A September 12, 1996 dialogue between journalist Rich Graves and anti-revisionist Webmaster Jamie McCarthy about the work of David Irving:- |
Subject: David Irving bashes Internet for telling the truth Date: On Thursday, September 12, 1996. Organization: Stanford University
RICH GRAVES wrote: "While I'm sure Mr. Irving could not tell a URL from a college degree, neither of which he possesses, he has a Bachelor's in History if I'm not mistaken." On Thursday, September 12, 1996, JAMIE MCCARTHY wrote: "You are mistaken. Reset your ZOG [sarcastic: "Zionist Occupation Government"] decoder ring. In Mr. Irving's response to Shallit, he acknowledges that he has no degree. In the introduction to his book Goebbels, he says he studied at the University of London, then went to work in a factory in Germany, where he learned German. He doesn't say what position he held. I'll get the exact text from his book when I go home. RICH GRAVES wrote: "Mr. Irving accurately responds that the same can be said for Winston S. Churchill, Thomas Babington Macaulay (The History of England), and the Gibbon who wrote The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire, etc. Would you denigrate them as 'historians' too?" JAMIE MCCARTHY wrote: "I don't believe that any of them preceded their books with IMO misleading statements about the colleges they had attended. Mr. Irving's intent seems to be to give the impression that he got an undergraduate degree from the first college, then went to the second for graduate studies. RICH GRAVES wrote: "Of course Mr. Irving's intimate familiarity with the Nazi period has never been denied, and he has contributed greatly to the historical record -- he is right to criticize professional historians for being so loath to recognize him as a source for the Eichmann papers and transcriptions of Goebbels' handwriting. Thanks to his biases, Mr. Irving has contacts that "establishment" historians would never be able to get. At his appearance in Oakland, Mr. Irving spoke of sharing more than one bottle of wine at 2:00 in the morning with Hitler's personal photographer [Walter Frentz] and his wife (sorry, don't have his book in front of me -- he's credited in the prologue and in the captions to most of the photos of the Reich leadership). Irving told how the photographer, rather drunk, had opened up to Irving about how he had witnessed a mass shooting on the Eastern Front. He told how the man's wife said, "But I've never heard that before. You can't tell me that's what you saw. Women and children? Tell me it's not true." And the man fell silent. JAMIE MCCARTHY wrote: "I think it is highly unlikely that a professional historian without Mr. Irving's biases would have been able or willing to spend so much time with such a man -- partying into the wee hours of the morning, essentially -- and to tell such an illuminating anecdote." RICH GRAVES wrote: "Irving's familiarity with the Nazi period is a credit to history. It is his dishonesty in deliberately misrepresenting both himself and the Nazi period that is at issue. Some people point to Mr. Irving's lack of academic credentials as evidence that he doesn't know what he's talking about. I disagree. He understands exactly what he's talking about, and yet he continues to make excuses for it. I think that's far worse." JAMIE MCCARTHY wrote: "Mr. Irving, in the context of describing his lifelong dedication to studying the Nazi era in a sympathetic light, and his efforts to get himself taken seriously, suggested, presumably without intended irony, that Jamie McCarthy, a Macintosh and web programmer who webmasters for the Nizkor Project part-time on a volunteer basis, should "get over his obsession and find something better to do with his life." Hey, people have been telling me to "find something to do with my life" since I was in the 3rd grade. If any readers happen to bump into Mr. Irving, would they kindly tell him I don't need any advice at present, and would he please answer my latest letter in print rather than talking about me behind my back?" |
RICH GRAVES wrote: "In fairness to Mr. Irving, this was a response to a direct question from me; he wasn't really talking behind your back, because he knew I was a friend of yours. I don't recall the exact words, but it went something like: Rich [Graves]: You spoke of the vitriol and lies on the Internet many times, but from where I sit, Nizkor looks pretty reasonable. You say you don't bother to respond to the garbage online, but I've read your response to Shallit on the IHR site, and you've responded to Jamie's letters.  Richard
Graves, April 7, 1997 Return to Index: |
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