Being an Idiot, the David Irving way.

Stating that David Irving comes across as an unpleasant human being is really stating the obvious, but it is always eye-opening to read an article like this one, that really hammers the point home. Take this part of the article:

When I suggest that all dictators have a loyal clique who like them – it means nothing – he keeps dodging the question. Eventually, he responds by arguing dictators are often misjudged: Idi Amin gets a unfair press, for one. Irving says he owns a medallion that belonged to the Ugandan dictator, and he likes to wear it secretly below his clothes when he is delivering a lecture. But, I respond, he ethnically cleansed the Ugandan Asians. He shrugs: “Expelling people is something that's been going on for a long time.”

Uh-huh. Idi Amin gets an unfair press. And Pol Pot is frowned upon for no reason. And Stalin was actually just an avuncular guy with a mildly intolerant streak. Dictators? Pah! They are just lovable rogues.

What glaring idiot actually takes it on themselves to not just defend Hitler but also Idi Amin?

But Irving also shows himself to be almost delusional in another part of the same article. See, apparently Hitler was waiting for him:

Irving sits back with an expression of beatific calm. “So [when] I phoned the doctor and he said ‘I’ve been expecting you,’ the Messiah had come. The one he had been waiting for all these years. And of course all the other historians hate that because they don’t fit.” I stare silently for a moment. To clarify: you actually think Hitler wanted you to be his biographer? “Yes. Yes and I am not ashamed of that. Hitler knew that. Hitler himself said that for fifty years they won’t be able to write the truth about me.”

Riiiigggghhhht. Hitler, in the midst of a war and just after an assassination attempt, was thinking about a future English biographer of the next generation who he did not even know existed. That seems logical. I mean, Irving is 70 now, meaning when Hitler died, Irving must have been circa seven years old. So Hitler was thinking about a seven year old boy. Sweet Jesus, this is the sort of thing that gets people committed.

Go read the article, and come away convinced of what seems to be an invioable truth - David Irving is a dickhead.