Holocaust denier Irving draws ire on UK speaking tour

David Irving, a British Holocaust denier and virulent antisemite, has reportedly just finished a speaking tour of the United Kingdom and has plans to tour the United States and visit Poland this year.

According to his own website, Irving “was in the Midlands, speaking in Coventry, Birmingham, Stirling, Manchester and Inverness. The tour has now concuded [sic] successfully and he is back in London.”

Another note on his website said that Irving was planning to tour “US cities, speaking in the spring of 2019” and also to lead “an exclusive tour of historic Nazi sites in Poland [in] September 2019.”

Irving’s website says the tour will begin in Warsaw on September 1, and will include visits to Hitler’s and Himmler’s headquarters. It also lists visits to the Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and Majdanek death camps, which Irving refers to as “sinister Operation Reinhard sites,” a reference to a Nazi plan to liquidate the camps. Irving is charging $3,650 per person – not including airfare – to take part in the nine-day, alternate history trip that he refers to as a “real history tour.”

According to The Times, the 80-year-old Holocaust denier and convicted criminal spoke in Glasgow and Stirling and had additional speaking engagements on “WW2’s hidden history” in several other British cities.

Last week, The Birmingham Mail reported that many people were outraged that Irving would be speaking in the city. While he would not reveal details of the speaking engagement, he reportedly said that he would not be discussing the Holocaust, but rather the allied bombing of Japan.

Irving has gained infamy through his hate speech, revisionist history and several high-profile court cases, including his libel suit against renowned Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt in the late 1990s, which he lost. He was imprisoned in Austria for Holocaust denial, and has been banned for entering Germany, Austria, Australia, Italy, New Zealand and Canada over his writings.

A website for Irving’s publication house lists six previous speaking dates across the UK during February. The site does not provide exact locations for any of the events, but lists them as costing $29 each, “except for those under eighteen, who are admitted free.”

While there is also a listing for the September tour of Poland, there were no dates or events taking place in the United States as of Sunday.