Sunday, September 30, 2007

David Irving: He's Back .... but does it really matter??? [except to deniers... who aren't going to like it]

According to the Guardian, David Irving, whom it described in a headline as "Discredited" is planning a "comeback" speaking tour. [The paper also described him as a "Historian"... though I can't say why].

What Irving has to say will not make deniers happy.

First, of course, he engages in his traditional antisemitism, telling the paper that
"the Jews were responsible for what happened to them during the second world war and that the 'Jewish problem' was responsible for nearly all the wars of the past 100 years: "The Jews are the architects of their own misfortune, but that is the short version A-Z. Between A-Z there are then 24 other characters in intervening steps."

His rant reminds me of statements by someone he seems to lionize, Hitler, in that he blames Jews for every war in the last 100 years. [Korea? Iran-Iraq? Eritreia-Ethiopia? Somalia?]

But what he says about the Holocaust is really going to upset his denier pals:
"that a document, which he is 80% sure is genuine, suggests that 2.4 million Jews were killed in Poland, but goes on to claim that the gas chamber at Auschwitz was fake. "

Even as he says that at Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka about 2.4 million Jews were killed by men in control of Heinrich Himmler, he whitewashes the Germans by claiming that the killers were "mostly Ukrainian mercenaries."

Pressed to say whether he now accepted that there had been a Holocaust [I am not sure why what he accepts or does not is important] he engages in one of his traditional antisemitic swipes by saying he was "not going to use their trade name."

Then apparently still finding it necessary to protect Hitler, he claims the German leaders was "completely in the dark" about the programme.

The fact is that David Irving has made so many twists and turns in his claims that even I, who is pretty familiar with them all, has a hard time keeping track of them all.

The only way he gets attention is by swerving in one direction and then the other.

I wonder if this acknowledgment would have gotten him dis-invited from the Iran denial conference had he not been in jail in Austria....

He has truly become, as I describe him in History on Trial, the court Jester.

6 comments:

Hume's Ghost said...

That's pretty shameful of the Guardian to grant Irving the title of historian.

Pseudo-historian is more like it.

FAIIRPLAY said...

Why not honour him with the nickname 'Lord Irving of Haw-Haw', in the County of Essex, England.

Unknown said...

Its actually quite outrageous that the Guardian would refer to Irving as a historian, given that he was found by Judge Gray to be a deliberate falsifier of history. Hardly surprising though, given the recent contemptible record of leftist British media establishments.

FAIIRPLAY said...

Irving quote: "the Jews were responsible for what happened to them during the second world war".

Whenever I read this sort of nonsense I immediately think of those rather shabby, worried and illegally held men, women and children, who were photographed on the Auschwitz arrivals ramp awaiting processing. See www. Auschwitz Album / yadvashem/ I recall with tears the little girl shown kneeling down playing with pea-gravel - a boredom game of marbles perhaps?, the girl of 11 wearing a red & white football scarf - did she support Budapest Dynamos, and the little boy stood leaning awkwardly on a walking stick. Tell us Irving what did they and their families ever do to injure others, including the people of Germany and the 'crazy' you so much admire. To make matters worse for me this mans a Brit!

hockey hound said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
hockey hound said...

Shalom, Prof. Lipstadt. I am too early for your blog.