Sunday, February 20, 2005

Why don't they just marry each other?

A few things to add to the previous post:

  • The strange confluence of thought between Ward Churchill and Holocaust deniers like David Irving is most evident in their attitude toward Deborah Lipstadt: for both, she is the enemy. Irving's website, which obsessively documents Lipstadt's every move in squibs with titles like "The racist record of Deborah Lipstadt" and "Still dining out on the Holocaust," also, incredibly, has a link to the Churchill piece in Socialism and Democracy. They probably didn't read it real good, is my guess. (Yesterday, Irving's site also had a link to a little piece that gloated over Lipstadt apparently having to undergo surgery recently. It's gone now. Lovely people.)


  • There are several books besides Richard Evans' on the Irving libel trial, among them Lipstadt's History on Trial; R.J. van Pelt's The Case for Auschwitz; and D.D. Gutenplan's The Holocaust on Trial. (Didn't spend much money thinking up titles, did they?)


  • I'd forgotten that during the libel trial in 2000 Irving addressed the judge as "Mein Fuhrer."


  • Lipstadt is tough: as a student in the 80s she was kicked out of the Soviet Union for clandestinely distributing copies of the Torah; she also, after her legal team shredded Irving in the libel trial, said: "This was an exercise in pest control." She was right, but I hope she's got protection. Churchill and Irving might for their own reasons refrain from violence, but what about their more ardent followers?
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