Thoughts on David Irving

Posted by JW Holliday on February 24, 2006, 10:14 AM | #

JJR: the loss that Hitler inflicted on the human gene pool by his attacks on Jewry is incalculable

Of course, JJR is absolutely correct here.  What the world indeed needs is more people like Tim Wise, Betty Freidan, Noel Ignatiev, the Frankfurt School, Foxman, Lewontin, Stephen Jay Gould, Karl Marx, etc.  The loss to the human gene pool of people such as these is incalculable, and the NSDAP regime can never be forgiven for that.

On the other hand, the millions of dead Russians, etc. that resulted from Hitler’s policies can be safely forgotten - who cares about a bunch of dumb Slavs, anyway?

Posted by Søren Renner on February 24, 2006, 11:48 AM | #

Mr. Holliday is correct. As proven by the following quote, God himself was under attack in the Holocaust—the notion that He was similarly attacked in the suffering inflicted on non-Jewish bodies, Slavic or otherwise, is morally repugnant.

“The Holocaust is something different. It is a singular event. It is not simply one example of genocide but a near successful attempt on the life of God’s chosen children and, thus, on God Himself.” -Abe Foxman, National Director of the ADL.

Posted by Steve Edwards on February 24, 2006, 12:17 PM | #

The sheer arrogance implied in Abe Foxman’s quote is truly breathtaking.

Posted by Steve Edwards on February 24, 2006, 12:18 PM | #

“...attempt on the life of God’s chosen children and, thus, on God Himself”

Yet the Holy Trinity is supposed to be a self-evidently ridiculous idea!

Posted by friedrich braun on February 24, 2006, 01:00 PM | #

On the other hand, the millions of dead Russians, etc. that resulted from Hitler’s policies can be safely forgotten - who cares about a bunch of dumb Slavs, anyway?

Today Russian historians (most notably Pleshakov and Suvarov) admit that Stalin was preparing to attack Germany in 1941. In other words, Hitler launched a preemptive strike against the Soviets…It’s ironic that this is no longer controversial history in Russia but still a taboo subject in the West where anything that deviates from the caricature of Hitler as a warmongering maniac is repressed…it’s an image that suits the post-war western political class so well. Hitler didn’t want war…however, his hand was forced when Poles began acting up and stupidly provoking Germany…mainly thorough their relentless persecution of the German minority in Danzig and elsewhere in Poland that in turn constantly appealed to Hitler for help.

Millions of Russian and Ukrainian Christians perished during the communist era. However, the perpetrators were largely Judeo-Bolsheviks, that much is clear.

The reader might want to consult in the role of Jews in Soviet mass-murder, among other worthy sources, chapter 6 of When Victims Rule

Jewish pre-eminence in the leadership of Soviet communism, including Jewish pre-eminence in the Soviet terrorist secret police

http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/wvr.htm

One example of Soviet mass-murder:

Lazar Kaganovich: Stalin’s Mass Murderer

American Times Today

Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich (Kogan), of Jewish descent, was born in Kubany, near Kiev, Ukraine, in 1893. In 1911 he joined the Jewish-founded Communist Party and became involved with the Bolsheviks (Lower East Side New York Jews). Kaganovich took an active part in the 1917 takeover of Christian Russia by Communism and rose rapidly in the Party hierarchy.

From 1925 to 1928, he was first secretary of the party organization in Ukraine and by 1930 was a full member of the Politburo.

Kaganovich was one of a small group of Stalin’s top sadists pushing for very high rates of collectivization after 1929. He became Stalin’s butcher of Christian Russians during the late 1920s and early 1930s when the Kremlin (jews) launched its war against the kulaks (small landowners who were Christians) and implemented a ruthless policy of land collectivization. The resulting state-organized forced famine, was a planned genocide and killed 7,000,000 Ukrainians between 1932 and 1933, and inflicted enormous suffering on the Soviet Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan.

Josef Stalin (Dzhugashvili) altered census figures to hide the millions of famine deaths when the Ukraine and northern Caucasus region had an extremely poor harvest in 1932, just as Stalin was demanding heavy requisitions of grain to sell abroad to finance his industrialization program which was on top of enforced collective farming of 1929. Stalin is conservatively estimated to have been responsible for the murder and/or starvation of 40,000,000 Russians and Ukrainians during his reign of terror, while the total deaths resulting from the de-kulaklization and famine, by way of Kaganovich, can be conservatively estimated at about 14,500,000.

On any analysis, Kaganovich, was one of the worst mass murderers in history, and little wonder that during World War II large numbers of Ukrainians greeted the Germans as liberators, with many joining the Waffen-SS to keep Communism from enslaving all of Europe.

Posted by friedrich braun on February 24, 2006, 01:09 PM | #

Correction:
Germans in Danzig were a majority between WW I and WW II. I was obviously referring to the German minority in Poland.

Posted by ben tillman on February 24, 2006, 01:11 PM | #

God himself was under attack in the Holocaust

Yes, of course.  Judaism is a religion of self-worship. 

MacDonald in PTSDA, p. 45:

In a very real sense, one may say that the Jewish god is neither more nor less than Ezra’s “holy seed”—the genetic material of the upper-class Israelites who were exiled to Babylon.

Posted by friedrich braun on February 24, 2006, 01:27 PM | #

But in his constant reading of material from the period, Irving lives in a world where Hitler’s ideas have not yet been discredited and he has fallen victim to their appeal.  Very few people these days seem to have read Mein Kampf but it is in fact (as it was meant to be) a very persuasive book if you read it without thought of what it led to.  Hitler comes across as an enquiring, passionate and yet reasonable mind who offers persuasive explanations of what has gone wrong with the world.  And I think he has persuaded Irving.  It is a strange thing but, as we know from the example of Leftist intellectuals today, simplistic explanations often do attract intelligent people.

Huugh…I hate to barge in like that on one of JJR’s pet theories (after all the man claims to have studied NS for over 40 years!) but Irving has said on many occasions that he has never bothered to read Mein Kampf.

There are problems with Mein Kampf:

There is an interview with a reporter from a British newspaper in 1936 (or so) where he explains that “Mein Kampf” was written by a young hasty, unexperienced man who was disappointed that they put him into prison. In sum, by at least 1936 Hitler no longer stood by Mein Kampf.

Secondly, Mein Kampf was written in the early 1920s. Additionally, Rudolf Hess wrote it (Hitler dictated it to him). I believe that Irving has said that the work suffers from non-Hitler accretions.

Thirdly, if one wants to glance at Hitler’s thinking one would be better off to read The Table Talks or Zweite Buch ...a book that Hilter actually wrote himself.

Posted by Calvin on February 24, 2006, 03:02 PM | #

“Irving’s earlier position…. that there was no holocaust at all is clearly absurd”

In lieu of a supporting argument for that statement, can I please claim my free mini-series and Spielberg movie?

Posted by Phil Peterson on February 24, 2006, 04:20 PM | #

Irving’s earlier position…. that there was no holocaust at all is clearly absurd

Irving never said that. That is rubbish unless you believe that you cannot have a Holocaust without Gas Chambers.

Irving disputed the existence of gas chambers and the evidence of the use of gas chambers is so flimsy that one must be amazed at the persistence of this claim. The second claim Irving has repeatedly made (which he recanted to save in his skin in Austria - in vain I might add) is that the 6 million figure is an exaggeration.

Neither of the two claims equal no Holocaust.

Posted by Ben Tillman on February 24, 2006, 08:02 PM | #

The second claim Irving has repeatedly made (which he recanted to save in his skin in Austria - in vain I might add) is that the 6 million figure is an exaggeration.

Which is freely admitted by the “orthodox” historians, though they may prefer to call it a “convenient rounding-up”.

Posted by friedrich braun on February 24, 2006, 08:42 PM | #

Victor Suvorov explains in the “Icebreaker”, “M-Day”, ” The Last Rebublic” how and why the WW2 started.

You can order those books from Amazon.com

Posted by friedrich braun on February 24, 2006, 09:53 PM | #

Ineresting post on The Revisionist Forum:

http://revforum.yourforum.org/viewtopic.php?t=2986

Hi,

Irving never would have won his case, even if the case was about the Holocaust, which it wasn’t, that was just a throw in.

Irving charged Lipstadt with libel. In fact, he was justified to do so. She did in fact libel him in her book, used unsourced material that was fed to her to say numerous things about Irving, someone she knew next to nothing about, and several of these things were false, that is, libelous, and the court agreed to that.

(I just pause here to point out what an incompetent historian and intellectual Lipstadt must be, that with her expertise being Holocaust history but she doesn’t know about David Irving. I also think people should check her footnotes some time to see the amazingly shallow “breadth” of her scholarship.)

So the defense strategy was: Irving claimed that he was libeled by being called “a”. What we have to do is prove that Irving is “B”, so that by establishing he is “B” we can overwhelm the libel of calling him “a”. That was basically the game.

Irving has a big mouth. He says stupid things. He didn’t process the information that by suing Lipstadt she was giving her lawyers license to dredge up everything Irving had ever said and done, including videotapes of speeches before various groups where he would talk about Auschwitz, Chappaquiddick, and so on.

Irving said and wrote many things about Jews that had nothing to do with his books. Maybe they weren’t “anti-semitic” but no judge in the world is going to state before a liberal western court today that they WERE NOT. Same thing applies to his racial statements. Irving was bound to be characterized in the verdict as a racist and an anti-semite even before discovery was half over, and therefore he had lost even before the trial started.

Lipstadt’s lawyers hired some historians to shred Irving’s scholarship. Some of the stuff they turned up was ridiculously trivial, like the “Goering goggled” flap. But all you have to do is make a few mistakes per book, and pretty soon, someone can accuse you of being a “distortionist.” And on top of that, Lipstadt’s lawyers argued a pattern to his mistakes by saying he made them basically because—are you ready?—he was a racist and an anti-semite.

Then finally they got some historians to argue that the Holocaust happened. Of course the term is very slippery and everyone knows how awful van Pelt’s brief was. Once again, though, no court in the west is going to say that “nobody” was ever gassed, and once you say “somebody” was gassed—are you ready?—it’s all true!

Of course Irving could have done a better job defending himself on the Holocaust related charges. The trial wasn’t ABOUT whether the Holocaust took place, though (despite what Lipstadt and everyone else writes now). The trial was about the evidence on the basis of which Irving “denied” it. Since Irving basically “denied” it while not knowing anything about it (what he knows now, or knew in 2000 being irrelevant), he came off as a hair-trigger historian, who made a snap judgement about the Holocaust because—wait for it—he was a racist and an anti-semite.

Judge Gray did talk the Holocaust in his verdict. Everyone should read what he wrote. He prefaced his remarks by saying more than once that he was not making historical findings but only judging the facts presented to him. He also basically repeated Arno Mayer’s “rare and unreliable” comment.

Irving did not dispute the gas vans, or the Reinhardt camps. So that was that! He did dispute Auschwitz, but Judge Gray was hardly going to say that no one was gassed there, especially when Irving wasn’t going to contest gassings anywhere else. As a matter of fact he didn’t say that hundreds of thousands were gassed at Auschwitz either, he stumbled and said “thousands.” He’s not a complete idiot.

Revisionists can’t prove absolutely a counter-factual, no one can. Either about no one being gassed, or about no one being shot. They have to deal in probabilities. Those arguments will eventually persuade ordinary common sense but if you can’t prove a counter-factual a judge is not going to declare the counter-factual true. No way in the world would a judge ever declare that “no one was ever gassed” or that “the Holocaust didn’t happen.” The most revs could have hoped for was a less than overwhelming endorsement of Standard Holocaust Mythology. And they pretty much got as much as they were going to get.

Irving could have called the top ten revs worldwide as witnesses and he still would have lost. The truth about the Holocaust was not what the trial was about. It was about destroying Irving’s reputation so that Lipstadt’s libels would be small and dismissable in comparison.

Posted by seelow heights on February 24, 2006, 10:29 PM | #

Irving’s earlier position…. that there was no holocaust at all is clearly absurd
His earliest controversial position re the NS genocide of the Jews(stated in Hitler’s War) was that there WAS an extermination program but that it was decided upon at lower levels without Hitler’s knowledge or consent.  In that book he seems to be attempting a partial rehabilitation of Hitler while condemning the NS system as a whole.

Much later he made oral statements about his disbelief in the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. I’ve read four of his books and in none of them can I recall anything that can be reasonably called “holocaust denial”. Unlike Butz, Rudolf, et al, that is not the focus of anything he has written.

Posted by Alex Zeka on February 25, 2006, 06:24 AM | #

Actually, Mein Kampf, is rambling, patchy and incoherent (like most of Hitler’s output taken as literature rather than as speechs). Hitler’s style is appalling, reliant as it is on cant phrases scarcely understood, and laborious and tedious repetitions (both of words and ideas). A typical passage reads (this satire, you understand): in the final analysis, we must admit that the final analysis leads to the conclusion, taken in the final analysis…

Translater Ralph Manheim even claims he couldn’t write English bad enough to convey the toridity of the original German.

Mein Kampf, if one ignores the content, reads like a particularly dull civil servant’s account of a particularly unexciting drainage problem.

It was Hitler’s delivery of his speeches, the pantomime surrounding his regime, and the attraction of his central ideas which so mesmerised Germany. No even faintly educated and cultured man could be taken in by the Hitler mythos in this day and age. You had to actually be there.

I do not venture to say what so attracted Irving to Hitler (perhaps his ill treatment in academia, when compared to other despots?), but it could not have been from reading Mein Kampf (or the bureaucratic report from hell).

Posted by Phil Peterson on February 25, 2006, 10:11 AM | #

Actually, Mein Kampf, is rambling, patchy and incoherent (like most of Hitler’s output taken as literature rather than as speechs). Hitler’s style is appalling, reliant as it is on cant phrases scarcely understood, and laborious and tedious repetitions (both of words and ideas). A typical passage reads (this satire, you understand): in the final analysis, we must admit that the final analysis leads to the conclusion, taken in the final analysis…

Thanks for pointing this out Alex. I was going to say the same thing. I had to rub my eyes in disbelief seeing John’s description of Mein Kampf. But John’s flakiness is something we are all used to here.

Posted by friedrich braun on February 25, 2006, 12:29 PM | #

No even faintly educated and cultured man could be taken in by the Hitler mythos in this day and age. You had to actually be there.

I believe that it’s foolish to compare Hitler’s or other politicians’ literary output to renowned philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, etc., etc., etc. or to expect God knows what from their writings. Hitler was smart and quick and popular and worked very, very hard. But ultimately he was just a talented politician. However, I’d say that the man who as a penniless orphan in Vienna preferred to buy opera tickets than to eat and who talked endlessly for hours about art and architecture was still light years ahead intellectually from today’s crop of shallow and ignorant pols…a Tony Blair, a Ronald Reagan…not to mention Bush jr. who boasts in interviews about his dislike of reading.

Posted by Matra on February 25, 2006, 01:12 PM | #

Abe Foxman on the Holocaust: “The Holocaust is something different. It is a singular event. It is not simply one example of genocide but a near successful attempt on the life of God’s chosen children and, thus, on God Himself.”

Abe Foxman on Mel Gibson bringing up the Ukrainian Holodomor: “He doesn’t begin to understand the difference between dying in a famine and people being cremated solely for what they are”

He makes the Ukrainian famine sound like a natural disaster. Holodomor denial?

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on February 25, 2006, 02:32 PM | #

I think Ray’s right about Hitler seducing Irving.  I also think he’s right about Irving’s scholarship.  The popular scorn heaped on Irving’s scholarship all started after he wrote Hitler’s War.  Until then he was hunkey-dorey.

From what I understand Irving is an A-grade asshole, but that doesn’t make him a liar.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on February 25, 2006, 02:33 PM | #

The Holocaust deniers are the ones putting people in jail for disputing it or asking questionings.  By their actions, which can only mean they feel they have something to hide, they are, in effect, denying the heretofore usually-accepted account.  At this moment, the Austrian prosecutor’s office and the Austrian courts and government are denying the Holocaust.

As usual Fred you’re good for an excellent rhetorical point; I’ll be using that.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on February 25, 2006, 02:45 PM | #

Thanks for pointing this out Alex. I was going to say the same thing. I had to rub my eyes in disbelief seeing John’s description of Mein Kampf. But John’s flakiness is something we are all used to here.

I felt similarly, but in fairness I don’t think JJR called MK good writing.  It’s not.  I gave up a few pages in.

Posted by friedrich braun on February 25, 2006, 05:53 PM | #

Abe Foxman on Mel Gibson bringing up the Ukrainian Holodomor: “He doesn’t begin to understand the difference between dying in a famine and people being cremated solely for what they are”

Well, at least he didn’t say they were “gassed.”

Posted by Steve Edwards on February 26, 2006, 12:36 AM | #

“He doesn’t begin to understand the difference between dying in a famine and people being cremated solely for what they are…”

This man is pure vermin. Maybe he should be prevented from eating for a couple of weeks, and we’ll see who is going to be so flippant about mass starvation.

Posted by Andrew on February 26, 2006, 01:44 AM | #

Mein Kampf is the top selling Book in Turkey 2005, and throughout the Middle East, there I did not say that Moslem word, so they are planning to be national socialists also, or where they already there and just need some invigoration.
That is the point, Slavs were not worthy of a Holocaust plaque, just denial that it took place at all. After all , Communism is wealth distribution and for the people, it is just when you run out of people you must ask: Then who is it for?

Posted by seelow heights on February 26, 2006, 02:06 PM | #

Abe Foxman on Mel Gibson bringing up the Ukrainian Holodomor: “He doesn’t begin to understand the difference between dying in a famine and people being cremated solely for what they are”
Someone should start a campaign to get Ukraine to pass Holodomor Denial laws. Then, just as Irving was tried under an ex post facto law, an arrest warrant can be issued for old Abe. Unlikely to happen, because (I believe) the current Ukrainian government is a Soros creation. If not Soros, some equally kosher bunch.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on February 26, 2006, 06:26 PM | #

Someone should start a campaign to get Ukraine to pass Holodomor Denial laws. Then, just as Irving was tried under an ex post facto law, an arrest warrant can be issued for old Abe. Unlikely to happen, because (I believe) the current Ukrainian government is a Soros creation. If not Soros, some equally kosher bunch.

It needn’t be Ukraine; Belarus or Russia could pass such a law, as could any other nation not engaged in Kosher-worship (a dwindling list, I admit).

Posted by RobertinArabia on March 03, 2006, 12:12 AM | #

Europe News
Austrian prosecutors: We\‘ll have to react to new Irving remarks
By DPA
Mar 1, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Vienna - Austrian prosecutors said Wednesday they would have to act over a fresh denial of the Nazi Holocaust by jailed British historian David Irving.

The new denial came in interviews with several British journalists in his Austrian prison cell, where he is beginning a three-year sentence.

A spokesman of the state prosecution said: \‘We\‘re going to have to react to that. We can\‘t overlook it.\’ It was possible that Irving had again broken Austrian laws banning Nazi \‘revivalism.\’

In a British BBC interview, Irving cast doubt on the number of victims in Auschwitz. He described the organized annihilation of the Jews under the eyes of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler as \‘absolutely wrong.\’

In the immediate future, said observers, the 67-year-old historian\‘s latest remarks would not improve his chances of lowering his prison sentence on appeal.

But more than that, they could result in new charges being raised against him under Austrian law.

Critics also questioned whether the Austrian justice system had been put in a good light by allowing Irving to \‘hold court\’ to journalists in his prison cell.

On February 20, Irving was jailed for three years in a one-day trial in which he was accused of falsifying history and claiming there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.

The charges carry prison sentences of one to ten years.

Irving pleaded guilty to the charges relating from remarks he made in Austria 17 years ago, but told the court that in the meantime he had changed his views.

He was arrested in November last year after entering Austria at the invitation of a rightist-nationalist student fraternity.

© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

© Copyright 2003 - 2005 by monstersandcritics.com.
This notice cannot be removed without permission.

Posted by ben tillman on March 03, 2006, 02:13 AM | #

Well said, Fred.

Posted by friedrich braun on March 03, 2006, 10:13 AM | #

Let this thought sink in: people are being jailed in EUROPE in the 21st Century for their views…think about it.

A spokesman of the state prosecution said: \’We\’re going to have to react to that. We can\’t overlook it.\’ It was possible that Irving had again broken Austrian laws banning Nazi \’revivalism.\’

Nice yellow piece of journalism. What “Nazi revival”? Where? Certainly not in Austria…where a friend of mine got arrested for arguing with a leftist piece of shit holding up a sign that read: “Bomber Harris do it again!” on the Dresden anniversary. 

Why is historical investigation of what happened at Auschwitz and elsewhere illegal? History is constantly being revised. That’s why books still get published on all kinds of historical events…the past is always being interpreted and reinterpreted and every generation brings something new to the debate…for the sake of historical accuracy…except for the so-called holocaust (whatever it was)...the late great French historian Francois Furet in an article protesting the Fabius-Gayssot anti-Revisionist law said that what made this law even more egregious is that so much of what really happened remains very murky and unclear…but politicians succombing to powerful lobbies know better than professional historians what ought to be off limits to historical investigation. At the time of the enactment of that obscurantist bill in the the country of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedistes Jacques Toubon (a right of centre politician) called the Fabius (a Jew and former Prime Minister)-Gayssot (a communist M.P.) a Stalinist law. It was enacted nevertheless…to the great shame of France.

Posted by Guessedworker on March 03, 2006, 11:54 AM | #

Friedrich: Why is historical investigation of what happened at Auschwitz and elsewhere illegal?

Because too much capital has been invested in mythologising Auschwitz et al to let anybody whatsoever point out how shaky it all is.  No, the Euro-proles must very obediently all fall down, all fall down before our sainted Elders in Faith.  It serves a purpose.  And I don’t just mean for Jews, who obviously think that’s A Jolly Good Idea.  It serves the political interests of our liberal elites because it stabilises liberalism against the predations of European national self-awareness.

Apparently, our rulers agree with many “far right” extremists that 1930’s Nazism is the true politics of the self-aware European.  A more subtle and accurate understanding of Hitler, therefore - one free of cartoonish history - is inadmissable.  I think it was Wintermute who, many months ago, commented in a thread here that the restitution of humanity to Hitler was a precondition for the release of the West from suicidalism.

This is an interesting idea at several levels.  Of course, it is difficult to remain perfectly sanguine when one first encounters it.  The ideational tide of, now, nearly seven decades is not lightly opposed.  But to say the least it would be advantageous to us to grow up and dispense with the wartime paranoia at last, so we can be clear-eyed about the past and present alike.

Is this the same thing as is meant by the WSJ when they speak of Irving wanting to rehabilitate Hitler?  Probably not.  I have some sympathy with John’s take on Irving, in that I suspect his regard for the Corporal runs deeper than that required by Wintermute, for example (whose primary interest, I believe, lies not in historical accuracy per se nor in Nazism, but in the plight of the West right now).

In any event, let us be quite sure that the legal attack dogs guarding the sacramentalisms of the Holocaust are there not to save us from the gas-happy extremis of neo-Nazism, but to save liberalism from us.

Posted by Steve Edwards on March 03, 2006, 12:05 PM | #

“...the restitution of humanity to Hitler was a precondition for the release of the West from suicidalism.”

I think it is equally important to demonise Marxism endlessly, and to tar Marxism with every single charge we can make stick. Once Marxism is seen as an essentially unnatural, rather than benign, idea we shall be closer than ever to recovery.