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A Lesson on Free Speech at Washington State University, Pullman [Photo by David Gamble, for The Independent on Sunday ] David Irving: Speaking at Washington State University
on April 13, 1998 Index Article published in the Moscow-Pullman (Wa.) Daily News on April 7, 1998. [© Moscow-Pullman Daily News 1998] Article published in the Moscow-Pullman (Wa.)
Daily News on April 9, 1998. [© Moscow-Pullman Daily News 1998] David Irving’s Personal Diary, recording his Visit to Washington State University, April 13, 1998 Partial transcript of video recording of this speech , April 13, 1998 From The Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Washington, USA) April 14, 1998, front page: a grotesque distortion of the evening’s lecture Comments of Michael Hoffmann on the above article This article was published in the Moscow-Pullman
Daily News on April 7, 1998. MR. Irving was not interviewed for the article, nor was he consulted. April 7, 1998 ‘Mild fascist’ booked to speak at WSU; ‘Hitler apologist’ to visit following week against hate Ted McDonough THIS WEEK Washington State University celebrates a “week against hate” with a series of presentations, lectures and discussion groups. Next week, on Monday evening, the university will be the venue to one of the most bitter foes of groups dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism.
Referred to in the English press as a “Hitler apologist,” English author David Irving is touring the West Coast. Scheduled to appear Sunday in Seattle,and in Portland
on April 19, Irving is squeezing WSU into his schedule under the sponsorship of a WSU senior who scraped together $440 to rent the student union auditorium for Irving’s appearance Monday at 6 p.m. Called “the propagandists’ poster boy” by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith because some of his books have been published by the mainstream press, Irving has referred to himself as “a mild fascist.”
He is referred to by the ADL as being among a group of Holocaust revisionists, groups and individuals dedicated to rewriting the history of the death of Jews at the hands of HitleR. Banned from Canada in 1992 and Australia in 1993, Irving has made frequent appearances before far-right groups. His most famous book is “Hitler’s War,” which, according to the ADL, argues Hitler did not order the killing of Europe’s Jews.
According to the ADL, Irving was fined by a Munich court in 1992 for violating Germany’s hate crime laws by asserting that Auschwitz gas chambers were constructed after the war as a tourist attraction. The director of WSU’s Compton Union Building was not familiar with Irving’s scheduled appearance. As a rule,said Tim McCarty, the union building would arrange for any event provided that appropriate arrangements were made for security and safety. “We don’t rule on content,” he said.
Larry Fox, a member of a recently-formed Pullman anti-hate group, said he had “mixed emotions” about the scheduled talk by Irving, with whom Fox was not familiaR. Fox sees the potential for “fomenting hatred” in the event, but said he wouldn’t want to promote censorship. “Who censors the censor?” Fox asks.
Bringing Irving to WSU is Justin R., a senior who has spent much of his time at WSU maintaining a site on the university’s Web server dedicated to denying the Holocaust. [The Student Revisionists Resource Site ]. A psychology major, R. said he has dedicated a large portion of his WSU career to a fringe historical study and spent money from his own pocket to bring Irving to campus in order to fight academic censorship and promote the free flow of ideas.
But R. has another reason for his dedication. “I’ve seen Jewish political aims furthered by this tragedy of history that we see, and I don’t think that is fair,” he said. R. describes himself as fighting a global battle against Jewish political groups while reviving the tarnished reputation of Germans who lived during Hitler’s Third Reich.
Few WSU students openly embrace his cause, R. said, but R. said he finds a community of like-minded students on the Internet who participate in his “Student Revisionists’ Resource Site” from the University of Washington, the University of Puget Sound and Central Washington University.
“What kind of stokes the fire in me is when I publish on the Web page suddenly I get these e-mails from Jewish professors,” said R., who contacted the ACLU when WSU faculty attempted to assemble Web-page guidelines following publicity over R.’s web page. “It makes me think this is a much bigger deal than just relaying to me and my friends what’s going on,” he said.
“It’s as though vested national interests here and abroad have a stake in the general population believing a specific version of history. If suddenly it came out that the numbers dead at Auschwitz or at any of the other large camps were too large by 500 percent, there would be tremendous political ramifications.
And I see those ramifications as being almost necessary because the benefits that are being reaped by the Jewish state of Israel and other political Jewish interests B’nai Brith or the Simon Wiesenthal Center are essentially an injustice.”