Tonight's Radio 4 6:00pm news broadcast reports that David Irving, "the British historian", has been given a three year sentence for denying the Holocaust, on the basis of an opinion he expressed seventeen years ago. That's the same reason as Irving gave ahead of the trial as to why it was improper for him to have been put on trial.
The inverted commas are mine, because the tone of the newsreader made it clear that BBC Radio 4 News presents him as a reputable historian. Not even a reference to him being a controversial historian or a discredited historian. But the report did quote the Austrian prosecutor who said that Irving is not an historian, he is a falsifier of history and evidence. And that's exactly what he is.
Irving did not simply express an opinion seventeen years ago. As my previous post about him shows, the judge at the libel trial Irving brought to try and silence Professor Deborah Lipstadt found that he had repeatedly falsified and distorted historical evidence. And that the purpose of his doing so was to exonerate Hitler and the Nazis, to deny the Holocaust and to vilify the Jews as a people.
Irving has devoted his life to this pursuit. When he was arrested in Austria late last year, he was on his way to address a far right group.
He continues to run a web site which is full of suggestions that "the usual enemies of the truth" are out to suppress him. He has an index to a list of these "traditional usual enemies" which consists almost entirely of Jewish organizations like the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Canadian Jewish Congress . He lobs in the German government, the New Zealand government, plus a few other watch organizations like Surfwatch.
For example, he runs a page on the banning of his entry to New Zealand, where he repeatedly refers to Jewish organizations and Jewish people to whom he attributes conspiratorial motives. He describes the US Anti-Defamation League as a "sinister central organization".
The archives of his monthly newsletter show he continues to use one of the terms which most conspicuously shows his Holocaust denial worldview. He refers in the May 2005 issue to a Holocaust survivor as an ASSHOL -- an acronym he used in one of his original Holocaust denial lectures, and meaning "Association of Spurious Survivors of the Holocaust and other Liars". He describes the convicted Ernest Zundel, the notorious Canadian Holocaust denier, as a "revisionist".
Each newsletter is full of anti-semitic innuendos and interpretations of news stories, and he repeatedly mocks Jews and Jewish organization and presents them as out to extract money by cheating and misrepresentation, especially in relation to the Holocaust.
But if you listened to the BBC report, you wouldn't hear of any of this. You would hear of David Irving denying ahead of the trial that he is still a Holocaust denier. You would hear how he says he has changed his mind on the basis of what he has learnt since 1989.
And despite it having been demonstrated comprehensively at the libel trial by Professor Richard Evans and others that his books were so full of falsified and distorted evidence that they could not be described as reputable histories, David Irving continues to offer them for sale or download from his web site. And he describes his works as "Real History".
Well, he runs true to form.
But why does the BBC continue to present him so sympathetically?
UPDATE: BBC Radio 4 is running David Irving: the London Trial at 5:00pm on Sunday 26th at 5:00pm GMT. You should be able to listen online from here and hopefully listen to it after the broadcast from the Listen Again page.
The notorious reference to Irving as an academic has been edited out of Clare Murphy's updated piece, so paragraph 3 now reads:
"The Briton has now been sentenced to three years after being found guilty of Holocaust denial at a trial in Vienna."
Posted by: Martin Morgan | February 21, 2006 at 06:49 AM
It could just be because my post about that Clare Murphy piece got picked up and featured by Biased BBC and quite a few high profile sites....
Or it could just be entirely coincidental...
Posted by: Judy | February 21, 2006 at 07:08 AM
I am 100% with you, Judy. He markets lies, he profits from them. He should be punished because of them. End of story.
And if he ever recants his recanting, may God that he does so while still in Austria, so he can get other 3 or more years in jail.
Posted by: Fabián | February 21, 2006 at 02:01 PM
I don't have a clue about who you are or where you live. Someone linked to your blog in one of the comments at Roger Simon's blog.
I live in America, where we believe in an absolute right to unfettered political speech. People who support state efforts to suppress speech you find offensive disgust me. In fact, you are as disgusting as the Holocaust deniers themselves.
Since when is it a crime to have "repeatedly falsified and distorted historical evidence"? If Irving's work is as specious and easily refuted as you claim it is, then why are you so afraid of it? Why don't you simply refute it in the public square? Should be quite easy.
The timing of this decision could not be worse for those of us who care about preserving the hard won right to blasphemy and other heterodox behavior. It shows the Muslim extremists that European claims to defend free speech in the context of the Danish cartoons are so much hot air. Evidently, certain groups are exempt from defamation, other groups are not. When confronted with this hypocrisy, the reaction will be predictable: to extend censorship to anti-Muslim speech.
Posted by: markus | February 21, 2006 at 03:43 PM
markus
The operative word is Maliciously perverted and distorted history to cause anguish and suffering.
Imagine if a phony American historian wrote that the Japanese never bombed Pearl Harbor but the American Gov invented the story because the cowardly US forces had gone A wall.
You mught not give a damn if you have not served your country, but the thousands of relatives of those dead soldiers in those underseas graves, would be seriously upset at such MALICIOUS lies or deliberate flasification of historical evidence.
Posted by: chevalier de st george | February 23, 2006 at 01:44 AM
Given the BBCs coverage of any stories involving Israel, it's hardly surprising that they don't acknowledge the anti-Semitism of Irving.
I'm still reeling from their use of 'pbuh' after every mention of Mohammed on their website.
The world is literally going mad.
Posted by: Martin Hague | February 26, 2006 at 08:07 PM
Markus is of course correct - unfettered free speech is an absolute requirement. Irving is an anti-semite, and the BBC should simply be more forthright about the fact. I too live in the United States, and have been deeply troubled by the media's self-censorship over the Danish cartoons.
They showed no such restraint (nor should they) when printing pictures of Jesus Christ in a jar of urine.
Perhaps the threat of having their head lopped off is influencing the news judgement of Newspaper Editors.
Posted by: Martin Hague | February 26, 2006 at 08:11 PM
Irving is imprisoned for his views. That fact is digusting. You are free to blog, but for how much longer if the Austrian attitude to free speech becomes more fashionable? In Britain there are signs that this is happening.
You should be ashamed at quoting the Austrian prosecutors opinion that Irving is not a serious historian as if that justifies imprisoning a man for his beliefs. Austrian prosecutors earn money from a judicial system that denies free speech, and because of that they are corrupt. I suppose we should be grateful that Austria has improved over the years. Not so long ago the Austrians would have sent Irving to the local concentration camp or the nearest Gestapo office for expressing views the state found unacceptable. He would very probably have been killed for his beliefs. Now they only imprison him for three years. This is a great improvemnet and we can only hope that this improvement continues and the Austrian state learns how to cope with free speech.
Posted by: simon | February 26, 2006 at 11:43 PM
A man imprisoned for his beliefs whether they be right or wrong? Disgusting. And the Brits think that we Americans are brutal?
Posted by: Kathy | December 15, 2006 at 01:16 PM
Irving wasn't imprisoned for his beliefs, but for his activities in creating and disseminating fraud. His frauds include the invention, falsification and manipulation of historical evidence, in the service of the active promotion of anti-semitism and the exoneration of Hitler and the Nazi murder machine from responsibility for the mass murders they organized and perpetrated.
Posted by: Judy | December 16, 2006 at 09:07 PM