Let him live and die in the social and financial penury he so richly deserves. -- Journalist Mitchell Symons of The Daily Express, London, writing about Mr Irviong

Leader

No reasoning with Odious Irving

By Mitchell Symons

DAVID IRVING poses as a historian but he is an antisemitic polemicist. He is embarking on a lecture tour of Britain in an attempt to recoup some of the money he lost bringing a libel action against Deborah Lipstadt, who had accused him of denying the Holocaust.

He claims: "Freedom of speech is under severe threat at the moment and I think it's important for me to get out and speak to people directly."

David Irving comments: FIRST, my apologies for the belated posting of this Express article. I belong to the many millions, indeed billions, of people who do not read or subscribe to The Daily Express, whose decline since the days of the great Lord Beaverbrook needs no comment here. We publish it nonetheless.     Many readers compliment us on our policy of posting all relevant news clippings, both the flattering and the fulsome, and those corrupted with un-Christian hatred. This is one of the features, we like to think, that has already raised this website to one of the top 50,000 in the world. We now have more daily visitors than the website of the truly odious and hatred-filled Anti-Defamation League (annual budget: $60m).    Still, this Leader article by "Mitchell Symons" leaves behind a nasty taste, one which is difficult to identify: It opens questions, like ugly, fly-blown sores.     What is known about him? Who can tell us more? [Email us]. He claims to have spoken with me, but I cannot claim to have spoken with him. This is not the same as calling him a lying swine of course, I am too much of a gentleman to use words like that.    The use of a word like "swine" would probably offend him deeply. He would take the porcine comparison as being further evidence that I am viciously anti-Jewish; it seems however, from his opening remark, that this would not surprise him, anyway.

Leaving aside the thought that his idol Hitler didn't exactly value freedom of speech, I would use that very same freedom to urge people to stay away. Don't go along thinking that you can reason with him as he is beyond reason and redemption: I should know, I tried and failed. Even in the face of irrefutable evidence, he assured me that there was no systematic programme of extermination at Auschwitz.

With odious creeps like Irving it is always hard to balance the importance of alerting the public to his plans against the danger of giving him the publicity that he so craves. I hope this will be the last time I ever write about this pariah. Let him live and die in the social and financial penury he so richly deserves.