, so quick to flutter their eyelashes around “terrorist” and “holocaust denier” and then at other times they just won’t come out and play.
“BBC soft soaps Holocaust denier” – blogs Adloyada, referring to this BBC article about David Irving. I quite agree with the view of the sociologist quoted in the BBC article that the law should not be used to silence the likes of Irving (although when he brings a libel case to intimidate and silence a critic and then loses, I laugh loud and long) – but that’s not the issue. The issue is, as Adloyada says that he isn’t a “holocaust denier” as the BBC sidebar repeatedly puts it, he is a Holocaust denier. We don’t have to wait for a court to tell us this; it is quite clear to anyone who has read any substantial portion of his output – but even if we did, a British court has unambiguously ruled that he is not only a Holocaust denier but has actively lied about and distorted historical evidence in order to further his Holocaust denial.
As Adloyada also points out, there are a few other points in the BBC article that could do with some scare quotes. Irving is not an “academic” and he is not “engaging.” On my own account I rather felt that the description of Irving as a “gentleman”, even if offered as one of two alternative futures, would have been better employed at some editorial distance.
There is a more profound question discussed in Adloyada’s post: that the Western media seems to have accepted a line pushed by the Iranian state-controlled media among others, namely that Holocaust denial is an offence against the Jewish religion. But that is a matter for the advanced class.
UPDATE: I see that as I was writing this post, Laban was writing another – concerning the Adloyada post just above the one I quote. The coincidence is not that great. There is a common theme to the two stories concerned.
The reason most modern socialists like to call the Nazis “right wing” (oooh, scare quotes!) is because they were, as their name says, nationalists. The communist/socialist ideal is international socialism that spreads far and wide but, sooner or later, every socialist country adopts nationalism as a defence of is policies. Stalin was an internatioanlist until the nazis invaded, whence he quickly adopted nationalist rhetoric to encourage the defence of the “fatherland”.
And that’s essentially it. The Nazis started out as nationalists, but they were still socialists. Their policies – universal employment, control of capital by the state, idealised environmentalism, eugenics, an obsession with health and safety and “identity politics”, or the reduction of the individual to membership of a class or social group – all have their roots in 1920s progressive commmunism. Fascism itself was born from american progressivism. The difference, as I said, was nationalism.
By its nature socialism is authoritarian, as it presumes the right to tell people who they should live their lives.
There s a good long essay here that explains it all in detail. Remember, this is the word of one man (and no, it’s not me, I’m not patient enough to write that much) so it shouldn’t be taken as the final authority, but it’s very revealing. The extent to which the left has dissasociated itself from a man who, if you quote his speeches today, would be considered a leading light of leftist thought, is quite remarkable.
Beyond the economic sphere of interventionalism against free marketism the ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing labels’ are pretty much redundant these days – useful only for knee jerk insults and idiots who want a label without having to think about it.
not really – fascism used a lot of base, hardcore populism to stay in power. The collectivism was self-enforced by the populace rather than top-down dictat. I’m not saying that there WASNT top-down dictat – but that aspect doesnt cover the entirity of fascism and how it stayed in power.
there’s a lot of recent indications in the historical record that Hitler’s Germany was almost an anarchy of competing interests – all competing for the attention of the Fuhrer.
A kind of groupthink that capitivated Germany in mass hysteria of sorts, irrespective of your class in society.
Michael Burleigh’s “Third Reich – A New History” is a serious eye opener to what i’m trying to describe. I cant recommend that book highly enough.
I’m not saying that fascist Germany was in any way any “better” than Soviet Russia -it was just different , and equally as vile.
Rob Read and Archonix:
Nice to see arguments presented calmly, without bluster and name calling.
interestingly enough – the definition debate regarding “fascism” is quite large on wikipedia – there’s a hell of a debate going on over there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Fascism
but this really has nothing to do with bbc bias. so i’ll shut up now.
Beyond the economic sphere of interventionalism against free marketism the ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing labels’ are pretty much redundant these days – useful only for knee jerk insults and idiots who want a label without having to think about it.
Cockney
Well said, but isn’t this long discussion a result of “right wing” being far more widely drawn by the BBC & many others?
The BNP election manifesto showed that their ideas (plans would imply logical thought had been applied) involved the tight control of the economy, even resurrecting the infamous “commanding heights of the economy” phrase. By your (& my) definition definitely left wing.
but this really has nothing to do with bbc bias. so i’ll shut up now.
archduke | Homepage | 21.02.06 – 1:48 pm | #
I’m not so sure about that. The BBC is increasingly being seen, at least by some, as the media mouhtpiece of an increasingly fascistic government. Although that depends on your definition of fascism, which makes the wikipedia debate highly relevant. Do we live in a fascist country?
archonix -> if you read the civil contingencies bill and then add that to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, not to mention the tearing up of Magna Carta and Habeus Corpus – i’d say, yeah. We’re getting very very close to it.
All the legislation is in place – all it takes is an “emergency” – the definition and declaration of which lies with the executive rather than parliament.
Cockney,
If the BBC stopped using Hitler=Right-wing, we could stop correcting them.
“I’m not saying that fascist Germany was in any way any “better” than Soviet Russia -it was just different , and equally as vile.”
archduke
Some thoughts on this from Lavrenti Beria as related by his son Sergo.
“My father thought that if Bolshevism was an extreme system,
then Fascism was the highest development not of capitalism but
of our Socialist system. Comparing the two systems, he nevertheless pointed out a difference. ‘In Germany the National-Socialist Party is only an instrument for supervision, in the hands of the dictator.
With us the Party[CPSU] is not merely an instrument for supervision,it is also the means that Stalin uses to carry out his policy. That’s the only difference.’
And he added:
‘We are better able to manoeuvre and improvise, despite our stupidity and that of our officials.
The Germans can’t adapt themselves to new circumstances.
They carry through to the end whatever they have begun, even
if the dynamic of events has changed.
There is an element of inertia because they need to understand
why they must alter their conduct and that’s a handicap for them.'”
‘Beria, My Father: Inside Stalin’s Kremlin’
Sergo Beria
Whenever I’m confronted by these discussions about the dis/similarity between the communist/nazi philosophies I can’t help thinking of washing powder.
One leading brand promises to wash clothes “whiter than white” and the other to “restore vibrant colour” but when it comes down to failing to get ink stains out of shirts I’ve never noticed the slightest difference.
it depends on the historical context.
the arguments in politics nowadays are framed in a low tax verus high tax argument for example.
in the Spanish civil war , you were either on the right (fascist Franco + the catholic church) or the left (communists, socialist, anarchists, republicans). that war was so vicious, there was no middle ground really, so gentile , democractic arguments about low/high taxes were pretty much out of the window.
a similar thing happened in germany, where monarchists, catholic nationalists and christian democrats sided with the Nazis(the “right”) in opposition to the forces of communism and the social democrats (their “left”)
so, it all depends really, on the historical context.
My argument is this.
The government is force.
The government is funded by exortion.
How much extortion do we need?
I would argue as little as possible! IT shouldn’t be used to fund entertainment (AKA the BBC).
After seeing Paxman’s interview with Irving’s lawyer last night on BBC2 Newsnight, I was somewhat curious why such a sympathetic one from a BBC interviewer. Now I remember something Christopher Hitchens said about Irving in a Vanity Fair article about Paxman’s friend, the novelist Robert Harris:
“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 calibre of Hugh Tevor-Roper, author of The Last Days of Hitler) —was made possible in part by Irving’s finding that those nasty papers were indeed 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 form 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.” http://www.fpp.co.uk/StMartinsPress/ABCRadio0596.html
No doubt it was with this historical debt in mind that Paxman made the studied comments he did last night on bbc concerning Irving’s appeal. Let us hope Hitchen’s writes on the travesty of this imprisonment soon. Re the insults and expressions of ‘repugnance’ towards Irving from those here who admit to not having read him, well they are really not worthy of reply on a blog about bbc bias. Paxman showed far more courtesy last night than on here!
Thom Boston
I think David Nolan, should stop watching so much TV as well. You really dont nead to know much about classic Libertariasm to see that it is not only compleatly impractical, but can not have anything to do with Nazism by definition.
However the fact that their is a perception that it is right wing, is ofcause the point.
In a compleatly liberal sociaty that must tolerate all types of behavior that does not directly damage others,will throw up some obvious problems. Nazis/Rednecks/BNP/Neo Labour/BBC/communists, have in a classic Liberal sociaty as much right to exsist and say what they think as any one else. As long as they dont harm anyone.
The big difference is that because their is no BIG goverment they cant harm anyone, or cost any money, and you can say what ever you like about them.
The thing that is most impractical is that to have a goverment that is that small is impossible.
It would take politicians/ to admit quite how compleatly unnessery and dangerous they are. Nobody would like to admit that, including you or me.
Which is why all sensible people are middle of the road. Which has now in Europe become a very dangerous and lonely place to be standing indead.
If the BBC/EU/New Labour considers itself to be middle of the road this should not suprise us, it should make us S..T our pants.
A problem also is that no-one ever publishes books about the strong political “middle of the road” views they have. And none of even you lott would read them if they did. However it really does matter if you dont know where ” middle of the road” is. We can trust the BBC 100% not to help us find out.
Archduke
No it does not. This is where the perception comes from. Orwell was fighting for the communists in the Spanish civil war. As you know he got his idears for Animal Farm and 1984 from this experience. He was disillutioned by his realisation that they were both as bad as each other.
Has nobody on this thread read historian Richard Evans’ Lying about Hitler, his account of how the team of historians he led in the libel trial completely discredited Irving’s work? Irving’s book on Dresden, in fact, was crucial in exposing his deliberate misreading of many of those “primary documents” he’s always boasting of, as he knowingly exaggerated the Dresden death toll by several orders of magnitude. Chris 8:20 is nuts, Bryan 8:51 and following has it absolutely right. Irving is an anti-semitic, lying piece of sh*t.
This Irving business is very illuminating.
Holocaust denial is illegal in Austria, has been since about 1992. But Irving has been prosecuted for something he said in 1989. Oh dear me. Sounds like a travesty of what we understand as the law.
Irving is being done not for denying that the Nazis killed lots of Jews (and others) but for denying the the extent and methods employed. He also questions some of the evidence ie there is not as much as we have been led to believe. Something to do with the trial, apparently no forensics people have ever gone over Auschwitz looking for evidence of bodies, graves and so on, unlike Bosnia or Iraq. Can this really be true? I dont know what to believe.
Even saying that could make me a criminal in Austria.
What would happen if I sat down and spent 20 years researching, interviewing etc to document 6 million murdered Jews only to find the number only added up to 5 million. Thats still a lot of people dead you might say, an enormous crime even so. But never mind the real criminal would be me, Ive questioned the 6 million figure, Im a holocaust denier, 3 years inside, next please.
Actually seriously, I heard somewhere that the 6 million figure really has been downgraded to @ 5 million. Does anyone know if this true?
jgm,
Chris feels so compelled to defend the indefensible Irving that he’s reduced to scratched-record tactics, playing the same tuneless few bars over and over again:
Read Irving’s books….click
Read Irving’s books….click
Read Irving’s books….click
It’s time to lift the needle.
Holocaust denial is illegal in Austria, has been since about 1992.
Paragraph 3g, Verbotsgesetz passed 8. May 1945.
Interesting date 8 May 1945………
Geezer….start reading. The actual technical drawings of the manufacturers Topf & Sons for the ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau are available; there is a book written by a Frenchman with lists of the orders for railway-sleepers which is how pyres were made to burn corpses and details of the dripping human fat into huge trenches.
If you are confused about whether the Nazis ever killed Jews or Poles or Red Army soldiers or even British RAF crew at A-B then I suggest you do a reality check by seeing if people like Hoess, Himmler, Heydrich, Hitler, Eichmann etc ever lived or whether Tiergarten 4 was ever an address in Berlin.
Check also that T-4 never happened, that handicapped were not put through a Euthanasia Program at Hadamar, Sonnenberg etc. That the cremation ovens and team of doctors did not get moved from Hadamar in 1941 to Auschwitz.
Maybe you could take David Irning by the hand and feast his little eyes on the files of life insurance policies held by Jews encashed by the Nazis; or perhaps you could take him to review the meticulous record-keeping of the Nazis on this very matter.
http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndcrema.html
http://www.vho.org/GB/c/CM/body-disposal.html
http://www.codoh.com/found/fndcrema.html
http://www.holocaust-history.org/pamphlets/irving/pamphlet.shtml
“If you are confused about whether the Nazis ever killed Jews or Poles or Red Army soldiers or even British RAF crew at A-B then I suggest you do a reality check by seeing if people like Hoess, Himmler, Heydrich, Hitler, Eichmann etc ever lived or whether Tiergarten 4 was ever an address in Berlin.”
Good grief your right Bryan! Reading back I can see that I said I was confused about that stuff! OK I never actually wrote the actual words but being much clever than wot I am you managed to see that from what I did write.
Read Irving’s books….click
Read Irving’s books….click
Read Irving’s books….click
It’s time to lift the needle.
Bryan | 22.02.06 – 5:55 am
Bryan I’m pleased you managed to comprehend Christopher Hitchens’words: “that you can’t say you know the subject at all unless you have read them.” As Rick says “get reading”… Milton,Locke, Kant,Paine,Chomsky,Dagmar Barnouw, Index on Censorship. BBC Radio 4s ‘Thought for the day’ was thoughtful on Irving this morning.Bbc bias? It seems the extremism is actually here!
Sorry, Barnouw’s(USC) recent work on “Zeitliche Diskriminierung” may be unfamiliar to some, here is a ‘critical’ review from Dec and her reply: The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans (Indiana University Press, 2005)
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/19649.html
“If the BBC/EU/New Labour considers itself to be middle of the road this should not suprise us, it should make us S..T our pants” – Gary Powell.
Gary, you make so many comments about how terrifying everything is (“Scared? You should be” etc) that it’s getting like The Power Of Nightmares round here.
Anyway. In an effort to unite the two main topics being discussed, then, presumably you disagree with the judge at the 2000 libel trial who said Irving “associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism” on the grounds that neo-Nazis cannot be right-wing?
Geezer,
I’m not the one who responded to your post.
Has nobody on this thread read historian Richard Evans’ Lying about Hitler
jgm
No, on amazon I read “Evans’s carefully documented book has not yet been published in the U.K., as Irving’s threats to bring a libel suit have already caused one company to drop publication.” Presumably now he’s out of the way he can publish?
Oooops sorry Bryan!
I see now it was rick.
Ive been trying to find out about this Austrian law.
As far as I can tell there is a clause about not diminishing the crimes of the Nazi era or something. It doesnt go back to 1945 though and holocaust denial isnt mentioned. Only a technicality but the term holocaust certainly wasnt used in those days. Seems to date back to the ’60s or ’70s.
Perhaps it was altered later, maybe in 1992?
Austria has a rather unfortunate history of not trying to bring real Nazi war criminals to trial. To be fair so has Germany & indeed the US & UK (see operation paperclip, Reinharf Gehlen & Klaus Barbie). We provided enormous assistance to Franjo Tudjman the fairly openly Nazi Croatian leader (America basicly ran Operation Storm the Krajina Holocaust for him) despite the fact that he was on record as a Holocaust denier.
Which proves that the pen makes a more convenient target than the sword.
Whether the Nazis were right wing or not depends on definitions but they certainly & still are sought as allies by the more violent enemies of left wingery.
Austria has a rather unfortunate history of not trying to bring real Nazi war criminals to trial.
And I believe it was Lithuania that recently declared that it would no longer try suspected Nazi war criminals.
Geezer, no, that’s OK.
Maybe you should go on an Internet search to establish exactly what that Austrian law entails.
Anybody know if Chris is right that Lying About Hitler hasn’t been published in the UK?
jgm,
I dunno about the UK, but it’s selling on Amazon for about $12.
Come to think of it, I’d doubt Chris’ word as well. Anyone who trusts the likes of David Irving….
This thread is dead, ain’t it? Capt. Kirk voice: Must. Try. Anyway.
Yeah, I saw it on Amazon, Bryan, which is why couldn’t figure out what Chris was talking about.
Hey, here’s the “progressive” but often sensible Oliver Kamm on Irving the other day (sorry, can’t get link to work): http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/02/irving_and_othe.html.
Link worked fine. Interesting stuff.
Yes, this thread is deader than the proverbal doornail.
It’s not’trust’Bryan,rather a loose philosophical concept,it’s more to do with reason & experience. Like many other academics I deplore the latest witchhunt and neo-McCarthyism.
http://hnn.us/articles/7259.html
Kirstein reflects my views more than Therese Villiers MP on BBC 1s Question Time last night.God help us if she is a future Home Secretary!
Anybody know if Chris is right that Lying About Hitler hasn’t been published in the UK?
jgm
Have you read Dickens’ Hard Times’by any chance? I said I read on amazon….
“Ironically, Evans’s carefully documented book has not yet been published in the U.K., as Irving’s threats to bring a libel suit have already caused one company to drop publication. “(Editorial Reviews From Library Journal)
whoops forgot
Re: Prof. Richards Evans
http://fpp.co.uk/Legal/Penguin/experts/Evans/index.html
Actual transcript of letter of publisher concerning non-publication of Evans’ book that some wags on Amazon refer to as “Lying about Irving”
http://fpp.co.uk/Legal/Penguin/experts/Evans/THE120202.html
His Right to Say It
Noam Chomsky
The Nation, February 28, 1981
“…No rational person will condemn a book, however outlandish its conclusions may seem, without at least reading it carefully; in this case, checking the documentation offered, and so on….
It seems to me something of a scandal that it is even necessary to debate these issues two centuries after Voltaire defended the right of free expression for views he detested. It is a poor service to the memory of the victims of the holocaust to adopt a central doctrine of their murderers.”
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19810228.htm
Sigh,….Europe a quarter of a century later……