Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day014.10 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR RAMPTON: Let me take the first one on this page 3, may I, Mr Irving? This is your action report No. 12, I think, of July 1997. The reference is given if you want to look at it. "Why are they [the Jews] so blind that they cannot see the linkage between cause and effect? They protest, what, us? when people accuse them of international conspiracy. They clamour, 'Ours, ours, ours' when hoards of gold are uncovered and then when anti-Semitism increases and the inevitable mindless pogroms occur, they ask with genuine surprise, why us?" Mr Irving, is that a fair quote in the context from ---- A. Can I read the two paragraphs before that? Q. Yes, please do. A. To set it in context: "Three hours work today on discovery", that is for this action two years ago already, "compiling exhaustive files for my papers for my libel actions, my archive files on the Judenfrage, the Jewish problem. Depressing. "There is an item in today's Jewish Chronicle which reports that, according to a study by the University of Tel Aviv, anti-Semitic incidents everywhere are on the decline. There has been an 8.1 per cent decline in Britain over the 12 month period to the end of 1996. "There are two significant exceptions, however. . P-84 An increase in anti-Semitic propaganda in Switzerland during 1996 was generated by 'Jewish claims for the return of money and of the property of Holocaust victims or their heirs'. The other exception is Australia 'where there was a 12 per cent rise over the previous year'." I then continue with the passage that you have put before his Lordship which is the conclusion to be drawn from this fact, that in Australia -- "In fact, Australia today is on fire about me again, about my not being allowed into the country. The Prime Minister of Australia this morning has criticised me. This kind of thing generates the anti-Semitism in countries", and this is precisely what this is about. Q. You do not see anything in what I have just read which might account for the Australians' unwillingness to have you on their shores? A. On the contrary, this is saying cause and effect. Why is there increasing anti-Semitism in Switzerland today when it is going down everywhere else in the world? Answer, we know why. Why is there anti-Semitism today in Australia today? Answer, we know why. Q. But you are adopting it, are you not? You are saying the anti-Semitism is justified on account of the fact that the Jews are greedy? A. Did I say justified or explicable? Is there a subtle difference there, do you think? . P-85 Q. We will read the next passage, Mr Irving. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot find the reference. K4, tab 10, page 60. MR RAMPTON: At 1. A. This is a typical example of something being taken out of context and the word "explicable" being changed into "justifiable". This is a typical manipulation. Q. If you say so, Mr Irving. It is going to get worse, I am afraid. Can we read the next passage? This is rather a long passage so perhaps you would like to have a look? This is taken from your interview with Errol Morris on 8th November 1998. My Lord, the passage in the file is at page 60 of tab 10. 60 is written in the round circle. It is at the bottom of the left-hand column of page 22 of the action report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this your second one? MR RAMPTON: No, that is first one your Lordship was asking after. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I did find it. I am sorry. I have it now. MR RAMPTON: This comes from, if you want the reference, Mr Irving, pages 25 to 27. A. I have it. I have the full text in front of me. Once again you left off the opening passage which explains what I am saying. . P-86 Q. Which opening passage? A. You begun half way down the paragraph of what I said. Q. I will read the whole thing if it bothers you. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I have just read the opening part of that paragraph. It makes no difference at all to what is relied on, I do not think, does it? A. No, what I am saying is if somebody calls me a liar, which frequently happens, especially in this courtroom, even when I am on oath, I shrug my shoulders. Q. And then you contrast that with the Jewish reaction? A. And I contrast that with the sensitivity of the Jewish community. When they are called liars, then suddenly all the force and majesty of the law is called in and you are invited to go before the Magistrate and all the rest of it, and this generates anti-Semitism, in my view. MR RAMPTON: Well, Mr Irving, I am going look at something which I suggest is a massive exercise in the generation of anti-Semitism. It is you speaking at line 39 on page 25 of the file. You see: "It is certainly is inexcusable. Every country, every people, particularly the Jewish people, I think are robust enough to survive the knocks, to survive the insults, to survive the impugning of their integrity". So far so good. "If somebody says to me, 'David Irving, I think you are a liar', I shrug my shoulders and say, 'So, so . P-87 what? You are entitled to your opinion'. But if somebody says to the Jewish community, 'Jewish community, we think you are a liar', suddenly the jail doors are swung open and people say, 'This way, come on, you have called them a liar'" ---- A. Like Karl Philip, for example, fined 3,000 deutschemarks for some utterance. That is precisely the example, and that generates anti-Semitism, in my view. Q. Yes, "... and this I think does harm to the Jewish people in the long run because the non-Jewish people will say, 'What is it about these people?' Irving: I am deeply concerned about this and I have said this to people like Daniel Goldhagen who I challenged to the debate at a meeting in New Orleans a few months ago. I said, 'You have written a book called Hitler's Willing Executioners. You have talked to us this evening at great length about who pulled the trigger, but the question which would concern me if I was a Jew is not who'" ---- A. "If I were a Jew". Q. --- "'pulled the trigger, but why? Why are we disliked? Is it something we are doing? I am disliked. Dave Irving is disliked. I know that because of the books I write. I could be instantly disliked by writing. I could become instantly liked by writing other books. You people'", by which, of course, you mean the Jews, "'are disliked on a global scale. You have been disliked for 3,0000 years and . P-88 yet you never to seem to ask what is at the root'", misspelt, "'of this dislike. You pretend that you are not disliked but you are disliked. No sooner do you arrive as a people in a new country, then within 50 years you are already being disliked all over again. Now what is it? And I do not know the answer to this. Is it built into our microchip? When a people arrive who call themselves the Jews, you will dislike them? Is there something in our microchip? Is it in our microchip that we do not like the way they look? Is it envy because they are more successful than us? I do not know the answer, but if I was a Jew, I would want to know what the reason is why I am being disliked, and not just disliked in a kind of nudge, nudge, wink, wink, he is not very nice kind of sort of way, but we are being disliked on a visceral, gut wrenching, murderous level, that no sooner do we arrive than we are being massacred and beaten and brutalized and imprisoned until we have to move on somewhere else. What is the reason? I would want to know the answer to that, and nobody carries out an investigation about that". Then I have to go on: "(Interviewer) What would you say the reason is? (Irving) I am just looking at this as an outsider; I come from Mars and I would say they are clever people. I am a racist, I would say they are a clever race. I would say that, as a race, they are better at making money than I am". That is a racist remark, of . P-89 course, Mr Irving. It is worthy of Dr Joseph Goebbels, is it not? A. Now then, you are taking words here and you are putting your own intonation on them: "If I am a racist, then I would say these things, I say things in a racist kind of way -- there are better people than us, they play the violin better, they make money better than us and this would generate my envy". Q. "But they appear to be better at making money", you repeat yourself, "than I am". A. That is right, I am putting myself in a position of the critics. I am trying to find reasons why people are anti-Semetic. I am talking here to a television interviewer. We are investigating the reasons why people may become anti-Semetic in my own rather clumsy and incoherent way. We are trying to find what makes people anti-Semetic. Is it because the Jews are better than us? Is it because they play the violin or the piano better than us, better at making money than us or is there something built into our microchip? Q. Yes, Mr Irving. A. I think this is a very coherent expression of the whole anti-Semitic tragedy, that nobody knows what it is that makes people dislike foreigners, the xenophobia that is inside every human being. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That sentence (I do not know whether . P-90 Mr Rampton has read it yet or not), you say: "If I was going to be crude, I would say not only are they better at making money but they are greedy", that is you, Mr Irving, saying the Jews are greedy, is that right, or have I misunderstood? A. No, this is the two or three levels down in the argument, my Lord; this is putting myself into the skin of a person who is asking questions about those clever people. There should be triple quotation marks around this. MR RAMPTON: Oh, no, Mr Irving, that will not do; that is another rash and hasty ---- A. If you read on, you will see exactly why we are talking about the Swiss gold business. Q. I am going to read on, Mr Irving. That is exactly why I said it was a rather rash answer. A. This is precisely the moment when Abraham Foxman and the Jewish newspaper 'Forward' have said: "Sure, we bludgeoned them until they had parted with the money". That was his headline: "Yes, we bludgeoned them". This is the kind of thing that generates anti-Semitism as witnessed what happened in Switzerland. Q. So every time there is a pogrom or a machine gunning into a pit, or a mass gassing, it is entirely the Jews' fault because some of them make money and some of them are good at the piano, is that right, and some of them are clever? A. I regard that a very childish oversimplification of what . P-91 I have tried to set out in two paragraphs there.
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