more on Irving

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/21/uirving.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/02/21/ixportaltop.html
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/02/21/freedom_on_trial.html

Although I did (and do) defend this guy's right to have bizarre, divergent views, he is proving himself even dumber than I thought before. To question the reality of the gas chambers is just too out there. You can go and visit the sites...of course, you can also see the photographs, so questioning the deaths seems pretty out there to me...but when Austerlitz, for example, receives as many visitors every year, to question their existence is way beyond the pale.
This actually brings up another interesting point. Some self-proclaimed "world's most unsuccessful bimbo" who has made a career of marrying rich guys, then divorcing them to make her living stood outside the courtroom suggesting the bodies of Jews be exhumed and tested to see if they died of being gassed or of...I can no more remember the disease she suggested than her name, but that sort of illustrates the point...in the context of this discussion, she just doesn't matter, nor will she be jailed for regurgitating Irving's idiocy.
See, when you claim to be a historian you have a different standard. Remember the big flap a couple years ago about Stephen Ambrose being accused (and found guilty, if I recall correctly) of plagiarizing? Of course you don't because outside of we history nuts, nobody noticed or cared. In the great scheme of things it does not matter. I would not be surprised if less than 10% of the population has even heard of Ambrose, yet he is one of the most influential historians of this generation...he was the technical advisor on Saving Private Ryan, yet somehow Spielberg is the more renowned historian. Interesting.
Why is it then that a supposedly former model can say things without fear of reprisal, but a fringe element pseudo-historian gets in trouble?
More to the point, and more important for me, what is the role of historians in interpreting history? Very few "new" discoveries are being made about, say...David. He lived (depending on whose numbers you believe) either 1000 B.C. or a century or 2 later. Obviously, there is not much new stuff HAPPENING in his life, yet 6 new books, major and considered "important" new books have been released in the last 2 years. So what new information is available?
None, really. No, what is going on is "reinterpretations" of information. It is reanalyzing stuff that has oft before been covered. It is trying to use a different tool, a different angle to look at things. Historians, to become or stay "relevant", by the nature of their work, are going to come up with new ways to look at old stuff, and this, on occasion, will result in some very, very bizarre propositions.
And at some point it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. A hundred, two hundred years from now when the emotional impact of the Holocaust, the impact of seeing the grainy, brutal photographs, of having talked to someone who survived the camps, of hearing discussions of Corrie TenBooms book, the ready availability of Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem" with its stomach-churning account of a man saying he was helping Jews by overcrowding them into trains to go to the death camps, but he was getting them there "on time" and so was helping them...when those things are past, someone will reanalyze the situation.
Someone will come up with something wherein the REAL blame lays with Britain and France for how they "settled" WWI. The "real" blame will be on Wilson for caving on 15 of his 14 Points. The "real" blame will be the League of Nations, the ineffective Weimar Republic, the deaf ears the U.S. and elsewhere turned to the warnings of prominent Jews like Einstein...
A study into the masscre of Jews by the Russians early in the war, a sharing of the blame by places like Auschwitz in Austria, the numerous camps in Poland and elsewhere (look it up: virtually every concentration camp was outside of Germany and Germans themselves did comparatively little of the dirty work) will cause another reassessment. Germany will be largely absolved of blame for the Holocaust...possibly rightfully, possibly wrongfully...remember, there is no paper trail leading back to Hitler, there is no "smoking gun" that he deliberately and conclusively ordered the so-called "Final Solution"...
Someone, after the emotional impact is removed will write something that alters the way the Holocaust is viewed. And they might even be partially correct. But they will be partially incorrect, also. And here is perhaps where people like Irving really harm the cause of truth and understanding.
Because of people like him saying things like that these books will not receive a fair hearing. In fact, they might easily be misrepresented or even written differently because people like Irving once existed. And ultimately, that self-censorship will restrict the exchange of ideas. To be sure, many of the ideas are bad ones (such as the one being discussed) but some good ones will be lost, too. And while I don't encourage people to listen to people like Irving, the fact he is not allowed to spout stupidity is still an example of why censorship is a poor idea.