[INGRID RIMLAND is a veteran on-line commentator living on the west coast of the United States; she originally posted this item on August 7, 1998]

1.

ERNST ZÜNDEL once said something to the effect that we are entering the Age of Truth to usher in the new millennium much like a spaceship would. He said that we are diving head-first into a brand new era in a kind of "controlled crash" landing, using the parachute of new information via the Internet - the first medium in the world to take raw information right past political and geographical borders at the speed of light - and as we get ready to land, ". . . the ceramic tiles of the space shuttle's heat shield are flaking off and burning up."

Those who "flake off" in our ranks are those who are defective and who are found wanting for the magnificent struggle ahead. They are the ones who like to flirt with being part of an exciting and intellectually revolutionary movement but who can't take the heat. While scores and scores have joined our Cause, hungry for Truth Information, there have been a handful of groupies, snitches, chameleons and out-and-out unconscionable traitors who have defected to the other side to give aid and comfort and cheap victories to our enemies, willing to prop up the Lie just a second or two longer to please our ever-more-desperate foes.

Now talk abounds that David Irving is getting too ambivalent for many people's comfort. I want to speak to that in no uncertain terms.

You have got to know David Irving's mercurial nature and the persecution he has had to endure to appreciate where he is coming from. You have to look at some of his Revisionist tracks to understand how that rumor got started and where it might lead.

2.

Described as the movement's "Reluctant Revisionist", Irving has been made a Revisionist star entirely by our enemies. He was a star in his own right long before he stumbled on our cause. He didn't need us in the least - the Revisionist cause needed him. He himself has repeatedly said that he was no expert on the "Holocaust" and that he had never written a book on the topic. David Irving never volunteered to find the Revisionist truth. He was a very rich, very famous man - probably one of the top five internationally lauded and eminently successful mainstream writers on World War II events and personalities. The world was his oyster before he stubbed his toe on the Holocaust Truth - and nothing was ever the same for this jet-setter.

Yet for almost ten years, with robustness and untiring ardor, Irving has plowed ahead as a "Revisionist" of note - and gone where angels fear to tread.

Irving only came aboard the Revisionist Truth Campaign at the end of the Second Great Holocaust Zundel Trial in 1988, right after the bombshell Leuchter Report. He was asked to be an expert witness. He appeared in Toronto straight from a holiday in Florida, handsome and young, sun-tanned and with not a worry in the world, wearing moccasins, no socks, a white short and some cotton pants.

Ernst has told this moving story many times -- how this courageous man stood in a Toronto courtroom wearing Doug Christie's loaned suit and a 75 cent tie Ernst had bought at a Goodwill store the day before, bravely testifying in open court before a dozen reporters and stating, quite correctly, that the Leuchter Report would change the face of history - that anybody ignoring Leuchter's findings and subsequent laboratory results would not be writing history but merely repeating propaganda.

5.

David Irving spoke those words to an aghast press and public -- while on that very day, in New York, his agents were negotiating for a paperback rights of one of his books with a publishing house in the range of close to half a million dollars. In the age of materialism where everything is measured in monetary terms -- that shows class. Greatness, even. There stood a man - not a mouse. I have been told this story often -- how swept off his feet Irving was when he realized the impact and potential power of this historical Leuchter Report that buried the blah-blah of the Great Gas Chamber Myth with verifiable laboratory data.

That was then -- and now is now.

Now some claim there are ominous signs about Irving cracking under the strains and assaults of his foes. The leading Revisionists have been divided on Irving for over a decade, for there are signs he is not happy in the company of the motley collection of people who make up the bulk of the Revisionist movement -- many of whom are disheveled, sometimes timid, often anxious, poor and not as brilliant and articulate as he is.

He is reported to have muttered that ". . . there might have been some experimental gassings." There is a none-too-flattering passage in a recent book written by [Ron Rosenbaum], that quotes David Irving as having said that, just as soon as it is feasible, he is going to dump his Revisionist pals ". . . like an ill-fitting shoe" and move back to where the real money, applause and accolades are found.

The other day, I had dinner with him and a few other Revisionist leaders, and I asked him point blank: Was it true that he was waffling?

"Waffling?" said our famous Mr. Irving.

"Waffling!" emphasized Ms. Rimland.

"Who said that? Zündel?" David asked.

Not only Zündel. Many do. And many think that it will happen - and small wonder. What happened to the Irving lifestyle is no fun.

6.

Read just one of his Action Reports. He has been barred from many countries. He has been led away in handcuffs while making a speech on Free Speech. Lucrative publishing contracts have been canceled by leading publishers like St. Martin's Press. He has become a hounded "villain" - for witnessing to truth.

If you want to know if he will be our loss and the Holocaust Promotion Lobby's gain, I'll go on record saying "No."

I just don't think that it will happen -- for David has tasted the Truth and cannot go back to the Lie -- regardless of how much his tormentors may malign and vilify him. David Irving was not a failure in life, bouncing from disaster to disaster - a pattern that we know to be the hallmark of most shills and snitches.

David Irving was a major and respected player in the revising and rewriting of World War II history, of which the "Holocaust" is but ". . . a minor detail, a mere footnote."

He carried a man's weight. He spoke a man's language. He has helped to find many facets of historical truth - often under painful circumstances. He has spoken out on many an occasion when it would have been wise for him to be silent. David is a writer who needs freedom of speech to exist, and he knows, to quote Robert Lenski in "The Holocaust on Trial", that

". . . censorship is the legalized version of book burning by the mobs, and it is one of the keys to power for totalitarian governments."

For these and many other reasons, David Irving knows down in the marrow of his bones that he can't turn back the clock -- for the enemies of truth will not forgive him. Ever.

I may be wrong, but I don't think this man will join the Holoschlock Brigade. 

David Irving comments: Obituaries like the above are, in my view, premature.