Discredited Irving plans comeback tour | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

I was wondering a few months ago why he was so quiet. At least he's advanced to the "Jews were exterminated, but they deserved it." position. So much more... honest, on his part.

I thought he was killed by a ray or something, oh no wait that somebody else...

I still find the existence of Holocaust deniers bizarre. It's like denying the moon.

It's just an optical illusion! Like the sun! And kittens!

Kittens are not an illusion. If one thinks that they are then one will be neck deep in little illusions before a short time has turned about. I think that cats hate mice so much because they feel that they should have been the namesake in the phrase, "Breeds fast as mice". It was only after that slight that they became entirely bent on the destruction of every mouse that has ever procreated, ever been procreated, or even thought of procreating.

Not like denying the moon, Grace, no. More like denying the moon-landing and claiming that it was entirely faked, with the added benefit of exploiting existing stereotypes and hatred.

With Irving, the standing theory is that he became sympathetic to the Nazis during his studies of the period, and is something of a Nazi himself now.

What, like a death-ray ? **little finger to corner of mouth** Muahahahahahahaha !

Actually I was more thinking about this kind of ray

I know, but a death ray would have been so much more fun...

Noboby was surprised were they? Except maybe that they expected it to be a croc.

I find the denial of the moon landing very fasinating, simply because "if" it was faked there would be a lot of people involved who are surprising good at keeping secrets.

The main flaw, for me, in the fake Moon landing scenario is that the Russians would have been all over it. They'd have done anything at the time to discredit the Americans and would definitely had their spies involved in the US space program and would have been the first to know, and tell everyone, if there was any trickery going on.

Actually, it was surprising. For one, despite appearances to the contrary, Irwin really did know animals. He'd been working with dangerous animals for most of his life. His father, who took the same risks, lived to be a quite old man (and may still be alive, for all Ba knows). For another, stingrays are one of the least lethal animals one could find. Prior to 1995 (the most recent information Ba has available), there had been 17 recorded deaths attributed to stingrays. Total. Ever. The majority of those involved allergic reactions to the venom. Irwin was more likely to die from falling off a ladder while replacing a lightbulb than from a stingray.

I meant that the Holocaust is something so vast, evident and undeniable that to deny it is bizarre to the point of being nonsensical. I wasn't actually trying to compare Lord Irving's version of history with an attempt to deny the moon.

The comparison to the moon landing is a nice one, but it implies that Lord IRving is operating at an ordinary level of stupidity and ignorance rather than one so far removed from reality that it becomes ludicrous. So you're both missing my point and being a little more charitable to Lord Irving than I am!

Regarding Nazi sympathies, I think a key mistake that many people make is denying that the Nazi Party had any good impact on pre-WWII Germany at all. Like it or not, Hitler did manage to do some good in Germany, and denying that fuels the fire of pro-Nazi idiots.

You may be right about the comparison, though it wasn't stupidity that I see in Irving, more like malicious intent.

As for Nazis being good for Germany in some way, yes, they were. I tend to look at the methods (re-distributing jobs and wealth by removing part of the population from the "True Citizens", war industry by starting a great big war, slave labor) though. And in terms of the end result, the Nazis destroyed Germany, in their endless war, inability to admit defeat when the war was obviously lost, and extermination of part of the German populace by their own hands.

Absolutely. It's a clear mistake to recognise only the good the Nazi Party did - as though that were the defining feature! And one can argue that what good was achieved was inherently tainted anyway, for the reasons you give.