Friday, November 25, 2005

Irving's About-face: We should not be rejoicing. Irving's followers should be worrying.

People seem to want to know more about Irving's about-face regarding the gas chambers. Many of those who have contacted me think his 180 turn around is really significant. They treat it as a victory of sorts. I don't, not because I am not glad Irving has abandoned this particularly calumny. The fact is that I just don't think what he does is significant.... certainly not to people who care about truth.

First of all, let me point out as late as two months ago Irving's was lauding the Leuchter Report and claiming that it was the report that convinced that gas chambers were a scientific impossibility. Now he says that it was evidence he saw in the Moscow archives which convinced him.

[Check it out on his website in his correspondence with Sara Salzman of Denver on September 21, 2005. He wrote to her again on September 23, 2005. In both cases he left no doubt that he did not believe there were gas chambers. What happened in the interim to cause this sudden volte-face? Seems strange to me that he suddenly discovered this information. Was he even in Moscow and if so what evidence did he find there to cause this great reversal? Did his lawyer "misspeak"? Did he take Irving at his word? Hmm....]

Far more important however, is the fact that what Irving thinks does not seem to me to be important at all. Why should we pay any mind to someone about whom a judge writes that he "perverts" the evidence, that his claims are a "travesty" of the evidence, that his findings are "unreal," and his conclusions not mistakes but "deliberate... distortions."

The people who should be worrying are the deniers and those who have hitched their wagons to David Irving's star. Their world seems to be crashing....

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