Denying the Holocaust

As the violence over the Dutch cartoons continues, in Austria British historian David Irving has been jailed for three years for denying the Holocaust.

Holocaust-deniers are ignorant, foolish, and quite possibly anti-Semitic. Their views are distasteful and offensive.

As such, they should be treated just like anyone else with ill-informed, unpleasant opinions: ignored, or their arguments countered with facts.

Locking them up is illiberal and unnecessary.

Comments

[J Starling on 20.02.06 at 21:01]

Unfortunately the Austrians have now martyered Mr.Irving and boosted thefar right in the process. It would have been better to counter anit-semetic propoganda with historical fact. One cannot deny that history is written by the victors, but the Holocuast did occur and is a blemish on humanity's collective memory. There have been other genocides and equally atrocious crimes against humanity though, and the victors may not have highlighted these for political reasons. But martyering Irving will pove to be counter-productive.

[loki on 20.02.06 at 23:22]

Yes, I find the jailing of Mr. Irving extremely troubling - in some respects, it amounts to government attempting to police thoughts. There is no doubt that Mr. Irving believed what he said at the time that he said it (some 17 years ago). Sadly, Mr. Irving's view has changed considerably since he made his remarks (note: he never denied the holocaust, he simply stated that he did not believe that the gas chambers existed and thought that, perhaps, the number of deaths had been exaggerated). Based on papers he examined in, I believe, 1989, Mr. Irving has publicly stated that his previous statements were incorrect, that he believes that there was a plan to exterminate the Jews, that thousands upon thousands of Jews did die at the hands of the Nazis and, furthermore, that the gas chambers did exist.

Ironically, I find it incredibly fascistic that a man should be tried and sentenced on the basis of personal OPINIONS that he aired 17 years ago that he now acknowledges were wrong.

[Uncle Elvis on 20.02.06 at 23:37]

loki, I agree with you in theory, but he did print these things. The books are still out there and will still be used by some shmuck as proof that the holocaust didn't happen.

"The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion", the book that pretty much caused ALL the bad feelings and stereotypes against Jews, has been debunked in every country, but it is still being published. It was a lie and a forgery from the very beginning and yet people still publish it. It was debunked before WWII and still Hitler referenced it.. and it worked. White Supremacists STILL use it as proof of a Zionist conspiracy.
That's the power of print.
This is why I have no problem with this guy going to jail. If he had just voiced his opinion, then, yeah, it's out of line. It's the fact that he printed it.

[Michael Taylor on 21.02.06 at 01:06]

I really hope we see a big backlash and protest about this. This is a great time to show the Middle East that we really are serious about Freedom of Speech.

Free Speech trumps most everything in my books. The facts should speak for themselves. No more should we deny this man his lunacy than should we deny the anti-Evolutionists their rights. On the flip side, the prospect of Right Wing loonies somehow corrupting the accepted version of history by gaining significant control of the media, publishing companies and government is a bit scarey, if not completely paranoid.

Maybe what is needed is to legally create classes of literature which would have to be clearly identified on any published work. "Opinion", and "Entertainment" literature and other media should enjoy all the protections of freedom of speech. You should be able to claim that we are all actually living in hibernation plugged into a virtual world on robot energy farms like in "The Matrix" as long as you dont brand it "Fact" or "History". Literature presented as "Fact" or "History" should be clearly branded as such. Authors of such material have at least a moral duty to get the facts as close to correct as possible at that particular time. I don't see a problem with holding a published author accountable if it can be proven they knowingly presented false statements (about ANY subject) as facts, or that he/she deliberately ignored important evidence contadicting their theories.

This man wasn't charged with publishing lies(which he obviously did). He was charged with denying the holocaust. Making it illegal to publish lies branded as truth is a GOOD idea, making it illegal to deny an accepted view of history is a BAD idea.

[Bill Cook on 21.02.06 at 06:39]

Regrettably we are not able to put the right wing Neocons in prison for 3 years for all their lies and distortions of the Middle East situation,esp Paul Wolfowitz(archetect of the attack on Iraq) his cadre of Zionists and their sympathisers,instead of rewarding him over Colin Powell as leader of the World Bank.

Fox News or "Faux" news largely influenced by Irving Crystal father of William Crystal all Zionists and Neocons who have been recognised and rewarded for service to Israel,is a propaganda tool for their own agenda.

It is easy to put someone like Mr Irving in jail as there will be little done to oppose such a breach of freedom of expression esp when it it is so easily discredited by a simple visit to Belson or Austwich or any Holocaust museum and a very powerful Jewish lobby that constantly reminds the world.

The lies and distortions of the true situation in the Palestian Israel position is ongoing with the truth being suppressed by the most powerful countries in the world as it is in their best interests to do so.

The HYPOCRICY is total and will continue to grow as the masses prefer to believe that which makes them feel most comfortable rather than the truth.

[Slowhand on 21.02.06 at 06:55]

Uh Oh.... somebody let that out of the bag and now Bill is running with it.....

[wig n' gown on 21.02.06 at 08:42]

The correct procedure, in my view, in dealing with the publication of Holocaust denial, would be to bring a civil action against Mr. Irving for libel. If found guilty by a civil court, he is subject to a civil penalty. This does not involve locking him up in prison. I find it grossly out-of-step with established legal principles to criminalize his actions. If he'd been charged with Inciting Racial Hatred and found guilty, putting him in prison might have been an appropriate sentence. This however, was not the charge brought against him.

[Tiger Bay on 21.02.06 at 08:43]

Just for the record, Mr Irving is a prick of the first order.

[Martin on 21.02.06 at 08:53]

Tiger is right...this man is a prick of the first order...but Bill makes one of the most valid points, in that "it is easy to jail" someone like Irving.

I get tired of the capricious and inequitable approach we take to such matters...particularly when we label others with respectability.

[loki on 21.02.06 at 09:20]

Mr. Irving may be a complete prick, but we don't imprison people for that. People also shouldn't mistake him for being some right-wing, marginal author: most of what he's written, including his two-part biography of Churchill, has been very mainstream and praised widely. I don't agree with what he wrote, but the idea that you should be imprisoned for your opinions is bizarre.

[loki on 21.02.06 at 09:21]

"The correct procedure, in my view, in dealing with the publication of Holocaust denial, would be to bring a civil action against Mr. Irving for libel."

Who would he have libeled?

[ace on 21.02.06 at 09:28]

Apples and Oranges Mr. Cook. Apples and Oranges.

What does Fox News, Paul Wolfowitz or even the Palestinian situation have to do with Austria jailing one of their own citizens for BREAKING the law?

What the man did by denying the holocuast was illegal...therefore by all accounts (and all arguments previously made with respect to drug laws in this country) the man should be jailed.

As to the assertions being easily discredited by visiting the former concentration camps? You don't find many skin heads travelling to Poland or to a museum to go and check them out. What you will find is them meeting in some shitty litle room decorated with swastikas with a copy of Mr. Irving's writings in their hand teaching his lies to very easily manipulated people.

[loki on 21.02.06 at 09:31]

"What does Fox News, Paul Wolfowitz or even the Palestinian situation have to do with Austria jailing one of their own citizens for BREAKING the law?"

He is not an Austrian citizen, he just happened to be travelling through Austria when his car was stopped by the police.

The idea that Mr. Irving is some nut-job pandering to skinheads is bollocks, as well. Go to amazon.com and look at the books he's written. Very mainstream. Don't get me wrong: I vehemently disagree with some of what he has written in the past.

[silencedogood on 21.02.06 at 09:33]

Unless his books were advocating immediate violence, which it does not appear that they were, there is no way he should be locked up.

Free speech is sometimes an entitlement to be a prick. If we lock up pricks, who is the judge--probably a prick himself/herself.

If someone is that far out in their opinions they tend to be 1) dead wrong or 2) ahead of their time. In this case its dead wrong but let's not forget Gallileo was persecuted for speech as well.

This dovetails nicely into the Berkeley debate in that if someone is wrong, lying, etc. it's simple enough to disprove. Truth shines an bright light.

[Triggerfish on 21.02.06 at 09:45]

"... most of what he's written, including his two-part biography of Churchill, has been very mainstream and praised widely ..."

Balls. Irving's star has been on a precipitous decline since the 1970s in serious academic circles when he first began to be drawn to neo-Nazi revisionism. Early in his career he did write a very well received biography of Irwin Rommel as well as one of the first comprehensive accounts of the V2 rocket programme. But for the last 30 years he's been on a downward trajectory both in terms of the quality of his research and his often bizarre judgement calls on historical events and personalities. His reputation was in tatters long before the Austrians jailed him (maybe he should be forced to read his own books for the duration of his incarceration). For instance, his Churchill biography is a heavy-handed exercise in iconoclasm -- based around the dubious premise the World War Two British Prime Minister was not only on the wrong side of that conflict but was in fact manipulated by sinister Zionist agents! Here's a not untypical reader review from Amazon.com:
"IRVING DOES IT AGAIN .... SMASHING A FALSE ICON !!! , November 1, 2005
Reviewer: Larry Petersen (Illinois) - See all my reviews
Noted British Historian David Irving has done it again, exposing Winston Churchill as a debauched alcoholic, too cowardly to show himself anywhere near the bloody combat he ordered thousands to their deaths to, and a corrupt warmonger servile to the interests of the Zionists scheme to drown Europe in a sea of fratricidal blood while they ploted and manipulated the dispossession of the Palestinians. Irving shows how it was Churchill who sold out and lost the once great and mighty British Empire for the sake of his personal grudges, and gambling debts paid for him by wealthy Zionist master manipulators. In a mountain of damning facts, Irving presents a case only a top prosecutor could equal in terms of quality and quantity in his relentless pursuit of exposing the true picture of the real Winston Churchill. Regardless of the slanders of his critics, who fail to point to anything specific, and thus can only resort to character assassination and defamation, David Irving has given us the final word on the man who destroyed two empires - one of them his own!"

[ace on 21.02.06 at 09:49]

"He is not an Austrian citizen, he just happened to be travelling through Austria when his car was stopped by the police."

Okay..my bad. But it still has nothing to do with Fox News or the Palestinian situation. It is about Austria jailing a person who broke their laws.

Irving being mainstream does in no way make what I say bollocks...in fact it lends credence to the man in the eyes of Neo-Nazis.

[loki on 21.02.06 at 09:56]

Triggerfish, yes, I can print out user reviews from Amazon, as well......

[Triggerfish on 21.02.06 at 10:01]

"Triggerfish, yes, I can print out user reviews from Amazon, as well......"

Do so, then. Irving's most vocal supporters are, by and large, of the Illinois Nazi type. You won't find many historians or readers of the "very mainstream" variety singing his praises --

[Zoom on 21.02.06 at 10:18]

I hate Illinois Nazis.

[Triggerfish on 21.02.06 at 10:20]

"I hate Illinois Nazis."

Me too, Jake (or are you Elwood?)

[Two Cents on 21.02.06 at 10:41]

"I hate Illinois Nazis."

That line was spoken by Jake

[Ethiops on 21.02.06 at 11:10]

Who gets to have the right to speak on the greatest lies ever agreed upon? History! A big can of worms it is. Often blacked out through whitewash, truth on so many subjects can quickly be labelled a farce by others.

Putting a man in jail for his printed opinion is pathetic.

Anyway soon as you speak on the Khazar conflict with those called gypsies (out of Egypt) AKA Jews you’re asking for a bad moon to rise.

[Silencio on 21.02.06 at 11:20]

It's times like this when I am so greatful for having an EU passport.

[Triggerfish on 21.02.06 at 11:21]

I hate Bermuda Nazis, too ...

[H Reardon on 21.02.06 at 11:35]

"This is why I have no problem with this guy going to jail. If he had just voiced his opinion, then, yeah, it's out of line. It's the fact that he printed it."

Posted by Uncle Elvis on 20.02.06 at 23:37

So, anything denying the holocaust on a website should lead to jail for the offending party. By that logic, you are probably in violation of several laws in Arab countries for your support of gay rights or your wacky belief that women can wear shorts in public.

Triggerfish,

I fail to see your point. Are you saying that since his career was going down the toilet that he should be put in jail? Why is Churchill beyond reproach? Many on this site like to criticise George Bush--should they be put in jail as well? Should anyone trying to discredit Cheney by looking for a Haliburton link be put in jail as well?

[Shelley on 21.02.06 at 11:50]

In Canada there was a similar debate concerning the prosecution of Ernst Zundel, another Holocaust denier. A lot of Jewish and non-Jewish groups argued against his prosecution because they felt his prosecution would provide Zundel with an opportunity to publicize his views. In fact after his conviction in 1985 Zundel quipped that the trial cost him $40,000 in lost revenue but afforded him $1Million dollars in publicity. The big problem associated with his trial was that it put the onus on the prosecution to establish the occurence of the Holocaust as historical fact, that to me was the greater tragedy.

[Triggerfish on 21.02.06 at 11:51]

"I fail to see your point. Are you saying that since his career was going down the toilet that he should be put in jail? Why is Churchill beyond reproach?"

My point is simply this -- Irving is a crackpot, not a reputable historian. I didn't actually offer any opinion on the Austrian law (introduced in the post-World War II era to help stymie any reconstitution of the Nazi movement, it's almost certainly outlived its usefulness). Churchill certainly isn't beyond reproach -- historians as diverse as John Keegan, Emrys Hughes, Francis Neilsen and, perhaps most recently, Norman Rose have all written critical warts-and-all biographies that have undermined the "Churchill myth". But these historians and others have interpreted the man and his actions based on the facts -- Irving's "biography", by way of comparison, is a Jew-hating, Nazi-idolising conspiracy theorist's wet-dream. It's science fiction, not history.

[SmokingGun on 21.02.06 at 12:05]

As wig n' gown suggests I too think a civil action is more in keeping with how this gets handled. Loki - you're the lawyer -you figure out how we go about it. ;)

If this moron is going to be put in jail for choosing to be in denial about such an atrocity then I cannot for the life of me understand why someone walking around dressed up as a suicide bomber and carrying a placard calling for Danish people to be be-headed is free to carry on their way.

[Shelley on 21.02.06 at 12:33]

I also think we need to look at everything that has transpired from the perspective of post-war Germany and Austria and what the governments there tried to do to be more accountable in the eyes of the world in the immediate aftermanth of the war. If you remember many Germans were in denial that the Holocaust actually happened and the Allies forced many citizens surrounding the camps to take responsibility and bury the victims. The Germans had also been heaviy criticized for their lack of an internal resistance movement (again debatable) and I strongly believe that these laws were established in part to demonstrate that they realized they were accountable. It was also during the Nuremburg trials that the concept of individual criminality or accountability was first established in war crimes trials. In other words, I was just following orders, doesn't cut it. I feel strongly that these laws had to be established and firmly adhered to in a society that previously had engaged in a lot of revisionist history and the perverion of a legal system/code, i.e. the Nurmemberg Racial Laws and curtailment of freedom of speech.

[Uncle Elvis on 21.02.06 at 13:38]

Again, this all goes back to The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion. Denying the Holocaust is just a feeble attempt at discrediting the Jews... yet again.
It's bullshit and it's Nazism and I FULLY support the law.

Reardon, What he did was against the law in the country he was found guilty in and this guy knew it. This is the important bit. He KNEW he had printed this filth. He knew it was against the law. Why go to Austria?
Don't bring me in to you scenarios again. I'm not playing your game.

Ethiops,

Um.. I'm reading about the Khazars now and can find nothing about them being from Egypt. Everything I've read points to them being Asian. The WORD gypsy comes from the word Egypt, but most gypsies are actually Asian nomads. And now they'r econsidered Jews... so... um... I guess I don't see your point.

Silencio,

Just curious what you meant by that comment.

[44-40 on 21.02.06 at 13:39]

David Irving is basically trying to sell books when he spouts anti-semtic rhetoric. Being jailed for three years for something he said in 1989 seems a bit much especially by a country that willingly allowed itself to be absored by the Third Reich in 1938.

[Uncle Elvis on 21.02.06 at 13:43]

So you're against these laws and not just this situation?

[the dude on 21.02.06 at 13:44]

The gypsies actually originate from northern India.

[44-40 on 21.02.06 at 13:47]

For someting said 17 years ago, yes, just fine hime and kick he out of the country. Now if he was found plotting with a bunch of skinheads to attack jewish people or somthing like that, it would be a different matter.

[loki on 21.02.06 at 13:56]

Judge for yourself. Here's a 1995 interview with David Irving:

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/australia/2gb-transcript-0795.html

I'm still amazed that people think that anyone should be imprisoned for stating an opinion. Not calling for violence, or inciting racial hatred, but just stating an opinion.

[Uncle Elvis on 21.02.06 at 14:03]

Sorry, lokes, that made me feel ill.

[loki on 21.02.06 at 14:13]

My point is that I don't think he's a nut-job who panders to fascists, anti-semites and racists. Do I agree with his views? No. Well, I do agree with a lot that he has to say about the myth of Churchill, but insofar as his statements on the Holocaust, no, I don't agree with him. However, neither do I think he's putting this stuff out that for nefarious reasons. I just think that he has a viewpoint and an opinion and that he shouldn't be jailed for stating that opinion.

[Shelley on 21.02.06 at 14:17]

But opinion can ferment hatred. Especially if people can infer credibility to the source because of their academic credentials. Irving's opinion was used to dissuade or misrepresent historical truth and therefore is in contravention of the law.

[Uncle Elvis on 21.02.06 at 14:18]

Even if it's illegal in the country he's decided to visit?

IF I had made anti-Muslim remarks in a book I printed, spouting lies about Prophet Mohammed, I certainly wouldn't visit a Muslim country where that was illegal.
If I printed a book of lies about the Holocaust, I would certainly not choose Germany or Austria for a ski trip, as there are well known laws against what I did.

It was his choice to print these lies and it was his choice to go to Austria. Now he has to take responsibility for his choices.

[Triggerfish on 21.02.06 at 14:23]

"Not calling for violence, or inciting racial hatred, but just stating an opinion."

Irving's longtime association with Ernst Zundel, recently deported from Canada for making a lucrative cottage industry out of Holocaust Denial and inciting racial hatred, is a well-established fact. So is his longtime anti-Semitism (Irving's private nickname for organised groups of concentration camp survivors is "Associations of Auschwitz Survivors and Other Liars" ... or "ASSHOLS"). Irving sued author Deborah Lipstadt for libel when she described him as a Holocaust denier in one of her books. Irving lost the case -- resoundingly. Mr. Justice Gray, in his ruling in the London High Court, said Irving routinely perverted the historical record to advance his neo-Nazi agenda -- an agenda aimed at fomenting racial hatred (and by extension violence). "He is an active Holocaust denier ... anti-semitic and racist and (associates) with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism," he ruled. The full judgement, which tells you everything you ever needed to know about Irving, can be read here http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/judgment-00-00.html

[loki on 21.02.06 at 14:25]

"It was his choice to print these lies and it was his choice to go to Austria. Now he has to take responsibility for his choices"

Yes, but it's only your opinion that these were lies. I think he was wrong, too, but to allow anyone to control, through legislation or otherwise, what the 'truth' is, what 'true history' is, is an extremely worrying thing.

Incidentally, here are his comments shortly before his recent conviction:

"I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now......The Nazis did murder millions of Jews."

[loki on 21.02.06 at 14:29]

If I haven't made myself plain enough, I vehemently disagree with his views, save for some of his views on Churchill.

Leaving aside the question of his morality, ask a wider question: do you agree that any one group, government or person should have the unfettered right to define 'truth' and 'history'. I would suggest not. I would suggest that 'truth' and 'history' is ever-changing and a matter or debate in the wider context.

[Uncle Elvis on 21.02.06 at 14:35]

Lokes, I didn't print my opinion in a book. I also didn't choose to go to a country where I knew I broke the law.
He may have denounced his earlier stuff with the quote, but the fact remains that he broke the law in that country... and yet chose to go there.

Now, if his plane had been diverted to Austria and they dragged him out at gunpoint, then, yeah, it's fucked up. But it wasn't. He made a choice to go to a country where he knew he was a criminal.

[Triggerfish on 21.02.06 at 14:40]

"If I haven't made myself plain enough, I vehemently disagree with his views, save for some of his views on Churchill."

Which have always been highly questionable ... even long before he published his two volume biography.

As long ago as 1967 in Accident: The Death of General Sikorski, Irving attempted to defame Winston Churchill, claiming that he ordered the assassination of Wladyslaw Sikorski, the Polish Prime Minister-in-exile. In response, Hugh Trevor-Roper said: "It is well known that some years ago Mr. Irving convinced himself that General Sikorski, who died in an air crash at Gibraltar, was 'assassinated' by Winston Churchill, to whom in fact his death was a political calamity. Not a shred of evidence or probability has ever been produced in support of this theory and when it was tested in the courts, Mr. Irving’s only “evidence” was shown to be a clumsy misreading of a manuscript diary (I have myself seen the diary and feel justified in using the work 'clumsy')."

I broaden my reading on Churchill if I were you, Loki.

[Two Cents on 21.02.06 at 14:43]

"If I printed a book of lies about the Holocaust, I would certainly not choose Germany or Austria for a ski trip"

This explains why Salman Rushdie's travel agent works so infrequently. Why was Irving in Austria in the first place? In the BBC programme I saw yesterday, it seemed as if he was 'testing' the situation to see if he would be arrested/charged.

[loki on 21.02.06 at 14:45]

"I broaden my reading on Churchill if I were you, Loki."

I'd appreciate it if you didn't blindly assume that my views of Churchill are derived from Irving or, indeed, that I agree with the bunk that Irving put forth concerning the 'assassination'. I don't. It's bollocks. The views of Irving on Churchill with which I broadly agree are:

1. That he was not the great leader that he was made out to be;

2. That Britain won the Second World War in spite of Churchill, not because he was a brilliant tactician;

3. He was a raging alcoholic.

That's all.

[Triggerfish on 21.02.06 at 14:54]

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't blindly assume that my views of Churchill are derived from Irving ..."

You are the one who said you subscribed to some of his views on Churchill. One of the best-known of Irving's views is that Churchill engineered the "assassination" of Sikorski. Sorry for any confusion.

"1. That he was not the great leader that he was made out to be; 2. That Britain won the Second World War in spite of Churchill, not because he was a brilliant tactician; 3. He was a raging alcoholic."

Irving is hardly unique in raising these questions. Other historians have addressed them, to my mind, in more perceptive, compelling and illuminating ways. In any event, the extent of Churchill's alcohol dependence has always been the subject of a lot of misinformation -- most of it generated by Churchill himself. As he was wont to say: "I've always taken a lot more out of alcohol than it's taken out of me" (his drinks were often watered-down, certainly on public occasions, simply because the public in question had come to expect to see a hard-drinking warlord).

[Shelley on 21.02.06 at 14:58]

Loki,
I agree with your premise that no one group should define what truth or history is, God that is what we learn in university to debate all the sides and come to some distillation of what the truth is. However, this is a greater issue. In a court of law (as what transpired here in Canada with Zundel) we should not have to establish the Holocaust as a historical fact before we can prosecute. The law is grey it has nuances, it can be perverted. If the Holocaust is not established as fact, there can be no offense. I think that by establishing it as fact the Germans hold people accountable, they actively strive to make sure it never happens again. There can never be grey areas where there is the potential to violate one's basic human rights.

[Triggerfish on 21.02.06 at 15:02]

The following is a lengthy but extremely astute dissection of David Irving's motives and methods. Those who remain unconvinced that the man is a lunatic polemicist/propagandist with a Martyr Complex masquerading as a historian would do well to read and ponder the following essay.

David Irving
-------------

David Irving is unique among modern Holocaust deniers for having first established a reputation as a popular, if controversial, chronicler of World War II. This reputation, combined with his flair for self-promotion and involvement in high-profile lawsuits, made him one of the best-known Holocaust deniers in the world. He suffered a major blow, however, when he lost an internationally publicized legal battle with Professor Deborah Lipstadt, whom he had accused of libel, before a London court. Labeled a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite by Justice Charles Gray, and increasingly shunned by publishing houses, it is unlikely that Irving will ever regain the mainstream cachet he once enjoyed. Nonetheless, he continues to tour, raise money and convene annual "Real History Conferences." He remains one of the world's most effective purveyors of Holocaust denial.

Year of birth : 1938
Residence: London and Key West
Publications: Irving is the author of numerous books and articles about World War II. He also posts a monthly "Action Report" on his Web site.
Organizations: Irving founded his own publishing house, Focal Point Publications. He also lectures internationally and has appeared at conferences held by the Institute for Historical Review and the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
Associations : Institute for Historical Review, National Alliance, several European far-right groups and Holocaust deniers.
Legal issues : The governments of Canada, Austria, Germany and Australia have barred Irving from entering their countries. He has been convicted of defaming the memory of the dead in Germany and has lost civil suits in England and the United States. His most significant legal battle ended unsuccessfully in April 2000 when a British court ruled that American historian Deborah Lipstadt had not libeled Irving when she called him a Holocaust denier.

Early Life and Writings
David John Cawdell Irving was born in 1938. He was considered a gifted student in grammar school, and in 1957 he entered the physics program at Imperial College in London. He dropped out in 1959 due to a lack of funds, but not before achieving notoriety for his rightist writings, which appeared in the student newspaper Phoenix, and for his editorship of the London University Carnival Committee’s journal, Carnival Times. In the latter case, Irving published a special supplement to the paper that included racist cartoons, a “spirited defense” of South African apartheid, an appreciative article about Nazi Germany and the allegation that “the national press is owned by Jews.” In the ensuing uproar, Irving was removed from his position as editor. In an interview with The Daily Mail printed at the time, Irving was quoted as saying: “I belong to no political party. But you can call me a mild fascist if you like. I have just come back from Madrid.…I returned through Germany and visited Hitler’s eyrie at Berchtesgaden. I regard it as a shrine.” In a 1981 interview, Irving denied having made these statements.

Following his departure from the college, Irving worked as a steelworker in the Ruhr Valley in Germany. After a year, having become fluent in German, he returned to University College in London to complete his degree, which he thought would be necessary to attain “higher executive jobs.” To support himself while enrolled, he worked as a night watchman and wrote articles for local newspapers about his experiences in Germany. Also at this time he began researching and writing what would become his first book, The Destruction of Dresden. By 1962, according to his own account, he contracted with a magazine to write a series of articles on air warfare. Supporting himself with his writing, Irving decided that he had no further need for college. He would later say, “After two years at University College, I decided to devote myself entirely to a career of professional writing about history, and left without taking the degree.”1

In 1963, Irving, only 25, published The Destruction of Dresden. The book addressed the February 1945 Allied bombardment of that city, in which tens of thousands of German civilians died and which left the city nearly razed. Because casualties were so high, historians since the war have debated the morality of the bombing, and there has been some debate as to how many Germans were killed. Irving’s book, however, seemed designed rather to sensationalize the tragedy than to weigh the historical evidence. As historian Richard Evans recently demonstrated while testifying as an expert witness for the defense in the Irving v. Lipstadt trial, Irving reported the death toll at 10 times the most reliable estimate. The book became an immediate bestseller nonetheless and may still be the most widely read of Irving’s works.

In retrospect, the inaccuracies, omissions and distortions that Irving used in order to arrive at his figures in The Destruction of Dresden come as no surprise. Throughout his career he has sought to rehabilitate the image of the Nazi regime, and this inclination led him ultimately to deny the existence of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps and the genocide of the Jews. In a similar but less spectacular way, by manipulating and misrepresenting historical data in The Destruction of Dresden, Irving was able to exaggerate the already horrifying Allied actions in Dresden by an order of magnitude, thereby suggesting a moral equivalency between the Nazi regime and the Allied governments (or even that the Allies were “worse”). Indeed, since the book’s initial publication in 1963, Irving has lectured extensively on the subject of “Allied war crimes” in Dresden while minimizing or denying Nazi war crimes. In 1995, Irving reprinted the book himself, adding the phrase Apocalypse 1945 to the title.

Irving produced several other works following The Destruction of Dresden. In 1963, he published The Mare’s Nest, a study of Germany’s development of secret weapons during World War II; in 1964, The Virus House, on the German effort to develop an atomic bomb. A few years later, in 1967, The Destruction of Convoy PQ17 described a failed arctic expedition, and Accident — The Death of General Sikorski suggested that Sikorski, the Polish leader in exile during World War II, had been assassinated by order of Winston Churchill.

Hitler’s War
Irving gained wider notoriety 10 years later with the 1977 publication of Hitler’s War, a 900-page World War II narrative told “from behind the Fuhrer’s desk,” “through Hitler’s eyes.” Irving later explained that he intended Hitler’s War to clean Hitler’s historical record of the “grime and discoloration” that had accumulated since World War II. He concluded that although Hitler was a “powerful and relentless military commander,” he was also a “lax and indecisive political leader” who ignored internal German affairs of state. Completely focused on the military aspects of the war, “[Hitler’s] grip on his subordinates weakened with each passing year.” In fact, Irving argued, as a result of Hitler’s weak leadership, domestic policy was controlled by whoever was most powerful in each sector — by Hermann Göring as head of the powerful economic agency, the Four-Year Plan; by Hans Lammers as chief of the Reich Chancellery; or by Martin Borman, the Nazi party boss; or by Heinrich Himmler, minister of the interior and Reichfuhrer of the evil-famed SS.

The depiction of Hitler as politically limited led to Irving’s most startling claim: that Hitler had little knowledge of, and no part in, the Jewish genocide. Irving acknowledged that as a young politician Hitler realized that anti-Semitism was “a powerful vote-catching force,” but he insisted that once the Austrian had attained power, he “paid only lip service to that part of his Party creed.” In Irving’s view, the planning, implementation and responsibility for the systematic murder of the Jews rested with those under Hitler — subordinate “Nazi gangsters,” Irving called them — most importantly Heinrich Himmler. As late as 1943, Irving argued, Hitler knew nothing of the death camps operating in occupied German territory.

From the outset, Irving’s conclusions and methods in Hitler’s War elicited widespread criticism from historians. Walter Laqueur of Georgetown University, writing in The New York Times Book Review of April 3, 1977, stated that Hitler’s War reads like the plea of an advocate who knows from the very beginning what he intends to prove and who marshals his evidence to his end relentlessly and with an enthusiasm worthy of a better cause. The result is a book of value to a few dozen military historians capable of separating new facts from old fiction, of differentiating between fresh, documentary material and unsupported claims, distortions, and sheer fantasies.

British historian Alan Bullock, in The New York Review of Books (May 26, 1977), said of Irving’s portrayal of Hitler as a “weak” leader that “there is so great a volume of evidence against such a view that it is astonishing anyone can seriously suggest it.” John Lukacs, in the National Review (August 19, 1977), called the book “appalling,” containing “hundreds of errors: wrong names, wrong dates and, what is worse, statements about events, including battles, that did not really take place.” Lukacs concluded that these flaws did not merely reflect “inadequate research…technical mistakes or oversights. They are the result of the dominant tendency of the author’s mind.”

Reviewers had further opportunity to explore Irving’s “dominant tendency” when he released The Trail of the Fox, a biography of Nazi general Erwin Rommel, shortly after the publication of Hitler’s War. David Pryce-Jones wrote in The New York Times Book Review (November 12, 1977):

Like all Irving’s work, this goes beyond revisionism: Hitler, his lieutenants and his creed are to be pure and shining, cleansed of the crimes committed in their name by tainted degenerates whom Irving keeps in the shadows out of sight. Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda might have hoped for a postwar line like this.

The release of Hitler’s War also led reviewers to revisit some of Irving’s earlier works, where they encountered the same patterns of distortion.

Toward the Radical Right and Holocaust Denial
By 1978, therefore, scholars largely dismissed Irving’s methods and conclusions, though many acknowledged his skill at unearthing previously unknown archival material. Publishers in England and the United States continued to print his books, which sold well in the popular market. In ensuing years, however, Irving’s views veered still further right. He developed connections with extremist organizations in Germany and the United States and articulated theories that were increasingly critical of what he came to call the “Holocaust legend.”2

Irving and the Deutsche Volksunion
Irving began speaking to meetings of the German political party Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) in 1982. Though not banned or illegal, the DVU had been categorized as “Right Wing Extremist” since the early 1970s by West Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution (the government body responsible for safeguarding democratic institutions, as mandated by the Basic Laws of 1949). In a 1985 report, the OPC described the DVU’s platform as including “hatred against foreigners, anti-Semitism, playing down [the crimes] of the National Socialist terror regime and disparagement of democratic institutions.” (Irving demonstrated his usual disingenuousness when he recently referred to the DVU as a “longstanding democratic party” — a true statement only if one defines “democratic party” as a party that has not been banned by a democratic government.) As early as 1977 the DVU had given an award to pioneering American Holocaust denier Arthur Butz, author of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.

Irving’s signature themes — the rehabilitation of Hitler, downplaying the Holocaust and condemning Allied actions — fit well with the DVU program; the subject of his first speeches for the party — during a tour of ten German cities — was “The Unatoned Holocaust — The Expulsion of the Germans.” For the next 12 years he continued to stump for the DVU, but following his conversion to hard-core Holocaust denial in 1988 (see below), party leaders began to consider him a liability: his outspokenness threatened to entangle the party in legal action brought by the German government. His relationship with the party apparently ended in 1993.

Irving and the Institute for Historical Review
Since its founding in 1979, the California-based Institute for Historical Review has been the foremost Holocaust-denial organization in the United States. Its two main projects have been publishing the bimonthly Journal of Historical Review, which contains ersatz scholarly articles “disproving” various aspects of the Holocaust, and its occasional Holocaust-denial conferences, which attract an international coterie of “revisionists.”

Irving’s relationship with the IHR began in September 1983 when he appeared before the Fifth International Revisionist Conference in Los Angeles. In the course of a speech on “Contemporary History and Historiography,” he restated his Hitler’s War thesis, to wit: “There is a whole chain of evidence from 1938 right through to October 1943, possibly even later, indicating that Hitler was completely in the dark about anything that may have been going on” in Nazi-controlled territories. For good measure, he added that the German leader was “probably the biggest friend the Jews had in the Third Reich, certainly when the war broke out….He was the one who was doing everything he could to prevent things nasty happening to them (sic).” As radical as these statements were, Irving realized that, for the dedicated deniers of the IHR, they didn’t go far enough. Reflecting on his own observation that Hitler was unaware of “anything that may have been going on,” Irving explained:

I use these words very closely. I am sure you realize that I take a slightly different line from several people here. I would specify as follows: I would say I am satisfied in my own mind that in various locations Nazi criminals, acting probably without direct orders from above, did carry out liquidations of groups of people including Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, mentally incurable people and the rest. I am quite plain about that in my own mind. I can't prove it, I haven't gone into that, I haven't investigated that particular aspect of history but from the documents I have seen, I've got the kind of gut feeling which suggests to me that that is probably accurate.

Several months after the conference, Robert Faurisson, a French Holocaust denier and member of the Journal of Historical Review’s Editorial Advisory Committee, published “A Challenge to David Irving” in the Journal. He derided Irving’s “gut feeling” about the Holocaust as unworthy of a serious historian, who should only rely on duly substantiated evidence. Faurisson concluded that Irving’s belief that Hitler knew nothing about any mass killings was only true because no mass killings took place. There is no record of any direct response from Irving to Faurisson.

In the mid-1980s, Irving worked on Churchill’s War, whose conceit was to tell the story of World War II from, supposedly, Churchill’s point of view. Not surprisingly, Irving portrayed Churchill as a warmonger whose reckless policies forced the start of the war. Even here, however, Irving did not deny the existence of gas chambers or the extermination of Jews under the Nazi regime.

Nevertheless, there are indications that by the mid-1980’s Irving was gradually moving toward denial of the basic facts of the Holocaust. This evolution is most evident in his estimates of the number of Jewish victims of the Nazis. In a 1986 interview in Australia, Irving referred to the Jewish victims as “millions of Jews, or…hundreds of thousands of Jews — I’m not going to name a figure.” In 1988, he testified on behalf of Ernst Zundel, a Canadian resident being prosecuted by the government there for disseminating neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denial materials. Irving said:

I am not familiar with any documentary evidence of any such figure as six million…it must have been of the order of 100,000 or more, but to my mind it was certainly less than the figure which is quoted nowadays of six million….

Irving the Denier
By all accounts, including his own, Irving’s “conversion” to hard-core Holocaust denial took place sometime around the Zundel trial in 1988. Zundel’s defense team had commissioned Fred A. Leuchter Jr., a self-described engineer from Massachusetts who specialized in designing execution apparatus, to investigate whether the Nazis had used gas chambers to kill Jews. In his findings, Leuchter claimed that samples he (illegally) chipped off the walls of the gas chamber at Auschwitz did not contain residue of the cyanide gas recorded as having been used there. When Irving read The Leuchter Report, he called it “shattering in the significance of its discovery.” He elaborated:

If a future historian was to be writing the history of the Holocaust controversy, then undoubtedly they can no longer ignore a document of this validity (sic)….It is clearly a document written by somebody in the position to know what he is writing about….I’m very impressed…by the scientific manner of presentation, by the expertise that’s been shown by it and by the very novel conclusion that [Leuchter] has arrived at….I must say that as a historian I’m rather ashamed it never occurred to me to make this kind of investigation on this particular controversy.

In fact, The Leuchter Report was discredited within days of its introduction to the court. Leuchter identified himself as the Chief Engineer of Fred Leuchter Associates in Boston, but the prosecution established that he had no engineering education or training (his degree from Boston University was in history). Under court questioning, he also demonstrated that he was unfamiliar with basic facts and documents about the gas chambers. The court ruled that Leuchter did not possess the qualifications or knowledge to serve as an expert witness for the defense.

The New Disciple
Irving remained committed to The Leuchter Report. In 1989 his own publishing house issued the study in a book version with an introduction by Irving himself. This short essay may include his first explicit public denial of the Holocaust: he calls Nazi executions of millions of Jews a “well-financed and brilliantly successful postwar publicity campaign,” modeled on “the original ingenious plan of the British Psychological Warfare Executive” in 1942 to disseminate a similar “propaganda story” against Germany. He also described the “Auschwitz concentration camp and its ‘gas chambers’” as the “holiest shrines” of a “new twentieth century religion.” At the end of the essay Irving challenged the “incorrigible historians, statesmen and publicists” who persist in their belief in the Nazi genocide of the Jews to “explain to me as an intelligent and critical student of modern history why there is no significant trace of any cyanide compound in the building which they have always identified as the former gas chambers.”

Irving appeared again at the Institute for Historical Review’s convention in 1989, the year following the Zundel trial, and has since been a frequent participant in the organization’s functions. His books are sold through the IHR’s Journal of Historical Review, and the IHR has even organized mini-conventions for local supporters when Irving passes through the United States. Despite his consistent claims to the contrary, he also began associating with the neo-Nazi National Alliance during the 1990s. Between 1995 and 1998, Irving addressed National Alliance events at least seven times.

Hardcore
As his appearances among bigots and neo-Nazis suggest, Irving has become increasingly emphatic and sweeping in his denial of the Holocaust. Although The Leuchter Report denied the existence of gas chambers only at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Irving extended Leuchter’s claims in a 1990 speech to include Treblinka and “other so-called extermination camps in the East.” In his 1991 edition of Hitler’s War, he deleted all references to the extermination of the Jews “because it never occurred.” He was forced, therefore, to explain away thousands of pages of testimony at Nuremberg. Like many other deniers, he claimed, in Nuremberg: The Last Battle (1996), that the proceedings against Nazi war criminals were mere “show-trials” staged by the victorious Americans and British — themselves guilty of crimes against humanity. Using a method to which he resorts when treating evidence that disproves his conclusions, he claimed that Nuremberg prosecutors forged or tampered with incriminating documents used in the trials.

Another challenge for Irving has been the survivors of the Holocaust, who experienced firsthand the horrors of Nazi policies. Irving told a Canadian audience in 1990 that people claimed to be survivors because “there’s money involved and they can get a good compensation cash payment out of it.” He has also suggested that many of the survivors are mentally unstable; he told the magazine CODE in 1990 that “the psychiatrists should concern themselves with this matter some time. There are many cases of mass hysteria.” In a 1991 speech in Ontario, Irving coarsely expressed his disdain:

These September gatherings have attracted such prominent Holocaust deniers as Bradley Smith, Mark Weber, Frederick Toben and Germar Rudolf. Also attending were Wellesley Professor Tony Martin, who argues that Jews controlled the Atlantic slave trade, and columnist Joseph Sobran, a former senior editor at the National Review deemed “obsessed on the subject of Israel” by Review editor, William F. Buckley, who “disassociate[d]” the magazine from the “obstinate tendentiousness” of Sobran’s columns.

California Civil Suit
In 1997, Max Kerstan (now deceased), a California resident, lent Irving $10,000 to underwrite the cost of publishing or reprinting some of Irving’s books through a company Irving set up called Parforce UK Ltd. The agreement specified that Irving pay back the loan in United States dollars within four months, with the addition of interest calculated at the annual rate of 15 percent. After Kerstan died, Irving claimed that he no longer had to repay the loan, on the grounds that the loan had been amended orally by Kerstan to free Irving from repayment in the event of Kerstan’s death. Kerstan’s widow, Irma, claimed that her husband had never changed the original loan agreement. After attempting to settle the matter amicably, Irma Kerstan brought a civil action against Irving for repayment of the loan. The court ruled in April 1998 that Irving had to repay the principal sum of $10,000, along with interest and costs. Irving has yet to repay the money.

Ridicule alone isn’t enough, you’ve got to be tasteless about it. You’ve got to say things like “More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.” [Applause] Now you think that’s tasteless, what about this? I’m forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try and kid people that they were in these concentration camps, it’s called the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and other liars, A-S-S-H-O-L-E-S. Can’t get more tasteless than that, but you’ve got to be tasteless because these people deserve our contempt.

Irving has also become less discreet in using anti-Jewish language. He has referred to Jews as “Shylocks” and “our traditional enemy” and has dwelled on the “international Jewish conspiracy” against him; he says the “big lie” of the Holocaust is “designed to distract attention from even bigger crimes than what the Nazis did…designed to justify, both in arrears and in advance, the bigger crimes in the financial world and elsewhere that are being committed by the survivors of the Holocaust.”

Baby Aryan
Irving has made some notably racist remarks as well. In a 1994 diary entry (revealed in his court proceedings against Deborah Lipstadt in 1999), Irving memorialized a poem he composed for his young daughter (which is, according to Irving, appropriate to use “when halfbreed children are wheeled past”):

I am a Baby Aryan
Not Jewish or Sectarian
I have no plans to marry an
Ape or Rastafarian.

More prosaically, in 1992 Irving maintained:

I am not anti-colored, take it from me; nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at an airport, or a station, or a seaport, and I see a colored family there — the black father, the black wife and the black children….When I see these families arriving at the airport I am happy, and when I see them leaving at London airport I am happy. [cheers and laughter] But if there is one thing that gets up my nose, I must admit, it is this — the way…the thing is when I am down in Torquay and I switch on my television and I see one of them reading our news to us. It is our news and they’re reading it to me.4

Fallout
Because many Western democracies have passed laws against Holocaust denial, racial incitement and defaming the memory of the dead, Irving has frequently come into conflict with the governments of countries he has sought to enter. In early 1992, German authorities fined him 10,000 marks (about $6,000) after he violated a federal law against public expression of the “Auschwitz Lie.” Appealing the fine, an unrepentant Irving declared, “there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, I will not change my opinion.” (His fine was subsequently tripled.) In 1993, he was banned from the country. His criminal convictions in Germany led Canadian authorities to deny him entrance as well; he was deported from Canada in 1992 after he admitted having lied to a Canadian customs official. Also in 1993 Irving was barred from visiting Australia on the grounds that he was “likely to become involved in activities disruptive to, or violence threatening harm to, the Australian community.” Irving fought the ruling for several years, even threatening defamation proceedings against Australian Prime Minister John Howard. He failed to win entry to the country, however, which stated in 1996 that “applicants with comparable criminal records are routinely refused [entry]” by the Australian Department of Immigration.

Along with legal difficulties, Irving has had trouble with publishers, who have rejected his manuscripts in recent years. In 1991, Macmillan UK Ltd chose to stop accepting his new works and allowed already published books to lapse out of print. In 1996, St. Martin’s Press, a New York publishing house, canceled its plan to publish Irving’s biography of Joseph Goebbels after receiving complaints from Jewish organizations. St. Martin’s called the work “effectively anti- Semitic.” Irving currently self-publishes through his London-based Focal Point Publications. In 1999, he urged his supporters to invest in Focal Point, promising a 10 percent return. Whatever the success of the scheme, he has been able to reissue several of his out-of-print works, including Hitler’s War.

The Penguin-Lipstadt Trial
His financial needs may have been part of the motivation for filing suit in a British court against American Professor Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University and her British publisher, Penguin Books, Ltd. in 1996. Irving charged that Lipstadt committed libel when she characterized him as a Holocaust denier who tended to “misstate, misquote, falsify statistics and falsely attribute conclusions to reliable sources" in her book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. Although Lipstadt’s book was published in the United States in 1993, Irving waited to sue until it was printed by a British publisher. American law places the burden of proof on the accuser; to win, Irving would have had to prove that Lipstadt had lied about him in her book. In addition, under the provisions of American libel law, Irving would undoubtedly be considered a “public figure,” and thereby would also need to prove that Lipstadt wrote about him with malice. The libel laws in England, by contrast, place the burden of proof on the defendant. By suing Lipstadt in his own country, Irving forced her to prove that her statements about him were truthful.

David Irving in the USA

Lipstadt and Penguin mounted a vigorous defense. They commissioned several expert witnesses who testified with detailed written reports that Irving systematically misused evidence to falsify the history of the Holocaust. Richard Evans, Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, who submitted a 700-page analysis of Irving’s work on issues relevant to the case, testified that he was not prepared for “the sheer depths of duplicity which I encountered in Irving’s treatment of the historical sources, nor for the way in which this dishonesty permeated his entire written and spoken output.” In the first chapter of the report, Evans wrote:

Penetrating beneath the confident surface of [Irving’s] prose quickly revealed a mass of distortion and manipulation in every issue we tackled that was so tangled that detailing it sometimes took up many more words than had been devoted to it in Irving’s original account. Unpicking the eleven-page narrative of the anti-Jewish pogrom of the so-called Reichskristallnacht in Irving’s book Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich and tracing back every part of it to the documentation on which it purports to rest takes up over seventy pages of the present Report. A similar knotted web of distortions, suppressions and manipulations became evident in every single instance which we examined. We have not suppressed any occasion on which Irving has used accepted and legitimate methods of historical research, exposition and interpretation: there were none.

Evans concurred with what some reviewers had said about Irving as early as 1977:

It is clear from all the investigations which I and my research assistants have undertaken that Irving’s claim to have a very good and thorough knowledge of the evidence on the basis of which the history of Nazi Germany has to be written is completely justified. His numerous mistakes and egregious errors are not, therefore, due to mere ignorance or sloppiness; on the contrary, it is obvious that they are calculated and deliberate. That is precisely why they are so shocking. Irving has relied in the past, and continues to rely in the present, on the fact that his readers and listeners, reviewers and interviewers lack either the time, or the expertise, to probe deeply enough into the sources he uses for his work to uncover the distortions, suppressions and manipulations to which he has subjected them.

Verdict
The trial, in which Irving represented himself, ran from January 11 through March 15, 2000. Justice Charles Gray presided; due to the complexity of the evidence, both sides agreed to dispense with a jury. Comically compromising his attempt to dismiss Lipstadt’s claims that he admired Hitler, Irving, in a moment of weariness during his closing statement, addressed the justice as “Mein Führer.”

The mistake presaged Justice Gray’s verdict. Ruling for Lipstadt and her publishers, the justice argued that it was “incontrovertible that Irving qualifies as a Holocaust denier.” He described Irving as an “anti-Semite,” explaining that “[Irving’s] words are directed against Jews, either individually or collectively, in the sense that they are by turns hostile, critical, offensive and derisory in their references to Semitic people, their characteristics and appearances.” He also noted that Irving had associated with the extreme right-wing National Alliance, saying, “In my view Irving cannot fail to have become aware that the National Alliance is a neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic organization. The regularity of Irving’s contacts with the National Alliance and its officers confirms Irving’s sympathetic attitude towards an organization whose tenets would be abhorrent to most people.” Finally and most importantly, Justice Gray ruled conclusively on Irving’s historical methods, stating:

I have found that in numerous respects, Irving has misstated historical evidence; adopted positions which run counter to the weight of the evidence; given credence to unreliable evidence and disregarded or dismissed credible evidence.…In my opinion there is a force in the opinion expressed by Evans that all Irving’s historiographical “errors” converge, in the sense that they all tend to exonerate Hitler or to reflect Irving’s partisanship for the Nazi leaders. If indeed they were genuine errors or mistakes, one would not expect to find this consistency….Mistakes and misconceptions such as these appear to be by their nature unlikely to have been innocent. They are more consistent with a willingness on Irving’s part to knowingly misrepresent or manipulate or put a “spin” on the evidence so as to make it conform with his own preconceptions.

Consistent with British libel law, Irving was ordered to pay the legal fees incurred by the defense, which amounted to nearly 2 million pounds. An initial payment equivalent of $250,000 was ordered following Irving’s protests that he faced bankruptcy and that he planned to appeal. On July 20, 2001, an appeals court denied his request for a new trial.

Irving’s Future
The Lipstadt trial exposed Irving’s pervasive dishonesty and recklessness as a historian, as well as his bigotry, to an international audience. It is highly unlikely that he will ever regain credibility among legitimate scholars. He remains a celebrity among Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, however, who view him as a martyr to free speech and political dissent. He continues to tour and raise money, his vigor apparently undiminished. He remains probably the most lucid expositor of a history in which Hitler was benevolent, the Allies despotic and Jews the perpetrators of their own phony genocide.

[JJ on 21.02.06 at 15:04]

If it is the act of writing a book which upsets people as opposed to the actual misguided denial of the Holocaust, why not put the publisher jail?