| Some images
`and video link added by this website 
The Budapest Times, Hungary, Monday, March 19,
2007
Still in
the fight for the far right Holocaust
denier
David Irving draws a friendly crowd in
Budapest  DISCREDITED
British author David Irving spoke in front of some
250 people at a small theatre on Szabadság
tér last Monday. [
Video]
He was warmly greeted by the kind of rhythmic
clapping that is one step short of a standing
ovation in Hungary
[Website comment: but
is considered an insult in the English-speaking
world!]. Irving
was released from jail in Vienna only last
December, having served 13 months of a three-year
sentence imposed on him for breaking an Austrian
law that makes it a criminal offence to deny the
magnitude of the crimes committed by the National
Socialists during the Second World War. A warrant for his arrest was issued following a
speech and an interview given in 1989, in which he
denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
He was picked up by police in November 2005 while
driving to give a speech to a far-right student
group in Vienna and sentenced the following
February.  When
the sentence was passed, the US academic Deborah
Lipstadt, whom Irving
had previously unsuccessfully sued for libel,
said "I am uncomfortable with imprisoning people
for speech. Let him go and let him fade from
everyone's radar screens." She warned that the far
right would find a martyr if he went to jail.
[Website comment:
Lipstadt
later wailed that it was a crime for him to be
released.]
Irving, who will be 69 on March 24, was in
Hungary to promote his latest Hungarian-language
publication, which deals with the 1945-1946
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
He was also a guest of the nationalist Hungarian
Justice and Life Party (MIÉP).
[Website: No he was
not]. At the Szabó Dezsô Theatre, he
began with a joke about the similarities between
his own country and Hungary, as both are being run
by liars. This was enthusiastically received, as
were all of his comments and gags. The English
interpreter failed to turn up, so Irving spoke
chiefly in fluent German. He said that while in
prison, he wrote 2,000 pages for a book on
[Heinrich] Himmler, and 2,000 pages
of his memoirs. "I can recommend prison to
writers," he quipped. The audience consisted
mostly of middle-aged men and women, with some
pensioners and twenty-somethings mixed in. There
were no stereotypical extreme right supporters:
no skinheads, no swastikas. In Hungary, the far
right parties, especially MIÉP, tend to
draw crowds of moustachioed men in leather
jerkins and stern-looking housewives. After admitting
that he has been in Hungary, where he has a number
of "good, special friends", for the past month -
"and no one knew I was here, I'm glad to say" - he
went on to rail against what he sees as a growing
curtailment of freedom of speech in Europe. "I have
to behave myself," he said, bitterly. He added that
the war was fought for freedom but now "some are
more free than others". He told his audience how the criticism of his
work started when "things I uncovered during my
research did not conform" to the opinions of
conventional historians. He has no formal training
as a historian, and used to hanker after acceptance
from the academic community. He reportedly said
during the Lipstadt libel case
that drove the last nails
into the coffin of his reputation that he
has "no academic qualifications whatsoever". Irving is now widely
regarded as a crank, but is an almost iconic
figure in the world of extreme-right fringe
politics. He campaigns for what he calls "Real
History" and is in demand as a speaker. Having no
serious publishing deal, he has put his works
online for free download.
[Website comment: All
the books that are online as free downloads have
been  published
by major publishers around the
world.] His connection with Hungary
goes back to the 1970s, when he was researching his
1981 book Uprising!
about the 1956 revolution. That book has been
criticised for implying that rebels were chiefly
motivated by anti-Semitism and for ignoring events
that took place in the years immediately preceding
the 1956 revolution. Irving said Austrian authorities would only
allow him to see his twelve-year-old daughter for
15 minutes through a reinforced glass screen while
in prison. [She had
flown 20,000 km for the visit] The
Hungarian audience applauded him warmly in
sympathy. Many warned that imprisoning him would
only heighten his importance to those sympathetic
to his marginal, extremist views. To the small
audience that came to hear him talk in a
subterranean theatre in Budapest, people who like
to think of themselves as victims living in a
police state, David Irving was, at least for one
night, a hero. Robert Hodgson  Donate
| regularly
 -
Video
of David Irving's talk at Szabó
Dezsô theater,
Budapest
(in German and Hungarian)
[wmv]
Free download: Uprising
- One nation's struggle in several
languages-
Free download: "Nuremberg,
the Last Battle" in several languages
-
Budapest Times: David
Irving to speak at emotionally charged
Hungaarian national holiday.-
Text
of Mr Irving's speech in October 2003 |
photos
of that event
-
Reviews
of David Irving, Uprising
-
András
Mink review article on secret Hungarian files on
David Irving's 1970s research visits to
Hungary
-
David
Irving's imprisonment in Austria 2005-6 |
prison
memoirs
-
|
write
to David Irving