Not one speech can be taken on trust
Richard Evans’s Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial is a fascinating book. And it’s highly relevant to the question of whether or not it’s a good idea to debate Irving. Holocaust Denial on Trial has Evans’s report for the trial; see for instance his General Conclusion.
Irving is a particularly dangerous spokesperson for Holocaust denial because over the years he has consistently portrayed himself as a scrupulous historian with an unrivalled knowledge of the archival sources and an unerring eye for forgeries and falsifications. As we saw in Part I, he has repeatedly claimed that he is waging a ‘campaign for real history’ against legend and myth, truth against falsehood. ‘Real history’, he says, is based on the archives, not on copying other historians’ work, which is how academic, university-based historians in his opinion proceed. Many reviewers, and still more journalists, have been at least partly taken in by this ceaselessly propagated self-promotion and have paid tribute to Irving’s skill and energy as a researcher.
That’s the thing about all this – people are taken in by what people say. If someone confidently and firmly asserts something, we’re likely to believe it unless we have some existing reason to be suspicious. That’s one very compelling reason not to debate Irving, even apart from all the other reasons.
Reputable and professional historians do not suppress parts of quotations from documents that go against their own case, but take them into account and if necessary amend their own case accordingly. They do not present as genuine documents which they know to be forged just because these forgeries happen to back up what they are saying. They do not invent ingenious but implausible and utterly unsupported reasons for distrusting genuine documents because these documents run counter to their arguments; again, they amend their arguments if this is the case, or indeed abandon them altogether. They do not consciously attribute their own conclusions to books and other sources which in fact, on closer inspection, actually say the opposite…At least, they do not do any of these things if they wish to retain any kind of reputable status as historian. Irving has done all of these things from the very beginning of his career. Not one of his books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about.
Well there you go. How could one debate him when not one of his speeches, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them can be taken on trust? How could one debate him when he cannot be trusted to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about? One couldn’t. It would be like doing a clog dance on thin ice.
[I]f we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian. Those in the know, indeed, are accustomed to avoid the term altogether when referring to him and use some circumlocution such as ‘historical writer’ instead. Irving is essentially an ideologue who uses history for his own political purposes; he is not primarily concerned with discovering and interpreting what happened in the past, he is concerned merely to give a selective and tendentious account of it in order to further his own ideological ends in the present. The true historian’s primary concern, however, is with the past. That is why, in the end, Irving is not a historian.
I quoted that last part in the Talking Philosophy discussion on Saturday. That was one of the points I didn’t want to get lost.
As Mary McCarthy said about Lilian Hellman: “every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”
“Irving is essentially an ideologue…” Well, that pigeonholes him nicely. Say no more. No historian is an ideologue.
I have read very little of what Irving has written, and would not be inclined to debate him on any public platform because I know relatively little about his chosen field, Nazi Germany.
But Holocaust deniers, tiresome as they are, cannot be muzzled in a society calling itself liberal. That is the first step on a rather slippery slope.
At one stage of my life I was involved seriously in academic history, with a view to becoming a professional historian. One eminent (ANU) professor on day advised our tutorial group on technical mistakes, such as in referencing and misquotations. He said words to this effect: ‘Once you let yourself be caught out in this manner, there will always be a question mark over anything you write, and you will never be taken seriously thereafter.’
I took that on board right there and then, and have never let it go.
So if I was debating Irving, I would open by reading out to the audience a list of his indisputable falsifications, ask why anyone should ever take anything he says on face value, invite Irving to use all the remaining time trying to convince the audience that they should, and then sit down.
“But Holocaust deniers, tiresome as they are, cannot be muzzled in a society calling itself liberal.”
One of the things I have learnt from this ongoing thread is that it is one thing to “muzzle” someone and it is another to not provide a platform.
Freedom of speech is a bit of grey area anyway. Like all freedoms, it comes in two forms: freedom from and freedom to. Deciding which takes precedence at certain times can be tricky.
If Holocaust denial is really just veiled anti-semitism, wouldn’t it make sense if it was unlawful in the same way that libel, slander and verbal abuse are unlawful?
Why do the Holocaust deniers deny the Holocaust? A convinced Nazi would be proud of the Holocaust, just as a Communist will always defend human rights violations in Cuba, saying that dissidents are CIA agents, who deserve to be jailed, etc. Even Eichmann at his trial never denied the fact of the Holocaust. So what is the psychology behind the Holocaust deniers? I’m sure that they are anti-semites and neo-Nazis on some level, but why do they feel the need to deny what for a true Nazi must be the greatest achievement of the Third Reich? I’m genuinely puzzled.
Ian, no one is talking about muzzling Irving or any other denier. Not debating Irving is not muzzling him, it’s just not debating him. Irving is perfectly free to talk and write (though not in Germany and Austria, but that’s not the issue here).
But also, Irving is not just tiresome. This is the problem with the way the issue is so often framed in and by the media – the BBC calls Irving ‘controversial’; other people chime in and say he should be free to speak no matter how ‘offensive’ he is. But he’s not just tireseome, or controversial, or offensive; he is also fundamentally untrustworthy in the way Evans describes. Falsification of history shouldn’t be dismissed as mere tiresomeness. That’s not to say he should be muzzled (of course, but clearly I need to make that clear however of course it is), but it sure is a compelling reason never to debate him on any subject.
It has been commented before that some people want to deny that Holocaust happened and to say its victims “had it coming”.
amos, I’ve wondered the same thing. My latest speculation is that admitting the Holocaust happened is bothersome because the Holocaust elicits sympathy for Jews. That really, really bothers them. I suspect that’s because of weird, deep-seated anti-semitic feelings (and who knows what that’s about). There’s also the feeling in the Arab world that the Holocaust gave Jews their pretext for founding the state of Israel. That’s the best I can do…but I’ve wondered the same thing. Why be a denier instead of a celebrator of Jewish tragedies? I think it’s because of the perception that there’s power in tragedy.
“During the Second World War, his father was an officer aboard the light cruiser HMS Edinburgh. On 2 May 1942, while escorting Convoy QP-11 in the Barents Sea, the ship was sunk by the German U-456. Irving’s father survived, but after the tragedy severed all links with his wife and their children.” Wiki.
It has dawned on me from reading the above that David Irving could be suffering with misplaced anger.
Counsellors, forever and a day, tell counsellees, who specifically have anger problems, that the source of their anger lies with their mothers’. David Irving, (who is incidentally a twin) must have felt deep rejection after the father walked out on the family.
Father separated
David Irving’s father’s ship was sunk by the German’s. However, his father survived, but after the tragedy he severed all links with his wife and their children.”
During the Second World War, his father was an officer aboard the light cruiser HMS Edinburgh. On 2 May 1942, while escorting Convoy QP-11 in the Barents Sea, the ship was sunk by the German U-456. Irving’s father survived, but after the tragedy severed all links with his wife and their children.” Wiki.
It has dawned on me from reading the above that David Irving could be suffering with misplaced anger.
Counsellors, forever and a day, tell counsellees, who specifically have anger problems, that the source of their anger lies with their mothers’. David Irving, (who is incidentally a twin) must have felt deep rejection after the father walked out on the family.
Sorry, OB for the mess up above!:-(!
“But Holocaust deniers, tiresome as they are, cannot be muzzled in a society calling itself liberal. That is the first step on a rather slippery slope.” That was me.
Rose: I would never provide a platform for Irving, but I would not try to prevent others from providing him with one, obnoxious as his propositions are, because it is only a step removed from a more generalised ban on public utterance.
However, the reality is that there are numerous calls for his muzzling, and he was muzzled (read banged up in the slammer) in Germany for his views. There are laws in many countries, including here in Australia, against incitement to racism and race hatred, which I think are right. But where is the line to be drawn?
The controversial writer Keith Windschuttle [see http://www.sydneyline.com/ ] stirred things up in Australia by writing a book challenging the mainstream account of the extermination of the (‘full-blood’) Tasmanian Aborigines, claiming that disease and their own cultural practices brought about their demise, and that more whites were killed by Aborigines than vice versa.
On this issue I disagree strongly with Windschuttle (who has written some excellent critiques of pomo none the less). But for his stuff on Aborigines, he could be the next cab off the rank after Irving, if we were to go down the censorship path.
OB: Greetings. Holocaust deniers are tiresome because of the ‘lastwordism’ debating them involves. Unless someone somewhere keeps responding to them, they will claim victory, as Irving does with his call for evidence that Hitler knew about the death camps. They can thus keep the treadmill going as long as they like, with however many Holocaust affirmers on it. Dreary business.
Ian, when you say you would not try to prevent others from providing Irving with a platform – do you mean prevent by persuasion, or by force? I would guess that all of us would agree with you if you meant the second – but I for one certainly disagree if you meant the first.
Gotcha, about tiresome. Yes they’re tiresome along with the other things they are.
Jean: Among holocaust deniers, who also tend to be 9-11 conspiracy theorists (it was Mossad who did it), there seems to be a fascination with what they see as Jewish cunning, just as with anti-black racists there is a fascination with what they see as black sexuality. No one is fascinated with Jewish sexuality. So the Jews are so cunning that they faked the Holocaust in order to get reparations from the poor Germans and to get the rest of the world to see them as victims. Mossad pulled off 9-11 in order to movilize U.S. public opinion against the Muslims. The Jews deserved the Holocaust, because they are pure malicious cunning, but unfortunately, the Nazis didn’t do their job. Now, given their current nefarious conduct, for example, 9-11, the policy of Israel (which is always portrayed as genocidal: I’m not apologizing for Israel’s illegal occupation, but it’s not exactly genocide), a real Holocaust is necessary. But in all these guys (and Holocaust denial seems to be a male hobby) there is an implicit adoration of how shrewd Jews are supposed to be. There is still one more premise: the Jews form a conspiracy; far from being hopelessly divided, as they are in reality, they are monolithic, the most disciplined group one can imagine.
Re: Stolen Children. I believe that a Redress Board has been set up to compensate them. Not before time, indeed!
austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AJHR/1996/3.html
I wish them the best of luck!
Anti-semites seem to think that if anyhting goes wrong in the world, the Jews did it. I think the loathing begins with deicide: they think the Jews killed Jesus (never mind that he probably never existed in the first place, and if he did, the Romans killed him).
They think the Jews are responsible for the “Holohoax”, that the Jews are responsible for 9/11, that the Jews (Howard Stern) killed Anna Nicole Smith.
Basically, anything bad that happens is the fault of the evil conspiracy of Jews who want to run the world. It has something to do with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, too: the “textbook” of the Jewish conspiracy theory.
Like all conspiracy theories, it’s absolutely lunatic.
OB: Flat-Earth theorists are not welcome around university geography and physics departments, and it is profitable for us to ask why not. I think it is because few people have ever engaged in detailed debate on the subject, and most have more pressing concerns. I have seen a sophisticated flat-Earther tie undergraduates up in inconclusive and extended debate, because he knew all the standard evidence, and had given hours of attention to devising counter-arguments to it. His young opponents had probably last encountered the issue in primary school.
There is such a huge amount of information about the Holocaust from existing documents (even though the Nazis destroyed so much) plus accounts from survivors, that all but a tiny minority of post WW2 historians and people generally take the Holocaust as a given. Irving leads that tiny minority, and has prepared his case against the conventional wisdom well enough to qualify as a public nuisance and academic time waster.
As I understand it, he explains away the majority ‘conventional wisdom’ as being the result of a conspiracy, and as arising from the ‘victor’s justice’ of WW2. ‘Victors’ history’, if you like. But I may be wrong.
University history departments would be wasting their time giving a platform to Irving. If however, say, a bunch of senior history students were itching to get stuck into him on a public platform on a campus, I would not stand in their way, physically or by argument. I do not think Irving’s case bears close scrutiny, nor that mainstream historians of the Second World War have done an injustice to Hitler.
In my last comment I mentioned Keith Windschuttle and the controversy he has stirred up. OB, if you would counsel against giving Irving a platform, would you also extend that to Windschuttle? Many historians of frontier Australia (eg Henry Reynolds, Lyndall Ryan) would lump him in with Irving as a denier of a holocaust just like Irving.
When the Australian Parliament opens in about 3 weeks time, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will issue an apology to the Aborigines for some of the terrible experiences they were put through since colonisation. No further details are available at present, but he could start with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 and take it up to the present if he was inclined to, through massacre, rape, enslavement and destruction of the whole Aboriginal way of life. (They got no justice from the legal system; few whites were ever convicted of murdering Aborigines.)
The forcible removal of ‘half-caste’ children from their families is expected to feature prominently in Rudd’s apology, as could the subject matter covered by Alan Ramsey in last Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald. (It’s at http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/weasel-words-wont-hide-monstrous-shame/2008/02/01/1201801034773.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1 and worth a read.)
Should someone like Keith Windschuttle, who argues that it is all a monstrous exaggeration put up by leftist historians with additonal agendas, be given a platform? Anywhere?
As it happens, KW has done more to stimulate research into the area than any other historian I can think of. This work I expect will in turn consign his case to the dustbin. He has himself sown the seeds of its destruction.
I think Irving, if he makes a big enough nuisance of himself, will bring himself down likewise.
Australian history is not my field, but I was under the impression that KW had shown with some prety strong documentary evidence that there had been patent exaggerations in historians’ claims of genocide made in the post-1960s atmosphere of anticolonial guilt. I find it hard to imagine he would be such a fool as to pretend that the Aboriginal Australians had not been treated like sh1t by the colonisers, but my reading of a few articles online suggests that he is more balanced than some of his opponents – at least in his use of evidence, if not his public pronouncements. But I remain to be enlightened.
“No further details are available at present, but he could start with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 and take it up to the present if he was inclined to, through massacre, rape, enslavement and destruction of the whole Aboriginal way of life. (They got no justice from the legal system; few whites were ever convicted of murdering Aborigines.)”
The English government has already formally apologised to the Aboriginal people for colonising Australia. Australia became Australia in 1901 when all the colonies were federated. The stolen generation was actual Australian government policy, therefore it is fitting that Rudd apologise for that.
Australia has gone from the racist days of the White Australia policy and the Stolen Generation to being the most successfully multicultural country in the world. I love it here. I know there has been some bad international press following the riots in Cronulla and the abysmal treatment of refugees by the Howard government, but these incidents do not characterise the Australia I know.
Dave:
Keith Windschuttle claimed to have found glaring and clearly deliberate falsifications in the work of some historians of the Australian frontier, and particularly that of the major historian of the Tasmanian Aborigines, Lyndall Ryan. Hence the title of the first of his projected three volume series on Aboriginal history, ‘The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Volume 1 Van Diemen’s Land’ ( http://www.macleaypress.com/Fabrication%20Volume%201.htm ). Ryan has written a rebuttal. As I recall it is online, and could chase up the reference if you are interested.
Windschuttle basically says that in the absence of documentary evidence to a standard that would be admitted in a court of law, we cannot say that any given event took place on the frontier. But as few Aborigines spoke English and even fewer were literate, documents authored by Aborigines are rare. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, and with inconsistencies in what accounts we have of frontier violence, he says that we can only conclude that the frontier was actually a lot more peaceful in terms of black-white relations than the prevailing ‘black armband’ version of Australian history makes it out to be.
This is little different from Irving’s position that in the absence of documentary evidence to the contrary, we cannot say that Hitler authorised the death camps or even knew about them. You will find more on Windschuttle’s thesis on his website at http://www.sydneyline.com/ which holds numerous articles he has published.
No Europeans on the Australian frontier were keeping journals documenting their activities, particularly if such would be incriminating. So his criteria for admissible evidence cannot be met.
KW has his critics. I do not think that his thesis bears analysis, and hope to shortly publish a paper on the net showing why.
At the same time I agree with his general philosophy of history, namely that the historian’s task is to seek the truth, not one of many possible relative ‘truths’. I think that his critiques of postmodernist thinking and historiography are generally excellent.
Rose:
“Australia has gone from the racist days of the White Australia policy and the Stolen Generation to being the most successfully multicultural country in the world. I love it here. I know there has been some bad international press following the riots in Cronulla and the abysmal treatment of refugees by the Howard government, but these incidents do not characterise the Australia I know.”
I agree. No argument. Except that I think that we need to get the history right.
I am in the cattle business, and live on a property on the Northwest Plains of NSW, 25km from the nearest town. There, as in every other town I have had direct experience of, a state of non-violent apartheid prevails. Blacks don’t have anything to do with whites, and vice versa. If you don’t believe me, I suggest you take a trip to Wilcannia, NSW, which is the extreme example, and the closest thing to a war zone Australia has seen since the Japanese bombed Darwin.
I don’t care how many people go on reconciliation marches across Sydney Harbour Bridge; this is the reality here in the bush, but you won’t read about it in the press or see it on the TV news.
Moreover, and for a change, it is coming from the blacks, not the whites. They don’t want anything to do with white society, and the more I read of Aboriginal history, the more I ask how anyone can blame them.
As I see it, the forthcoming apology by Kevin Rudd (next Tuesday I am now told) will be a chance for a change in direction on this, as black leaders are keen for it to be delivered.
Here’s hoping it breaks the pattern and leads to something positive.
Ian,
“all but a tiny minority of post WW2 historians and people generally take the Holocaust as a given.”
I’m not sure there is even a tiny minority of post WW2 historians that don’t take the Holocaust as a given. That’s part of the issue – there’s a lot of confusion because several of the most prominent deniers are academics – but they’re not historians. Faurisson taught literature, Butz is an engineer. Note that Evans says that historians are careful not to call Irving a historian – not because he doesn’t have a PhD but because of his extensive record of falsification. He’s not a historian because he doesn’t do what historians are supposed to do.
I don’t think even a class of history students should engage with Irving, because they wouldn’t know whether he was telling them the truth or not. It’s not possible to check people’s claims during a live discussion, and Irving’s claims have to be checked – they can’t be taken on trust. That’s the whole point of Evans’s concluding statement. I think it’s a compelling reason to give him a wide berth.
“I think Irving, if he makes a big enough nuisance of himself, will bring himself down likewise.”
Well he already has brought himself down. I don’t see any reason to resurrect him.
I think that Ian MacDougall makes an excellent point about why it is risky to debate flat earthers or holocaust deniers; there is a genuine risk that one will actually lose the debate on the merits, even if they aren’t lying.
They know the standard scientific arguments and ways to (attempt to) counter them, and just because they’re deluded or evil doesn’t mean they’re stupid. If you make a mistake they are likely to be able to exploit it better than you can, because they have practice and experience and you probably don’t have as much, unless you’ve done a lot of this before.
I should have made that point more complete. Irving is not a historian because he doesn’t do what historians are supposed to do and because he does do what historians are not supposed to do. Sins of omission and sins of commission. Not doing the right thing, and doing the wrong thing.
OB: “Note that Evans says that historians are careful not to call Irving a historian – not because he doesn’t have a PhD but because of his extensive record of falsification. He’s not a historian because he doesn’t do what historians are supposed to do.”
Good point. There is probably no book written by a serious historian which does not contain mistakes or errors. Think of Herodotus, still regarded by many in the field as the ‘father of history’. But deliberate falsification is another matter, and in practice enough to disqualify the perpetrator for life, because he/she moves automatically from the category of historian to that of propagandist.
The Macquarie dictionary defines an historian as: 1. a writer of history; 2. an expert in history; an authority on history; 3. a student of history. Its first definition of ‘history’ is ‘the branch of knowledge dealing with past events’.
This would qualify Irving as an historian, albeit a bad or a wicked one. As a result of this discussion, I would define him as a propagandist.
What you have written in your last two comments makes the case of Keith Windschuttle even more to the point. He does not have a PhD, and his work as an academic has been in media studies. His opponents have not been slow to point this out, and they are all high level academic historians. But they, the historians, are accused of deliberate falsification by Windschuttle, the non-historian (in the professional academic sense). While the professional historians (and others)have written extensive criticism of Windschuttle’s work, they have never accused him of deliberate falsification (not for want of looking for evidence, I assume). Yet they claim that there were around 20,000 aborigines killed in violent conflict with whites on the Australian frontier, mainly in the 19th C, and maybe more. (Prof Henry Reynolds’ estimate, accepted by the others.) This would I imagine, qualify as a ‘holocaust’, making Windschuttle (who disputes it strenuously and says that the frontier was nothing like that and that white society if anything tried to protect the Aborigines) a ‘holocaust denier’.
Should Windschuttle therefore be treated as another Irving and denied a platform in universities?
Ian, certainly not. As far as I know (which isn’t much) the dispute between KW and the others is a genuine dispute over evidence and interpretation. A dispute with Irving can’t be a dispute of that kind, for the reason that Richard Evans cites: Irving has disqualified himself.
Furthermore – saying Irving is being ‘denied a platform in universities’ is putting it rather tendentiously. That seems to assume he is somehow entitled to one. Irving has no particular claim to a platform in universities, so not offering or giving him one is not really denying him one.
OB: The controversy around Keith Windschuttle is a fasinating mirror-image of the one centred on Irving. KW, the holocaust-denier, attacks his mainstream opponents for falsification (his book is entitled ‘The Fabrication of Aboriginal History’) in terms like the following:
‘In her book The Aboriginal Tasmanians Lyndall Ryan claims that British colonists killed 100 Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land between 1804 and 1808. Yet in an interview on Channel Nine’s program Sunday, Ryan confessed she didn’t have any evidence for the figure. I had pointed out that the source her book quoted, the diary of the colony’s chaplain Robert Knopwood, only recorded four Aboriginal deaths. Ryan, however, admitted that footnote was a mistake and said her real source was a report by the explorer John Oxley in 1810. But if you look up Oxley’s report, there is no mention in it anywhere of 100 Aborigines being killed. Pressed on the issue by journalist Helen Dalley, Ryan said: “I think by the way Oxley wrote that he seemed to think there had been a great loss of life from the Aborigines.” Helen Dalley then asked: “So, in a sense, it is fair enough for [Keith Windschuttle] to say that you did make up figures? You’re telling me you made an estimated guess.” Ryan replied: “Historians are always making up figures.”
‘Like everything else Ryan has said on this subject, however, this statement was not true either. All historians do not make up figures. To do so is a corruption of their profession. Historians must have evidence for their claims. And if they can’t produce evidence they shouldn’t produce figures. Ryan would have been more accurate if she had said: the historians of Aboriginal Australia are always making up figures. That statement would have been true.
‘The biggest single invention was made by Henry Reynolds in his book The Other Side of the Frontier. He claimed that 10,000 Aborigines were killed in Queensland before federation. The source he provides is an article of his own called “The Unrecorded Battlefields of Queensland”, which he wrote in 1978. But if you look up the article you find something very strange. It is not about Aboriginal deaths at all. It is a tally of the number of whites killed by Aborigines. Nowhere does it mention an Aboriginal death toll of 10,000. Reynolds invented this figure and then gave a false citation to disguise what he had done.’
Read more at http://www.sydneyline.com/Postmodernism%20and%20Fabrication.htm
Just for good measure, KW is a strident critic of postmodernism. A radical Marxist in his youth, he has turned conservative, was awarded a seat on the Board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission by the last federal government, and has just been appointed editor of Quadrant, Australia’s foremost conservative journal of political and cultural opinion.
It would seem to me that if a university club or society wanted to invite Irving to speak on campus, liberalism would favour letting him speak, whether as historian, ideologue or propagandist, and however obnoxious his views to mainstream opinion. This does not imply that the university itself is obliged to offer him a platform. But it cannot put itself into a position of stopping people from hearing someone they want to hear without becoming censorious and illiberal.
But Ian – I keep saying – the issue is not whether Irving’s views are ‘obnoxious’ – that is not the point. The issue is the falsification, which is not detectable in a public debate.
And we’re not talking about universities stopping people from hearing someone they want to hear, so why bring it up?
Sorry to be pissy, but these are exactly the clichés about Irving that I’ve been trying to displace all along, so it seems slightly inattentive just to bring them all up again.
Fair enough.
Thanks for the Windschuttle material, by the way. I have read The Killing of History, and I thought it was pretty dang good.