Downfall

Following his arrest in Vienna last week, David Irving has now been charged with denying the Holocaust, a crime that in Austria can carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. It has been enormously enjoyable watching Irving’s downfall in recent years: his disastrous libel case against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin, his financial ruin, and now, fingers crossed, some jail time. This is a man whose career has been built on adulating Hitler and denying the extent and nature of the Nazi crimes against the Jews. He once referred to an Association of Auschwitz Survivors and Other Liars, or "ASSHOLS." He has all the hallmarks of a true Holocaust denier: an antisemite, a white supremacist, a deliberate falsifier and distorter of historical evidence, and an unqualified, amateur historian. He doesn't even have a BA in history, let alone a PhD.