David Irving Pleads Guilty

David Irving, the self made British Historian, has pleaded guilty to charges of denying the Holocaust in Vienna. Irving has been in jail in Austria since November on charges stemming from speeches he gave 17 years ago declaring that the Auschwitz gas chambers were a myth.

Irving has had a rather tumultuous career. This is the man that was instrumental in exposing the “Hitler Diaries” as fakes in the 1980’s and this is also the man whose military history books used to be required reading at West Point. Unfortunately his admiration for Hitler and his flirtation with extreme right wing Holocaust Denial groups sent his career into a crash dive in the 1990’s. He hit rock bottom in 2000 when he lost a libel action against Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University and Penguin Books over Lipstadt’s 1994 work, “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.” In her book not only did Lipstadt identify Irving as a "Holocaust Denier,” but also accused him of distorting history in his books. Actually, if the truth must be told, she just about called him a bald faced liar.

Irving sued and, when Penguin Books surprised everyone by refusing to settle, acted as his own lawyer in anticipation of a triumphant confrontation between himself as lawyer and Lipstadt as witness. Irving only made one mistake; he sued in British Court where he couldn’t force her to testify rather than in a U.S. Court where I’ve been led to believe he could have. As a result Penguin’s legal team never let the mild mannered academic anywhere near the stand and substituted strong willed historians, that resembled velociraptors, who ripped Irving, his books and his attempts at playing solicitor to shreds. About the only thing Irving accomplished was he annoyed the judge.

The old saying that anyone who defends himself has a fool for a client was never truer than in this case. The result was a disastrous decision that every uncomplimentary thing Lipstadt said about Irving was TRUE. This essentially destroyed his credibility as a historian and left Irving saddled with 2 million pounds of dept. This led directly to his declaring bankruptcy in 2002.

Now, as a result of his guilty plea, the Vienna Court has handed Irving a three year sentence.

Gee, I’m amazed I remembered all that. I followed the case pretty closely having actually bought (and read) one of the 4,000 or so copies of Lipstadt’s book actually sold prior to the libel suit. I also read the court decision and D.D. Gutenplan’s book “The Holocaust on Trial,” which was about the libel case.

While I don’t sympathize with Holocaust Deniers, there is the little matter of people being entitled to their opinion. Like I’ve said before, Freedom of Speech means defending speech that you don’t particularly care for or it’s hollow.

On the plus side Irving has apparently seen the error of his ways and now concedes that the Holocaust did in fact occur and he was wrong to doubt the existence of the gas chambers.

Excuse me while I go curl up in the corner with my copy of the 1st Amendment again. I hope Irving gets a suspended sentence (if they have those in Austria). Nobody deserves to go to jail for simply being mistaken and Irving, aside from his inexplicable attraction to the denial position, always struck me as a man with useful historical insights and some worthwhile things to say.