First paragraph (Teaser):

Hitchens: Irving's studies of the Churchill-Roosevelt relationship, of the bombing of Dresden, of the campaigns of Rommel and others, are such that you can't say you know the subject at all unless you have read them.

Rest of the text:

David Irving is not just a Fascist historian. He is also a great historian of Fascism.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: IRVING HAS NEVER AND NOT ONCE DESCRIBED THE HOLOCAUST AS A "HOAX."

BUSH BACKING CONTROVERSIAL WRITER HITCHENS: "According to the laws of Moses, the Law of Return, Israel's civil code and the Nuremburg Laws, I am a Jew." - [http://tinyurl.com/pxaq3]

"HITLER'S SPIN ARTIST was the headline on a typical column, by Frank Rich in the New York Times, raising the alarm about the mere idea of Irving's being published. The Washington Post was not laggard, saying that Irving "routinely refers to the Holocaust as a hoax." Jonathan Yardley , a cultural critic of some standing, wrote a whole article that positively sighed with satisfaction at the idea that, having neither read nor seen the book, he could now safely counsel others to do likewise.

Nary a voice was raised, in American publishing or academe or journalism, to ask if David Irving had anything to contribute as a chronicler.

Things were rather different in my country of birth, which doesn't even have a First Amendment. More than 120 book sections of English magazines and newspapers have requested copies from Irving's British publisher, and reviews are pouring in. I might mention Robert Harris, author of Fatherland and Enigma, who wrote in the London Evening Standard on April 1 that "in the words of the military writer John Keegan: 'No historian of the Second World War can afford to ignore Irving.'

Few contemporary scholars have his depth of knowledge, virtually none has met as many of its leading figures and nobody, surely, has unearth more original material--a private archive known as the 'Irving Collection,' always generously made available to other researchers, which weighs more than half a ton."

Harris could have added that his own brilliant book 'Selling Hitler' - describing the 1983 forgery of "the Hitler Diaries," which hoodwinked a large chunk of the British establishment (including historians of the caliber of Hugh Trevor-Roper, author of 'The Last Days of Hitler') - was made possible in part by Irving's finding that those nasty papers were indeed a fake. Irving rendered another service by unmasking some spurious documents connecting Churchill and Mussolini.

He speaks faultless German. He has, in the most recent case, been the first historian to see some 75,000 pages of diary entries by Joseph Goebbels, held in secrecy in Moscow from 1945 to 1992. His studies of the Churchill-Roosevelt relationship, of the bombing of Dresden, of the campaigns of Rommel and others, are such that you can't say you know the subject at all unless you have read them.

AND, INCIDENTALLY, HE HAS NEVER AND NOT ONCE DESCRIBED THE HOLOCAUST AS A "HOAX."

I have caught David Irving out, just by my own researches, in one grossly anti-Jewish statement and one wildly paranoid hypothesis and several flagrant contradictions. But I learned a lot in the process of doing so. It's unimportant to me that Irving is my political polar opposite. If I didn't read my polar opposites, I'd be even stupider than I am. But what did I get when I went round that Holocaust seminar? Professors Bauer and Kwiet and Browning, asked if they agreed with the St. Martin's decision, shrank as if I had invited them to a Witches' Sabbath. None of them would say that Irving should never be published, but all of them said that if it were up to them he would not be.

WHAT ARE WE AFRAID OF HERE?

Deborah Lipstadt, author of the standard text Denying the Holocaust, told The New York Times that one wouldn't and shouldn't publish David Duke on race relations, and (varying her pitch a bit) told The Washington Post that one wouldn't and shouldn't publish Jeffrey Dahmer on man-boy love. What is this vertiginous nonsense? These are supposedly experienced historians who claim to have looked mass death in the face, without flinching. And they can't take the idea of a debate with David Irving? Quite apart from the fact that many publishers would have rushed to promote a Jeffrey Dahmer manuscript, what are we afraid of here?

I have now read the exchange of correspondence between Irving and St. Martin's. For a long time, everything was hunky-dory. The manuscript was read seven times in 15 months(and understandably, since it contained amazing new material). The Military Book Club chose it as a main selection. Sales representatives made ethusiastic noises. And then, after a few hysterical and old-maidish articles in the press (Eek--a Nazi!), Irving is told that his contract is void. He is told this not by the publishers but by members of the press telephoning him for his reaction.

THE LAW ON FREE EXPRESSION COVERS EVERYBODY

I remember when my friend Aryeh Neier, of the American Civil Liberties Union (whose parents got out of Berlin just in time), made the decision to uphold the right of the American Nazi Party to mount a demonstration in Illinois in 1978. The A.C.L.U. lost a lot of donors and subscribers that time. In a fine book entitled Defending My Enemy, Neier explained soothingly that the law on free expression covers everybody, and thus that in defending it for anybody you defend it for everybody.

After weeks of general acquiescence on the Irving suppression, Steve Wasserman of Times Books was moved to push Neier's point with his colleagues at Random House. In a contentious meeting, it was agreed they would actually read the book. Someone will no doubt pick up where St. Martin's left off; until then, one will have to seek David Irving on some ghastly Brownshirt Web site, which will parade its bravery in making the occult facts into revealed truth. Is this what the established experts want?

A little depressed at this last thought, I made a late-night call to Professor Raul Hilberg at the University of Vermont. Professor Hilberg's book The Destruction of the European Jews was the original text on the Holocaust, published in 1961. He is acknowledged as an ancestor on the matter. He sighed a bit when I mentioned Irving, whom he regards as a slippery customer but with whom he has had correspondence about documents and details. A very good man in footnotes and archives, allowed Hilberg, but you had to suspect his motives. However:

"IF THESE PEOPLE WANT TO SPEAK, LET THEM.

It only leads those of us who do research to re-examine what we might have considered as obvious. And that's useful for us. I have quoted Eichmann references that come from a neo-Nazi publishing house. I am not for taboos and I am not for repression."

CURRENTLY, THOUGH, THERE IS A TABOO. AND WHO REALLY BELIEVES THAT IF IT WERE LIFTED ANY HONEST PERSON WOULD BE THE LOSER?  

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

[andend] - Story Url.: http://tinyurl.com/myp5b

Are we all 'David Irvings' now? Where's our freedom of speech? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/n93l8

REFERENCES & LINKS:

United States PNAC version of 'spreading democracy' in pictures - Url.: www.marchforjustice.com/shock&awe.php

Christopher Hitchens, who fantasized about drinking champagne in Baghdad with his new buddies, the Iraqi freedom fighters: - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/l2kg5

Believe as I do, or I'll assassinate you! - Url.: tinyurl.com/e2wkj

Reuters (US Propaganda channel) - Austria jails Irving for 3 years on Holocaust denial - Url.: tinyurl.com/pyeuq

Google 'news' selection ''David Irving'' 07.05 hrs. GMT - Url.: tinyurl.com/ogrr2

The RAW story - and (this far) 37 Comments - can be found at Url.: tinyurl.com/afes4
(I checked the Url. today, now the comments are gone?)

The Boston Globe - Islamic furor exposes a rift across Europe - Url.: tinyurl.com/7wpvo

Some pictures of the war criminals behind the ominous PNAC - Url.: tinyurl.com/bdpmw

Background: 'Facing up to Islam in the Netherlands' - Url.: tinyurl.com/82msr

Philadelphia Inquirer - 'Islam and the West trapped in lies told about each other' - by Abdul Aziz Said and

Benjamin Jensen - Url.: tinyurl.com/bacd9

* "Sarah, if the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched." - George Bush Senior speaking in an interview with Sarah McClendon in December 1992. - And here's why: 'George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography' - by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin - Chapter - II - The Hitler Project - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/57qxk

* P.M. - Compliant media - Hitler: An Officer and a Gentleman? - Url.: tinyurl.com/3eepa

* "People do not forget. They do not forget the death of their fellows, they do not forget torture and mutilation, they do not forget injustice, they do not forget oppression, they do not forget the terrorism of mighty powers. They not only don't forget: they also strike back." - 2005 Nobel Literature Prize winner Harold Pinter - Url.: tinyurl.com/9cyeq

* The 9/11 WTC drama was by the PNAC criminals planned terror - Url.: tinyurl.com/9np7d - It was an inside job - Google - Url.: tinyurl.com/7tj9d

* Who's financing? - The 'Federal Reserve' and it's usurers is the absolute biggest crime against all humanity ever. - Url.: www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm

* 'Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one' — A.J. Liebling - The merciless engine of propaganda has been turned on: The infamous US 'Lie Factory' - Url.: tinyurl.com/8ncal

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