Irving v. Lipstadt

13.160 I pointed out in paragraph 13.139 above that there may be circumstances extraneous to Irving's practice of his profession as an historian from which it may be the legitimate to draw inferences as to whether his misrepresentation of the historical evidence has been deliberate. If the evidence supports the view that Irving is a dispassionate objective student and chronicler of the Nazi era, that would militate powerfully against   the conclusion that he is working to agenda of his own. Conversely, if the extraneous evidence indicates that Irving holds views which are pro-Nazi and anti-semitic and that he is an active protagonist and supporter of extreme right-wing policies, that would support the inference that he perverts the historical evidence so as to make it conform with his ideological beliefs.

13.161 I have already set out in section VIII above my conclusion that Irving displays all the characteristics of a Holocaust denier. He repeatedly makes assertions about the Holocaust which are offensive to Jews in their terms and unsupported by or contrary to the historical record. I have also given at section IX above the reasons for my findings that Irving is an anti-semite and a racist. As I have found in section X above, Irving associates regularly with extremist and neo-Nazi organisations and individuals. The conclusion which I draw from the evidence is that Irving is sympathetic towards and on occasion promotes the views held by those individuals and organisations.

13.162 It is not difficult to discern a pattern to the activities and attitudes to which I have alluded in the preceding paragraph. Over the past fifteen years or so, Irving appears to have become more active politically than was previously the case. He speaks regularly at political or quasi-political meetings in Germany, the United States, Canada and the New World. The content of his speeches and interviews often displays a distinctly pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish bias. He makes surprising and often unfounded assertions about the Nazi regime which tend to exonerate the Nazis for the appalling 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. The picture of Irving which emerges from the evidence of his extra-curricular activities reveals him to be a right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist. In my view the Defendants have established that Irving has a political agenda. It is one which, it is legitimate to infer, disposes him, where he deems it necessary, to manipulate the historical record in order to make it conform with his political beliefs.