The Baby and His Bottle

So over on the Phelps Visits the Amish thread, I realize that I’ve used the phrase “Holocaust denier” without explaining the reference. It’s a nod to Deborah Lipstadt, scholar, historian, and author of, “History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving.” The book is an account–a fascinating one–of another intimidation expert’s libel lawsuit against Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier. I was gonna link a timeline with documents, but I noticed that it referred to Lipstadt’s book as a “contagion,” so not so much. It’s a fascinating story, and the trial didn’t do much for Irving’s reputation among people who acknowledge genocide. Wikipedia has an article on him with a long section about the trial.

Deborah Lipstadt has a blog. How awesome is that?

Anyhow, her biography says:

She declined an appearance on C-Span BookTv because of their intention to “balance” her presentation with one by David Irving.

This op-ed by Lipstadt explains her thinking a little more clearly:

My joy was quickly dissipated when I learned that David Irving had announced on his website that C-Span had asked to appear in order to give “balance” to my presentation. I was surprised by this, to say the least. (Initially, I attributed the word “balance” to him, but since then C-Span has repeatedly used it to justify its decision.)

At first I was convinced that this was a decision made at the lower levels of the C-Span food chain, but C-Span disabused us of that notion. “It has been discussed and decided on at the highest level,” HarperCollins and I were both told. I asked Amy Roach, the C-Span producer handling this matter: “Would you put on someone who says slavery did not happen?” “No,” Roach assured me. Then why a Holocaust denier, I asked. “Oh,” she said quite breezily, “He’s not going to talk about Holocaust denial. He’s going to talk about the trial.” Since the trial was all about Holocaust denial, this struck me as completely wacko.

(snip)

That is where it stands now. Most people who have been contacting me and or writing about this recognize that this is not about freedom of speech nor is it really about David Irving. Holocaust deniers have the right to make complete fools of themselves. They can speak wherever they want. That, however, does not mean we have to invite them into our “homes” or that a network–a public service network at that–has to give them precious, highly limited and coveted broadcast time.

David Irving has spent his entire career attempting to create legitimacy for himself so that people will listen to what he says. He has disguised himself as a historian, an academic, an investigator, a modern rational man. That has become increasingly difficult, both because of the content of his writing and because of changing public attitudes towards racism, but it was not impossible until his lawsuit against Lipstadt backfired. That was the point of the suit: he recognized that the label of “Holocaust denier” was a negative one for purposes of the mainstream, and that it would make it much more difficult for him to successfully deny the Holocaust. It would marginalize him and shrink his audience. He had to resist it with every weapon in his arsenal. Had Lipstadt been less tenacious, less resourceful, or less brilliant, he might well have succeeded in punishing her for describing him as the horror that he is. Thankfully, his strategy backfired and gave him all the exposure–and subsequent obscurity–he wanted to avoid.

C-SPAN didn’t get it (unless, of course, their motives were even more cynical). They didn’t understand that all Irving wanted was to be allowed to speak while they sat quietly, allowed to present the denial of the Holocaust as a “side,” a “viewpoint,” a “controversy,” a version of events on which reasonable people might reasonably disagree. He wants to make his case as though he has one; he wants it formally received as a historical endeavor. Lipstadt, on the other hand, sees that pretense for what it is: the desire to mask his extreme and reprehensible racism in the trappings accorded serious historians like Lipstadt herself. She would not be attacking him, but shielding him. She cannot face him as an equal, as half of a “balanced” equation. She cannot be his counterpart. She cannot share his mike. As she says, there is nothing to discuss:

There are many things to debate about the Holocaust, e.g. Goldhagen’s theories, but whether it happened is not one of them. I have stood by this principle for many years and continue to adhere to it.

Fred Phelps is a little different. Fred has never represented himself as an academic, never published anything, never attempted to pretend that he is not on the fringe. He is not trying to softpedal anything, or to come off as pleasant or reasonable. In fact, he explicitly distances himself not merely from the mainstream, but from America itself, government and nation. Fred Phelps does not want the chance to speak as a member of the mainstream. He wants the chance to speak, period. The director of Small Town Gay Bar, who described Phelps as “your grandpa meets Hitler,” talked about how eager Phelps was to meet with them. He said that they could have written “camera” on the side of a shoebox and he still would have talked into it for hours. That’s his objective, his only objective: spreading the word. All he wants is the mike.

That’s why the decision on the part of Fox News to “compromise” with him by offering him an hour of airtime–more than he has ever received before–in exchange for his promise not to picket the funerals of the murdered Amish girls is not justifiable. He is receiving the only thing he wants in exchange for something he doesn’t particularly want or need. He gets all the notoriety of the original stunt, since the press doesn’t seem to be covering, “The guy who decided to picket the funeral of the murdered Amish girls,” much differently from, “The guy who actually did picket the funeral of the murdered Amish girls.” He also gets the opportunity to speak for an entire hour on a national radio broadcast. That’s a paramount achievement for Phelps. His audience has heretofore been confined to his congregation, which he had to father himself; whoever happened to be watching his demonstrations, which most people completely ignore; and whoever stumbles onto his website. He has received news coverage whenever he has picketed a covered event, such as the Matthew Shepard case. He has never been given a national platform simply to speak from; he has seldom if ever been interviewed.

That is the only strategy that will defeat him: treating him like the crank he is. He is a backwater leader of a marginal church with a congregation in the double digits. He has no influence beyond what he can buy with his willingness to set up hateful signs and shout hateful slogans. That’s the sum of his powers, and that is why it is so important not to reward him for using them.

This is a description of the most poetic interpretation of that counter-action I have yet encountered:

Fred Phelps showed up in Laramie with a dozen “God Hates Fags” picketers, but he was quickly silenced when Romaine’s angels showed up at the court house. Phelps and his group were surrounded by a dozen counter-demonstrators in flowing white angel costumes with 10-foot wingspans rising seven feet high. The angels turned their backs on Phelps, smiled and silently blocked him from the view of passersby at that time. The impact that the angels had on the residents of Laramie would not be felt until much later when the angels started getting requests for “do it yourself” angel kits to be used all over the country.