A Revealing Interview with David Irving

by Liberty and Power

Sunday's Observer newspaper carries a revealing interview with David Irving, who sits in a Viennese prison awaiting his court appearance on February 20.

Towards the end of the article, the interviewer, German author and academic Malte Herwig, explains that since Irving's arrest, Austria has witnessed a new debate on Holocaust denial and free speech."The sociologist Christian Fleck, Lord Dahrendorf and others have spoken up against criminalising opinions even if they are as vile as those of David Irving. Even Deborah Lipstadt has suggested that Irving should be let go. 'If you had said to me a couple of months ago that I would be asking for David Irving's release,' she says, 'I would have said you are crazy.' But Lipstadt doesn't want to be on the side of censorship, she says, and she doesn't want Irving to become a martyr to free speech."

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Tom G Palmer - 1/24/2006

No doubt we all reap as we sow.

But my main point is to thank you for clearing up the impression a friend had, on the basis of your posting and your affinity for "revisionism" of various sorts, that you were presenting the despicable Irving as a friend of freedom of speech. It's good to know that you have managed to see through him.

Mark Brady - 1/23/2006

Yes, although I guess he's less of a windbag than many, fundamentally far more decent, people. Some of his earlier books, like his biography of Field Marshal Rommel (1977), are recognized as significant contributions to scholarship. It's too bad that, on the one hand, those books may lend credibility to him as he holds forth on other subjects and, on the other hand, his outrageous views cause some people to discount everything he has ever written. I guess he reaps as he sows.

Tom G Palmer - 1/23/2006

And would "Irving's number" be that he is a mendacious, malicious, and hate-filled windbag?

Mark Brady - 1/23/2006

I think the essay is revealing in the sense that the author Malte Herwig got Irving's number better than other interviews with Irving that I've read.

Tom G Palmer - 1/23/2006

I thought that the essay was interesting, but I didn't find it all that "revealing." What did you have in mind? What it "revealed" (again) is what an utterly evil and despicable character David Irving (the one who taught his children to give straight armed salutes and to sing Nazi marching songs) is. He's hardly "David Irving, the champion of free speech," especially since he's the one who sued Deborah Lipstadt for exercising her free speech and then lost his case. He's all about "freedom for me, but not for thee." And just imagine if his loathesome allies got back into power, when he'd gleefully see all the rest of us massacred.

It's one thing to say that David Irving shouldn't be in prison (here goes: he shouldn't be in prison), but another to suggest that he is a champion of freedom of expression. That's one thing he definitely is not.