Zaterdag publiceerde TPO een interview met de meer dan omstreden Britse historicus en veroordeelde Holocaust-ontkenner David Irving. Dat deed behoorlijk wat stof opwaaien, want ja allemaal leuk en aardig die vrije pers, maar ‘er moeten ook verantwoordelijkheden worden genomen en plichten worden nageleefd’. De obsessie met informatiecontrole en dédain voor de lezer, is tamelijk stuitend.
Wij geloven niet dat onze lezers enerzijds wel mogen stemmen, politieke partijen mogen oprichten, kinderen mogen krijgen, en hun vrijheid van meningsuiting mogen gebruiken, maar als domme kinderen bij de hand genomen moeten worden als zij een stuk willen lezen. Merk ook op dat wij niets hebben geframed, of de lezer in een bepaalde richting hebben geduwd. Wij stelden de vragen, meneer Irving gaf de antwoorden. Opzettelijke desinformatie laten we graag aan anderen over.
Om dat punt kracht bij te zetten, hieronder het ongecensureerde interview met Irving zoals door ons opgetekend. Alleen de eerste en laatste minuten van het gesprek waarin we het gesprek aanvingen en afsloten, zijn niet uitgeschreven, die delen bestonden vooral uit beleefdheden, begroeting en afscheid en dat soort ruis. Voor de rest krijgt u het hele gesprek, want dat kunt u best aan.
Na een begroeting gaat het gesprek al vrij snel over de gemeente Den Haag die Irvings reservering bij het hotel waar hij zou spreken, ongedaan liet maken. Hij informeert naar verder nieuws uit het Nederlandse taalgebied over zijn aanwezigheid in de Lage Landen. Een woordvoerder van een Joodse vereniging uit Antwerpen had gezegd, zo citeren wij terwijl we van onze telefoon lezen, “Zelfs als-ie over zijn postzegelverzameling wil praten, dan moet dat verboden zijn”. Diezelfde woordvoerder zei ook dat Irving de toegang tot België überhaupt ontzegd zou moeten worden en dat dit mogelijk is omdat Groot-Brittannië geen lid van de Schengenruimte is. Irving lacht even – één van de weinige keren dat we hem dat zien doen – en stelt resoluut: “Ze zullen erachter komen dat dat niet mogelijk is vanwege EU-wetgeving”.
“Goh, die zie je nog zelden gebruikt worden.” Hij inspecteert een vulpen van een van ons. “Geef ‘m aan een Amerikaan en het enige wat die zegt is ‘oh, dit is geen balpen’.” Hij blijkt een gelijkende vulpen te bezitten en zegt dat hij even in de veronderstelling verkeerde dat we met zijn pen schreven. David Irving schrijft met een Mont Blanc. Wij niet.
We vragen hem hoe het Haagse hotel te weten is gekomen wie hij is en daarom zijn reservering annuleerde (wij hebben redenen om aan te nemen dat Irving onder zijn eigen naam heeft geboekt, wat hij niet altijd doet). Het hotel wist hoogstwaarschijnlijk niet wie hij was toen het zijn reservering accepteerde, maar bedacht zich later.
De recorder gaat aan.
Do you think your e-mail is being monitored by security services?
“If the jews, if they would consider it important, I could conceive they would tip off Mossad and make sure my e-mails are being read. But I don’t mind. It’s unimportant to me because what I’m doing is legal.”
But do you feel your right to free speech is being violated?
“One historian is being silenced, and all the other historians are being encouraged. This is one way of talking history, I don’t think they like it. They don’t like exploring the complete knowledge of languages, and the documents, and the archives, and reach different conclusions. They are control freaks, they like to control everything, also history. The jewish community, the international jewish community. Das internationale Judentum. I’m not saying that in a sense of antisemitism at all, I’m saying that as a statement of fact, they want to be in control. They don’t like it when somebody comes along who is not in control.”
Would it be different if a jewish historian would say the things you say?
“It would be different. They would hesitate before silencing him, they would encourage him, because they have a habit of encouraging their own people. A jewish film star for example would be encouraged, a non-jewish film star would be discouraged. It’s called networking, we all network. That’s the way they operate, it gives me a disadvantage, the way they network, and I object to that. They netwok unfairly, using smear tactics. They smear me around the world as a holocaust denier, as a Hitler apologist, a nazi, a fascist, those are smear tactics. I receive a lot of documents via internet from people who know my name from reading about the Rosenberg Diary. I read the Rosenberg Diary before the jewish community found out who had it. People on the internet find me, that’s how they know my name. In the Lipstadt trial I was called a holocaust denier. It sticks to you, you can’t shake it off, it’s like a toffee paper.”
But as you claim your right to free speech, don’t you feel that people who call you a holocaust denier also have their right to free speech?
“The difference is, they publish first, I don’t [inaudible] them afterwards for defamation, as in the Lipstadt case I sued her for defamation. She said, ‘but i have the right to freedom of speech’, I said ‘yes, you have that right, but you are being sued for defamation unless you can prove that what you write is true.”
Het filmpje voor Powned start binnen enkele momenten, hiervoor een korte uitwisseling. Het filmpje is een korte onderbreking van het interview dat TPO met Irving heeft.
Irving tegen A.N.: “I had no idea who you were. I don’t know who your friends are, who you are talking to, it could be you’re with all the wrong people.”
A.N.: “Oh, I figured you might have researched me a little, googled me or something, to see I if was trustworthy.”
Gesprek voor Powned begint.
A.N.: “Mr Irving, welcome, thank you for granting us this interview. To start off: yesterday there was a bit of a riot concerning the hotel, they refused to let you make a reservation, on orders of the municipality of The Hague.”
Irving: “Yes, they ordered me to shut up. That doesn’t seem to be compatible with free speech.”
A.N.: “Because…you do not incite violence, you only have a certain opinion?”
Irving: “They only people who are inciting violence are the people who demonstrated outside my hotels and abuse my guests as they come and go, and decide I’n not allowed to stand in a lecture room and talk about history, based on the documents that I know of.”
A.N.: “And you will have your lecture, in The Hague?”
Irving: “Yes, there has been a…well I can’t talk about it, but it will go ahead.”
A.N.: “You have to be a bit creative in concealing the exact location, then?”
Irving: “I try not to conceal, and I do not know the exact location, but it will go on even if people will not allow I’m gonna be saying this.”
A.N.: “So you feel it is a violation of your freedom of speech that the municipality of the Hague, mayor Van Aartsen and the hotel refuse to give you an opportunity to speak?”
Irving: “I’m very sorry for them. I’m very sorry for the mayor and his friends because obviously they’ve been told the wrong things about me. These jewish people who were outside last night, or, I mean I assume they were jewish because they wore yarmulka hats and so on, I might as well accuse them of being paedophiles, but I won’t do that. Why do they try and insult me, why would they do that?”
A.N.: “They should just try and debate you?”
Irving: “Yes. If they can. But of course, they can’t. There was one last night who told me about a little baby called Graus (inaudible) this child that died in Auschwitz, and I could have talked about a hundred thousand people who died in Dresden, but I didn’t. What interest is that of mine? I tour all the big sites, the big extermination sites in Poland. Lvov (inaudible), Treblinka, Majdanek, all these big extermination sites.”
A.N.: “You don’t deny that?”
Irving: “No. Stil, they call me a ‘holocaustontkenner’. It’s just exactly the same as I would turn around and say, ‘well, you’re just a paedophile, you are a jew and so many jews are peadophiles’. It doesn’t help.”
A.N.: “There is another point some people made. You chose today, originally, it has been postponed but you chose today, the February Strike commemoration, was this deliberate?”
Irving: “Who knows this, I mean, who knows this? They might just lock up the whole calendar and the whole year and so om because every day, if you look at the calendar, has some significance. They can try and lock up the whole year.”
A.N.: “So it wasn’t a day you picked knowingly?”
Irving: “No. It only shows how pathetic their intelligence is.”
A.N.: “Thank you very much, we’ll continue this in written form.”
Einde van de opname voor Powned.
We e-mailed you, about how we wanted to discuss free speech. We consider TPO and ourselves, personally, as advocates for freedom of speech. We also know that the late Christopher Hitchens often defended you…
“The late Christopher Hitchens…he was a nice man. I also know Peter Hitchens, his brother. He is still alive and he’s a journalist.”
Did you meet Christopher Hitchens?
“I met him several times, in his large Washington appartment, overlooking the site where Reagan was shot.”
Did it help you, he came out in your defense?
“Oh yes. When I was sent to prison in Vienna, a large number of notables came out in my defense, which I didn’t know about as I was in prison. A ‘holocaustontkenner’ lock him away, but I had quite a reputation, which the jews are trying to destroy. That reputation, in the year 2005, 2006, when I went to prison, a lot of famous people came out.”
And it made things better for you?
“Oh yes. The judge began by saying that he looked on the internet, he saw two million people interested in my case.”
You had a terrific reputation as a historian.
“This irritated the jews, they tried to dismantle my reputation in dealing with my book ‘Hitlers War’. First thing that happened when this book was published, in Germany it was published under a different title, it was ‘Hitler und seine Feldherren’. And the German publishing house Ullstein, they did not send proofs, they never sent me the proofs, they sent them on the morning of publication, the proofs. But they were not the proofs of the book, they were the wrong proofs. So the I went to the bookstore (inaudible) in Munich and had to buy my own book, that was funny, and then I sent a telegram to Ullstein and said ‘cancel the book, I forbid you to sell any more copies’.”
It wasn’t the original work?
“No. I found out they changed things in German, it’s in Germany quite acceptable, just changing the opinions of the author. I spent ten years getting all the opinions right, they didn’t publish it as I wrote it.”
But what you wrote, did cost you your reputation, you paid a personal price for it.
“Since that came out, they have been harassing me.”
And is that political correctness, or because of the ‘holiness’ of the holocaust?
“It was also jewish and communist. I am satisfied with the life I’m leading, I’m satisfied with the job I am doing.”
You would do it again?
“Oh yes. It’s been rough on my family, because we lost the house. In 2002, and we lost it again in 2006. After the Lipstadt case in 2002 I was declared bankrupt, which gave them the right to seize my house. It was five million pounds at that time, probably ten million now. Losing that house was hard on the children, they realized they lost everything. But on the other hand, at the same time, the internet is growing so big, which I didn’t predict. The internet has made it easier. I get messages from so many young people from all over the world. I deal with 300 e-mails every morning when I get up, 300 during the day, from people that say, ‘I am a student from this or that city. I’m studying history at school and I’m puzzled about this or puzzled about that.’ A lot of people are not happy with the history as it is being told now. They feel like they, as they say in America, are being sold a bag of coins.”
But people have refuted you, Richard Evans for instance.
“Oh, Richard Evans I can’t speak about, ‘indiskutabel’. I had never heard of him before, when I heard he was going to be the chief defense witness in the Lipstadt trial. I said ‘who is Richard Evans?’ and somebody said ‘oh he’s a historian and you have his books’. This was true, he had sent them to me.”
He was a Cambridge professor…
“He was a professor at East Anglia or something. They planned to get rid of him but he then rose and rose and rose…”
But in 1998 he was a professor. But you mutually dislike each other?
“Oh, dislike is the wrong word. He is unspeakable to me and he applies for the job of Regius professor, he asked for it, that is the same as writing a letter asking for the Ritter Kreuz, he asked for it!”
Like asking ‘give me a Nobel Prize’?
“Same kind of thing. It’s just not done. He asked for the job of Regius professor and he has gone down since then. I don’t read his books because he’s a bore. He’s writing history…if you find that your audience is bored to tears – and his audience is bored to tears – he doesn’t know how to keep an audience awake. I know how to keep an audience awake. I’ve given him the adjective of ‘skunky Evans’.”
His Cambridge colleague David Starkey came out in defense for you, in a way. He defended a very broad version of the freedom of expression. This is the only way you can attack certain ideas. He disagrees with you, but…
“I remember the last time I was telephoned by the BBC asking if I could answer some questions up in Scotland. There was a discussion evening and I thought they would cancel. Sure enough, an hour later, they telephoned and cancelled. Due to a ‘technical’ problem.”
And what do you suspect happened there?
“They must have checked out the index of people preferably not invited, they won’t tell you this index actually excist. But I always like to debate Evans. I once said, ask him who Albert Speer is. And they went, oh come on, he knows who Speer is. Ask him, see if he knows. So I asked him, do you know who Albert Speer is? And he said: ‘you have to remind me..?’”
[Skipped an anecdote here about Goebbels and a German phrase/punchline DI could not remember, so pointless story.]
But on the issue of freedom of speech..
“I don’t bang the drum on freedom of speech.”
But is is the issue in this case. For example, the city of The Hague allowed several what we call ‘haatimams’ salafi hate preachers, to speak here.
“The jews have a kind of Sonderstellung here in the Netherlands. The Sonderstellung, certain special rights. Hitler said we are being taught in childhood that certain things like religious beliefs are intact, are infallible. And he’s right, a lot of people trade on this inviability. They trade on that.”
So you are saying just because you are not publicly religious, that is why you get called an antisemite, because you have no religious excuse?
“Under the cloak of religion, that prevails freedom of speech.”
Why don’t you bang the drum on freedom of speech? In this day and age, it would give you much more credibility.
“I think, because of that. I don’t want to hide behind the flag of freedom of speech and say ‘you can’t touch me, first amendment’ and so on. On monday I have a meeting with the American embassy, it’s my last chance to get a new visum, it’s a first amendment issue. The same people have been stirring up trouble in America.”
Because it is some kind of cowardice, you don’t want to hide behind it, you say?
“I have issues that can stand up for themselves without ducking behind that. I think. People can say, ‘oh, he’s a holocaust denier, we don’t talk to him’. It’s not a freedom of speech issue, it’s just defense against defamation. In the Lipstadt case, I haven’t realized at that time that the Lipstadt case was essentially a jew versus an non-jew issue and they tried, in their presentation, to not make it look like that. But they said it in a newspaper actually, they didn’t want too many jews involved in the case or it would look like a jew versus non-jew case.”
Which, for the record, you think it was? A jew versus non-jew case?
“Yes. I think so. Look at the sums of money involved. I was a struggling autor, struggling to survive, financially, and they come along, Lipstadt and her publisher, within six months they had 21 million dollars in their coffer, for the fight. Steven Spielberg gave one million dollars. They never won a penny back, they were not entitled the costs back. The publisher paid it, or their insurance, they didn’t give a squeak. The final costs they had to pay was over 30 million pounds, ehr, dollars, and i had to pay 1,7 million pounds.”
But had you had more money…?
“It would have made no difference, they would have raised more. They would have increased it. We’ve had some funny moments. At one point, Lipstadts council, who was very clever, pushed down on my racism. On day three or day four. So I said, ‘I have had the opportunity to see the courtroom for a few days now. You have forty people on you side, your council, historians, assistants, clerks, forty people. All white, aren’t they? I showed you photographs of my personal assistents over the past ten years. Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Barbados, Indonesian..you are all white.’ The judge was furious, he said, ‘you will not say that again’. After the ‘Mittagspause’ we went back into court and I went tot the stand, my podium, and i said ‘mylord, before the lunch, I said something wrong. The defense council said I was racist and I had a chance to look around this courtroom and see that all forty on their side are white. Now, this was wrong.’ So my apology blinded them with rage.” (laughs)
So on the counts of racism, you mentioned assistants of various ethnicities. But would you hire a jew?
“I did. Yes sir, knowingly, her name was Miriam…Miriam something. It was back in the 1980’s.”
This was when you altered your views on history.
Yes I was quite open about it. She was a reasonable prospect with the right qualifications so I gave her the job. She worked for me for six months. it was quite satisfactory and we didn’t have a falling out, I don’t know why she quit.
Do you work alone now? You tour Europe?
“I live in Scotland. People don’t come up here, so I go to Europe.”
You don’t have anyone with you, a secretary?
“No, all by myself. I book hotels in advance. And in the united states I drive all over the country, in a big car, I load it with books and I drive all around. Mississippi, Seattle, Minneapolis. You drive two days from one city to the next, big distances in America.”
But you do not have permanent security, like Geert Wilders?
“I don’t think people who threaten me will do something. It’s always possible someone in the audience has a knife in their pocket. If that happens, that’s that.”
But you don’t worry about that in advance?
“The time comes when the time comes. I take certain precautions. We’ve had some trouble 3 or 4 years ago. We had a mob breaking in in Chicago, about 50 people, communist, anarchists, and the ringleader was caught. My assistant there called the police, so when they didn’t turn up we phoned again, and the police station said ‘oh, I can tell you that our squad cars are already outside the building’, and they caught the lot. And the ringleader, Jeremy..er, something, was sentenced for ten years. Because he was a hacker, he was also involved in hacking the Pentagon. Jeremy Hammond. Needless to say the newspapers that reported the case thought it was an injustice he was incarcerated. I didn’t. I thought it was absolutely right.”
You say you don’t beat the drum on freedom of speech, but I do think it’s interesting in your case because your opinions are highly controversial, what is beyond freedom of speech? What, woud you say, is not permissible?
“What is not permissible?”
Would you say holocaust denial is such a thing?
“I would say you can put forward arguments, some of them valid arguments, some of them invalid arguments. You need to hear what the arguments are.”
Is truth a factor in deciding what is and isn’t to be said?
“If the arguments are all false, it will fall through, in a free society. In a free society, we are allowed to say certain things.”
What do you consider hate speech? The salafi imams, preaching violence against gays?
“Hate speech against people.”
Like calling you a holocaust denier?
“Yes because that’s very risky. It’s exposing me to all sorts of violence, which is what I would call hate speech.”
You say jews try to control history. People may see that as hate speech. What is ‘the jews’?
*inaudible*
Have you ever been physically attacked?
“Yes in Seattle, there was a mob. They do damage to my stock, to my books. They destroy everything, they know that’s how to inflict maximum damage.”
Why do you do what you? Why put yourself out there?
“I’m not gonna be silenced. By judges or mayors or jews, I’m not gonna be silenced.”
Would it be different if people just let you be?
Yes. Yes I am more determined if people try and silence me.
Who visits your lectures?
“It’s different. When I began, there were people sitting in front of me with hearing aids, elderly folk. Now it’s young men, younger people, they get much younger. The audience is pretty bored.”
Is it boredom?
“No, the young people do not believe what they are told.”
