David Irving
By Callimachus | Related entries in Bad Decisions, History, In The News, The WorldAn Austrian court this week sentenced British historian David Irving to three years in prison. His crime? Denying the holocaust.
Americans have steeled ourselves to an ugly truth: Our commitment to free expression means we must tolerate freedom of expression for people we despise, or else it means nothing.
But Europe is different. Public Holocaust denial is a crime in 10 European countries, from France to Lithuania. All of them not only suffered under Nazi occupation but were, in some degree, complicit in the deportation and killing of Jews during the war.
After the war, laws were enacted that banned Nazi insignia and the stiff-arm salute. It was not just a question of muzzling Jew-baiters; the European nations remember that fascists came to power within the mechanism of democratic electoral systems and with a great deal of popular enthusiasm. The laws were meant, in part, to prevent the rebirth of a lethal political movement.
As Hajo Funke, a German historian, put it: “We can’t afford the luxury of the Anglo-Saxon freedom of speech argument in this regard. It’s not that I don’t understand it, it’s just not for us. Not yet. Not for a long time.”
Hence the 1992 Austrian law Irving was convicted under, which applies to “whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.”
Irving, 67, is a formidable amateur historian who has worked from primary sources to build up his picture of a Third Reich in which Jews certainly were mistreated and died in large numbers, but not by a methodical genocide ordered by Hitler.
It is perhaps too generous to see Irving’s Holocaust denial as a professional, rather than a personal, issue, but his reliance on primary sources in the Nazi archives may have led him into the paths of error. The Nazis certainly desired to be rid of the Jews. Sometime in 1941, as the war got out of hand, their vague plans to deport European Jews to Siberia or Madagascar morphed into pure genocide. But how and exactly when this happened is likely never to be known.
The Nazis, for all their reputation for ruthless efficiency ran an incredibly cumbersome and chaotic bureaucracy. Key documents disappeared in the malestrom of the war’s last days and the Gotterdammerung of the Third Reich. There exists no written order from the top commanding the Final Solution. The notorious, but vague, Wannsee Protocol survived in a single copy, discovered by U.S. prosecuters in the Nuremberg Trials after the principal Nazis were dead.
Instead, the history of the Holocaust must be built up from outside, from the physical evidence of the death camps and the ghettoes, and from the testimonies of tens of thousands of people — both survivors of the killing and those who helped carry it out. From this great mass of testimony an unmistakable picture emerges.
Irving already has been financially ruined and professionally disgraced by his persistence in Holocaust denial. But he should not be in jail; he should be out in the public arena trying to prove his case and seeing it shreded by the historical record. Like Jefferson, we are willing to “tolerate error as long as reason is free to combat it.”
In history as in all intellectual activities, questioning and probing makes a strong case stronger. The truth need not fear a Devil’s advocate.
But there is yet another twist in this story. The Holocaust denial laws are in place in countries where Jews again are being beaten and Jewish cemeteries desecrated, not by neo-Nazi skinheads or German revanchists, but by Islamist immigrant gangs.
Irving’s writings feed the Islamists’ warped ideology, which run a close parallel to Hitler’s. But jailing Irving only adds the martyr’s halo to his sad career. It’s an unfortunate side-effect of Irving’s trial that Islamists around the world have been able to point to it as proof of hypocrisy in the Western commitment to freedom of speech as invoked in the case of the Danish cartoon drawings of Muhammad.
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 and is filed under Bad Decisions, History, In The News, The World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 23rd, 2006 at 1:47 am
Austria has really shot itself in the foot. Negative publicity when they arrest, try and imprison the guy. More of the same when they release him early. In order to clamp down on Fascist apologists they have to behave like Fascists themselves. So it’s hardly surprising that Austria is a country in denial. Face it, “Birthplace of Adolph Hitler” is hardly something you’d put on your tourist promotion literature. But now they’ve topped even that; “Austria, no stinking freedom of speech here.” Jailing a 66-year-old historian for an utterance made some 17 years earlier; you shake your head in disbelief. I thought David Irving was raising a perfectly innocuous academic point. I mean, it wasn’t like he was saying the Jews cause all the trouble in the world. Austria, the thought crime capital of Europe. Although it should be said the vast majority of European countries have Holocaust denial laws. You might want to keep this in mind when planning your emigration. Asia starts to look a good bet.
December 23rd, 2006 at 6:13 am
A misrepresentation………Firstly to try and show europeans as somehow less inteligent or educated than your American audience is laughable. Herr Funkes opinion that freedom of speech “is not for us” is nonsense.These laws are not popular they are kept in place and even spread to new countries by jewish lobby groups in europe,make no mistake if enough educated people in the United States start asking awkward questions they will try to introduce them there too.
Secondly,any one who describes David Irving as an “amature historian” even a formidable one is a bit off key,David Irving has written over 30 history books some best sellers and is still the most respected ww11 historian alive dispite the farcical libstadt trail where expert witnessess were bribed er paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for their testomany or this recent outrage.
Finally “Islamist immigrant gangs” Jewish graves” “warped ideology that runs a close parallel to Hitlers” oh dear perhaps we should all join in and bomb Iran.
Your article is not rabid but it is predictable,it seeks to divide the europeans of America from their brothers in Europe by suggesting that we in europe are different in our hearts which we by the way are not,then it goes on to diminish the revisionist and then renforce the holocaust myth “physical evidence of death camps” meaning gas chambers which of course there is no physical evidence you end bringing things up to date by representing jews as victims once again in europe rather than the priviliged minority that they are,and of course you end with anti arab propaganda aimed at bringing us into Israels war with its neighbours the fact that you mentioned Hitler at this point indicates that your skullcap has slipped over your face
December 23rd, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Irving supposedly said what he said in 1989…convicted under Austrian law passed in 1992. Wow…there was no law on the books when he said what he said! The power of the lobbyists, retroactive laws, what a concept!
What physical evidence in the death camps? Please elaborate.
Irving does not fear the truth, it is those who say the holocaust happened that fear the truth. For if they had the facts to prove it, they would have long ago allowed a historical debate to take place and they would have won. Since they have no proof, they have lobbied and passed laws ruining the people financially who questioned the facts, and as a bonus, they also jailed these people. Freedom of speach my ass. He who has the money has the power, but me thinks this is slowly passing.
I guess those who push the holocaust as gospel have won the debate logically and that is why we have the holohox myth today because it was based on researched facts (hollywood docu-dramas).
The Tehran Conference was just the beginning of exposing this nonsense.
December 24th, 2006 at 12:32 am
Its easier just to saay I DONT CARE. And its not ilegal!.
December 24th, 2006 at 5:59 am
Ahmadinejad talking B.S. But this man, David Irving has all kind of legitimacy in his views about these sickness called Jewishness. Why the whole media starts with the Wire, AP, to silence a reasonable argument. Shame of this bloody world.
December 24th, 2006 at 6:00 am
Ahmadinejad talking B.S. But this man, David Irving has all kind of legitimacy in his views about these sickness called Jewishness. Why the whole media starting with the the Wire, AP, to silence a reasonable argument. Shame of this bloody world.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Personally I think this article is an outright lie.
David Irving hosts the entire transcripts of his trial VERBATIM and he does not deny the holocaust at all. In fact it was David Irving the ‘amateur historian’, as you put it, that found and published the Brun Report which clearly shows the Nazis were shooting Jews on the front lines.
David Irving simply realizes the truth of ANY courtroom today. You have witnesses who were either involved in a crime or seen a crime and you have forensic and documentary evidence. The witnesses are basically useless. If two cars crash into each other the witnesses involved [the drivers or 'party witnesses'] will both have differing opinions. Their word, in court, is pretty much useless. The Witnesses who seen it are somewhat more reliable. The documents of any such event [video or paper] are next to the best you can have and the Forensic studies and physical evidence are the best.
In the ‘holocaust’ it’s stated that 11 million people were killed in the camps. Many of which were in gas chambers. 5 million Jews and 6 million non Jews.
What ‘deniers’ don’t believe is that the Nazis gassed people in ‘gas chambers’ [mostly because the story lacks the forensic and documentary evidence]. They don’t believe 6 million, let alone 11 million of ANYONE died [mostly because there are no real hardcore solid studies on it. The highest even remotely credible source is the Yad Vashem museum and they have 3 million names from seriously corrupt reported sources. For example, I can report a holocaust survivor] and third that Hitler gave orders to kill prisoners laborers [the inmates in the camps].
Like it or not. Believe it or not, that is all there is to it. Some people use it politically, like the White Nationalists, to show Jews as liars. The Jews use it for emotional support in present day matters like ‘Israels’ existsance.
All in all the holocaust is the largest remembered historical event of our time. I think that should be changed. Sure, it was a fucked up, but the War wasn’t a Hebrewcentric event. Personally no one gave a shit about Jews who fought for the Allies in that war. They didn’t even know about the camps until they liberated a few of them. Yet even on the Allied side we are victims of this propaganda machine. We are constantly bombarded with this “we must never forget” crap. What exactly must we never forget? That we saved the cowardly Jews from the Germans? I suppose you’re right. Next time maybe we shouldn’t save them. Then we won’t have to listen to them whine for another 60 years. What’s more I don’t really think I should be getting a lesson in morals from a peoples whos spoken Talmud talks about raping, murdering, and robbing non Jews. I also don’t get my Morals from a people who scream “never again” and “we must never forget” then build a fucking wall people and kill them and try to force them out so they can steal their land. Its a double standard and nothing more.
Does what I say seem brutal? Oh well, thats life. Here in the real world its not all fairy dust and “everyone loves each other” bullshit.