Holocaust denier cashes in on Hollywood drama
Disgraced Irving goes on the road to spread his vile message
FAR-RIGHT historian David Irving is to embark on a secretive tour of Britain – just as a new Hollywood film thrusts his most ignominious moment back into the spotlight.
The author’s reputation was left in tatters in 2000, when he lost a £2million libel case in which a judge ruled that he was a racist, anti-Semitic Holocaust denier who twisted facts to fit his pro-Nazi agenda.
Now the story of his humiliation is being told in a new film starring Timothy Spall as Irving and Rachel Weisz as Deborah Lipstadt, the US academic he unsuccessfully sued.
But in the weeks before its release, Irving is embarking on a monthlong lecture tour, airing his pernicious views.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, Irving conceded the roadshow may profit from the publicity surrounding the film, Denial, which is released in the UK in January. But he insists the movie, written by playwright David Hare and co-financed by BBC Films, is ‘inaccurate’.
His tour starts on November 23 and will visit 21 venues – but their exact location will be revealed only to vetted ticket-buyers, to evade anti-fascist protesters. The 78-year-old is billing the lectures as ‘David Irving looks back: My 50 years defending real history against its enemies’.
He has denied being anti-Semitic, but his publicity material describes Jews as ‘the traditional enemies of free speech’ and refers to how ‘mobs of Jews’ have confronted him throughout his career.
Speaking to this newspaper, Irving also said he had been following the US elections and praised Donald Trump as a ‘good man who has his heart in the right place’.
The news of the tour was yesterday derided by critics, who branded Irving a ‘has-been’. Rabbi Jonathan Romain, of Maidenhead Synagogue in Kent, said: ‘It is extraordinary that Irving has not learned from the academic trouncing he received, demolishing his spurious views and biased research.
‘Banning him would be treating him seriously, rather than as a discredited historian. But he should be shunned and his roadshow ignored.’
The former Government anti-terror adviser Lord Carlile said: ‘The best way to react to this tour would be for nobody to attend. He is a has-been of no credibility whatever. His views are laughable.’ Anti-Semitism campaigner Jonathan Sacerdoti said: ‘This tour is a pathetic last bid for attention from a man who has been rejected as a mainstream historian.’
Five years after his High Court defeat, Irving was sentenced to three years in an Austrian prison over ‘trivialising, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust’. He has been banned from Austria, Canada, Italy and Germany.
Last year, The Mail on Sunday revealed he addressed more than 100 fascist sympathisers and neo-Nazis at a secret meeting in a London hotel. He has also led controversial tours around concentration camps.
Irving has disputed being a Holocaust-denier but insists that the number of Jews killed is lower than the widely accepted figure of six million.