Wednesday, March 08, 2006

History, The Academy, Truth and Freedom of Speech

Deborah Lipstadt: "I fought this man's libel charge against me for six years. For over three months I had to silently sit in court in London listening to him say the most horrible things about Jews, people of color and survivors. He made fun of those who talked about gas chambers and sneered at survivors' accounts of what they endured. He was full of bluster about how he was going to demolish the myth of the Holocaust.

Quietly and meticulously, relying on the stellar work of a dream team of historians, we showed that every one -- not many, not most, but all -- of David Irving's claims were complete rot. They were based on lies, distortions and fabrications. They were, as the prominent historian Richard Evans and the leader of our research team, said, ``A tissue of lies.'"


A strong statement of the importance of freedom of speech follows. Read the whole thing.

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