Guess who's back, back, back? Back again! Audrey's back! (Classic Eminem reference)
Okay after a brief hiatus of other school work I have actually written a draft! Winner! Yesterday I just sat down and wrote .... and wrote ......... and wrote. But it was worth it because I just got a draft out and it might be absolutely awful, in fact in most definitely it is. But it does create the argument I want to create even if it isn't written very well. At least I have something to edit now.
Here it is:
(Also, the picture is Irving examining the pits they shot people in at Auschwitz, having crossed the cordons ... a good metaphor?)
There are no footnotes, because it never formats properly on here.
“Don’t believe everything they tell you”
David Irving and New-Media History
Evaluate David Irving’s use of the internet for historical publication.
As Dr. Carl Smith writes, “Has the unregulated culture of the Internet made cyberspace a bloated refuge for work of questionable value that otherwise couldn't–and shouldn't–see the light of day? .... Is it possible, in short, to do “serious” history on the web?”, this question challenges the very nature of historical publication online. Prominent historical publications such as Trenches on the Web have gained reputation due to their acceptance by the wider historical community, yet lesser known historians, or historians who do not work in a professional context struggle to gain recognition. One such historian is rogue revisionist David Irving, who was shunned from the credible stream of historical publication after his failed libel case against Deborah Lipstadt and connections to the Holocaust denial movement.
The reliability and benefit of digital history is only a modern historical debate, but one which divides the discipline. Some, such as Smith, see it’s merit in presenting historical material on a larger scale than that which is possible in a museum or book. Such a medium saw successful online exhibitions such as the British Museum’s Cleopatra of Egypt: From History to Myth and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s Infinity of Nations. These works are both backed by credible institutions, and are interested in a branch of history deemed acceptable by both the historical community and society. Yet the unmonitored nature of the internet leaves room for criticism, as Daniel Cohen and Roy Rozenwig stressed, “With Google now indexing more than eight billion pages, a full qualitative assessment of historical information and writing on the Web is well beyond the ability [of] any person or even team of people.” Yet even Cohen and Rozenwig note the benefits, “A much deeper and denser historical record, especially one in digital form, seems like an incredible opportunity and gift.” The question must be asked however, while established and distinguished institutions such as the British Museum and the Smithsonian may be aiming to add to a corpus of reliable historical information, can Irving be considered to be pursuing a similar path?
David Irving is a British author whose works are primarily concerned with the German perspective of the World War II conflict, especially the involvement of the Third Reich. He began his collection of over thirty works with The Destruction of Dresden (1963) which garnered both critical and historical acclaim, despite it’s anti-Allie standpoint. Yet as his works ventured further from mainstream opinion regarding the events of World War II and entered the territory of Holocaust Denial, as in his 1977 book Hitler’s War wherein he attempted to explain Hitler’s ignorance of the ‘Final Solution’, much of the historical community began to view his work with a sense of skepticism. Jerome De Groot says of Irving, “[He] is in some ways the epitome of the public historian - not part of the academy ... a maverick, looking to a wider public audience rather than the circumscribed elite”. However most historians and historical commentators express a far less romantic view of Irving, Anthony Lewis calling him “a racist faker.” Much of Irving’s widespread opposition is a product of the libel case he brought against Deborah Lipstadt, a prominent academic of Jewish studies, after she referred to him as a “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial. Familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda”, in her book Denying The Holocaust. The trial that proceeded discredited both Irving and his historical method, leaving him little standing in the historical school. This forced him to create his own publishing house, Focal Point Publishing, and he kept an online blog which chronicled not only his interpretation of the legal battle, which spanned a four year period, but also continues presently as a avenue for his assessment of past and present world events.
Richard Evans, expert witness in the Lipstadt-Irving trial wrote of Irving’s website, “Throughout the trial, Irving posted more or less daily reports on the case on his website. These seldom bore close relationship to what had gone on in court.”
Irving currently maintains on his website for Focal Point Publishing, his newsletter Action Report Online, information about his book tours, archives of his blog posts and an online bookstore among a host of other internet facilities. As Irving listed in his correspondence with me, his website is interested in a wide variety of topics, “World War II, anti-Semitism, Holocaust, free speech, immigration, racial problems, governmental lying, atrocities, war crimes”. Irving has strong connections with the revisionist movement, his articles appearing on websites such as The Institute for Historical Review and The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. His revisionist affiliation, especially in regards to the Holocaust, has given way to such famous statements as “The gas chamber they show in Auschwitz is as genuine as the fairycastle in Orlando, rather like Disneyland” and “More women died in the backseat of Senator Edward Kennedy’s car in Chappaquiddick than were ever gassed in [the Auschwitz gas chambers]” . This evident bias is clear in both Irving’s historical method and rhetoric, and culminating in his writing regarding the Auschwitz death camp. He travelled to Poland, visiting Auschwitz, in 2007 and recorded in his Radical’s Diary on March 4th his visit to the site. Irving uses obvious sarcasm when referring to the grounds as a “holy site”, as he examines the ruins of the cremotoria by “duck[ing] under the anti-revisionist red-and-white plastic chain”. His immediate assumption regarding the remains is that it is a forged conspiracy, when shown the disinfection room by his guide he records his irritability noting, “it is her duty to piston all her victims through this propaganda Schleuse, like running a gauntlet at school”. Irving refers to the Auschwitz Sauna Building as the “expensively glass-floored propaganda walk, which is pure Disneyland”, once more questioning the validity of the structures at the site with a casual and colloquial dialogue. The rhetoric Irving employs in his posts regarding his tour of Auschwitz exemplifies his opinion of the historical grounds as a whole, he believes them inauthentic and undeserving of respect, and whilst this would perhaps not be considered an issue as a stand alone feature of his writing, if he merely wrote a stream of clearly biased and unfounded work that did not imitate the work of a legitimate historian, he merges both his own opinion with what he believes to be historical fact, adding more influence to his work.
He writes regarding the ten watch towers at Auschwitz, placing watch towers in inverted commas, saying “these look very fake - very flimsy, not properly roofed, no ladder or other means of access, open to the weather. They are fakes ... erected post-war”. He then attempts to validate his observations, by referencing photographs he has seen that do not show these watchtowers, and whilst he includes other photographs of this trip, the photographic evidence he refers to remains unpublished and uncited, an enigmatic source that supports Irving’s claims but remains shielded from general view and discussion. Irving includes no heteroglossia in his publication, his voice remains entirely authoritative, “The Poles and others have wrecked the document that this site could have been, by their keenness to generate money and propaganda. They have slapped a vast monument of paving slabs and memorials between Kremas II and III, concealing whatever evidence they might have revealed. They have conducted little if any archeological research, “digs”, to get at the truth”, an ironic statement from a man who has concealed all traces that support his claims, instead devising his own ultimate and unverifiable truth.
Within the broad spectrum that is Irving’s interest in the Second World War, is his work regarding what he calls the “Dresden holocaust”, in which “whole refugee families must have been engulfed”. Irving’s work on Dresden began with his articles in German magazine Neue Illustrierte and continued with The Destruction of Dresden (1963), although this book was widely received as a legitimate historical text. Irving did begin however to reveal his affinity for exaggerated estimates, stating that the German death toll and the hands of the Allies had reached “135 000”, although the revised 1995 edition states “Researchers are advised that figures for the final death toll in Dresden still vary widely, and may be lower than this author originally stated”. Despite Irving’s statistics the independent investigation commissioned by the by the city council in 2010 implores, “there is not the slightest evidence existing for the long-popular narrative picture of a “bloodbath” caused by the Allied fighter pilots among the people fleeing from the city.”
Irving’s interest in the bombing of Dresden, attempting to fulfill his clear desire to reach an equivalence between the deaths of civilians at German and Allied hands, is chronicled in detail on his website. He maintained an online diary during his search for information that supports his claims regarding the Dresden death toll, writing on the 24th of April 2009 a post citing the new information he had obtained. Irving makes explicit his “confidential” source Hans Voigt, a German schoolteacher who “was put in charge of Dresden’s Missing Persons Bureau” , who used his “immense card index” and diary to estimate a death toll for Irving, reaching the number of 135 000. He claims that this is also the figure that “Kurt Vonnegut and others always used”, yet it is important to note that Kurt Vonnegut is a satirical author perhaps best known for his work Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) which tells the story of aliens able to view the fourth dimension, and Vonnegut has since stated that he acquired much of his historical material for this satirical piece from Irving’s Destruction of Dresden. While Irving so detests the “inter-historian incest” of our age, it appears he himself may be citing works that draw too heavily on his own, especially pertinent as Irving himself gathered his death toll figure from a vague and unverified source.
In this same passage from his website Irving reveals a decidedly ambiguous “new secret document”, a coded report from the Dresden Chief of Police to SS Oberfuhrer Dr Dietrichs. Irving states that the report has been “decoded by the British”, although any specifics on this process remain concealed. The source supports the death toll Irving so eagerly promotes, referring to large numbers of missing persons reported to the newly established Central Bureau of Missing Persons at the time. However, one immediately notes once again the lack of specificity in Irving’s source, there is no footnote or credit mentioned at all and Irving remains vague regarding this “decoded ... secret document”. However, are footnotes or bibliographic details necessary on a web page, especially a passage contained within what is essentially a blog? Furthermore, Irving’s ability to maintain an ordered website is clearly little more than a yearning within the reader, and so would it even be plausible that he could establish some kind of system which allowed for the easy crediting of sources, such as the formatting of footnotes? As the internet is history’s most recent medium for publication there remains no defined standards by which historians operate, essentially a democracy of historical opinion free to be added to, although consumers of this media maintain the expectation that a credible, mainstream website will provide them with verified information. Irving however may lack such a readership, and thus is it even important that he maintains historical credibility on his website?
In my correspondence with Irving, he states that his website is at “a ranking position of No. 40,000 on the Internet”
although internet-ranking websites such as Hitwise and Alexa were unable to verify this information and there appears to be no freely available internet ranking system reaching such a number. Despite such an inaccuracy, Irving clearly believes his work is being read by many, and therefore he holds some influence. He makes reference to a readership with interests similar to his own, “My method of material selection is the same as the way I select material for my books. If the topic interests me, then it will probably interest my website readers.” Whilst Irving may be delusional in terms of the serious or academic consumers he writes for, he is a well known public figure. Facebook groups such as “David Irving Doesn’t Exist” and “I’m a David Irving Denier” have surfaced and reached into the hundreds of fans, although it must be noted that an equal number of pages in support of Irving also exist on the social networking website. Youtube videos of Irving speaking at functions around the world regarding his opinion on the Holocaust and other historical issues exist and Irving is often blogging regarding his tour, the email I received from his was written from Key West, USA. Clearly Irving retains some influence, despite being within a fairly alternative stream of publication, thus I believe the authoritative tone he possesses must be spreading an accurate, verified and well-cited historical message.
Irving’s opinions are extreme, and as he has been shunned from mainstream publication he has found himself in the desolate refuge of online blogging, as he said in his correspondence with me, “The answer at present is yes, there is more freedom to express opinions online. There is a risk that is growing however: some of these opinions may be illegal in some countries”. Clearly he is interested in correcting the mistakes he perceives in the history already in circulation regarding the Second World War, but his interest in maintaining a website reaches beyond that. As he says, “Note that we accept no paid advertising, so we are not affected by outside influences like that”, and whilst this may be true his website is not without advertising. The website itself is called Focal Point Publishing, his publishing house, and there are entire dossiers chronicling his publications and how the reader may purchase them. Clearly Irving possesses a pecuniary interest in propagating his beliefs regarding the Second World War, in maintaining this website and establishing a medium through which he can sell his work outside the mainstream. Perhaps he even creates more media interest in himself, by the means of historical scandal, as this will create more traffic to his website and in turn a greater interest in his work, as he says, “If I am the centre of media attention, then [my website] may go up to a ranking position of No. 40,000 on the Internet.”
The internet is a democracy of free speech, yet when some, such as David Irving, possess a public profile beyond the faceless blogger, I believe it is important that they convey accurate and verified information to their readership. Undoubtedly, Irving’s followers now consist of alternative and revisionist readers, and whilst subgenres of historical consumers have existed for decades, Irving now has the ability to set some of the historical untruths he spreads right, to realign a misguided readership towards mainstream and verified history. Whilst there is no regulator of publication online, unless one is aligned with a historical institution, it the responsibility of those who purport to be historians to maintain an effective historical method and rhetoric without bias no matter where their work is displayed, be it book, museum or blog. As a historian once told me, “Don’t believe everything they tell you”, especially if their name is David Irving.
