Page 82 - All About History - Issue 53-17

Interview

Deborah Lipstadt and her team on their
way to court, January 2000

America, however, has seen many of the tropes she For Lipstadt, it’s vital that historians play a role in be, it’s very important that now more than ever
identified in Denying the Holocaust cross over into this fight, just as she did when David Irving gloated historians speak out.
the mainstream, cluttering up social media and “that more women died on the back seat of Senator “Not everyone is capable of doing it. Some fine
populist press with their distorted reimaginings of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than scholars, fine historians, aren’t built for that kind
the slave trade, the crusades and the world wars. ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz”. “Given of battle but if they know the facts, they know the
“We see it over and over again,” agrees Lipstadt. the current attack on facts, given the blatant way truth so that when Ken Livingstone plays with
“And by the way, we see it from the right and we in which facts are changeable, deniable, ignorable, your history — and I don’t care what your personal
see it from the left, we see it on both sides. We see whatever simile you want to use, it’s incumbent on political outlook is — when he takes your history
it with [former London mayor] Ken Livingstone and academics in general, and and twists it for his own
his attempt to tie Zionists with Nazis and say, you in particular historians, to “You have denial from the political purposes, or Marine
know, ‘The Nazis trained Zionists etc’ which is all become public intellectuals. right, and this changing of le Pen takes the history and
bunk, complete bunk, based on one commercial When I was starting my twists it, no-one has more
contract that the German Zionist Organisation had career anybody who wrote facts from the left. It’s open credibility on this than
with the Nazis from August ‘33. From that Ken op-eds, anybody who season on facts” historians.”
Livingstone builds a whole panoply of charges was active speaking with Part of the problem,
which just are not true. reporters and all that was Deborah Lipstadt however, is that historians
“Then you get [French presidential candidate] sort of disdained as not can counter distortions
Marine le Pen — yes she lost, but she got 35% of being serious academics. But the fact of the matter of history but it’s the distortion that leads the
the votes so she’s not going away so fast — who is that we can no longer afford that. agenda — the lie takes centre stage in a headline
a couple of weeks before the election said that “I think historians, whatever their field, if there’s or soundbyte while the truth follows in its shadow.
France had nothing to do with the roundups [of something that applies to what they do, they have Could it be that if historians want to win the fight,
Jews] in the summer of 1942. When you look at to speak out. They have to be very careful to not they have to lead the discussion? For example,
the images you only see French officers, French speak out in a partisan fashion so that what they when a city in the Southern US moves in on
policemen. So you have this denial from the right, have to say can be dismissed or discounted as its memorials to Confederate generals, should
and this changing of the facts from the left. It’s partisanship. Whether they’re against Trump or historians get in front of that before their sober
open season on facts.” for Brexit, or opposed to Brexit, whichever it may interjections become lost in the politically charged
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