Testimony of
Kevin MacDonald in the Matter of David Irving vs.
Deborah Lipstadt NAME AND AFFILIATION: Kevin MacDonald,
Professor of Psychology at California State
University-Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 90840-0901
USA ACADEMIC BACKGROUND: I have a Ph. D. in
Biobehavioral Sciences from the University of
Connecticut. I have published six books (including
two edited books) and over 30 academic papers in
the area of evolutionary approaches to human
behavior, particularly in the field of evolutionary
psychology and the application of evolutionary
psychology to understanding ethnic conflict in
history (e.g., Social and Personality Development:
An Evolutionary Synthesis. New York: Plenum, 1988).
I am editor of the journal Population and
Environment, published by Human Sciences Press, a
division of Kluwer Academic Publishers. This
journal deals with issues related to the interface
between environmental issues and human population,
including issues of ethnic conflict. I am also
Secretary/Archivist and member of the Executive
Board of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society,
the main academic organisation dealing with the
application of evolutionary biology to the study of
human affairs. RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS: Since the early
1980s I undertook to extend the evolutionary
paradigm to the study of broad social phenomena
such as group strategies in Ancient Greece and
socially imposed monogamy in ancient Rome and in
Europe beginning in the Middle Ages. This led to
the study of the Catholic Church as a major
institution of social control, and to the study of
Judaism as a religious group strategy. The Judaism
project has resulted in three books: - KEVIN MACDONALD: A People That Shall
Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary
Strategy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994; 302
pp.) delineates key aspects of Judaism within an
evolutionary theory of groups. The basic
proposal is that Judaism can be interpreted as a
set of ideological structures and behaviours
that have resulted in the following features:
(1) the segregation of the Jewish gene pool from
surrounding gentile societies; (2) resource and
reproductive competition with gentile host
societies; (3) high levels of within-group
co-operation and altruism among Jews; and (4)
eugenic efforts directed at producing high
intelligence, high investment parenting, and
commitment to group, rather than individual,
goals.
- KEVIN MACDONALD: Separation and Its
Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of
Anti-Semitism (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998;
325 pp.) develops an evolutionary theory of
anti-Semitism. The basic thesis is that Judaism
must be conceptualised as a group strategy
characterised by cultural and genetic
segregation from gentile societies combined with
resource competition and conflicts of interest
with segments of gentile societies. This
cultural and genetic separatism combined with
resource competition and other conflicts of
interest tend to result in division and hatred
within the society. A major theme of this volume
is that intellectual defences of Judaism and of
Jewish theories of anti-Semitism have throughout
its history played a critical role in
maintaining Judaism as a group evolutionary
strategy. The book discusses tactics Jewish
groups have used over the centuries to combat
anti-Semitism. Particularly important are
discussions of Jewish self-interest, deception,
and self-deception in the areas of Jewish
historiography, Jewish personal identity, and
Jewish conceptualisations of their in-group and
its relations with outgrips.
- KEVIN MACDONALD: The Culture of Critique:
An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement
in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political
Movements (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998; 376
pp.) Ethnic conflict is a recurrent theme
throughout the first two volumes, and that theme
again takes centre stage in this work. However,
whereas in the previous works ethnic conflict
consisted mainly of recounting the oftentimes
bloody dynamics of Jewish-gentile conflict over
the broad expanse of historical time, the focus
here shifts to a single century and to several
very influential intellectual and political
movements that have been spearheaded by people
who strongly identified as Jews and who viewed
their involvement in these movements as serving
Jewish interests. Individual chapters discuss
the Basin school of anthropology,
psychoanalysis, leftist political ideology and
behavior, the Frankfurt School of Social
Research, and the New York Intellectuals. An
important thesis is that all of these movements
may be seen as attempts to alter Western
societies in a manner that would end
anti-Semitism and provide for Jewish group
continuity either in an overt or in a
seem-cryptic manner.
TRIAL TESTIMONY: DAVID IRVING IN THE CONTEXT
OF JEWISH INTELLECTUAL AND POLITICAL
ACTIVISM I am not a historian. Although the history of
Judaism is important to my work, I can offer no
expert opinion on the work of David Irving except
to the extent that I have noted that his work has
been favourably reviewed by a considerable number
of academic experts on World War II, including
Gordon Craig, A.J.P. Taylor, and Hugh
Trevor-Roper I believe that my background as an evolutionary
psychologist and my research into Jewish-gentile
relations equips me to describe to the court some
competitive features of those relations.
Anti-Jewish tactics are widely known, and it is
widely accepted that active anti-Semites have and
still do exist. But competitive behavior on the
part of Jewish organisations is not as widely
known. In my research I have reviewed the writings
and activities of both Jews and their opponents,
and I think I can help place the actions of Dr.
Lipstadt and some Jewish organisations against Mr.
Irving into a wider context. The main point of my testimony is that the
attacks made on David Irving by Deborah Lipstadt
and Jewish organisations such as the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) should be viewed in
the long-term context of Jewish-gentile
interactions. As indicated by the summaries of my
books, my training as an evolutionist as well as
the evidence compiled by historians leads me to
conceptualise Judaism as self-interested groups
whose interests often conflict with segments of the
gentile community. Anti-Jewish attitudes and
behavior have been a pervasive feature of the
Jewish experience since the beginnings of the
Diaspora well over 2000 years ago. While
anti-Jewish attitudes and behavior have undoubtedly
often been coloured by myths and fantasies about
Jews, there is a great deal of anti-Jewish writing
that reflects the reality of between-group
competition as expected by an evolutionist.
Particularly important have been the themes of
separatism: (1) Jewish groups have typically
existed as recognisably distinct groups and have
been unwilling to assimilate either culturally
or via marriage;(2) the theme of economic, political, and
cultural domination; (3) the theme of disloyalty. Because anti-Jewish attitudes and behavior have
been such a common response to Jews as a Diaspora
group, Jewish groups have developed a wide variety
of strategies to cope with their enemies.
Separation and Its Discontents discusses a great
many of these strategies, including a very long
history of apologia dating to the ancient world. In
the last century there have been a great many
intellectual activities, most notably many examples
of Jewish historiography which present Jews and
Judaism in a positive light and their enemies in a
negative light, often with little regard for
historical accuracy. Most importantly for the
situation of David Irving, Jewish groups have
engaged in a wide range of political activities to
further their interests. In general, Jews have been
active agents rather than passive martyrs; they
have been highly flexible strategizers in the
political arena. The effectiveness of Jewish
strategizing has been facilitated by several key
features of Judaism as group evolutionary
strategy-particularly that the IQ of Ashkenazi Jews
is at least one standard deviation above the
Caucasian mean. In all historical eras, Jews as a
group have been highly organised, highly
intelligent, and politically astute, and they have
been able to command a high level of financial,
political, and intellectual resources in pursuing
their group goals. For example, Jews engaged in a very wide range
of activities to combat anti-Semitism in Germany in
the period from 1870 to 1914, including the
formation of self-defence committees, lobbying the
government, utilising and influencing the legal
system (e.g., taking advantage of libel and slander
laws to force anti-Jewish organisations into
bankruptcy), writing apologias and tracts for
distribution to the masses of gentile Germans, and
funding organisations opposed to anti-Semitism
composed mainly of sympathetic gentiles. Jewish
organisations commissioned writings in opposition
to "scientific anti-Semitism," as exemplified by
academically respectable publications that
portrayed Judaism in negative terms. Academic works
were monitored for such material, and Jewish
organisations sometimes succeeded in banning
offending books and getting publishers to alter
offensive passages. The result was to render such
ideas academically and intellectually disreputable
(Levy, 1975; Raging, 1980). Jewish organisations have used their power to
make the discussion of Jewish interests off limits.
Individuals who have made remarks critical of Jews
have been forced to make public apologies and
suffered professional difficulties as a result.
Quite often the opinions in question are quite
reasonable-statements that are empirically
verifiable and the sort of thing that might be said
about other groups or members of other groups. The main point of my testimony is to discuss Mr.
Irving's difficulties which he argues have been
brought about by Jewish organisations and with the
defendant, Deborah Lipstadt who has contributed to
the effort to ban Mr. Irving from publishing his
work with reputable publishers. This is a major
part of Irving's complaint. As evidence I call your
attention to Lipstadt's comments in The Washington
Post of April 3, 1996 in which she is quoted as
stating that "In the Passover Hagadah, it says in
every generation there are those who rise up to
destroy us. David Irving is not physically
destroying us, but is trying to destroy the memory
of those who have already perished at the hands of
tyrants." "They say they don't publish reputations,
they publish books. . . . But would they publish a
book by Jeffrey Dahmer on man-boy relationships? Of
course the reputation of the author counts. And no
legitimate historian takes David Irving's work
seriously." These comments were made in reaction to the St.
Martin's Press rescinding publication of Irving's
book, Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, and
were clearly intended to support that decision. The
decision to sue Lipstadt came only after St.
Martin's Press had rescinded publication of the
book, and only after Lipstadt's public support for
that decision (see Guttenplan (2000, 53). Moreover, as the plaintiff has noted in his
statement, the intense pressure brought to bear by
certain Jewish groups on Mr. Irving goes far beyond
preventing publishers from publishing his work. Mr.
Irving has been prevented from travelling to
certain countries, his speaking engagements have
been disrupted and cancelled, his contracts with
other publishers have been voided, and he has been
subjected to physical intimidation. While David Irving has to my knowledge been a
target of these organisations far more than any
other author, Jewish organisations in the U. S.,
and particularly the ADL have also attempted to
censor books critical of Israel and the pro-Israel
lobby in the U.S. These books include Paul
Findley's They Dare to Speak Out (Wilcox, 1996, 82)
dealing with the activities of the pro-Israel lobby
in the U. S., Victor Ostrovsky's By Way of
Deception which deals with Israeli intelligence
operations, including recruitment of Jews in
foreign lands to act as spies for Israel, and
Assault on the Liberty by James Ennes on the role
of Israel in the attack on the USS Liberty during
the 1967 war (recounted in They Dare to Speak Out
by Paul Findley). For example, an ADL official
claimed that Findley's book "is a work of Holocaust
revisionism seeking to spread the claim that the
Nazi slaughter of Jews was a hoax" although it made
no such claim (Wilcox, 1996, 82). The ADL is also
actively engaged in attempting to censor the
Internet (Boston Globe, 3/25/99). Moreover, the ADL
has flouted the law by engaging in "espionage,
disinformation and destabilisation operations, not
only against neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen, but
against leftist and progressive groups as well"
(Laird Wilcox; Crying Wolf: Hate Crime Hoaxes in
America, 1996, 7). These activities include illegal
penetration of confidential police files in San
Francisco and elsewhere. This story broke in early
1993. Another example of behavior by Jewish
organisations that tends to chill free expression
involved the Canadian teacher Luba Fedorkiw.
Running for the Canadian Parliament in 1984, she
"discovered to her utter amazement that B'nai
B'rith Canada . . . had circulated an internal memo
which accused her of 'Jew-baiting!' " (Wilcox,
1996, 81-82). The allegation was repeated in the
Winnipeg Sun along with the assertion that she was
being investigated by B'nai B'rith on suspicion of
anti-Semitism. The resulting defamation cost her
the election to David Orlikow and subjected her to
malicious harassment. According to Ms. Fedorkiw,
when the investigation was publicised, she received
obscene and harassing telephone calls, a swastika
was spray-painted on her campaign office and a
number of her political supporters withdrew their
support. She sued for libel and won a $400,000
judgement on the basis that it was false that she
had said that her opponent was "controlled by the
Jews." In my book, Separation and Its Discontents:
Toward an Evolutionary Analysis of Anti-Semitism I
discuss several other examples of Jewish activism
aimed at suppressing criticism of Jews, Judaism, or
Israel. Media critic William Cash (1994), writing
for the British magazine The Spectator, described
the Jewish media elite as "culturally nihilist,"
suggesting that he believed Jewish media influence
reflects Jewish lack of concern for traditional
cultural values. Kevin Myers, a columnist for the
British Sunday Telegraph (January 5, 1997) wrote
that "we should really be able to discuss Jews and
their Jewishness, their virtues or their vices, as
one can any other identifiable group, without being
called anti-Semitic. Frankness does not feed
anti-Semitism; secrecy, however, does. The silence
of sympathetic discretion can easily be
misunderstood as a conspiracy. It is time to be
frank about Jews." MYERS goes on to note that The
Spectator was accused of anti-Semitism when it
published the article by William Cash (1994)
referred to above. MYERS emphasised the point that
Cash's offence was that he had written that the
cultural leaders of the United States were Jews
whose Jewishness remained beyond public
discussion. Cash stated that there is a double standard in
which a Jewish writer like Neal Gabler is able to
refer to a "Jewish cabal" while his own use of the
phrase is described as anti-Semitic. He also noted
that while movies regularly portray negative
stereotypes of other ethnic groups, Cash's
description of Jews as "fiercely competitive" was
regarded as anti-Semitic. As another example, actor
Marlon Brando repeated statements originally made
in 1979 on a nationally televised interview program
to the effect that "Hollywood is run by Jews. It's
owned by Jews." The focus of the complaint was that
Hollywood regularly portrays negative stereotypes
of other ethnic groups but not of Jews. Brando's
remarks were viewed as anti-Semitic by the
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) and
the Jewish Defence League (Los Angeles Times, April
9, 1996, F4). These claims regarding Hollywood are empirically
verifiable claims, but the response of major Jewish
organisations has been to label the claims
"anti-Semitic" and attempt to ruin the careers of
the people involved. Both Cash and Brando have
apologized for their remarks and, as part of their
apologies, visited the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in
Los Angeles (Forward, April 26, 1996). (Cash's
apology occurred some two years after publication
of his remarks.) The Forward article suggests that
Cash has had trouble publishing his work in the
wake of the incident. Moreover, the same issue of
Forward reported that the publisher of Cash's
comments, Dominic Lawson, editor of the London
Spectator, was prevented from publishing an article
on the birth of his Down Syndrome daughter in The
New Republic when Martin Peretz, the owner, and
Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor, complained
about Lawson's publishing Cash's article. There is
abundant evidence that Peretz strongly identifies
as a Jew that he has an unabashed policy of
slanting his journal toward positions favorable to
Israel. Similarly, Noam Chomsky, the famous MIT
linguist, describes his experience with the
ADL: In the United States a rather effective
system of intimidation has been developed to
silence critique. . . . Take the Anti-Defamation
League. . . . It's actually an organisation
devoted to trying to defame and intimidate and
silence people who criticise current Israeli
policies, whatever they may be. For example, I
myself, through a leak in the new England office
of the Anti-Defamation League, was able to
obtain a copy of my file there. It's 150 pages,
just like an FBI file, [consisting of]
interoffice memos warning that I'm going to show
up here and there, surveillance of talks that I
give, comments and alleged transcripts of talks
. . . [T]his material has been
circulated [and] . . . would be sent to
some local group which would use it to extract
defamatory material which would then be
circulated, usually in unsigned pamphlets
outside the place where I'd be speaking. . . .
If there's any comment in the press which they
regard as insufficiently subservient to the
party line, there'll be a flood of letters,
delegations, protests, threats to withdraw
advertising, etc. The politicians of course are
directly subjected to this, and they are also
subjected to substantial financial penalties if
they don't go along. . . . This totally
one-sided pressure and this, by now, very
effective system of vilification, lying,
defamation, and judicious use of funds in the
political system . . . has created a highly
biased approach to the whole matter. (Chomsky
1988, 642-3) Consider also the comments of columnist Joseph
Sobran, who was forced out of his position as
columnist at National Review for remarks critical
of Israel: The full story of [Pat Buchanan's
1996 presidential] campaign is impossible to
tell as long as it's taboo to discuss Jewish
interests as freely as we discuss those of the
Christian Right. Talking about American politics
without mentioning the Jews is a little like
talking about the NBA without mentioning the
Chicago Bulls. Not that the Jews are
all-powerful, let alone all bad. But they are
successful, and therefore powerful enough: and
their power is unique in being off-limits to
normal criticism even when it's highly visible.
They themselves behave as if their success were
a guilty secret, and they panic, and resort to
accusations, as soon as the subject is raised.
Jewish control of the major media in the media
age makes the enforced silence both paradoxical
and paralysing. Survival in public life requires
that you know all about it, but never refer to
it. A hypocritical etiquette forces us to
pretend that the Jews are powerless victims; and
if you don't respect their victimhood, they'll
destroy you. It's a phenomenal display not of
wickedness, really, but of fierce ethnocentrism,
a sort of furtive racial superpatriotism.
(Sobran 1996, 3).
DEBORAH LIPSTADT AS A JEWISH ACTIVIST I regard Deborah Lipstadt more as an ethnic
activist than a scholar. It is highly significant
that Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust was
written with extensive aid from various Jewish
activist organisations, including the ADL.
Lipstadt's book was commissioned and published by
The Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the
Study of Antisemitism of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem. In her acknowledgements, she credits the
research department of the ADL, the Simon
Wiesenthal Centre, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum, the Institute for Jewish Affairs (London),
the Canadian Jewish Congress, and the American
Jewish Committee-all activist organisations. Lipstadt is the Chair of the Institute for
Jewish Studies at Emory University. Historian Jacob
Katz finds that academic departments of Jewish
studies are often linked to Jewish nationalism:
"The inhibitions of traditionalism, on the one
hand, and a tendency toward apologetics, on the
other, can function as deterrents to scholarly
objectivity" (p. 84). The work of Jewish historians
exhibits "a defensiveness that continues to haunt
so much of contemporary Jewish activity" (1986,
85). Similarly the pre-eminent scholar of the
Jewish religion, Jacob Neusner, notes that
"scholars drawn to the subject by ethnic
affiliation-Jews studying and teaching Jewish
things to Jews- turn themselves into ethnic
cheer-leaders. The Jewish Studies classroom is a
place where Jews tell Jews why they should be
Jewish (stressing "the Holocaust" as a powerful
reason) or rehearse the self-evident virtue of
being Jewish." (Times Literary Supplement, March 5,
1999). Perhaps the best indication of Lipstadt's Jewish
activism is that she has served as Senior Editorial
Contributor at the Jewish Spectator, a Jewish
publication for conservative, religiously observant
Jews. Her column, Tomer Devorah (Hebrew: Under
Deborah's Palm Tree), appears in every issue and
touches on a wide range of Jewish issues, including
anti-Semitism, relations among Jews, and
interpreting religious holidays. In her column she
has advocated greater understanding and usage of
Hebrew to promote Jewish identification, and, like
many Jewish ethnic activists, she is strongly
opposed to intermarriage. "We must say to young
people 'intermarriage is something that poses a
dire threat to the future of the Jewish
community.'" Lipstadt writes that Conservative
Rabbi Jack Moline was "very brave" for saying that
number one on a list of ten things Jewish parents
should say to their children is "I expect you to
marry a Jew." She suggests a number of strategies
to prevent intermarriage, including trips to Israel
for teenagers and subsidising tuition at Jewish day
schools (Jewish Spectator, [Fall, 1991],
63). In his recent book, The Holocaust in American
Life, Peter Novick clearly thinks of Lipstadt as an
activist, although not as extreme as some. He
repeatedly cites her as an example of a Holocaust
propagandiser. He notes that in her book Beyond
Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the
Holocaust 1933-1945, Lipstadt says Allied Policy
"bordered on complicity" motivated by "deep
antipathy" toward "contemptible Jews." Novick says
that while there is no scholarly consensus on the
subject, "most professional historians agree that
"the comfortable morality tale . . . is simply bad
history: estimates of the number of those who might
have been saved have been greatly inflated, and the
moralistic version ignores real constraints at the
time" (Novick, 1999, 48). Novick characterises
Lipstadt as attributing the failure of the press to
emphasise Jewish suffering as motivated by "wilful
blindness, the result of inexcusable ignorance-or
malice" (p. 65) despite the fact that the
concentration camp survivors encountered by Western
journalists (Dachau, Buchenwald) were 80%
non-Jewish. Lipstadt is described as an implacable
pursuer of Nazi war criminals, stating that she
would "prosecute them if they had to be wheeled
into the courtroom on a stretcher" (p. 229). In a
discussion of the well-recognized unreliability of
eye-witness testimony, Novick writes: "When
evidence emerged that one Holocaust memoir, highly
praised for its authenticity, might have been
completely invented, Deborah Lipstadt, who used the
memoir in her teaching of the Holocaust,
acknowledged that if this turned out to be the
case, it 'might complicate matters somewhat,' but
insisted that it would still be 'powerful as a
novel.' " Truth is less important than the
effectiveness of the message. The intrusion of ethnocentrism into historical
scholarship is a well-recognized problem in Jewish
historiography, discussed at length in Separation
and Its Discontents. Historians such as Jacob Katz
(1986) and Albert Lindemann (1997) have noted that
this type of behavior is commonplace in Jewish
historiography. A central theme of Katz's analysis
- massively corroborated by Albert Lindemann's
recent work, Esau's Tears-is that historians of
Judaism have often falsely portrayed the beliefs of
gentiles as irrational fantasies while portraying
the behavior of Jews as irrelevant to
anti-Semitism. To quote the well-known political
scientist, Michael Walzer: "Living so long in exile
and so often in danger, we have cultivated a
defensive and apologetic account, a censored story,
of Jewish religion and culture" (Walzer 1994,
6). The salient point for me is that Jewish
historians who have been reasonably accused of
bringing an ethnocentric bias to their writing
nevertheless are able to publish their work with
prestigious mainstream academic and commercial
publishers, and they often obtain jobs at
prestigious academic institutions. A good example
is Daniel Goldhagen. In his written submission to
the court on behalf of Deborah Lipstadt, historian
Richard Evans, describes Goldhagen's Hitler's
Willing Executioners, as a book which argues "in a
crude and dogmatic fashion that virtually all
Germans had been murderous anti-Semites since the
Middle Ages, had been longing to exterminate the
Jews for decades before Hitler came to power, and
actively enjoyed participating in the extermination
when it began. The book has since been exposed as a
tissue of misrepresentation and misinterpretation,
written in shocking ignorance of the huge
historical literature on the topic and making
numerous elementary mistakes in its interpretation
of the documents." These are exactly the types of accusations
levelled by Lipstadt at Irving. Yet Goldhagen
maintains a position at Harvard university; he is
lionised in many quarters and his work has been
massively promoted in the media while his critics
have come under pressure from Jewish activist
organisations (Guttenplan, 2000). Regarding the
latter, in an interview in the German magazine Der
Spiegel, historian Ruth Bettina Birn comments on
the "unexampled campaign since 1995 to promote the
Goldhagen book. A literary first effort becomes a
world sensation, and immediately the newspapers
start hinting that there's a Harvard professorship
waiting for the views his book propagates." She
also comments on "the attempts to stifle the
criticism voiced by me and [her co-author,
Norman] Finkelstein," including efforts to
pressure her publisher to rescind publication of a
book critical of Goldhagen. The contrast between
the treatment of Goldhagen and the persecution of
David Irving speaks volumes. Because I am not a historian, I am reluctant to
pass judgement on the competence and integrity of
Mr. Irving as a historian. However, as indicated by
my written statement to the court, I have taken
notice of the fact that some well-known historians
have praised his work and have been dismayed at the
efforts to censor him-that it is simply false that,
as Lipstadt claims, "no legitimate historian takes
David Irving's work seriously." Indeed, based on my
own reading of Irving, I would venture the opinion
that whatever the faults of books like Goebbels:
Mastermind of the Third Reich or Hitler's War in
dealing with certain issues, such as the role of
Hitler in the Holocaust, there is no question in my
mind that any student of World War II would benefit
from reading it-that, quite simply, it is an
indispensable resource for scholars. What I find deeply distressing as a scholar is
that the pressure on St. Martin's Press exerted by
Lipstadt and Jewish organisations like the ADL
occurred independently of the content of the
volume. The same Washington Post article referred
to earlier in quoting Lipstadt's support for the
actions of St. Martin's Press noted that several
other companies had rejected the manuscript without
having read it. The effort to pressure St. Martin's
press was spearheaded by Jewish ethnic activist
organisations and by newspaper columnists, such as
Frank Rich of the New York Times, who are not
professional historians, and by people like Deborah
Lipstadt who do not have the expertise to evaluate
a manuscript on Goebbels. In other words, the
effort occurred independently of the analytic
content of the manuscript and was therefore an
illegitimate intrusion on free speech. Therefore,
even if the court comes to believe that the
scholarly objections raised, for example, in
Richard Evans's report are valid, the fact remains
that this book was rescinded because of who Irving
is-because his ideology conflicts with that of some
Jewish activist organisations, not because of its
scholarship. I find that utterly appalling. Besides promoting Goldhagen and attempting to
censor his opponents, the ADL has also condemned
responsible scholarship that deviates from its
version of the Holocaust. The ADL condemned Hannah
Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem as an "evil book",
presumably because, as Peter Novick (1999, 137)
notes, her depiction of Eichmann "could be read as
trivialising the Israeli accomplishment and
undermining the claim that he was an appropriate
symbol of eternal anti-Semitism." Similarly, the
ADL included Arno Mayor, author of Why Did the
Heavens Not Darken as a "Hitler apologist" because
of his view that Hitler was motivated more by
anti-Bolshevism than anti-Semitism. The ADL claimed
that Mayor's was an example of "legitimate
scholarship which relativises the genocide of the
Jews." Clearly Holocaust scholarship has been
politicised to the point that there are received
dogmas whose truth is jealously defended by Jewish
activist organisations.
DEBORAH LIPSTADT AND THE UNIQUENESS OF THE
HOLOCAUST One such politicised dogma is that the Holocaust
is unique: Civil Judaism's belief in the
Holocaust's uniqueness as being ultimately
significant per se . . . thus epitomises the
type of belief for which religious faith is both
famous and infamous-a dogma. And like all such
dogmatic beliefs, the more it is challenged, the
fiercer the faithful become in its defence. For
them, the first of the Ten Commandments has been
revised: "The Holocaust is a jealous God; thou
shalt draw no parallels to it" (Goldberg 1995,
48; inner quote from Lopate [1989, 56
]). The most commonly expressed grievance was the
use of the words "Holocaust" and "genocide" to
describe other catastrophes. This sense of
grievance was rooted in the conviction, axiomatic
in at least "official" Jewish discourse, that the
Holocaust was unique. Since Jews recognized the
Holocaust's uniqueness-that it was "incomparable,"
beyond any analogy-they had no occasion to compete
with others; there could be no contest over the
incontestable. (Novick 1999, 195) As Novick notes (1999, 196), one can always find
ways in which any historical event is unique.
However, in Lipstadt's eyes, any comparison of the
Holocaust with other genocidal actions is not only
factually wrong but also morally impermissible and
therefore the appropriate target of censorship.
Lipstadt clearly places herself among those who
would not merely criticise but censor scholarship
that places the Holocaust in a comparative
framework-i.e., scholarship that questions the
uniqueness of the Holocaust (Novick, 1999, 259).
Novick (1999, 330n.107) quotes Lipstadt as follows:
Denial of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is "far
more insidious than outright denial. It nurtures
and is nurtured by Holocaust-denial." In Denying
the Holocaust, Lipstadt castigates Ernst Nolte and
other historians who have "compared the Holocaust
to a variety of other twentieth-century outrages,
including the Armenian massacres that began in
1915, Stalin's gulags, U.S. policies in Vietnam,
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and the Pol
Pot atrocities in the former Kampuchea" (Lipstadt,
1993, p. 211). Lipstadt calls these "attempts to
create such immoral equivalencies." In the section
on the uniqueness of the Holocaust, she cites
approvingly the claim that "the Nazis' annihilation
of the Jews . . . was 'a gratuitous [i.e.,
without cause or justification] act carried out
by a prosperous, advanced industrial nation at the
height of its power'" (p. 212). The inner quote is
from Richard Evans' In Hitler's Shadow (p. 87).
(Evans is an expert witness for the defence in this
case.) While there are different meanings one might
attribute to this, I take it as an attempt to make
the actions of the Nazis completely independent of
the behavior of Jews. In my view, such a position
is untenable and is part of a common tendency among
Jewish historians of Judaism to ignore, minimise,
or rationalise the role of Jewish behavior in
producing anti-Semitism. This is a major theme of
Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an
Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism. From my perspective as an evolutionist, bloody
and violent ethnic conflict has been a recurrent
theme throughout history. The attempt to say it is
unique is an attempt to remove the Holocaust from
the sphere of scholarly research, interpretation
and debate and move into the realm of religious
dogma, much as the resurrection of Jesus is an
article of faith for much or Christianity. By
accepting the type of censorship promoted by
Lipstadt's writings we are literally entering a new
period of the Inquisition wherein religious dogma
rather than open scientific debate is the criterion
of truth. Peter Novick has a great deal of interesting
material on the political campaign for the
uniqueness of the Holocaust. In the same discussion
where he comments on Lipstadt's statements on the
uniqueness of the Holocaust, he notes Elie Wiesel's
idea of Holocaust "as a sacred mystery, whose
secrets were confined to a priesthood of survivors.
In a diffuse way, however, the assertion that the
Holocaust was a holy event that resisted profane
representation, that it was uniquely inaccessible
to explanation or understanding, that survivors had
privileged interpretive authority-all these themes
continued to resonate." (i.e., in recent years)
(Novick, 1999, 211-212). Novick also describes a massive
campaign to make the Holocaust a specifically
Jewish event and to downplay the victim status
of other groups. Speaking of 11 million victims
was clearly unacceptable to [Elie]
Wiesel and others for whom the "big truth" about
the Holocaust was its Jewish specificity. They
responded to the expansion of the victims of the
Holocaust to eleven million the way devout
Christians would respond to the expansion of the
victims of the Crucifixion to three-the Son of
God and two thieves. Wiesel's forces mobilised,
both inside and outside the Holocaust Council,
to ensure that, despite the executive order,
their definition would prevail. Though Jewish
survivors of the Holocaust had no role in the
initiative that created the museum, they came,
under the leadership of Wiesel, to dominate the
council-morally, if not numerically. When one
survivor, Sigmund Strochlitz, was sworn in as a
council member, he announced that it was
"unreasonable and inappropriate to ask survivors
to share the term Holocaust . . . to equate our
suffering . . . with others." At one council
meeting, another survivor, Kalman Sultanik, was
asked whether Daniel Trocme, murdered at
Maidanek for rescuing Jews and honoured at Yad
Vashem as a Righteous Gentile, could be
remembered in the museum's Hall of Remembrance.
"No," said Sultanik, because "he didn't die as a
Jew. . . . The six million Jews . . . died
differently." (Novick 1999, 219) Activists insisted on the "incomprehensibility
and inexplicability of the Holocaust" (Novick 1999,
178). "Even many observant Jews are often willing
to discuss the founding myths of Judaism
naturalistically-subject them to rational,
scholarly analysis. But they're unwilling to adopt
this mode of thought when it comes to the
'inexplicable mystery' of the Holocaust, where
rational analysis is seen as inappropriate or
sacrilegious" (p. 200). Elie Wiesel "sees the
Holocaust as 'equal to the revelation at Sinai' in
its religious significance; attempts to
'desanctify' or 'demystify' the Holocaust are, he
says, a subtle form of anti-Semitism" (Novick 1999,
201). A 1998 survey found that "remembrance of the
Holocaust" was listed as "extremely important" or
"very important" to Jewish identity-far more often
than anything else, such as synagogue attendance,
travel to Israel, etc. Reflecting this insistence on the uniqueness of
the Holocaust, Jewish organisations and Israeli
diplomats co-operated to block the U.S. Congress
from commemorating Armenian genocide. "Since Jews
recognized the Holocaust's uniqueness-that it was
'incomparable,' beyond any analogy-they had no
occasion to compete with others; there could be no
contest over the incontestable" (p. 195). Abraham
Foxman, head of the ADL, stated the Holocaust is
"not simply one example of genocide but a near
successful attempt on the life of God's chosen
children and, thus, on God himself" (p. 199). Novick has also shown how the Holocaust
successfully serves Jewish political interests. The
Holocaust was originally promoted to rally support
for Israel following the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli
wars; "Jewish organisations . . .
[portrayed] Israel's difficulties as
stemming from the world's having forgotten the
Holocaust. The Holocaust framework allowed one to
put aside as irrelevant any legitimate ground for
criticizing Israel, to avoid even considering the
possibility that the rights and wrongs were
complex" (p. 155). As the threat to Israel
subsided, the Holocaust was promoted as the main
source of Jewish identity and in the effort to
combat assimilation and intermarriage among Jews.
During this period, the Holocaust was also promoted
among gentiles as an antidote to anti-Semitism. In
recent years this has involved a large scale
educational effort (including mandated courses in
the public schools of several states) spearheaded
by Jewish organisations and manned by thousands of
Holocaust professionals aimed at conveying the
lesson that "tolerance and diversity [are]
good; hate [is] bad, the overall rubric
[is] 'man's inhumanity to man'" (pp.
258-259). The Holocaust has thus become an
instrument of Jewish ethnic interests as a symbol
intended to create moral revulsion at violence
directed at minority ethnic groups-prototypically
the Jews. |
