Because I Just Got a Real Estate License, That’s Why
Hmm. I had moved on to other things for the moment, while still planning to say another word or two later if I got around to it. But I’ll say another word or two now, out of irritation. There’s nothing like irritation to cause one to say a word now rather than later. (See, this is where misanthropy comes in. Lycanthropy too, if you argue with wolves. That’s a swell movie with Kevin Bacon – Argues With Wolves.) I’ll tell you why, since you ask.
I’ve been following with some interest the discussion between Norman Geras and Ophelia Benson about David Irving’s imprisonment. Norm’s most recent post seemed to me to settle things pretty definitively…The best sense I can make of Ophelia’s position, which she has reiterated in a further reply to Norm, is that she thinks that Irving deserves all the moral opprobrium, short of legal sanction (which she says she disapproves of), that comes his way…But that doesn’t touch Norm’s point, as he makes clear here. Which is why it seems odd to me that Ophelia should have chosen to go round the houses again – especially as the clearest bit of the new post just restates Norm’s view for him.
Because it’s my Notes and Comment, that’s why (at least, unless and until its owner closes it down, it is). Because I can go around any dang houses I want to go around; because I can bore up one side and down the other if I want to; because I can talk about dust, or shopping lists, or plumbing, or philately, or Akron, or macadam, or laundry, or weeds, or nail clippings, or bus schedules, or any boring thing I think of, that’s why. Because nobody has to read it, that’s why. Because I like going around houses, and around and around and around, and anyone who doesn’t like going around houses doesn’t have to go, so why bother complaining if I like to? Hah?
And since I’m irritated, I’ll point out that in fact some of the things I’ve been talking about have still been left unaddressed and unmentioned by Norm’s definitive posts, and that I’ve mentioned them again, and that this last most definitive post still didn’t mention them. So I’m not so sure things have been settled pretty definitively. Not the things I was talking about anyway…crooning and mumbling away to myself while I went wandering blamelessly and innocently around all these tiresome houses. The main thing that still hasn’t been addressed, that seems to be an elephant in the living room, is the fact that Irving lied and falsified the evidence. I’ve only said that about four times now, but that aspect keeps getting left out so I trudge around the houses again only to have the point about lying and falsification (oh look, it’s not four times, it’s six) left out yet again. And then I get chastised for going around the houses yet again when Norm has definitively settled the matter. Well, he’s no doubt settled what he was talking about, but he hasn’t settled what I’ve been talking about, because he’s barely mentioned it, and he hasn’t addressed it.
And I am not convinced. All right? That’s the reason for all the house-traipsing; I’m not convinced. I’m not convinced people actually think Irving has a right, whether a liberty right or a moral right or a natural right or an inalienable right, to lie and falsify the evidence. And if people do actually think that, I find it odd that they don’t say it more often. That’s where all this started. I wondered why commenters – in newspapers and the like – who talked of Irving and free speech didn’t mention the lying and falsification question. I still wonder. I suspect it’s because they’re not convinced Irving or anyone has such a right any more than I am, but they’re also not sure what they think about that or how to address it, so they don’t, they just cover it up, instead, and talk about the much easier issue, of what is ‘offensive’ or outrageous or the like in what Irving says. Except Lipstadt and Evans, of course. They’re sharply aware of that aspect, and don’t leave it out, but other people do.
So. That is a house that remains insufficiently explored, let alone settled, as far as I’m concerned, and I might go around it yet again at any time, so consider yourselves warned. If you don’t want to go around the houses again, then don’t join the tour.
Good on you Ophelia, i may not be able to express complex arguments cogently, but i can follow them, and i enjoy following them. There are too many declarations of victory in arguments and not enough actual discourse / thinking about issues.Personally i blame the soundbite media but thats a different story
OB, I agree that your point about lying and falsification has not been addressed. The problem is that Irving may well be sufficiently deluded/mad/conceptually challenged/post-modern to believe that he is telling the truth and to believe that his ‘selective’ presentation of the evidence is valid. As you are well aware, we cannot prove a state of mind, so I think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt – and we should also give those exposed to his flaky views the benefit of the doubt, the doubt that they are capable of skepticism about holocaust denial, or the doubt that they might be able to see Irving alone on Planet Irving.
To go round the houses again, if one subscribes to fallibilism then all of us sometimes misinterpret the evidence or think we have good evidence when we do not. Is it sensible to say that this is a crime only if concerned with certain emotive topics? One would have thought that emotive topics would usually come under greater scrutiny than other topics, and therefore would be adequately tried in the courts of public discourse. Just my opinion, of course.
Given the stupidity of the interviews he’s given since sentencing, I’m beginning to wonder whether Irving’s mind, such as it was, is beginning to fall apart. But “sufficiently deluded/mad/conceptually challenged/post-modern to believe that he is telling the truth,” “his ‘selective’ presentation of the evidence”? When he adds letters to words and words to phrases, thus changing their meaning, what are we supposed to think is going through his mind? That Himmler of course meant something slightly less murderous than what he explicitly wrote and it was up to him, Irving, to convey Himmler’s true meaning to the world? Why not let every murderer ever caught red-handed claim he was sleepwalking at the time and be done with it? Everyone is responsible for their actions, including a possibly deluded Irving. He didn’t tell us that he’s assuming Himmler meant all transports when mentioning only one, he’s changing the wording of the quote from Himmler to permit only that interpretation, which is contrary to the way it appeared. Giving us the original quote coupled with an interpretation of it would be expressing his opinion; changing the quote to permit no other interpretation is falsification, which is the difference OB keeps banging on about.
Mike – “As you are well aware, we cannot prove a state of mind, so I think we have to give him the benefit of the doubt”
We can’t prove it, no, but we (that is, they) can offer evidence. That’s what Evans did. He said – I think on ‘Today’ rather than in the Irving documentary – that the falsification was so thorough and complete, that it involved so many footnotes (Lipstadt noted somewhere – either in the documentary or in a post on ‘History on Trial’, I’m not sure which – that it wasn’t just many or most of the footnotes that were falsified, it was every single one of them) – that it seemed reasonable (or fair, or safe, or something) to conclude that he’d done it deliberately. He was careful in the way he said it (for epistemic reasons, I think, rather than legal ones; or epistemic-charitable reasons) but he said it.
Changing the quote is, indeed, falsification. That is, indeed, the difference I keep banging on about.
Sorry you’re feeling cranky. I haven’t been by your site for a while, but it does give me a Friday afternoon energy boost!
Yes OB, he had done it deliberately (I would dispute the value of that adverb – but thats another matter), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he doesn’t genuinely believe his own distortion. I have a problem with determining which misrepresentations should be criminal offences and which should be ‘honest mistakes’. Isn’t that what the Hutton enquiry was all about? Isn’t that why neither Bush nor Blair have been indicted over WMD?
Not feeling cranky now, Nix. Possess angelic temperament really, apart from occasional homicidal intervals.
Mike, you may be right. Evans for instance qualified what he said – in the way that historians and reasonable inquirers in general tend to do – by saying the evidence seemed to indicate etc. He didn’t say it was a certainty – which of course it can’t be.
Still – I have a hard time seeing how someone could systematically falsify all his evidence and still believe his own distortion. If he believes it, how does he explain to himself why the falsifications are necessary? That’s what I don’t get.
Sure, distinguishing lies from honest mistakes is often or usually difficult. But it does have to be done at times – in fact quite often. One can qualify and hedge, one can eschew certainty, one can say ‘I think’ – but sometimes one just has to declare ‘Guilty’.