'Springtime for Irving': The Video
Here鈥檚 a fresh treat for readers of Hatewatch 鈥� a brand new video, made by journalist Max Blumenthal and videographer Thomas Shomaker and co-produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center, about Holocaust denier David Irving. It鈥檚 an amazing, sardonic account of Irving鈥檚 visit this July 16 to a church in Manhattan, where Blumenthal presses him into a most remarkable interview.
Irving, of course, is the infamous British writer who penned numerous for Adolf Hitler and then sued American scholar Deborah Lipstadt after she a Holocaust denier. Irving ultimately lost his epic court battle in London, with the judge in the case concluding that he was a 鈥減ro-Nazi鈥� polemicist. The court also found that the author of some 30 books had 鈥減ersistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence鈥� to promote his racist and anti-Semitic ideas.
We鈥檒l save most of the good stuff for viewers of the video, but offer just a couple of teasers here. At one point, Irving tells his audience: 鈥淎dolf Hitler was being kept out of the loop and was probably not at all anti-Semitic鈥� . He repeatedly held out his hand to stop things happening to the Jews.鈥� Just as you鈥檙e digesting that incredible piece of neo-Nazi propaganda, the video recounts how journalist Christopher Hitchens, a former Trotskyist-turned-Iraq War cheerleader, has described Irving as 鈥渁 great historian鈥� and, in Irving鈥檚 words, remains 鈥渁 good friend鈥� to the man who once said that more people died in the back of Ted Kennedy鈥檚 car than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Although the video doesn鈥檛 make this point, Hitchens was named one of the world's by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazine of Britain in 2005, long after his paean to Irving鈥檚 swell talents as a 鈥渉istorian.鈥�
Take a look at this remarkable video, which we offer here a day late as a birthday present from Hatewatch, which just completed its year of existence. As the months unfold, we hope to bring you more along these lines.
