WEBVTT

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I come to you today
to speak of liars,

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lawsuits

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and laughter.

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The first time I heard
about Holocaust denial,

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I laughed.

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Holocaust denial?

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The Holocaust which has
the dubious distinction

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of being the best-documented
genocide in the world?

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Who could believe it didn't happen?

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Think about it.

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For deniers to be right,

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who would have to be wrong?

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Well, first of all --

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the victims,

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the survivors who have told us
their harrowing stories.

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Who else would have to be wrong?

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The bystanders.

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The people who lived in the myriads
of towns and villages and cities

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on the Eastern front,

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who watched their neighbors
be rounded up --

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men, women, children, young, old --

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and be marched
to the outskirts of the town

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to be shot and left dead in ditches.

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Or the Poles,

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who lived in towns and villages
around the death camps,

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who watched day after day

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as the trains went in filled with people

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and came out empty.

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But above all,

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who would have to be wrong?

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The perpetrators.

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The people who say, "We did it.

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I did it."

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Now maybe they add a caveat --

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they say, "I didn't have a choice,

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I was forced to do it."

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But nonetheless, they say, "I did it."

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Think about it.

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In not one war crimes trial
since the end of World War II

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has a perpetrator of any nationality
ever said, "It didn't happen."

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Again, they may have said, "I was forced,"
but never that it didn't happen.

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Having thought that through,

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I decided denial was not
going to be on my agenda;

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I had bigger things to worry about,

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to write about,

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to research,

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and I moved on.

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Fast forward a little over a decade,

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and two senior scholars --

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scholars of the Holocaust,

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two of the most prominent
historians of the Holocaust --

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approached me and said,

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"Deborah, let's have coffee.

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We have a research idea
that we think is perfect for you."

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Intrigued and flattered that they
came to me with an idea

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and thought me worthy of it,

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I asked, "What is it?"

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and they said, "Holocaust denial."

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And for the second time, I laughed.

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Holocaust denial?

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The flat Earth folks?

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The Elvis is alive people?

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I should study them?

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And these two guys said,

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"Yeah, we're intrigued.

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What are they about?

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What's their objective?

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How do they manage to get people
to believe what they say?"

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So thinking, if they thought
it was worthwhile,

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I would take a momentary diversion --

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maybe a year,

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maybe two, three, maybe even four --

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in academic terms, that's momentary.

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(Laughter)

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We work very slowly.

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(Laughter)

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And I would look at them.

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So I did.

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I did my research and I came up
with a number of things,

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two of which I'd like to share
with you today.

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One:

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deniers are wolves in sheep's clothing.

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They are the same nazis, neo-Nazis --

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you can decide whether you want
to put a "neo" there or not.

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But when I looked at them,

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I didn't see any SS-like uniforms,

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swastika-like symbols on the wall,

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Sieg heil salutes --

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none of that.

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What I found instead

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were people parading
as respectable academics.

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What did they have?

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They had an institute.

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An institute for historical review.

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They had a journal --

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a slick journal --

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a journal of historical review.

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One filled with papers --

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footnote-laden papers.

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And they had a new name.

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Not neo-Nazis,

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not anti-Semites --

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revisionists.

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They said, "We are revisionists.

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We are out to do one thing:

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to revise mistakes in history."

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But all you had to do was go
one inch below the surface,

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and what did you find there?

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The same adulation of Hitler,

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praise of the Third Reich,

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anti-Semitism, racism, prejudice.

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This is what intrigued me.

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It was anti-Semitism, racism, prejudice
parading as rational discourse.

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The other thing I found --

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many of us have been taught to think
there are facts and there are opinions --

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after studying deniers,

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I think differently.

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There are facts,

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there are opinions,

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and there are lies.

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And what deniers want to do
is take their lies,

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dress them up as opinions --

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maybe edgy opinions,

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maybe sort of out-of-the-box opinions --

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but then if they're opinions,

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they should be part of the conversation.

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And then they encroach on the facts.

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I published my work --

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the book was published,

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"Denying the Holocaust: The Growing
Assault on Truth and Memory,"

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it came out in many different countries,

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including here and Penguin UK,

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and I was done with those folks
and ready to move on.

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Then came the letter
from Penguin UK,

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and for the third time, I laughed ...

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mistakenly.

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I opened the letter,

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and it informed me that David Irving
was bringing a libel suit against me

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in the United Kingdom

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for calling him a Holocaust denier.

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David Irving suing me?

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Who was David Irving?

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David Irving was a writer
of historical works,

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most of them about World War II,

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and virtually all of those works
took the position

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that the nazis were really not so bad,

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and the allies were really not so good,

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and the Jews,

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whatever happened to them,

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they sort of deserved it.

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He knew the documents,

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he knew the facts,

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but he somehow twisted them
to get this opinion.

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He hadn't always been a Holocaust denier,

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but in the late '80s,

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he embraced it with great vigor.

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The reason I laughed also
was this was a man

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who not only was a Holocaust denier,

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but seemed quite proud of it.

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Here was a man --

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and I a quote --

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who said, "I'm going to sink
the battleship Auschwitz."

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Here was a man who pointed
to the number tattooed on a survivor's arm

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and said, "How much money have you made

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from having that number
tattooed on your arm?"

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Here was a man who said,

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"More people died in Senator Kennedy's
car at Chappaquiddick

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than died in gas chambers at Auschwitz."

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That's an American reference,

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but you can look it up.

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This was not a man who seemed
at all ashamed or reticent

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about being a Holocaust denier.

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Now, lots of my academic
colleagues counseled me --

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"Eh, Deborah, just ignore it."

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When I explained you can't
just ignore a libel suit,

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they said, "Who's gonna
believe him anyway?"

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But here was the problem.

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British law put the onus --

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put the burden of proof on me

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to prove the truth of what I said,

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in contrast to as it would have
been in the United States

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and in many other countries,

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on him to prove the falsehood.

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What did that mean?

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That meant if I didn't fight,

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he would win by default.

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And if he won by default,

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he could then legitimately say,

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"My David Irving version of the Holocaust
is a legitimate version.

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Deborah Lipstadt was found
to have libeled me

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when she called me a Holocaust denier,

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ipso facto, I David Irving, am not
a Holocaust denier."

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And what is that version?

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There was no plan to murder the Jews,

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there were no gas chambers,

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there were no mass shootings,

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Hitler had nothing to do with any
suffering that went on,

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and the Jews have made this all up

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to get money from Germany

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and to get a state,

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and they've done it with the aid
and [abetence] of the allies --

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they've planted the documents
and planted the evidence.

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I couldn't let that stand
and ever face a survivor ...

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or a child of survivors.

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I couldn't let that stand

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and consider myself
a responsible historian.

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So we fought,

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and for those of you
who haven't seen "Denial,"

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spoiler alert --

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we won.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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The judge found David Irving to be a liar,

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a racist,

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an anti-Semite.

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His view of history was [tendentious],

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he lied, he distorted,

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and most importantly,

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he did it deliberately.

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We showed a pattern,

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and over 25 different major instances --

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not small things,

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many of us in the audience write books,

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are writing books --

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we always make mistakes,

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that's why we're glad
to have second editions --

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correct the mistakes.

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(Laughter)

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But these always moved
in the same direction:

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blame the Jews,

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exonerate the nazis.

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But how did we win?

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What we did is follow his footnotes
back to his sources.

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And what did we find?

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Not in most cases,

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and not in the preponderance of cases,

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but in every single instance

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where he made some
reference to the Holocaust,

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that his supposed evidence was disorted,

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half-truth,

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date-changed,

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sequence-changed,

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someone put in a meeting
who wasn't there.

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In other words,

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he didn't have the evidence.

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His evidence didn't prove it.

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We didn't prove what happened.

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We proved that what he said happened --

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and by extension all deniers

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because he either quotes them
or they get their arguments from him --

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is not true.

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What they claim --

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they don't have the evidence to prove it.

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So why is my story more than just
the story of a quirky, long,

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six-year difficult lawsuit?

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An American professor being dragged
into a court room

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by a man that the court declared
in its judgement

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was a neo-nazi polemicist.

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What message does it have?

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I think in the context
of the question of truth,

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it has a very significant message.

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Because today,

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as we well know,

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truth and facts are under assault.

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Social media, for all
the gifts it has given us,

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has also allowed the difference
between facts --

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established facts --

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and lies to be flattened.

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Third of all,

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extremism.

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You made not see Ku Klux Klan robes,

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you may not see burning crosses,

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you may not even hear
outright white supremacist language.

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It may go by names, "alt-right,

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National Front" --

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pick you names --

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but underneath it's that same extremism
that I found in Holocaust denial

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parading as rational discourse.

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We live in an age where truth
is on the defensive.

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I'm reminded of a New Yorker cartoon.

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A quiz show recently appeared
in the New Yorker

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where the host of the quiz show
is saying to one of the contestants,

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"Yes, mam, you had the right answer,

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but your opponent yelled
more loudly than you did,

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so he gets the point."

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What can we do?

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First of all,

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we cannot be beguiled
by rational appearances.

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We've got to look underneath,

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and we will find there the extremism.

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Second of all,

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we must understand
that truth is not relative.

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Number three --

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we must go on the offensive,

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not the defensive.

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When someone makes an outrageous claim,

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even though they may hold
one of the highest offices in the land,

00:13:35.032 --> 00:13:37.066
if not the world --

00:13:37.066 --> 00:13:38.599
we must say to them,

00:13:38.599 --> 00:13:40.588
"Where's the proof?

00:13:40.588 --> 00:13:42.450
Where's the evidence?"

00:13:42.748 --> 00:13:45.698
We must hold their feet to the fire.

00:13:45.698 --> 00:13:50.251
We must not treat it as if their lies
are the same as the facts.

00:13:51.497 --> 00:13:52.569
And as I said earlier,

00:13:52.569 --> 00:13:54.847
truth is not relative.

00:13:55.135 --> 00:13:58.014
Many of us have grown up
in the world of the academy

00:13:58.014 --> 00:13:59.778
and enlightened liberal thought,

00:13:59.778 --> 00:14:02.985
where we're taught everything
is open to debate.

00:14:03.347 --> 00:14:05.151
But that's not the case.

00:14:05.384 --> 00:14:09.031
There are certain things that are true.

00:14:09.288 --> 00:14:12.517
There are indisputable facts --

00:14:12.517 --> 00:14:14.207
objective truths.

00:14:14.623 --> 00:14:19.416
Galileo taught it to us centuries ago.

00:14:19.416 --> 00:14:24.230
Even after being forced
to recant by the Vatican

00:14:24.230 --> 00:14:26.744
that the Earth moved around the Sun,

00:14:26.744 --> 00:14:27.779
he came out,

00:14:27.779 --> 00:14:30.299
and what is he reported to have said?

00:14:30.299 --> 00:14:34.408
"And yet, it still moves."

00:14:35.422 --> 00:14:37.967
The Earth is not flat.

00:14:38.333 --> 00:14:41.201
The climate is changing.

00:14:41.507 --> 00:14:43.798
Elvis is not alive.

00:14:43.798 --> 00:14:45.356
(Laughter)

00:14:45.356 --> 00:14:47.244
(Applause)

00:14:47.737 --> 00:14:50.061
And most importantly,

00:14:50.061 --> 00:14:54.710
truth and fact are under assault.

00:14:55.385 --> 00:14:57.018
The job ahead of us,

00:14:57.018 --> 00:14:58.244
the task ahead of us,

00:14:58.244 --> 00:15:01.696
the challenge ahead of us is great.

00:15:01.978 --> 00:15:04.615
The time to fight is short.

00:15:05.543 --> 00:15:09.230
We must act now,

00:15:09.230 --> 00:15:12.278
later will be too late.

00:15:12.437 --> 00:15:14.090
Thank you very much.

00:15:14.090 --> 00:15:15.973
(Applause)