David Irving is a nutter

We all knew after the Lipstadt trial - and indeed before - that David Irving is a thoroughly nasty piece of work. However, once upon a time he was quite an effective historian (see, for example, his book on Dresden) and even in his later books he still showed great acumen in finding and speaking to people in Hitler's circle to whom nobody else had spoken, even though his conclusions became more and more outrageous, and driven by his racist convictions rather than the evidence.

So I knew he was a racist and an anti-Semite, but I didn't think he was an out and out loon. But he clearly is now. Johann Hari's profile in the Independent yesterday suggests that he has finally lost the plot. The Indy headline goes with Irving's bizarre claim that Hitler foretold that Irving would be his biographer ("...Hitler replied: “One day, an Englishman will come along and write my biography. But it cannot be an English man of the present generation. They won’t to be objective. It will have to be an Englishman of the next generation, and one who is totally familiar with all the German archives.”") But the piece is stuffed full of lunacies. His Hitler love is now strong that he believes that Hitler was "the best friend the Jews had in the Third Reich"; and, which I didn't know before, he is clearly a semi-pathalogical misogynist.

All rather sad. I saw him speak at my school, and he was a very impressive, authoratative figure who turned up in a Roller and who could recall masses of information in great detail without recourse to notes. My teacher primed me to ask about evidence that apparently contradicted something he'd written; he expertly demolished what I'd said, and then, fixing me with a frankly malevolent glare, said "I'd be very interested to know who put you up to ask me that." I think I avoided an involuntary glance at my teacher who was staring at the floor in the corner; but Irving probably had his mind on a more sinister, Zionist explanation...

(Incidentally, it will be no great surprise to regular readers of JMP that I'm wholly opposed to criminalising holocaust denial, and wholly in favour of defeating the deniers in argument rather than making them martyrs.)

Is Griffin that short, or is the other bloke very tall?

h/t David T

BNP Membership List

Some thoughts on the publication of this on a blog, in contravention of a previous injunction:

a) it shows how toothless injunctions against publication are now. Just publish on a foreign-hosted site, and enforcement becomes a nightmare and, with switching between hosts, effectively impossible

b) reactions to the publication show the intolerance of many on the left. Alongside the handrubbing glee at this breach of the Data Protection Act and the exposure of these people to threats and intimidation, many on Comment is Free, for example, are arguing that teachers, nurses and other public servants should be sacked if they are BNP members. Why? If it affects how they do their job, fine; but otherwise this would be just another thoughtcrime. And of course no-one on the left would suggest that an SWP nurse or fundamentalist Muslim policeman should be sacked on the basis of how they might treat an Israeli. The instinct is to say that the BNP is racist, therefore it is right and proper to limit the rights and freedoms of its members and supporters. That is wrong in principle, and also clearly counter-productive in terms of reducing its support. Let the BNP become a silenced matyr, and its appeal will grow. Let it make its arguments in the famous marketplace of ideas, and watch its support fall away

c) Nick Griffin has shown once again what a tin ear he has for presentation and spin by arguing that the publication breached the right to privacy being established by jurisprudence under the Human Rights Act - which his party wants repealed. As well as being a truly nasty piece of work, the man really is an arse

d) the CiF article by Lola Adesioye is full of the ill-thought through verbiage that infests so many pieces there. For example, at one point she says:

Somehow, seeing details such as the names of men, women, families, young and old demystifies the BNP, making it appear much less threatening, although not by any means more legitimate.

What is the word 'legitimate' supposed to mean there? Something along the lines of 'acceptable to right-thinking people' as far as I can make out. Tssk, tssk, tssk.