Morse190500

) of B’nai Brith, USA Australian B’nai Brith Anti-Defamation Commission Board of Deputies of British Jews Canadian Jewish Congress Canadian League of Human Rights of the B’nai Brith Coalition for Human Dignity, Oregon Community Security Trust of Board of Deputies Jewish Telegraph Agency Searchlight and Gerald Gable Surfwatch Internet censorship [ H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine ] Kevin MacDonald on the Irving Trial [*] Posted on: H-NET List for Antisemitism<

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~antis/ Author: Jonathan Morse May 10, 2000 List Editor: Jonathan Morse In an off-list message, Jonathan Morse wrote: But you know what I’d really like to read from you? Not one more of your “The trouble with you people” articles but something personal about the Irving trial.

After all, you’ve now testified before an international readership on behalf of a man who has been shown in court to be unquestionably a racist, otherwise a common scoundrel, and — worst of all, I should think, for your professional standing — a falsifier of data. At the risk of sounding like the 6 o’clock news, I’ll ask the question: How does that make you feel? [ Kevin MacDonald :] Not good.

A few days prior to the verdict Irving sent me an email saying he was “moderately optimistic” about the outcome, but that turned out to be wishful thinking. Immediately after the verdict, I was very depressed about it, especially because of the rather harsh and uncompromising language to be found in the opinion.

All the newspaper accounts emphasized that he had been found to be an anti-Semite and a falsifier, and there is a sort of common sense suggestion that since I voluntarily testified for him, I was in favor of these things as well. I took heart from [Sir] John Keegan’s Daily Telegraph column because he clearly had the same ambivalence in deciding to testify. Keegan wrote: “As the trial date drew nearer, talk turned to the question of who had been asked to give evidence. Eventually I was.

I — like others I knew — declined. Earlier experiences had persuaded me that nothing but trouble comes of taking sides over Irving. Decide against him, and his associates accuse one of prejudice. On this occasion I was accused of cowardice. Decide for him, and the smears start. I have written complimentary reviews of Irving’s work as a military historian to find myself posted on the internet as a Nazi sympathiser.”

Since then I have become increasingly comfortable with the decision, at least at the intellectual level. On the one hand I can take solace in knowing that the issues that motivated me to testify (at least at a conscious intellectual level–there may be some self-deception here), were ratified by the judge’s opinion.

Judge Gray acknowledged that there was a campaign by certain Jewish activist organizations to suppress Irving’s freedom of expression, and he implicitly acknowledged that Lipstadt had gone too far in saying that no historian takes Irving seriously and that he is no historian at all. On the other hand, my life right now is mainly devoted to answering my critics with many more looming on the horizon.

Recent local publicity about my role in the trial has made life difficult at the face-to-face level where I work where there have been calls for censorship, breaches in long-time friendships, and letters to the president of the university demanding that I be fired. And I am still ambivalent about the decision. Before the trial, my only real doubt was when I read Richard Evans’ highly detailed charges against Irving on his use of sources etc.

Frankly, when I read the document, I felt that it was very unlikely Irving could win if for no other reason than that the charges were so numerous and so detailed. But Irving assured me he could deal with them, and in any case Evans’ charges were not really germane to the suppression of the Goebbels book . There is much fault to be found with Irving, just as there is much of the same with many people and organizations whose free speech is protected in this country.

When the ACLU sued to allow Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois some years ago (as I recall), their actions did not imply that they endorsed Nazi ideology, and that is certainly the case with me. I am not a Holocaust revisionist or denier. As indicated in a previous post here, I now accept that Irving has made anti-Semitic statements.

I also knew going in that, despite Irving’s personal assurances to the contrary, he did in fact associate with the political far right and has pandered to the many right-wing groups that he addressed. In other words, I had questions about his character, and nothing that occurred during my stay in London or thereafter has changed my mind about that. I think there is a natural tendency to want to shut such people up, especially by those who see themselves as the target of his rhetoric.

The suppression of Irving’s book, Goebbels , was a case of a publisher caving into pressure from an activist group. However, one can agree with the goals of a group without agreeing with the tactics, and in this case I think the tactics of the ADL and Lipstadt’s endorsement of those tactics raise serious questions. (Just a few days ago the ADL was ordered to pay $10.5 million to a Denver-area couple for invasion of privacy and unsubstantiated charges of anti-Semitism.)

As with the first amendment, academic freedom is not needed by those whose views are (at a certain point in time) generally accepted. Standing up for academic freedom means doing so precisely for those whose ideas are distasteful to many.

Kevin MacDonald Department of Psychology California State University-Long Beach Long Beach, CA 90840-0901 562 985-8183; fax: 562 985-8004 webpage: www.csulb.edu/~kmacd [H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine] Send comments and questions to H-Net Webstaff