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, 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, 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;
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,
to write about, 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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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, 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 -- 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, 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 -- and I quote --

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

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Here was a man

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who pointed to the number tattooed
on a survivor's arm and said,

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"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

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at Chappaquiddick

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than died in gas chambers at Auschwitz."

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That's an American reference,
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,
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 abettance 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

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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

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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,
in over 25 different major instances.

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Not small things -- many of us
in this audience write books,

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are writing books;

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we always make mistakes, 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.

NOTE Paragraph

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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 where
he made some reference to the Holocaust,

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that his supposed evidence was distorted,

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half-truth,

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date-changed,

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sequence-changed,

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someone put at a meeting who wasn't there.

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In other words,
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,
because he either quotes them

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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

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of a quirky, long,
six-year difficult lawsuit,

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an American professor
being dragged into a courtroom

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by a man that the court
declared in its judgment

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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 -- established facts --

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and lies

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to be flattened.

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Third of all:

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extremism.

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You may 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,"
"National Front" -- pick your 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, ma'am, 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,

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if not the world --

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we must say to them,

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"Where's the proof?

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Where's the evidence?"

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We must hold their feet to the fire.

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We must not treat it as if their lies
are the same as the facts.

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And as I said earlier,
truth is not relative.

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Many of us have grown up
in the world of the academy

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and enlightened liberal thought,

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where we're taught
everything is open to debate.

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But that's not the case.

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There are certain things that are true.

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There are indisputable facts --

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objective truths.

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Galileo taught it to us centuries ago.

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Even after being forced
to recant by the Vatican

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that the Earth moved around the Sun,

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he came out,

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and what is he reported to have said?

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"And yet, it still moves."

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The Earth is not flat.

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The climate is changing.

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Elvis is not alive.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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And most importantly,

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truth and fact are under assault.

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The job ahead of us,

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the task ahead of us,

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the challenge ahead of us

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is great.

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The time to fight is short.

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We must act now.

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Later will be too late.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)