Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day019.08 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 Q. Is it not true that the phrase that I use is "the traditional enemies of free speech"? A. Not always, no. You refer to "our traditional enemies" on a number of occasions. Q. Is it not obvious that one is the short form of the other? A. No. Q. "Our traditional enemies" is three words and "the traditional enemies of free speech" is five or six words. One is the short form of the other? A. I quote on page 168 "our traditional enemies", "our old traditional enemies", and so on. Q. Yes, but you appreciate that when you are speaking you do not use again and again and again exactly the same phrase, you modify it slightly. Sometimes you use the long form and sometimes you use the short form? A. Well, I have gone through a number of your speeches, Mr Irving, and you do use exactly the same phrases on a . P-67 number of ---- Q. "The traditional enemies of free speech"? A. --- because you speak in a number of different places, "our traditional enemies". Q. And "the traditional enemies of free speech". A. You have used both of those formulations. Q. Yes, and "the traditional enemies of free speech", as I formulated them both in public and on my website, include the people who are trying to censor the Internet, is that correct? A. I think, Mr Irving -- correct me if I am wrong -- you have taken to talking about the traditional enemies of free speech more recently. In the early 1990s, it was -- you were much more inclined to talk about our traditional enemies. Q. Do you have any evidence, any kind of statistical evidence, for that or that just a gut feeling you have that makes you say that? A. That is just an impression I have on looking at and reading your speeches and your writings. Q. But you have no evidentiary basis for that apart from your recollection? A. That is my impression from having read your material. Q. Will you now answer my question and say, is it true that on my website and elsewhere I have listed as the traditional enemies of free speech, governments, trades . P-68 unions and people who are censoring the Internet? A. Again, Mr Irving, we are back to the problem ---- Q. And there are separate dossiers on each of those people? A. --- that we need to look at that page of your website where you ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are going to have to pause until somebody has been able to find it. I do not mean pause altogether, I mean come back to it. MR IRVING: I have one more question. A. All I can say is that when I checked out, the list provided of some traditional enemies of free speech, there were virtually all Jewish. MR RAMPTON: Can I intervene because it involves a technical problem which is beyond me. Could I ask Miss Rogers to explain it? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you mind, Miss Rogers? MS ROGERS: My Lord, what happens is if you click on the website, there is what is called down a pull down menu which lists the organizations under a heading, but I am told -- I cannot do it-- by others as well it is not possible to print the pull down menu. MR IRVING: On Mackintosh it is. MS ROGERS: What one could do, one could either type out the list, or perhaps your Lordship, with assistance, could go on Mr Irving's website and have a look and see the list. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will do that. Is it possible to give me a . P-69 reference to where I will find it on the website? MR IRVING: Www.fpp.co.uk/trial. A. It is very easy, my Lord, to find it on the website. It is a very clearly organised website. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, thank you very much, Miss Rogers. I am not surprised you ---- MR IRVING: So that each of these particular things has a dossier, right? Each of these organisations, the Anti-Defamation League, the Board of Deputies, each of them has a dossier? A. Right. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, shall we leave it that I will have a look, and I know what the question is, whether they are mostly Jewish organizations or whether they are not. MR IRVING: My Lord, you are just going to have a look at the menu, are you not, is that correct? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to browse generally through the Internet. No, I did not mean that in any way critically of it. I just am not going to; there is plenty else to be doing. MR IRVING: Because there are 53 megabytes of information on that and I have idea which particular part of the forest you are going to get lost in. (To the witness): Do you accept that there is concerted campaign by the traditional enemies of free speech to refuse to debate with people like me? . P-70 A. I do not accept the concept of traditional enemies of free speech, to start with. I do not accept that there is a concerted campaign. No, I have not seen evidence for that. Q. Are you familiar with the number of times I have been invited to speak at universities over the last 10 years and the university has then come under pressure to cancel the invitation? A. I am not, no, but I can quite believe that that is the case. Q. Has this happened to other historians like John Charmley? A. I do not regard you as an historian, Mr Irving. Let me make a distinction between universities and other venues. By appearing at a university and speaking in a university, I think you lay a claim to being an academic or being a scholarly historian which you receive an endorsement from by the fact that you appear at a university. Q. I am careful not to create the impression that I am a scholar. Nothing would frighten me more. A. I think you try and give that impression in your books. You may have a different definition of "scholarship" from the one that I have. There is a distinction to be made, surely, if you take United States of America where nobody stops you from going around making speeches wherever you want to apart from universities. Q. Are you familiar that I have lectured at the National . P-71 Archives in Washington? A. On what occasion? Q. About five years ago on Hermann Goring. A. I am not familiar, no. Q. Are you familiar with the fact that I have lectured at Harvard on Adolf Hitler at the invitation of the Master of Harvard, Dr Richard Hunt? A. On what occasion was that? Q. This was 1977, I lectured on Hitler's War. A. Yes, I am familiar with the fact that you have talked to many academic institutions in the 1970s, including my own college in Cambridge, I believe. Q. Indeed. I have spoken at Caius and I have spoken at various other colleges around the world until the problems arose. Are you familiar with the fact that these problems were generated by outside organisations? A. I would have to be provided with evidence of that, I think. Q. Are you familiar with the fact that I was in the University of Cork in Southern Ireland? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, how is it going to help me that you were addressing the University of Cork? We really must keep an eye on the ball. We have spent a very long time deal with these preliminary passages and I can understand why, for forensic purposes you are concentrating on those earlier passages, but in the end we . P-72 must get to the specific criticisms because on that really Professor Evans is hanging his case against you. It stands or falls by that. MR IRVING: I agree, but we have just this witness say, "I do not consider you to be a historian", and then it turns out that large numbers of academic bodies consider me to be a historian whom they would willingly hear, were it not for the violence that is threatened if I do attend. This is the reason that I mentioned that fact, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: Go to page 44 of your report, please, 2.5.6. Do you accept that the Board of Deputies of British Jews in 1919 acknowledge that I am "one of the world's most thorough researchers and an exciting and readable historian"? You put it in quotation marks. A. I think I can accept that, yes. Q. So you did ---- A. I would not dispute the fact that you are a thorough researcher. I have not disputed that in this case. Q. You agree that that report does exist? A. I accept your word for it. I have not seen it myself. Q. Would you accept that the report is currently lodged in the files of the Canadian government where it was placed by an organization with the intention of getting me denied access to Canada? A. That I would require evidence, I think particularly with . P-73 the intention. Since I have not seen the report, I am only citing it second hand here, for the purposes of talking about your reputation as an historian, as a researcher, I am not concerned with any other aspects of the report which, as I say, I have not read myself. Q. On paragraph 2.5.8 on the same page, once again you are coming down pretty heavily on the historical profession, are you not? I wonder sometimes what your colleagues say in your common room when you go back to Caius about the way you are blackening the name of historians whom you disagree with. A. Could you point out to me the blackening of historians' names? Q. You are saying that those with the general knowledge have been kind to me, whereas those who are experts like yourself are rightly rude -- is that the burden of that? A. No. Let me read you the sentence. I am making a distinction between different kinds of historians with difference kinds of expertise in reviewing and commenting on your work. I quote here: "Those with a general knowledge have mostly been quite generous to Irving, even where they have found reason to criticise him or disagree with his views; but they have also seldom been entirely uncritical of Irving's work and his methods". Is that blackening their name? Q. Can I draw your attention to footnote 34? . P-74 A. Yes. Q. That is the New Statesman 1977. Is that not ten years before I published my biography on Winston Churchill? A. That, I take it, is a review of your book on Hitler. Q. Yes, so my views on Churchill are neither here nor there in such context. A. They appear in your work on Hitler. Q. Can I ask you now to turn to page 45, where there is once again reference to my attempt to show that Hitler urged restraint in the Reichskristallnacht? A. Yes. Q. Do you consider this to be a completely ludicrous version of history, that Hitler was the restraining influence that night? Is this your conclusion? A. Yes. It depends exactly what you mean by "restraint" but I think I am summarizing what Hinton Thomas says in that review there. I think that is probably his phrase. Q. But you devoted quite a lot of this report -- my Lord, I think this is something we can dwell on for a moment or two, which is the Kristallnacht? MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are certainly going to have to spend some time on Kristallnacht. Whether this is the right context to do it I do not know, because in the end, as I say quite often, it is Professor Evans' views and his criticisms that matter, not what other historians may have felt. MR IRVING: Oh dear. I will see how far I get with this one . P-75 then. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is for me to make up my mind, when I know what the criticisms are and I know what your answer is, whether I think it is well founded. MR IRVING: The allegation is that I have been perverse, if I may put it like that, in suggesting that Hitler was a restraining influence that night of all nights. It turns out -- would you turn to page 48 of your little bundle please, which is F? A. Is that the one with the pictures? Q. That is the one with the pictures. On Thursday we found out that you knew who Professor Burrin, a Frenchman, was. A. Burrin, a Swiss, I believe. Q. You said that yes, he is an academic, an acceptable historian with the highest credentials. Is it right that he is Professor of International History at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva? A. I will accept your word for it.
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.