Handshakes that should be refused
by Scoop Shachtman, 26 August 2007
John Sweeney has been hanging around with people who like to dress up as SS officers for the weekend. And no, he hasn’t been visiting scientologists on the set of their latest movies. While at the same event he saw some fairly odious memorabilia and David Irving who revealed a singularly unpleasant personal record:
Among the show’s 1,000 stalls are some where the public can pick up Nazi knickknacks. One trader, from Belgium, was selling a “concentration camp trolley” from Belsen for £550. When challenged, he said: “That’s just a wooden thing with iron on it. That trolley didn’t kill anybody. It’s not a bomb or a bullet. It’s just a trolley.”
When it was pointed out to him that the trolley was advertised as “a concentration camp trolley marked SS from Belsen”, he replied: “There’s a difference between politics and collecting.I don’t do politics.”
Someone who does is David Irving, the historian who last year finished a jail sentence in Austria for Holocaust denial. He was sporting a slight toothbrush moustache like a white version of Robert Mugabe - a comparison I did not care to mention.
He was at a stall selling his books, believed by many people, including a judge in a High Court case, to deny the Holocaust. He offered a handshake. I hesitated and shook - to be told I had now shaken the hand that had shaken the hands of more people who had shaken the hand of Hitler than anyone else.
Nice.
Irving is now reduced to hawking his books at a stall to nutjobs with a fetish for fascist memorabilia. A reassuring thought, is it not?
Monday 27 August 2007 at 7:57
I am not that impressed with this comment in The Sunday Times article:
“[David Irving] was at a stall selling his books, believed by many people, including a judge in a High Court case, to deny the Holocaust. ”
It is the “believed by many people” thing that I do not like. David Irving is a Holocaust denier plain and simple. The wording by The Sunday Times suggests that either the journalist or the editor is concerned about being sued by Irving for saying it straight.
Away from that I enjoyed Sweeney’s thing on the Scientologists and I expect that the programme tonight will also be quite interesting. I think I will miss the showing but I hope that someone puts it up on You Tube or similar.
Monday 27 August 2007 at 20:04
“My grandfather fought in the war for my right to dress up as a Nazi.”
Wankers.
Monday 27 August 2007 at 22:34
When that scumbag turned up at a military fair in Kent recently with his stall and merchandise someone hit him with a portaloo that was full.
Tuesday 28 August 2007 at 6:31
It was the Sunday Times that gave David Irving a platform, and sought to make him respectable. No surprise that they soften and downplay his vileness to this day.
Wednesday 29 August 2007 at 7:13
Wankers does not exhaust the subject, Hakmao. To dress in SS grab just for wanking is only one of the possible venues. I do remember a passage on the subject in the Naked Lunch. Superb.