Real History and Lipstadt’s odd brother

One sterling example
is Irving’s Wikipedia
bio –
[and critical
responses]
a slick, professionally

crafted
hatchet-job with not a single unalloyed
compliment. It is guarded day and night by
invisible zealots who immediately remove
the slightest softening alteration. In a
summary box, Irving is not listed as being
a ” WW-II historian” but for “Holocaust
denial and negationist historical
writing.” Whew!

“History on trial” joins this chorous, but does so out in the open. It does so by taking
“text-proofing” to a high art – amassing a large corpus of Irving’s many errors, exaggerations and equivocations – and scrupulously leaving out any exculpatory evidence. This is an easy trick when applied to David Irving whose historical beliefs have sashayed in a highly ambivalent trajectory. But without a counter-balance, such “scholarship” is next to worthless.

The two major aspects of David Irving’s career as an historian are these:

1. He is an
   indefatigable researcher who has
   sought-out and discovered an
   astonishing trove of inside details
   about the Third Reich leadership and
   its actions. His ability in this regard
   is unparalleled. Yet this talent is
   never alluded to in a positive light by
   Ms Lipstadt.
2. He has clearly
   developed a high regard – an affection
   even – for many of the odious Nazi
   leadership. This affection has
   occasionally caused him to be a bit too
   quick to spring to their defense.

IRVING’S occasional special pleadings were only altered or retracted – and usually with some reluctance – when overwhelming counter-evidence was produced. But altered they eventually were. However, to his enemies his original sin can never be forgiven.

To continue today, as Ms
Lipstadt does, to accuse Irving of being a
“Holocaust denier” falls into the same black hole of dirty tricks as repeatedly claiming that Mel Gibson is one – in spite of his repeated explicit public affirmations that the Holocaust occurred, or that President Bush knew about the lack of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction when no one else in the world did either.

To ideologues, an evocative epitaph is far too satisfying to let go just because it has been utterly disproven.

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Focal Point
2008

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