AAARGH
http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,738603,00.html
At last, an English publisher
has had the guts to stand up to David Irving.
Others should be ashamed
Reasonably clued-up observers of metropolitan culture might have
thought that publishers would have been falling over themselves
to print Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and
the David Irving Trial. History is more bankable at the moment
than Jamie Oliver's dips or Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen's pelmets
- and histories of fascism are the profit-seeking exec's favourite.
A producer told me recently that BBC2 and Channel 4 had established
that viewing figures doubled when 'Hitler' or 'Nazis' appeared
in a historical documentary's title. Blackshirts are the new black.
The author, Richard J. Evans, professor of modern history at Cambridge
University, was the expert witness Penguin Books called after
Irving sued the company for accusing him of falsifying the record
of Nazi Germany. His attempt at censorship was a devastating failure
in large part because Evans and two of his graduate students spent
18 months checking Irving's sources.
They found he had invented and suppressed evidence for decades,
deliberately mistranslated some documents and selectively quoted
from others. Whether he was inflating tenfold the number of victims
of the British and American raids on Dresden or minimising Hitler's
crimes by dismissing the Final Solution as a myth, intellectual
fraud dominated his
writing.
The ease with which he gulled those academics and journalists
who insisted that his Hitler worship didn't matter because he
produced original research remains astonishing. The greatest pleasure
of Evans's book is the schadenfreude which comes from seeing a
bullying conman exposed and the folly of his dupes dissected.
As a reviewer in America said, Evans has produced 'a classic example
of historical research as detective story'.
The rave notice was one of several in the States, and it was reasonable
to suppose that Evans would get many more back home. Obsession
with the Second World War is greater here, and Penguin's victory
over a book-banning neo-fascist was won in London. But far from
falling over themselves to print Telling Lies About Hitler, publishers
have fallen over themselves in
a rush to the exit.
As I reported last year, the British rights were bought by William
Heinemann, a branch of the Bertelsmann infotainment conglomerate.
It puffed its acquisition as 'a major contribution to our understanding
of the Holocaust', and then, bravely, pulped it after Irving threatened
to sue. The retreat was absurd as well as cowardly. No one in
the past decade - not Jonathan Aitken or Jeffrey Archer - has
been the recipient of a verdict comparable to the one Mr Justice
Gray read to David Irving. 'The content of his speeches and interviews
often displays a distinctly pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish bias,' the
judge said. 'He makes surprising and often unfounded assertions
about the Nazi regime which tend to exonerate the Nazis for the
appaling atrocities which they inflicted on the Jews. He is content
to mix with neo-fascists and appears to share many of their racist
and anti-Semitic prejudices.'
Every writer gets it wrong or gets carried away, but the judge
accepted Penguin's argument that Irving's distortions followed
a pattern. His misreadings always cast Hitler in a favourable
light. There was no instance when a misconstruction hurt the Nazis.
Irving was exposed as a justifier for the fantasists and criminals
of the far Right, who are doing so well in Europe this year. He
couldn't successfully sue Heinemann for defaming his reputation
because he had no reputation to lose.
At the time, Heinemann's collapse before Irving's bombastic assault
didn't seem to matter too much. Granta Books, an independent house,
was saluted in the liberal press for standing up for freedom and
buying Telling Lies About Hitler. Gail Lynch, Granta's associate
publisher, said she didn't see 'any terrible legal nightmares
ahead'. Despite her confidence, there was a small threat. Irving
tried his usual menaces and warned Granta he would sue for 'punitive
damages'. After Mr Justice Gray's verdict, his case was hopeless.
But Granta would still have to pay lawyers to spend a day or so
in court getting it struck out. Granta wouldn't recover its costs
when it won because Irving is a financial as well as a moral bankrupt.
Granta didn't return my calls. Evans says his agent and Granta
talked about him signing a four-book deal. He wasn't keen to commit
himself to churning out manuscripts until he retired - and the
money wasn't great. There was obviously a bad fall-out and Evans
refused to agree to spend a decade writing for Granta. Telling
Lies About Hitler was at the typesetters. Granta pulled it. Evans
found for the second time that a comforter of neo-Nazis and a
demonstrable liar had more clout in literary London than the professor
of modern history at Cambridge. Evans turned to his American publisher,
Basic. It, too, refused to publish in Britain unless Evans covered
its back with other books. Evans then tried Profile. A tautologous
managing editor, who should look for a new line of work, declared
that if a 'tiny kernel of doubt remained about its legal standing'
it would be 'impossible' for Profile to take the risk.
Heinemann, Granta, Basic and Profile present themselves as serious
publishers committed to freedom of thought, speech and publication.
All abandoned their principles when confronted with a neo-Nazi
fraud with a smattering of legal jargon. Fear of England's ferocious
libel laws can explain their gutlessness in part. This notebook
has gone on in the past about the perniciousness of a legal system
which allows tabloid newspapers to behave like the KGB and entrap
any celebrity or politician with a sex drive, while turning muscular
and investigative writing into a potentially ruinous vocation.
But bashing the judges can only get you so far in the Irving case.
Anthony Julius, a formidable solicitor who organised Penguin's
defence, offered his services free to Profile. If any of the other
publishers had found the balls to go ahead with Telling Lies About
Hitler, they would have had offers from other solicitors and barristers
who would have fought Irving pro bono. Victory was certain and
the accompanying publicity would have been gratifyingly generous.
Julius has argued before that the British Àlite has never
taken racism in general and anti-Semitism in particular, seriously
or understood what prejudice is. Ignorance is complemented by
a lazy and posturing style in Fleet Street and the right-wing
intelligentsia. It is this affectation which explains why Irving
wasn't disgraced by his disgrace. After the trial, Sir John Keegan
of Sandhurst and the Daily Telegraph spoke for many when he wrote
that, say what you like about him, at least Irving had a desire
to shock, 'to write the unprintable and to speak the unutterable'.
'Like many who seek to shock,' Keegan continued, 'he may not really
believe what he says and probably feels astounded when taken seriously.
He has in short, many of the qualities of the most creative historians.
He is certainly never dull. Prof Lipstadt [Deborah Lipstadt, the
American historian and Penguin author whose book Irving wanted
off the shelves] seems as dull as only the self-righteously politically
correct can be.'
If the 'politically correct' insult has any content left in it
after all these years of overuse, it must mean the censoring of
words and arguments which offend the ideologically rigid. Irving
has spent years trying to censor Lipstadt, Evans and others. To
Sir John, this makes him a bit of a card who is a far better value
than the defenders of the dreary and often ugly facts of history.
The same good-chappery was displayed by London publishers. When
Irving found out that Basic was thinking about publishing a British
edition of Telling Lies About Hitler, Don Fehr, the executive
editor, sent him a note.
---
Dear David,
Yes I did receive the copy of Churchill's War (Irving's attack
on Churchill). On the Evans matter, we are not planning on publishing
a UK edition of the book, though the author and agent have asked
us to. There are too many problems and complications, as you well
know.
Again, thanks for the book.
Best wishes,
Don Fehr.
---
The 'problems and complications' came from Irving's hollow threats
to sue publishers. Fehr's employers had been praised in America
for issuing Evans's demolition of Irving. If we are to believe
that Basic is an honourable company, we must assume it believed
that Evans's exposure of Irving's systemic fraud was true. Yet
there was Fehr 'Dear Daviding' and 'Best wishing' the other side
and giving Irving the complicit assurance that he wouldn't be
embarrassed by Basic's own author. Well, it wouldn't do to take
race hatred too seriously.
If it had been left to the mainstream, the British would never
have been able to read Evans's learned and compelling account
of the scandal which was freely available in the rest of the world.
Fortunately, Verso, a tiny house run by Tariq Ali and other old
Trots, stepped in. It will do what Heinemann should have done
18 months ago and publish the damn thing.
I asked Verso's spokesman, Gavin Everrall, if he was worried about
Irving suing. 'I hope he does,' came the reply. 'The free publicity
will save our marketing department a fortune.'
Telling Lies About Hitler will - at last - be in the bookshops
on 26 June. It's yours for £14.
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