In article <6JqdnT6GoNzdIvLbnZ2dnUVZ_r-onZ2d@giganews.com>, "Binyamin
Cramer" <bennielovestruth@alltimes.com> wrote:
<deletions>
Ferfuckssake. We were discusing where the money came from, dopey.
Here's a wee clue for you - Spielberg - The Shoah Foundation.
You find the rest. OK?
So what? A person is allowed to have a legal defense fund, and many
people, including my non-Jewish self, would have been delighted to
contribute to any cause that would result in David Irving committing
professional suicide.
You focus on the Jewish aspect of the trial but that means missing the
forest for the trees. The trial was about whether a professional community
has the right to blow the whistle on a person who wants to be regarded as
a member of it, but refuses to be bound by its standards, rules, and
ethics. The fact that the issue was exemplified primarily using material
dealing with the Holocaust and its denial is of secondary importance, even
if that is what caught the attention of the public.
David Irving's Holocaust denial was, like everything he did, designed to
ensure that he was in the spotlight. It was, however, not the most
important part of his oeuvre and, indeed, he never wrote a book or major
monograph about the Holocaust, a subject which, in his own words, interests
him little. David Irving's "real history", on the other hand, was a
genuine irritant to the community of professional historians, because it
made them look like they spent their time arguing about arcane minutiae
rather than making sensational findings, with David Irving grabbing the
spotlight and making money hand over fist while supposedly doing so.
Deborah Lipstadt's critique of David Irving focused on his status as the
only Holocaust denier to have any mainstream credibility, but it did not
focus on the narrow issue of Holocaust denial, but rather on the broader
issue of using unethical and dishonest methods to construct and support
historical arguments.
Many Jews hated David Irving, not so much because of what he had written
but more for his public pronouncements, and many were certainly eager to
contribute to the opportunity his suit against Deborah Lipstadt and
Penguin Books Ltd. afforded to see him commit professional suicide, going
down in flames doing so. However, that is only a small part of the larger
picture. Since David Irving never tried to palm himself off as a historian
of the Holocaust, what he had to say about it, even if it grabbed
headlines, was of little importance as history. He had never done the
in-depth study needed to support the views he was espousing.
On the other hand, virtually the entire community of professional
historians hated his guts because he was using illegitimate but highly
effective methodologies to make them look ossified and complacent.
Legitimate historians do not offer cash prizes for crucial documents or
participate in press conferences at which they proclaim that forensic
evidence overrides all other types of evidence. Nor, closer scrutiny of
his work revealed, do they fiddle with dates, mistranslate documents, or
fabricate references in order to support their arguments.
David Irving initiated the legal action, and he had just as much a right
to solicit funds from supporters, devise a rational defense strategy to
the inevitable counterattacks he could expect from the defandants when
supporting their case, and hire a lawyer as they did. He chose to go to
court having done none of these things, putting himself at a self-imposed
disadvantage right from the start.
The rest is history, genuine history.
Regards,
Eugene Holman
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