Date Posted:12:32 Author: ketch - 15 Jun 2001 Subject: Re: Free Speech issue In reply to:
Hendrik - 15 Jun 2001
's message, "Free Speech issue" on 12:31
Irving lost his libel case leaving him with debts he does not seem to be able to pay.
On another occasion Irving "verified" the authenticity of "The Hitler Diaries" for a newspaper in the UK. A few days later they were shown to be fakes, and not even particularly good fakes.
I have met some people involved in "historical revisionism" where the holocaust is denied. All of them were strongly anti-semitic, although there seems to be a very small number of Jews who dispute the holocaust.
With the exception of Irving I cannot find any revisionists who could be seriously regarded as historians. Prof. Butz for example, author of "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century" sounds impressive, but his expertise is in electrical engineering not history.
All in all the evidence that the holocaust did take place is so overwhelming that it's hard to see why anyone would try to deny it unless they had some reason to want to whitewash Hitler and his followers.
On a question of free speech though, I believe that historians should be allowed to question the accepted version of events even in emotive issues like the holocaust. Free speech however does not extend to this board. In the unlikely event that anyone should want to deny the holocaust here their posts will probably be deleted and they will be asked to go somewhere else.
