Austrian Goverment Rescues Irving February 21, 2006
For those who don’t already know, David Irving is probably the most thoroughly discredited modern historian of the Nazi regime. In 2000, he sued Deborah Listed for libel in a British court, and lost. Lipstadt, according to Irving, damaged his public reputation by calling his historical research on Hitler into question. After a long and expensive trial, the court found Irving’s case to be entirely without merit, and called Irving “an active Holocaust denier…anti-Semitic and racist.” (Mr. Justice Gray cited in Duff). Already morally bankrupt, Irving emerged from that debacle broke and without professional credibility. He was set to take up the position of chief reptile in the broom closet of history. Now, thanks to a 1947 Austrian law banning any “public denial, belittling, or justification “of Nazi crimes, Irving will spend the next three years in an Austrian prison.
The Austrians convicted Irving on the basis of a speech he gave in 1989, in which he claimed that “Auschwitz is a legend”. In the most recent trial, he has revised history yet again, claiming that his errors resulted from his reliance on primary sources. This ignorant and self-serving twaddle, as repulsive as it, is not sufficient reason to send Irving to jail. It will make him a martyr to the European right and elicit some sympathy from his enemies, of whom I am one.
Ironically enough, Irving intends to spend his time writing his memoirs, after the manner of a previous political prisoner. The working title is “Irving’s War”, and why the Austrian state is considering subsidizing a new Mein Kampf passes all understanding.
Read a profile of Irving in The Independent
