Why holocaust denial

But a week later, Irving reversed his position. Many believe he changed his view because the alleged diaries contained no mention of the Holocaust, thus buttressing Irving's argument in Hitler's War. Later, when the diaries were definitively shown to be fakes, Irving described himself as vindicated, although many pointed out that he had only briefly held that position.

The entire affair further damaged Irving's credibility as any kind of scholar. That may have helped push Irving toward explicitly radical-right groups. During the same year as the diaries controversy, Irving began to speak at meetings of the Deutsche Volksunion DVU , a party classified as "right-wing extremist" by West Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution. At the time, Irving maintained that there were liquidations of Jews and other minorities conducted by high-ranking Nazi officers, but that these executions were carried out without Hitler's knowledge or consent.

This drew a challenge from Robert Faurisson, a prominent French Holocaust denier and IHR member who rejected Irving's claims about Hitler's non-involvement, instead claiming that no Holocaust ever took place. Faurisson did not convince Irving, whose own epiphany, "realizing" there was no Holocaust, came later, during the trial of Ernst Zundel , a Canadian resident and key Holocaust denier.

Zundel had relied on a report issued by self-styled engineer Fred A. Leuchter Jr. Though Leuchter was discredited almost immediately, Irving, too, still cites his report as what changed his mind about the reality of the Holocaust. Irving has denied that racism or anti-Semitism forms the basis of his views. But his own history does not support that claim. During the early s, Irving began to associate with the neo-Nazi American group the National Alliance , which sponsored seven Irving lectures between to Irving also began to refer to Jews as "Shylocks" during this period, a nod to Shakespeare's unflattering portrayal of a Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice.

In , Irving publicly took exception to the British Broadcasting Corp. And, as became public during his later libel suit against Lipstadt, in Irving composed a revealing ditty for his infant daughter: "I am a baby Aryan, not Jewish or sectarian," Irving's song, recorded in his private diaries, began.

It was around this time that Irving began to run into trouble with European laws against denying or trivializing the Holocaust. In , a warrant was issued for his arrest by Austrian authorities after he gave two speeches in that country denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. In , Irving was fined several thousand dollars by the German government for denying the Holocaust, and was banned from entering Germany the following year.

Irving brought the suit against the British division of Penguin once the book was circulated in that country because British common law states that in a libel suit, the burden of proof rests with the defendant rather than the plaintiff American libel law shifts the burden of proof to the plaintiff and is far easier on writers' unintentional reporting errors.

The judge concluded that Irving "displays a distinctly pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish bias" and went on to call him "an active Holocaust denier" who "deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence. In , Irving was arrested in Austria, where he had traveled secretly to give a speech to a radical group, on the warrant. He pleaded guilty and told the court that he had changed his views of the Holocaust, and was sentenced to three years in prison.

That sentence was later reduced to time served, and he was deported to Britain where he immediately announced that he hadn't, in fact, changed his views on the war. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. Extreme Speech and Democracy. Find in Worldcat.

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