Why give Holocaust denial a platform?

November 25, 2007

lipstadt-deborah-emory-u.png

Deborah Lipstadt asks the key question at her blog: Why should any honorable, noble agency give a platform to people who don’t respect the facts and who have a track record of distorting history?

The distinguished debating group, the Oxford Union, has invited history distorter David Irving to speak. He was invited to speak with representatives of the British National Party (BNP), a group not known for tolerance on racial and immigration issues. While there is value to getting a range of views on any issue, Prof. Lipstadt and many others among us think that inviting a known distorter to speak is practicing open-mindedness past the point of letting one’s brains fall out (what is the difference between “open mind” and “hole in the head?”).

You know this story and these characters, right, teachers of history? You should, since these people play important roles in the modern art of history, and in the discussion over what we know, and how we know it. These are issues of “what is truth,” that your students badger you about (rightfully, perhaps righteously).

American teachers of history need to be particularly alert to these issues, since Holocaust deniers have been so successful at placing their material on the internet in a fashion that makes it pop up early in any search on the Holocaust. Most searches on “Holocaust” will produce a majority of sites from Holocaust deniers. It is easy for unwary students to be led astray, into paths of racist harangues well-disguised as “fairness in history and speech.”

Prof. Lipstadt practices history at Emory University in Atlanta, where she is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies. She chronicled much of the modern assault on history in her book, Denying the Holocaust, The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (1994). In that book, she documented the work of British historian David Irving, much of which consists of questionable denial of events in the Holocaust.

Cover of Lipstadt's book, Denying the Holocaust

Cover of Deborah Lipstadt’s book, Denying the Holocaust, the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory

Irving sued her for libel in Britain in 2000, where it is not enough to establish the truth of the matter to mount a defense. In a stunning and welcomed rebuke to Holocaust denial and deniers, the judge ruled in her favor, and documented Irving’s distortions in his 350-page opinion.

While his claims are legal in England, in several places in Europe his denial of Holocaust events is not protected as free speech. Traveling in Austria in 2005, he was arrested and imprisoned for an earlier conviction under a law that makes it a crime to deny the events. Prof. Lipstadt opposed the Austrian court’s decision: “I am uncomfortable with imprisoning people for speech. Let him go and let him fade from everyone’s radar screens.”

The drama plays out again. Serious questioning of what happened is the front line of history. Denying what happened, however, wastes time and misleads honest citizens and even serious students, sometimes with bad effect. Santayana’s warning about not knowing history assumes that we learn accurate history, not a parody of it.

This event will raise false questions about censorship of Holocaust deniers, and the discussion is likely to confuse a lot of people, including your students. U.S. history courses in high school probably will not get to the Holocaust until next semester. This issue, now, is an opportunity for teachers to collect news stories that illuminate the practice of history for students. At least, we hope to illuminate, rather than snuff out the candles of knowledge.

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8 Comments | Accuracy, Free speech, History, Holocaust, Holocaust denial, World War II | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

National embarrassment, national tragedy

April 17, 2007

Celebrate the hero, please.

He survived the Holocaust, arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp to die — he survived, instead. He survived the Communists, refusing to bow to demands he join the Communist party in post-war Romania; though a good engineer, his career was short-circuited by his stand on principle. He finally escaped Romania in 1978, emigrated to Israel, and then took a sabbatical to teach engineering at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. And he stayed on.

Yesterday, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Liviu Librescu used his own body to jam the doors into his classroom, yelled at his students to leave through the windows, and gave up his life to a depressed kid bent on murder. Prof. Librescu was 76 years old. He was the oldest victim, and a hero.

Survived the Nazis, survived the communists. Died to the excesses of the Second Amendment and a culture that seems to create enough disturbed people to make mass murder a serious problem, not a rare event. Librescu was already a hero. It’s embarrassing he had to rise to heroic actions to protect his students. It’s embarrassing to us that he died the victim of an act of senseless violence.

It’s a national embarrassment. Survived the Nazis. Survived the communists. Killed by an out-of-control student with a gun in the U.S.

It’s a national embarrassment. What are we going to do about it?

12 Comments | Current History, Freedom - Political, Heroes, History, Holocaust, Leadership, War, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Time to stand up for religious freedom: Lay off of Rep. Ellison

December 23, 2006

It was just sad when Dennis Prager prostituted U.S. history to rant at Minnesota’s U.S. Representative-elect Keith Ellison, for Ellison’s having said he’d use his faith’s scriptures for a staged photograph commemorating his being sworn in as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ignorance can be so ugly.

It was jarring when so many others demonstrated their ignorance of the First Amendment and Constitutional history by repeating Prager’s concerns. Ignorance is contagious.

It was tragic when a few people, after having had a chance to repent of their ignorance, then mounted an assault on the Constitution by continuing to demand something was wrong with the situation, even calling for Ellison to give up his faith for the ceremony. Ignorance can be cured, why would anyone reject the cure?

It’s time to stop piling stupidity on stupidity: Rep. Virgil Goode (ironically named, no doubt), a Republican representing much of southern Virginia in the U.S. House (5th District) took aim at Ellison’s election itself, calling for “immigration reform” to prevent a Muslim takeover of Congress.

Goode’s comments are insensitive, xenophobic, insulting, demonstrative of ignorance, and just wrong on so many counts it is hard to determine which rebuttal is more important. So, random rebuttals follow. [I’ve come back to this four times today. It makes me amazingly angry, and I have to take a break.] Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Bogus history, Education, First Amendment, Holocaust, Patriotism, Politics, Religious Freedom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

David Irving out of jail – no longer denies Holocaust

December 21, 2006

Former historian David Irving was released from jail in Austria early, on December 21. Irving claims that he no longer denies the Holocaust.

Former historian David Irving, in handcuffs, released from Austrian jail. Reuters photoDetails are in the Daily Telegraph from England.

In several European nations, including Austria, denial of the Holocaust not only is historical error, it’s also against criminal law.

He was arrested in November 2005 on charges related to two speeches and a newspaper interview he gave in Austria in 1989 in which he called the gas chambers a “fairy tale” and claimed that Hitler had no role in the Holocaust, even “offering his hand to protect the Jews”.

The charges covered statements he had made, such as questioning the accepted version of the Holocaust. He argued that “millions of people were led to believe” an “absolute absurdity”. A jury found him guilty of denying the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes.

Irving had appealed his 3-year sentence as too long. He serves the rest on probation.

Irving earlier sued U.S. historian Deborah Lipstadt for libel, in London, after she had called him a Holocaust denier. In a long and famous trial, she was found not to have libeled Irving, though under British law, truth is not a defense as it is in the U.S.

While it offends my First Amendment sensibilities to criminalize the making of such claims, one wonders about the intelligence or goals of people who deny the Holocaust.

Under California law, judicial note has been taken that the Holocaust occurred. It is a fact of history. U.S. law allows more robust, and offensive, discussion of the topic.

But in the end, the Holocaust is a fact. It’s an ugly, brutal and regrettable fact. Denying it occurred at all, or to the scope and degree it occurred, is only an odd form of denial of reality.

Read the rest of this entry »

3 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Holocaust, Holocaust denial | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Holocaust denial conference in Tehran

December 12, 2006

Some subjects do not lend themselves well to parody.  Either the subject is itself so repulsive that parody is unsavory, or it is impossible to tell parody from reality because the reality is so bizarre.  As Mark Twain noted, fiction writing is more difficult because it must stick to possibilities, while non-fiction doesn’t.  As Dave Barry noted, “I can’t make this stuff up.”

Tehran, Iran, is hosting a Holocaust denial conference. 

“Revisionist fringe,” says the headline in the online Independent.   Analysis from The Jerusalem Post says it’s mainly the same old stuff, including the denials that the denial of the Holocaust is anti-Semitic.  Iranian students protested the stuff — so often it is the students who seriously read history, now, who see what is going on and what is wrong with it — but the story from the online Times of London also carries the photo of the fringe ultra-orthodox Jewish group who showed up at the conference just to voice their opposition to the creation of Israel.  A sub-headline in the Times  is “‘Nazis and racists’ gather in Tehran.”

One would be much more comfortable were there a floating picture of MAD Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman coming across these stories on-line.  But it’s not humor, it’s not parody.  It’s really happening.

The ghost of Santayana rests uneasily today.

4 Comments | Bogus history, Holocaust, Holocaust denial, Voodoo history, World War II | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Mermelstein: Holocaust remembrance hero

August 28, 2006

In early August 1985, Melvin Mermelstein struck a powerful blow against bogus history and historical hoaxes. Mel won a decision in a California court, in a contract case.

A group of Holocaust deniers had offered a $50,000 reward for anyone who could prove that the Holocaust actually happened. Mermelstein had watched his family marched to the gas chambers, and could testify. He offered his evidence. The Holocaust deniers, of course, had no intention of paying up. They dismissed any evidence offered as inadequate, and continued to claim no one could prove that the Holocaust actually occurred.

Mermelstein, however, was a businessman. He knew that the offer of the reward was a sweepstakes, a form of contract. He knew it was enforceable in court. And he sued to collect. The issue in court would be, was Mermelstein’s evidence sufficient?

Mermelstein’s lawyer had a brilliant idea. He petitioned the court to take “judicial note” of the fact of the Holocaust. Judicial note means that a fact is so well established that it doesn’t need to be evidenced when it is introduced in court — such as, 2+2=4, the freezing point of water is 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 degrees Celsius, etc.

The court ruled that the evidence presented overwhelmingly established that the Holocaust had occurred — the court made judicial note of the Holocaust. That ruling meant that, by operation of law, Mermelstein won the case. The only thing for the judge to do beyond that was award the money, and expenses and damages.

You can read the case and other materials at the Nizkor Holocaust remembrance site.

Appalachian State University takes the Holocaust seriously — there is a program of study on the issue, recently reported by the Mountain Times (the school is in Boone, North Carolina — not sure where the newspaper is).

Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations

Mountain Times, August 17, 2006

As co-directors of Appalachian State University’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies, Rennie Brantz and Zohara Boyd are always eager to expand and improve the center’s methods of education. Seldom, though, does this involve airfare.

Brantz and Boyd recently visited Israel to participate in the Fifth International Conference for Education: Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations. The four-day conference was held in late June at Yad Vashem, an institute and museum in Jerusalem that specializes in the Nazi Holocaust.

“Yad Vashem is an incredible institute,” Brantz said. “It was founded in the ’50s to remember and commemorate those who perished in the Holocaust, and has been the premier international research institute dealing with the Holocaust.”

As Santayana advises, we remember the past in order to prevent its recurring. Clearly, this is a past we need to work harder at remembering.

28 Comments | Bogus history, Education, Freedom - Political, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Holocaust, Holocaust denial, Law, School discipline, Voodoo history | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

D. James Kennedy’s killer legacy

August 27, 2006

This might be a better topic for another blog I have in early creation stages — except that the difficulties with the anti-science program broadcast this weekend by D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries are exactly the same difficulties the same group has with history, and the concerns about revising history textbooks and history classes — to make them inaccurate and militantly polemic — also come from the same groups. The history errors alone in Kennedy’s program justify discussing it here. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Bogus history, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Education, Evolution, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Holocaust, Holocaust denial, Intelligent Design, Science, Science and faith, Voodoo history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Darwin-to-Hitler claims rebutted

August 24, 2006

Controversy still simmers over the pending broadcast from Coral Ridge Ministries (CRM) of a program that claims links from evolution theory to the Holocaust.  Apart from being incredibly simplistic historically, the claims raise the ire of scientists and biologists who say CRM gets most of the science and the history of the science wrong.

Rev. D. James Kennedy’s program is titled “Fatal Fruit.”  Alas, it appears to contain many fatal flaws of history. 

Several bloggers raised issues of accuracy in the past week, and especially after Dr. Francis Collins complained about the use of an interview he granted on such a cause (which he claims to be specious), Coral Ridge Ministries changed its promotional material, deleting references to Collins and to Ann Coulter, whose recent book deals in anti-Darwin disinformation.  In response, CRM trotted out historian Richard Weikart, a fellow at the anti-Darwin Discovery Institute in Seattle, whose recent book was titled From Darwin to Hitler.

Ed Brayton notes difficulties with Weikart’s thesis, and the fact that most historians disagree with Weikart and CRM, in a post at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

I am struck by the irony of CRM’s demonization of science and Darwin, in a program complaining about the effects of Hitler’s rise to power and his use of such demonization tactics against Jews, Gypsies, Africans, Arabs and others. 

You may wish to look at my earlier post, with links to other stories.

4 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Creationism, History Revisionism, Holocaust, Holocaust denial, Intelligent Design, Science, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Twisting history still: D. James Kennedy

August 23, 2006

Voodoo history just will not die.

Several years ago I caught the tail end of a television program featuring the Rev. D. James Kennedy railing against evolution and especially Charles Darwin.  What caught my aural attention was a rant claiming that Darwin somehow bore responsibility for Stalin’s manifold evils perpetrated in the old Soviet Union.

That is bogus history of the first order, of course.  Stalin banned the teaching of evolution, and he banned research even based on evolution. 

Soviet genetics, top of the world in the early 1920s, was set back decades (and still has not recovered).  Some top scientists were fired; some were imprisoned; some were sent to Siberia in hopes they would die (and some did); a few disappeared, perhaps after being shot.  Soviet anti-Darwinian science contributed to the massive crop failures of the 1950s that led to the starvation of more than 4 million people.  Claiming that Stalin loved Darwinian theory is bad history revisionism of first order.  (If you’re Googling, look for the story of Trofim Lysenko, Stalin’s henchman against biology.)

Kennedy is at it again.  The past couple of weeks have featured new rants against Darwin, leading up to a promised climax this weekend in which Kennedy will claim Darwin was responsible for Hitler and Nazi atrocities — again a fantastic claim, since Hitler directly repudiated Darwin, never expressed support for the idea of evolution, and since anti-Darwin quackery led to any number of stupid science moves in Nazi Germany, such as a ban on blood banks for fear that soldiers would get Jewish blood and turn Jewish (no, you can’t make that stuff up — see Ashley Montague’s essay in his 1959 book, Human Genetics).

Unfortunately for Kennedy and his Coral Ridge Ministries (CRM), his advance flackery got the attention of biologists like P. Z. Myers and others, like the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

There is much bogus history to deal with there, and so little time.  Check out the links.  More to come from here, I hope.

2 Comments | Bogus history, Creationism, Evolution, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Holocaust, Holocaust denial, Intelligent Design, Plagiarism, Religious Freedom, Voodoo history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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