate and that Irving was motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence.
Irving is a weirdo and is going to be 68 in a few weeks, I think. I don’t see any point in putting him in jail for being cracked. And now they want to keep him in custody for nine years? Not right.
I keep hearing that the Holocaust is open and shut, fine, if so, there’s no need to put crazy people in jail if they deny it. If what you really mean is we should have laws against people spewing hatred against Jews, I might just buy that, even though that too would violate freedom of speech. But just as someone not very well versed in the whole thing, I don’t see arguing about Holocaust details is the same as spewing Jew hatred.
Oh, I notice that the Sunnis blew up a Shiite shrine today, and there’s rioting all over Iraq. And here I just bought my “We Are Winning” T-shirt ……
Neo Neo, I read that article and the only thing I got from it is the guy really wants to see Irving in jail.
The nub of his argument apparently is that Irving stirs up hatred of Israel in the Arab world, and hatred of Jews in Europe, and that if the Holocaust is denied then Israel loses “moral legitimacy.”
All of these arguments are cracked. In particular, Isael doesn’t need any particular version of history to have a right to exist. And you know why? BECAUSE IT EXISTS. Case closed.
I know I’m late to the party, and I’ll probably be thought of as stinking up the joint, but I like the jailing. I also don’t have a problem with infringing his right to speech.
I believe that he did the historical equivalent of yell “Fire” in a crowded theatre. He deliberately gave intellectual cover to those who would attack, even kill, Jews. This is incitement to violence, even murder. In my book, given their murderous past, Jew-haters deserve little protection from the Law or Society. He knew where it would ultimately lead: to attacks on Israel’s Judaism’s and the Jewish right to exist.
They know what they’re doing, let them suffer real consequences for their hatred…
FebDay,
I keep hearing that the Holocaust is open and shut, fine, if so, there’s no need to put crazy people in jail if they deny it.
Would you be kind enough to elaborate on that statement? You “keep hearing”? The Holocaust isn’t a “Did the Vikings sail to Newfoundland” sort of historical issue. You don’t need to “keep hearing”. Go to any library and look it up. It happened. It happened a mere 60 years ago. Look up when the Nazis came to power and when the whole thing ended. Run the arithmetic about how many days they went about rounding up people. Pick the smallest number of victims you can find and divide that by the number of days. The per/day total of human slaughter is breathtaking!
There were death camps and there were gas chambers and there was industrial slaughter of millions of people. It is nothing anyone needs to “keep hearing”. It is incontrovertable historical fact. Any “historian” who goes around claiming there were no gas chambers is a bozo and maybe a bozo with some nefarious intent.
Throwing that bozo in jail for being a bozo is something most folks seem to think is not a particularly good idea. But doing so, regardless of whether it is a good idea or not, does not call into question the historical fact of the Holocaust.
Beyond that most people wou
Knucklehead, I just don’t see it the way you do. If it’s as “incontrovertable” as you say, then there’s no reason to put a guy in prison over it much less lecture other posters about it. I’m not Jewish. Half my family is. Whatever happened in Nazi Germany sixty years ago — and that’s a long time ago — has nothing to do with our day to day problems or with how we read the papers, the internet, or internet blogs.
I used to take my kids to a local park on weekends. One time, we were walking in the forest and these three guys came out of the bushes. They were wearing Civil War uniforms. Turns out there was some kind of Civil War re-enactment going on that day. I could not relate.
What the Nazis did to the Jews was horrible. Duh. Nobody should do that to anyone. Also Duh. But while I understand that a lot of people are really into World War Two and the Holocaust, I’m just not one of them. Best Regards.