Economist 291107

Enemies of Free Speech origins of anti-semitism Mr Irving was savvy enough to be polite about Jews and ingratiatingly grateful to his hosts, but he came across as a broken, paranoid man. The Economist London, November 29, 2007 David Irving comments: SINCE I am basically a polite person, I shall forego the temptation to post here copies of the reviews of all my books, without exception uniformly favourable, which The Economist , always anonymously, published between 1963 and 2000.

The magazine did not have a journalist in the Oxford Union chamber, so the report is based at best on hearsay, or at worst on imagination and wishful thinking. Quoi de neuf . As for me: What changed? Not my abilities, nor my objectivity. What changed? ” IN devoting a book to this one violent moment of the war, with its antecedents and something of its aftermath, Mr. David Irving has rendered the British people a great service. They have to know.

The Dresden event is a part of British (as well as of German, and European, and human) history. It is a piece of the mosaic that makes up the British character and a brush-stroke, out of many, in the image that Britain presents to foreign peoples — an image the British are at best imperfectly aware of, and that has consequences which they often find it difficult to understand. Dresden also has lessons necessary to an understanding of the nature of war.

What is necessary is to know what happened and to understand how it came to happen, and the only way is to read Mr. Irving’s excellent and terrible book.” — The Economist Freedom of speech A tussle at the Oxford Union ends in a creditable draw Invite and insult From The Economist IT WASN’T hard to distinguish the men of the right-wing British National Party (BNP) from the members of the Oxford Union debating society

on November 26th. The students who came to hear Nick Griffin , the BNP’s leader, speak alongside the Nazi apologist David Irving were mostly fey public-schoolboy types with plummy voices and the odd corduroy jacket, plus some fashionable young women. The BNP goons , for their part, wore standard-issue crypto-fascist leather coats and unnecessary black ski hats, except for one who sported a neo-tsarist beard.

The students and other protesters who gathered outside the Oxford Union building to try to prevent Mr Griffin and Mr Irving from speaking were rather rowdier. The chanting, intermittently rapping crowd had a case. Their chequered pasts — Mr Griffin was convicted in 1998 of incitement to racial hatred; Mr Irving was imprisoned in Austria for denying the Holocaust [ Website comment: Not so, the offence was Wiederbetätigung, Literally “Reactivating” — The Nazi Party, that is. Go figure.

The “Banning Law” of 1945 was enacted during Stalin’s occupation of Austria ] — do not obviously make the men experts on the limits of free speech, the subject of the debate; they are entitled to their opinions, but not to a privileged platform for them at Oxford. Nor do they represent large constituencies or hold high office as does, say, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , Iran’s president, who spoke at Columbia University in September.

On balance, however, the Oxford Union members who had voted to stage the debate had a better case. Free speech, they argued, is like a muscle which needs to be exercised to remain useful; the extremes of its terrain must be staked out to stop it shrinking. That seems a better attitude than Austria’s, which by imprisoning Mr Irving boosted his notoriety (and his appeal to the Oxford Union).

It is also preferable to that of the British government, which pursues the impossible goal of protecting the feelings of Muslims, gays and other groups who officially loathe each other. In the end, both sides made their point. Protesters managed to climb the railings and break into the debating chamber to stage a sit-in. (“Wagner, perhaps?” shouted a young man as he commandeered a piano.) They scarpered when the police got involved.

Introducing the president of the Union described his views as “despicable and abhorrent”, adopting Columbia’s “invite and insult” approach. So the Union honoured its avowed commitment to free speech ( Harold Macmillan once described it, with perhaps a little hyperbole, as “the last bastion of free speech in the Western world”).

It also, of course, generated the sort of controversy that is another part of its historic mission — witness the infamous 1933 debate on a motion that “This House will under no circumstances fight for King and Country”, and a more recent invitation to O.J. Simpson . The only people to emerge with little or no credit from the occasion were the chaotic police, Mr Irving and Mr Griffin.

Mr Irving was savvy enough to be polite about Jews and ingratiatingly grateful to his hosts, but he came across as a broken, paranoid man . As for Mr Griffin — regurgitating bile, flanked by his beefy bodyguards for protection — he looked no more than a nasty clown.

YouTube video of David Irving speaking at the Oxford Union (furtively filmed, 8 mins: poor sound: note the two Lefties silently flouncing out at 4:50) |with links to more video Those nice folks next door: Nixon Papers recall Concerns on Israel’s Weapons : Kissinger said, This is one program on which the Israelis have persistently deceived us and may even have stolen from us Lefty Peter Hitchens (brother of the admirable Christopher H.) equivocates in the Daily Mail about Mr Irving — a good

historian, but” Free speech is for nasty people, not nice ones ” David Irving, a Radical’s Diary: After thirty years, I finally speak at the Oxford Union. Not everybody is happy about it The debate at the Oxford Union: a student’s full eyewitness account | and Mr Irving’s mild rebuke to Luke Tryl | Cherwell (the Oxford student newspaper) posts a video of street interviews taken outside MORE STORIES ON OUR SPECIAL INDEX: DAVID IRVING AND THE OXFORD UNION