Saying What He Doesn’t Think
The Irving sentence raises some issues that are, it seems to me, not very well grasped by discussing them in the usual terms of the freedom or right to express an opinion or say what one thinks or similar. Because the thing about Irving is that, surely, he doesn’t actually hold the opinion he peddles, he doesn’t think what he claims to think. He falsifies the record, as the libel trial judge found. Well if he falsifies the record, he doesn’t do it in a trance or a fugue state, presumably – he knows he’s doing it, it seems fair to assume – so if he knows he’s doing it, he doesn’t really believe what he’s saying. If he knows he has to tweak things, he has to know that things weren’t as he says they were.
The Independent gives some examples:
“Last week, on the occasion of the Dresden bombing,” he said, “I knelt in my cell and prayed to remember the 100,000 civilians killed there.” The accepted historical casualty figure is closer to 35,000. Irving has traditionally exaggerated the numbers of Germans killed in the war and played down the numbers of Holocaust victims…The state prosecutor, Michael Klackl, remained unimpressed. He called Irving a “dangerous falsifier of history” and a man who often played the role of a repentant sinner.
A falsifier of history isn’t the same thing as someone who actually believes history was one way when in fact it was another. That’s not to say he should be jailed; it’s not to say either way what should be done about him; but it is to say that he’s actually doing something different from simply expressing an opinion or saying what he thinks.
A falsifier of history isn’t the same thing as someone who actually believes history was one way when in fact it was another. .. he’s actually doing something different from simply expressing an opinion or saying what he thinks.
This is true. But if there is any danger of him actually convincing anyone of this belief, which he himself does not really hold, surely that can be remedied through authoritative sources setting out the facts and the evidence for them.
Libel is a crime because details about an individual are not typically publicly known, and mis-portraying them can actually cause people to believe a lie about someone. Given the existence of the libel laws, one could probably prosecute someone who told a lie about you even though there was no danger of anyone believing it. But that’s neither here nor there. Libel laws were not passed in order to protect people from insul even if they can in some circumstances be used that way.
“surely that can be remedied through authoritative sources setting out the facts and the evidence for them.”
Oh, god, if only it were that easy. You think people never believe lies as long as the truth is available somewhere or other? Er – drop in on an evangelical church sometime, or one of those summer camps where they train children to contradict their biology teachers about evolution.
It seems to me all your arguments rely on an unwarranted optimism, Juan! I’d love to think you were right, but the evidence just doesn’t warrant that much optimism.
I’m with OB here, Juan: you seem to write as if you think that everyone will behave rationally all of the time.
Alas, we have an “embarressment of riches” when it comes to evidence against this view.
Some people will believe what they want to believe regardless of the evidence. And “setting out the facts and evidence” can be a difficult task — as those battling the insertion of creationism into US education can attest.
Inciting people to commit a crime is, and should be, a crime. How much difference is there between giving someone a gun and telling them to kill someone, and saying that all of a particular race are scum and deserve to be killed?
On the other hand, all anti-incitement laws have to be considered, framed and enforced extremely carefully to prevent them being abused (as they have been — abused, that is — here in Australia).
In response to
“surely that can be remedied through authoritative sources setting out the facts and the evidence for them.”
OB says,
Oh, god, if only it were that easy. You think people never believe lies as long as the truth is available somewhere or other? Er – drop in on an evangelical church sometime, or one of those summer camps where they train children to contradict their biology teachers about evolution.
It’s rather disturbing to see you say this. Three arguments come to mind:
1. “if only it were that easy.”
It did work during the civil rights movement, didn’t it? It did work for convincing people that smoking causes cancer, didn’t it? At least have a go at rational dialogue. If you proscribe dangerous points of view you rule that out.
2.“You think people never believe lies as long as the truth is available somewhere or other?”
I didn’t say somewhere or the other, I said “authoritative sources”. I also talked about “public dialogue”. You don’t know it’s impossible till you try. It takes a bit of effort but it has often worked in the past.
3. drop in on an evangelical church sometime, or one of those summer camps where they train children to contradict their biology teachers about evolution.”
So, these are the people you want to proscribe? You and what fucking army are going to tell those jokers that it’s illegal to argue for creationism? (Oh, right, the Army is full of them, too. The Marines are a little better and a little tougher, but… still an uphill struggle, no?)
Do I hear three big cheers for free speech building up inside of you!?
It is precisely the creationists that keep us honest about free speech, OB, because if we would take it away from them they would take it away from us. And they’re bigger than we are.
Reaction to Juan’s first comment:
I daresay there are quite a few people in the forefront of the denial industry who know very well that what they are peddling are lies (not surprisingly, some would also have formed alliances and friendships with those who actually participated in the extermination). They may not believe the denials they espouse, but many may genuinely believe all Jews to be intrinsically evil and therefore think that by denying what was already done they may facilitate doing it properly in the future.
This is a frequent unfortunate side-effect of people’s beliefs; that they are willing – knowingly – to compromise the truth for them. How they square this up in their minds, I don’t really know, but I guess they have prioritised their truths in such a way that they feel they can afford to sacrifice some truths, even major ones, in the name of truths they consider paramount.
I really don’t understand what this post is getting at. Is there a proposal to outlaw dishonesty?
The idea that a court is the best place to settle truth claims is problematic enough (don’t let a few correct results like Irving and Dover fool you). The idea that they should get into the mind reading business is bizarre.
Many people genuinely believe their own lies. I think it is quite a common psychological phenomenon. Creationists are a case in point.
Denial is the world largest river…
What a lot of confusion.
Look, if you’re going to argue, at least read carefully first. I said explicitly in the post that I’m not ‘propos[ing] to outlaw dishonesty,’ that I’m not suggesting anyone ‘proscribe dangerous points of view’ – I’m saying the discussion of the subject tends to evade some of the central issues, including the fact that Irving doesn’t merely have an opinion, he falsifies the evidence. That’s all I said.
People cannot seem to hear ‘there is this and this issue’ as anything other than ‘I think something should be banned.’ The two are not the same!
Juan,
“It did work during the civil rights movement, didn’t it? It did work for convincing people that smoking causes cancer, didn’t it?”
Yes and no; yes and no. And it did not work in other situations, some of which ended up with these mountains of corpses I keep mentioning. I don’t dispute that it works sometimes; I dispute that it works every time; so citing examples where it did (partially) work doesn’t address my point.
“At least have a go at rational dialogue. If you proscribe dangerous points of view you rule that out.”
Where in the sam hill did I ever say I don’t want to have a go at rational dialogue?! I’m just pointing out some difficulties, I’m not suggesting a course of action! I haven’t said I want to proscribe dangerous points of view. You and Orac both insist on reading me as saying that, but if you would read what I actually said, you would notice that I don’t.
Furthermore, ‘dangerous points of view’ doesn’t address the problem I was looking at in this particular post, which is lies, and the conflation of lies with opinions when lies are really more like anti-opinions, unopinions.
“Many people genuinely believe their own lies. I think it is quite a common psychological phenomenon.”
Yeah. I know. What I wonder is if that is consistent with actually falsifying the evidence. I don’t know that it’s not – but it seems as if it would be difficult. What story do you tell yourself as you drop the plural from ‘transport’ for instance?
We’re back to truth mattering again. Are there established facts (whether historical facts – such as Auschwitz, for which there are still a few living witnesses – or evolution – which no one saw, but for which there is a mountain of evidence for and none against, not to mention the fact that we can see it happening in small ways as I write) and is someone claiming otherwise? If so, why? Is it through genuine ignorance, or blindness or outright mendaciousness? And, once, again, why? Judge Jones exposed Buckingham and cronies as deliberate liars with an agenda. Irving was similarly exposed trying to worm his way out of things he claimed were errors that didn’t seem like innocent errors when one looked at them in detail. In both cases, there was other evidence to provide a motivation for what was done: the Dover Board’s overwhelming religiosity and Irving’s association with fascists and other deniers (though I think this was one of the few areas in which Lipstadt’s team’s evidence wasn’t fully accepted as being damning, though, of course, the rest sufficed). Someone who believes mainstream history has been unjust to the Nazis because the writings of David Irving have been his main source ought not to be judged as harshly as Irving, who had access to primary pieces of evidence and distorted the information in them, but it doesn’t make them less wrong. Does it make them less dangerous? It always bothers me when people don’t think lying for their cause is in any way detrimental to it.
< href="http://ibanda.blogs.com/panchromatica/2006/02/david_irving.html">Racism and anti-semitism are not forms of opinion to Irving. He has willingly associated with all sorts of vile people over the years and supported actively racist activity. I’m not shedding any tears.
There is no real person named David Irving, nor books written by this mythical figure.That the trial actually took place is a giant hoax. So what’s to talk about?
If this was 1950, I think Irving’s jailing would be justified, given the state of Austrian society and the recently completed war. Just as it restrictions on inflammatory speech in Rwanda would be justified at the moment. But the justification — the threat of a resurgent Nazi state — has long ago disappeared. Irving’s views — whatever they are – can be pretty easily handled by exposing them to light.
Not that neo-Nazis would care one way or another, but that is one of the reasons that Irving’s influence is self-limiting. The neo-Nazis are like any sect — in order to survive, they invent a world in which they can live by the wholesale conversion of fictions into fact. But that world will always be limited by a reality principle — and in fact they rather pay hommage to that principle with holocaust denial. After all, what does that mean? That Hitler’s party would have been a good thing if he hadn’t set about killing Jews? That he just should have shown them extreme prejudice? That he should have just settled for gypsies, Russians, and plunging Europe into a war that easily killed 10 to 20 million people? Besides of course setting up a dictatorship and throwing his opponents in concentration camps (one of those facts holocaust deniers don’t dissolve, since it was a fact proudly trumpeted by the Nazis themselves)?
It isn’t the Austrian court that really condemns Irving, but common sense. That is the court he can’t escape.
[repeats for fourteenth time] It’s not just a question of Irving’s ‘views’, it’s a question of his lies.
And whence this breezy confidence that his views and lies ‘can be pretty easily handled by exposing them to light’? Is that just axiomatic? Are all views and lies that easily handled, or only Irving’s? If only Irving’s, why? If all, then why are creationism and ID so robust and expansive?
Where does all this perky optimism come from? I find it terribly odd.