Pin-Striped Nazis

by Andrew Sullivan

EQUALLY, Ian Buruma (another friend) has a terrific little piece in the New Yorker about the trial of David Irving, the English historian and Holocaust "minimizer." Ian attended the libel trial Irving brought against the American scholar Deborah Lipstadt in London and elegantly picks apart its very English subtext of class resentment. I think Buruma gets Irving perfectly and lands a couple of deft punches at some of his supporters. (He's a little unfair on Hitch, [Christopher Hitchens] though.)

Buruma is alternately fascinated and repelled by a certain kind of English aristocratic reactionary, and is wise enough to see that this dark and evil strain in English culture nearly ceded the continent to Hitler in 1940. It's also far from dead, as any perusal of the Daily Telegraph will reveal. But I had never quite put Irving in this context - as a member of what Orwell called the insecure "lower-upper-middle-class." Ian also pointed out some amazing details from the trial that had somehow gone unreported until now: "At moments, … Irving made curious slips, as when he apparently referred to the judge as mein Fuhrer. (It should also be noted that the judge once or twice referred to Irving as Hitler.)" Could Monty Python have pulled that one off, I wonder?

David Irving comments: amazing that journalists still think that I was on trial, and not Deborah Lipstadt. A Freudian slip? Talking of which, isn't it entertaining how "history" grows, as wondrous as a crystal in a schoolgirl's jamjar? -- Not one newspaper at the time reported the Judge calling me "Hitler".