Deborah Lipstadt Blasts 'Holocaust-Abuse' by U.S., Israeli Politicians
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
No. 188 Challenging the Holocaust Taboo Since 1990 January 2012 Online at www.codoh.com Deborah Lipstadt Blasts 'Holocaust-abuse' by U.S., Israeli Politicians Jett Rucker his Holocaust revisionist letter, Lipstadt was fully kitted out As her erstwhile accuser was has a confession to make, in horns and a tail. apprehended and imprisoned in T and it’s worse than any- As the jackals closed in to pick Austria for doing the very sort of thing to which Bradley Smith con- Irving’s figurative bones (the ver- thing Lipstadt publicly accused him fessed in his best-selling (?) Con- dict ruined him financially, if not of doing, she came out foursquare fessions of a Holocaust Revisionist: otherwise), our new celebrity Deb- as “a free-speech person,” and with I have become a grudging admirer orah Lipstadt began to show that impeccable logic, she objected to of Deborah Lipstadt. Yes, the Deb- his being punished in any (crimi- orah Lipstadt who in 2001 with the nal) way for his speech. able assistance of her publisher Studying the matter, I immedi- Penguin-Putnam defended success- ately dismissed all imaginings that fully against the libel suit brought Lipstadt was influenced by remorse before the Queen’s Bench by the over Irving’s partly self-inflicted embattled David Irving. Lipstadt fate and concluded that she really had labeled Irving a “Holocaust did believe in Open Debate, includ- denier” in her 1993 book about ing of the Holocaust! I conceived “Holocaust denial.” The book sold admiration for this position, so un- adequately before the trial, and mistakably demonstrated by this considerably better during and after particular famous person—their Deborah Lipstadt it. In the trial’s wake, Lipstadt be- champion, at least where it came to came the standard-bearer in her attacking those who actually under- she was no mere pawn of the pow- own “Growing Assault” against took to revise history in ways that erful interests she chose to serve at revisionism, garnering bouquets she opposed. times when—and only when— and brickbats from the warring fac- I kept my admiration to myself, doing so struck her as the right tions on either side of the subject. except for revealing it one dark thing to do. For most of us who read this news- night to Bradley Smith himself, who had long since shown himself 1 to be not only infinitely under- her, though she didn’t specify of thought and reason that she is standing of human foibles, but also whether it offended her concerns obviously falling prey to. The full scrupulously discreet about letting for the sovereignty of her native version of Ha’aretz’s interview others in on the dark secrets that United States or her objection to http://tinyurl.com/7kfw2gc of her had been entrusted to him. And imperialism and the ethnic cleans- includes this self-aggrandizing pas- here, my raging sentimentality got ing of Palestinians from Palestine. sage: a needed splash of cold water from She wisely confined her remarks to “One of the results of my deal- this newsletter’s namesake, my an objection to the glorification and ing with deniers has been my abso- senior by more than fifteen years perpetuation of one wrong (that lute devotion to truth.” (and there are very few more of Holocaust) to support the continued Now, that’s saying a lot— those around anymore than there prosecution of fresh wrong in the perhaps even much too much— are of real Holocaust survivors): with a very few words! One could Bradley reminded me that La “One of the results of my infer that we “deniers” taught her Lipstadt once proclaimed, as to the dealing with deniers has respect for the truth, but there’s so Debate that we all wish could be been my absolute devotion much else to dwell upon that we’ll conducted openly and honestly, as to truth.” forgo the flattery. Dear Deborah, though among civilized human be- the truth, as you probably know ings of good will: “there is no other service of political careers empow- despite your cavalier reference to it side” to the Holocaust question! ered by the sins of the fathers. as though it were a mere commodi- Take that, Onkel Jett—you don’t But the true demonstration of ty, is incredibly elusive and subtle, count, nor does the country you her wisdom—what moved me to even when it isn’t subsumed, as our fought for and died defending! come out of the closet—came when Holocaust, in oceans of lies, propa- Then came last week’s inter- she illuminated the soul-rotting ganda, fraud, and self-serving per- view of Lipstadt by Ha’aretz potential of Holocaust Abuse that juries. The only “absolute” that can http://tinyurl.com/7srwtwd, the left- occurred when Jews themselves, be connected to truth is the pure leaning Israeli newspaper that must their hearts for whatever reason concept itself—anything and every- constitute the biggest thorn in the deficient in the profound insights of thing of substance can approach the side of Zionism since the Ottoman Judaism, mistook the legacies of truth only through unending pro- Empire. In this watershed broad- the Holocaust—and of all manifes- cesses of discovery and interpreta- side, Lipstadt applied her rightly tations of anti-Semitism, both real tion. And the only concept that can vaunted incisors to a vice lately and imagined—for the essence of connect truth to times, places, and stalking the worlds of history and their religion, their inheritance, or events is honesty—indefatigable, politics: Holocaust Abuse. their core beliefs. In words both remorseless honesty that is so thor- Holocaust Abuse, according to trenchant and at the same time un- oughgoing that it can be, and is, my flawed heroine, is the venal derstanding, Lipstadt diagnosed the turned upon itself in a process appropriation of the suffering and vacuum created in many by these known as—revision. injustice endured by the victims of new, secular times in the belief sys- Dr. Lipstadt does, in fact, in the the Holocaust (such as they may tems of Jew and non-Jew alike as a very next remark in her interview, be) to serve the various personal breach open to exploitation by claim to subscribe to a very modest political ambitions of those holding demagogues both political and step in the revisionist spirit in hav- political office in Israel and the US, (falsely) religious, in which both ing rejected the prima facie prepos- and no less of those who seek to the devotions and the pocketbooks terous story of a group of 93 young gain such office, particularly in the of the would-be faithful can be mo- Jewish women in Krakow who re- US, and particularly of late of the bilized by hate-mongers mouthing portedly committed suicide rather Republican Party. The orgy of opportunistic slogans such as than face likely rape at the hands of overweening devotion to the sup- “Never Again!” conquering German troops. Brava, posed cause of Israeli military su- To be sure, the fiery warrior of Dr. Lipstadt! That’s the idea, alt- premacy in the Middle East recent- the Holocaust Mythology still re- hough I must confess that this step ly displayed at the Jewish Republi- mains to resist the growing assault can Coalition properly sickened Continued on page 13 2 FRAGMENTS: ANOTHER ORDINARY LIFE Bradley Smith *** When the Occupy Wall the “nation.” His wealth consisted “The manifest sense is the literal Street movement burst onto the of his ownership of most of the one we all grasp; the latent sense is television screens last September I state of Virginia. Yet. the spiritual meaning, the secret was sympathetic with the outrage Are there a couple or three iro- that must be revealed by interpreta- and contempt that was being ex- nies here? Are the rich really the tion. This is true on the simplest pressed for the greed that is so evi- problem? level; there is naturally no point to dent in the “one” percent of Ameri- an interpretation that tells us only can culture. At the same time there *** Frank Kermode was a high- what we all know already, what was no evident plan to do anything ly regarded British literary critic inescapably and instantly strikes other than protest against greed. In who I used to read when I had time the eye. An interpretation must ei- the first instance, greed is pretty (before revisionism) for stuff like ther uncover or create a secret. For much a moral issue, not a political English literature . Mr. Kermode Kermode, the very existence of a one. And then greed is not limited died last year and I came across an text inspires interpretation, and to the one percent among us. It is appreciation of him by Charles therefore engenders secrecy.” present in every “percent” of the Rosen in the June 09 2011 issue of And then there is the photo- species, varying with the individual The New York Review of Books. graph, the document, the court tes- but there it is. Referencing Kermode’s observa- timony, the account by guys and One day I came across the fact, tions on such matters as the Gos- gals who survive or remain. It all if it is a fact, that while one percent pels, Mark Twain, Shakespeare and inspires interpretation, engenders of Americans are millionaires, Henry James he suggests that Ker- secrecy. A way of “telling a new about 50 percent of the U.S. Con- mode’s primary insight was that the story.” gress are millionaires.