Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day014.10
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20

   MR RAMPTON:  Let me take the first one on this page 3, may I,
        Mr Irving?  This is your action report No. 12, I think, of
        July 1997.  The reference is given if you want to look at
        it.  "Why are they [the Jews] so blind that they cannot
        see the linkage between cause and effect?  They protest,
        what, us?  when people accuse them of international
        conspiracy.  They clamour, 'Ours, ours, ours' when hoards
        of gold are uncovered and then when anti-Semitism
        increases and the inevitable mindless pogroms occur, they
        ask with genuine surprise, why us?"
                  Mr Irving, is that a fair quote in the context
        from ----
   A.   Can I read the two paragraphs before that?
   Q.   Yes, please do.
   A.   To set it in context:  "Three hours work today on
        discovery", that is for this action two years ago already,
         "compiling exhaustive files for my papers for my libel
        actions, my archive files on the Judenfrage, the Jewish
        problem.  Depressing.
                  "There is an item in today's Jewish Chronicle
        which reports that, according to a study by the University
        of Tel Aviv, anti-Semitic incidents everywhere are on the
        decline.  There has been an 8.1 per cent decline in
        Britain over the 12 month period to the end of 1996.
                  "There are two significant exceptions, however.

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        An increase in anti-Semitic propaganda in Switzerland
        during 1996 was generated by 'Jewish claims for the return
        of money and of the property of Holocaust victims or their
        heirs'.  The other exception is Australia 'where there was
        a 12 per cent rise over the previous year'."
                  I then continue with the passage that you have
        put before his Lordship which is the conclusion to be
        drawn from this fact, that in Australia -- "In fact,
        Australia today is on fire about me again, about my not
        being allowed into the country.  The Prime Minister of
        Australia this morning has criticised me.  This kind of
        thing generates the anti-Semitism in countries", and this
        is precisely what this is about.
   Q.   You do not see anything in what I have just read which
        might account for the Australians' unwillingness to have
        you on their shores?
   A.   On the contrary, this is saying cause and effect.  Why is
        there increasing anti-Semitism in Switzerland today when
        it is going down everywhere else in the world?  Answer, we
        know why.  Why is there anti-Semitism today in Australia
        today?  Answer, we know why.
   Q.   But you are adopting it, are you not?  You are saying the
        anti-Semitism is justified on account of the fact that the
        Jews are greedy?
   A.   Did I say justified or explicable?  Is there a subtle
        difference there, do you think?

.          P-85

   Q.   We will read the next passage, Mr Irving.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I cannot find the reference.  K4, tab 10, page 60.
   MR RAMPTON:  At 1.
   A.   This is a typical example of something being taken out of
        context and the word "explicable" being changed into
        "justifiable".  This is a typical manipulation.
   Q.   If you say so, Mr Irving.  It is going to get worse, I am
        afraid.  Can we read the next passage?  This is rather a
        long passage so perhaps you would like to have a look?
        This is taken from your interview with Errol Morris on 8th
        November 1998.
                  My Lord, the passage in the file is at page 60
        of tab 10.  60 is written in the round circle.  It is at
        the bottom of the left-hand column of page 22 of the
        action report.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Is this your second one?
   MR RAMPTON:  No, that is first one your Lordship was asking
        after.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes, I did find it.  I am sorry.  I have it now.
   MR RAMPTON:  This comes from, if you want the reference,
        Mr Irving, pages 25 to 27.
   A.   I have it.  I have the full text in front of me.  Once
        again you left off the opening passage which explains what
        I am saying.

.          P-86

   Q.   Which opening passage?
   A.   You begun half way down the paragraph of what I said.
   Q.   I will read the whole thing if it bothers you.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, I have just read the opening part
        of that paragraph.  It makes no difference at all to what
        is relied on, I do not think, does it?
   A.   No, what I am saying is if somebody calls me a liar, which
        frequently happens, especially in this courtroom, even
        when I am on oath, I shrug my shoulders.
   Q.   And then you contrast that with the Jewish reaction?
   A.   And I contrast that with the sensitivity of the Jewish
        community.  When they are called liars, then suddenly all
        the force and majesty of the law is called in and you are
        invited to go before the Magistrate and all the rest of
        it, and this generates anti-Semitism, in my view.
   MR RAMPTON:  Well, Mr Irving, I am going look at something
        which I suggest is a massive exercise in the generation of
        anti-Semitism.  It is you speaking at line 39 on page 25
        of the file.
                  You see:  "It is certainly is inexcusable.
        Every country, every people, particularly the Jewish
        people, I think are robust enough to survive the knocks,
        to survive the insults, to survive the impugning of their
        integrity".  So far so good.
                   "If somebody says to me, 'David Irving, I think
        you are a liar', I shrug my shoulders and say, 'So, so

.          P-87

        what? You are entitled to your opinion'.  But if somebody
        says to the Jewish community, 'Jewish community, we think
        you are a liar', suddenly the jail doors are swung open
        and people say, 'This way, come on, you have called them a
        liar'" ----
   A.   Like Karl Philip, for example, fined 3,000 deutschemarks
        for some utterance.  That is precisely the example, and
        that generates anti-Semitism, in my view.
   Q.   Yes, "... and this I think does harm to the Jewish people
        in the long run because the non-Jewish people will say,
         'What is it about these people?' Irving: I am deeply
        concerned about this and I have said this to people
        like Daniel Goldhagen who I challenged to the debate at a
        meeting in New Orleans a few months ago.  I said, 'You
        have written a book called Hitler's Willing Executioners.
        You have talked to us this evening at great length about
        who pulled the trigger, but the question which would
        concern me if I was a Jew is not who'" ----
   A.   "If I were a Jew".
   Q.   --- "'pulled the trigger, but why?  Why are we disliked?
        Is it something we are doing?  I am disliked.  Dave Irving
        is disliked.  I know that because of the books I write.
        I could be instantly disliked by writing.  I could become
        instantly liked by writing other books.  You people'", by
        which, of course, you mean the Jews, "'are disliked on a
        global scale.  You have been disliked for 3,0000 years and

.          P-88

        yet you never to seem to ask what is at the root'",
        misspelt, "'of this dislike.  You pretend that you are not
        disliked but you are disliked.  No sooner do you arrive as
        a people in a new country, then within 50 years you are
        already being disliked all over again.  Now what is it?
        And I do not know the answer to this.  Is it built into
        our microchip?  When a people arrive who call themselves
        the Jews, you will dislike them?  Is there something in
        our microchip?  Is it in our microchip that we do not like
        the way they look?  Is it envy because they are more
        successful than us?  I do not know the answer, but if
        I was a Jew, I would want to know what the reason is why
        I am being disliked, and not just disliked in a kind of
        nudge, nudge, wink, wink, he is not very nice kind of sort
        of way, but we are being disliked on a visceral, gut
        wrenching, murderous level, that no sooner do we arrive
        than we are being massacred and beaten and brutalized and
        imprisoned until we have to move on somewhere else.  What
        is the reason?  I would want to know the answer to that,
        and nobody carries out an investigation about that".
                  Then I have to go on:  "(Interviewer) What would
        you say the reason is?  (Irving) I am just looking at this
        as an outsider; I come from Mars and I would say they are
        clever people.  I am a racist, I would say they are a
        clever race.  I would say that, as a race, they are better
        at making money than I am".  That is a racist remark, of

.          P-89

        course, Mr Irving.  It is worthy of Dr Joseph Goebbels, is
        it not?
   A.   Now then, you are taking words here and you are putting
        your own intonation on them:  "If I am a racist, then
        I would say these things, I say things in a racist kind of
        way -- there are better people than us, they play the
        violin better, they make money better than us and this
        would generate my envy".
   Q.   "But they appear to be better at making money", you repeat
        yourself, "than I am".
   A.   That is right, I am putting myself in a position of the
        critics.  I am trying to find reasons why people are
        anti-Semetic.  I am talking here to a television
        interviewer.  We are investigating the reasons why people
        may become anti-Semetic in my own rather clumsy and
        incoherent way.  We are trying to find what makes people
        anti-Semetic.  Is it because the Jews are better than us?
        Is it because they play the violin or the piano better
        than us, better at making money than us or is there
        something built into our microchip?
   Q.   Yes, Mr Irving.
   A.   I think this is a very coherent expression of the whole
        anti-Semitic tragedy, that nobody knows what it is that
        makes people dislike foreigners, the xenophobia that is
        inside every human being.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That sentence (I do not know whether

.          P-90

        Mr Rampton has read it yet or not), you say:  "If I was
        going to be crude, I would say not only are they better at
        making money but they are greedy", that is you, Mr Irving,
        saying the Jews are greedy, is that right, or have I
        misunderstood?
   A.   No, this is the two or three levels down in the argument,
        my Lord; this is putting myself into the skin of a person
        who is asking questions about those clever people.  There
        should be triple quotation marks around this.
   MR RAMPTON:  Oh, no, Mr Irving, that will not do; that is
        another rash and hasty ----
   A.   If you read on, you will see exactly why we are talking
        about the Swiss gold business.
   Q.   I am going to read on, Mr Irving.  That is exactly why
        I said it was a rather rash answer.
   A.   This is precisely the moment when Abraham Foxman and the
        Jewish newspaper 'Forward' have said:  "Sure, we
        bludgeoned them until they had parted with the money".
        That was his headline:  "Yes, we bludgeoned them".  This
        is the kind of thing that generates anti-Semitism as
        witnessed what happened in Switzerland.
   Q.   So every time there is a pogrom or a machine gunning into
        a pit, or a mass gassing, it is entirely the Jews' fault
        because some of them make money and some of them are good
        at the piano, is that right, and some of them are clever?
   A.   I regard that a very childish oversimplification of what

.          P-91

        I have tried to set out in two paragraphs there.

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