[WikiEN-l] Re: Stevertigo should not be allowed to write about Jews

Wed Oct 1 18:58:29 UTC 2003

[Sorry about that lest email -- no html this time. Brian]

I've been trying to follow this, so I decided to "research" by looking at 
the David Irving article Robert referred to. I'm new to the list, so I 
don't know who's on it or what they know, but I want to weigh in with the 
facts as I have found them (I know it's very long, but please read before 
making any judgments). In short, I think that Richard has taken things out 
of context  Therefore I've put in below:

1) a short part of Richard's email -- specifically what he says Stevertigo 
says about Irving.
2) the link to the page history
3) the article before Stevertigo edited it
4) the article after, which was posted with the comment line: (This is a 
minor edit of about 2000 words... Definitely in need of some edits...)

Thanks, Brian <http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bcorr>
=================

At 04:36 PM 10/1/03 +0000, you wrote:
>Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 09:36:23 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Stevertigo should not be allowed to write about
>         Jews
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
...snip...
>3. [[David Irving]] is a much-maligned academic. He is a
>"young
>and talented writer," who has simply, and misguidedly tried
>to point out that post the second generation of Germans
>after the Holocaust "were no less victims of Hitler than
>the Jews were." Irving then wants "to bridge the gap
>between victor and victim."
>
>4. David Irving gave reasons why the numbers attached to
>the [[Holocaust]] could not be authentic. He repeats
>Irving's famous assertion: "more women died on the back
>seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever
>died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz."

-----------------------------
Here is the page history:
<http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=David_Irving&action=history>
-----------------------------

David Irving
(Revision as of 02:22, 21 Sep 2002)
< http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=David_Irving&oldid=674726>

David Irving (born 1938), historian well known for his Holocaust 
revisionism. Among other things, he denies that the Germans exterminated 
jews in Gas Chambers during World War II
-----------------------------

David Irving
(Revision as of 19:29, 16 Feb 2003)
<http://en2.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=David_Irving&diff=674731&oldid=674726>

David Irving (born 1938), historian well known for his Holocaust 
revisionism. Among other things, he has denied that the Germans 
exterminated jews in Gas Chambers during World War II. In a judgement by 
the High court of Justice, Irving was found to be a Holocaust denier and an 
"anti-Semite."

A forgiving view of David Irving might see him as; a conflicted, ambitious, 
and talented, (albeit entirely misguided) young man, who tried to shake 
off, instead of reconciling, the legacy of German shame for his its Nazi 
past. He originally stirred up a hornets nest of very sensitive issues in a 
sensationalistic and irresponsible way, and in the light of the aftermath; 
the stinging controversy, the focused attacks upon his person, and 
marginalized prospects for future academic acceptance.

Too quick to rush to the assertion of his premises. he published books, 
perhaps originally with little understanding of the kind of backlash they 
would cause. 'Bad press being good press', he continued to work under 
conditions of ever-increased marginalization, and rejection by whatever 
limited academic connections he had. His associations with racist or 
quasi-racist groups, began in an attempt to seek support for his work, 
while perhaps negotiating issues in a way that tried to reconcile disparate 
facts and social elements.

Irving, however, often was neither courteous or tactful; nor in the least 
bit considerate of the passionate anger his books, theories and comments 
would face, and he often spoke quite "tastelessly." As he put it, :

"I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It's baloney, it's 
a legend. Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and 
large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died 
elsewhere in the war, why believe the rest of the baloney? ...I say quite 
tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward 
Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz."

Criticism
The critics of Irving claim that his scholarship is poor, the substance in 
his work trite, and its keen to make assumptions. In Richard Evans' Lying 
About Hitler, London University Professor David Cannadine was quoted (Re: 
Irving's first volume of his biography of Winston Churchill):

"It has received almost no attention from historians or reviewers...It is 
easy to see why.... full of excesses, inconsistancies and omissions... 
seems completely unaware of recent work done on the subject... It is not 
merely that the arguments in this book are so perversely tendentious and 
irresponsibly sensationalist. It is also that it is written in a tone which 
is a best casually journalistic and at worst quite exceptionally offensive. 
The text is littered with errors from beginning to end."

Richard Evans, himself, said: "Irving's conclusions were completely 
untenable. I thought his scholarship was sloppy and unreliable and did not 
meet even the most basic requirements of honest and competent historical 
research."

Revisionism
In essence, the judgement of Irving and revisionism, by most historians is 
that he and it represented a dubiously suspect middle ground between 
outright Neo-Naziism and Legitimate historianism, in some attempt to 
legitimize the Neo-Nazi movement. The general consensus on Irving, among 
established historians, is that he was in far over his head, making the 
typical mistake of amateur historians and scientists, of starting with a 
premise, and seeking to prove it, instead of researching, and letting the 
facts speak for themselves. This eventually led to his making academic 
blunders, and to consequent public denouncements, and thus "revisionism" 
was became a genre-of-sorts, sub-academia, attempting to tie together any 
work that countered any previously established research into Nazi history, 
as "revising" of history, and would attempt to include neo-Nazi racism in 
the same category as thorough research that might challenge an established 
fact.

Irvings "revisionism" centered around the idea that Hitler did not know in 
any detail about the events of the Holocaust, and that the coordinated 
actions by Nazis to murder 6 million Jews took place at some administrative 
level, beneath the attention of Hiter himself. While it is true that 
Hitler, was clever enough to sanitize records connecting him with the 
concentration camps, the idea that the absolute dictator of a large, modern 
country, having long-established political and administrative connections 
and heirarchies althroughout Germany, Austria, and other Nazi occupied 
areas, is highly suspect. There turns out to be very little paper evidence 
indeed, of the administration of the Holocaust, regardless of any 
connections to Hitler himself. Irving, his critics say, in order to accept 
that Hitler knew of the holocaust, (disregarding, for the moment, any 
direct role he may have had in its orchestration), would be, in essence, 
saying that Hitler was only a benign figurehead. The evidence supports 
otherwise.

Irving was someone who reacted defensively to sharp attacks of 
anti-Semitism working with limited credentials - doing serious work, albeit 
with little assistance and connection to familiar circles. Working with 
limited evidence, such as the forgery of a "Last confession of Hitler", as 
the partial basis for some of his work. Irving claims this as a defense, 
that others have cited these false sources, and yet still recieve 
legitimate attention, despite a flaw in their publication.

As the heated feelings about the Holocaust continue, but there has been 
some recent academic consensus on an important Holocaust issue: That in the 
late 1930's, Hitler had not yet planned to murder Jews of Europe, rather 
had hoped to forcibly move them out of Europe entirely. Only later, the 
theory says, after pressures from the war, did Hitler act to deliberately 
murder millions of Jews. This idea is contradicted by the that fact that 
the Nazis made prisons out of the Jewish ghettos, not allowing them to 
leave en masse. It is supported by the fact that there was not yet any 
devised way to kill and dispose of millions of people, in the camp furnaces.

Only more recently, and in the context of debunking Irving, who claimed 
that it was impossible to incinerate and dispose of 6 million people, was 
it discovered that the Nazis had calculated that human bodyfat, after 
preheating, could provide the added fuel that would sustain the feasible 
operation of the furnaces.

Irving v. Lipstadt
David Irving, in 1996, sued writer Deborah Lipstadt, and publisher Penguin 
Books in the High Court of Justice for her book Denying the Holocaust, on 
the claim of libel. The verdict in Irving v. Lipstadt was short:

14.1 It follows that there must be judgment for the Defendants.

This followed numerous court findings, including the counterclaims of his 
"anti-Semitism", of his being a "Holocaust denier", and of his 
misrepresentaton of fact in his books.

On the issue of Irving's anti-Semitism, Mr. Justice Gray of the Queen's 
Bench Division, in giving judgment against David Irving in April, 2000 wrote:

"[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. A few examples will suffice: Irving has 
made claims that the Jews deserve to be disliked; that they brought the 
Holocaust on themselves; that Jewish financiers are crooked; that Jews 
generate anti-semitism by their greed and mendacity; that it is bad luck 
for Mr. Wiesel to be called "Weasel"; that Jews are amongst the scum of 
humanity; that Jews scurry and hide furtively, unable to stand the light of 
day; that Simon Wiesenthal has a hideous, leering evil face; and so on... 
The inference which in my judgment is clearly to be drawn from what Irving 
has said and written is that he is anti-semitic." (Matas, David. Bloody 
Speech. Winnipeg & Niagara Falls, 2000, p. 64)

===In defense of==
Irving has had, at least, one defender in Dr. Joel Hayward of Massey 
University in New Zealand. Hayward, responding to claims that Irving was 
unqualified, having never finished a batchelor's degree, by citing 
respected historians Gerald Reitlinger, Georges Wellers, Jean-Claude 
Pressac, and Walter Laqueur, as having unusual qualifications as 
historians. Hayward also wrote:

"I have critically examined - keeping issues of truth, objectivity and bias 
at the forefront of my mind -- ALL his thirty-one books... [I have] been 
able to check his sources and they way he used them... I can say with 
confidence that I am as well positioned to comment on Irving's scholarship 
as anyone. My judgement: I certainly don't agree with all his arguments and 
conclusions, and strongly disagree with some, but I can't find serious 
flaws in his methodology and I have never found a single example of 
deliberate falsification of evidence. ...Deborah Lipstadt's book is 
hopeless [and] Gerald Fleming's [book] is easily the best of the 
anti-Irving books, but even that ultimately fails to prove falsification or 
improper consideration of evidence."

Hayward's motivations, however, have been called as suspect as well: His 
masters thesis at the New Zealand's University of Canterbury, caused an 
uproar, in making the claim that far fewer than 6 million Jews, perhaps 
fewer than 1 million, perished in Nazi concentration camps; adding that 
Hitler could not be held personally responsible for any suffering 
experienced by the Jews of Europe. Hayward later apologized for the thesis, 
expressing remorse over the "mistakes I made as an inexperienced student", 
adding that he was "inexperienced in the historian's craft and knew 
relatively little about the Holocaust and its complex historiography."

David Irving's 'Focal Point Publications' official website - Holocaust 
victims website