Affirmation is not Denial, and Vice Versa
And then, more straightforwardly, there’s more of the confusion about free speech, in which people compare unlike things and then stand back triumphantly and say ‘See?’ No, we don’t see, because the two cases are different, not the same, so there’s nothing to see.
In the past few months, Europe has been flexing its muscles as a guarantor of freedom of expression – both in the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, and before that in its criticism of the trial of the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk for raising the subject of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians in the early 20th century. What a delicious irony that a Europe so sniffy about Turkish justice when it came to Pamuk should end up jailing another writer for three years for delivering his opinion on a different act of genocide.
No, that’s not a delicious irony, or even a nasty one that tastes like burnt okra, because the Pamuk and Irving cases are different. Different. Can you say different? I knew you could. Pamuk was on trial for saying a genocide that did happen, did happen; Irving was sentenced for saying a genocide that did happen, did not happen. There are two differences there. One, Pamuk was telling the truth, and Irving was lying, and two, denying a genocide that did happen is a kind of threat to the survivors, whereas asserting a genocide that did happen is not. Which is not, repeat not, to endorse either the Austrian law against Holocaust denial, or the sentence; it is simply to say that the two cases are not only not parallel, they are on the most crucial issues, opposites. So it seems very silly to try to treat them as parallel.
Wouldn’t you know it was in the Guardian!?
Of course it makes me angry at them, but it also makes me angry that we leave such a target there for them.
You’re right, of course, that there’s no comparison, but things have to be made more clear, not less.
Irving was lying…
Isn’t Irving engaged in an elaborate form of self-deception, which is different from, but not better than, lying?
Not entirely. He falsified the evidence; it’s hard to do that without lying. The judge said he was lying. I chose the word deliberately – I wouldn’t have used it if it hadn’t been for the verdict in the libel case.
You know…Rwanda has some laws about what can’t be said. Funny that people mention Irving but not Rwanda.
Hardindr writes:
Isn’t Irving engaged in an elaborate form of self-deception, which is different from, but not better than, lying?
That’s also my interpretation — Irving was quite a competent historian who early on in his catreer appears to have made a genuine contribution to knowledge (at least according to historian John Keegan).
Then at some stage he got the “Jew thing” as the Americans say, and that obsession led to his belittling, if not quite denying, the Holocaust — and his downfall. His jail sentence was, however, vindictive and shameful.
BTW one might even argue that objectively (if not morally) self-deception is even worse than lying — for if you deceive yourself you can sound more convincing than when you know you are telling a blatant lie.
Frankly, I think that as rule it’s enough to say that somebody is in error and to refrain from use of the term ‘lying’ unless one has very good reasons to justify the accusation.
Yes, Cathal, so do I, but I do have very good reasons, as I said – but you posted right after me, so probably didn’t see it. Read the excerpt from Why Truth Matters in Articles – Richard Evans details some of Irving’s falsification.
Clearly this is too little known, and it is part of the whole Irving-free speech debate. He falsified the evidence, repeatedly. He’s not just ‘expressing an opinion’ or ‘saying what he believes’ as so many people say. Read Lipstadt’s posts – she doesn’t think he should have been jailed, or arrested, but she does say he lied. And she should know.
See also Saying What He Doesn’t Think. It’s only three days old. Irving did lie – that’s rather the point.