A Holocaust Historian Explains Why People Believe Trump's Lies

If you have never heard of David Irving, you're in good company. He has faded into obscurity somewhat, but in the early 1990s through the early 2000s Irving was heavy player in the Holocaust denier community—that band of tin-hat armchair historians and anti-Semites who hawk the idea that the Nazi's genocide of Jewish people was a hoax. Irving was one of its chief shills, and for a decade traveled the globe spewing pro-Nazi revisions of history.

Irving's persistent anti-Holocaust gas-bagging attracted the attention of legitimate Holocaust historian Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt. She penned a scathing indictment of Holocaust deniers called Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory and stated, "Irving is one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial. Familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda… He is most facile at taking accurate information and shaping it to confirm his conclusions." For her troubles, Irving sued Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, for libel in British court. For nearly four years Lipstadt and her legal team were forced to trot out the history of the Holocaust, including eyewitnesses, to assert her claim Irving was a "dangerous spokesperson" for Holocaust denial. The saga was turned into the 2016 film Denial starring Rachel Weisz. (Spoiler: He lost.)

Any rational thinker could take a quick look at Irving and make a corollary to modern individuals and organizations that trade in manipulated facts and outright lies against "mainstream" ideas or universally understood truths. Irving is fundamentally no different than Alex Jones, who peddles conspiracy theories, or Milo Yiannopoulos and Richard Spencer, who sell prejudice and more contemporary alt-right rhetoric. Their anger and paranoia, their hyperbole, and the constant whiff of conspiratorial doom they perceive in the democratic winds are nothing new in the American political landscape. The sitting president slid into the Oval Office with an economically frustrated electorate stirred into anger with undercooked nonsense about a Kenyan-born Barack Obama, climate change hoaxes, and "fake news." The past is always prologue.

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