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Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
ALBERT
DOYLE writes
about the Blumenthal-Hitchens feud on Monday, February 22,
1999 :
THE wheel within the wheel here is the fact that the ADL is running away from the fight. They are at pains to disclaim any notion that Hitchens is a "denier". Why? If he indeed said the things that Epstein says he said, then he is indeed a "denier" par excellance, far greater than, say, David Irving, that famous "anti-semite".
Why are they running from the fight? I say that it is because they fear what he might do if provoked. Hitchens may be a maverick in many senses but he is (or has been until now) a member of the inside literary cogniscenti of what passes for the literary establishment...and he has a very mean and skilful pen. No, they don't mind pissing on David Irving (who is not nasty), but they really fear Hitchens. "Yella bellies", as we say here.
Though I disagree with many things he has done (like insulting Mother Theresa at her funeral) I share your view of his essential integrity. And I never trust a man who doesn't drink.
Albert Doyle
David Irving notes:
WHEN Christopher Hitchens came out on my side against St Martins Press and the ADL in a famous Vanity Fair article in June 1996, Abraham Foxman wrote a vicious letter attacking both of us. I replied with a reader's letter backed by the threat of a writ. Vanity Fair asked if they might remove my backing for Hitchens, as he was taking other steps against Foxman. (They published my letter). -- David Irving
For further proof that Hitchens has an independent mind, see his article about Monica Lewinsky: Weapon of mass distraction published by The London Evening Standard in Dec. 1998, and by Vanity Fair March 1999.
David Irving