You have the right to be wrong

is the opinion of Paul Benkendorfer, the young North Dakota professor I interviewed.

I was in the library at Dickinson State University of North Dakota.

reader- Dickinson State? Never heard of it.

Shumway- neither had I, but I saw it on the map- it was right off the I-94 and I needed an internet connection for my computer and figured a university would have wifi. In any case, it seems to be a magnet for Bahamian sprinters, who run faster than western North Dakota farm boys. In fact Ramon Miller, of the Bahamamian 2012 Olympic gold medal 4X400 relay team attended DS. And so did Jill McClain, Miss Montana 2006, so there.

So I hook up my computer and I’m typing away, and I overhear a conversation at the librarian’s desk. This kid wearing a brown yorkshire flat cap, just like mine, is talking with the librarian about Trump, the trouble in Palestine, and various current events. I walk up to them and find out that Paul is actually a professor at the school. I’m stunned because he looks like he could pass for a freshman. While we’re talking a student comes up- a blond girl with a nose ring and blue streaks in her hair. She’s asking Paul about an assignment she’s working on. I think she was quite fond of the friendly, boyish prof. Anyway, I ask Paul if he could do an impromptu interview and he says sure. So we go into the foyer and I put my iphone on a selfie/stick/stand and start asking questions.

I like Paul. I think there are gaps in his historical knowledge and I differ with his political stance, and on some controversial issues he’s gonna play it safe for now, but he’s young, enthusiastic and seemingly eager to talk and learn. What we agree on is that freedom of speech is sacrosanct. Of course that means that controversial and upsetting topics that cause offense need to be aired. Unfortunately Paul has a rather common, safe, normie view of the most controversial subject of all, the Holocaust. He references the David Irving vs. Deborah Lipstadt defamation trial, in which Lipstadt won fair and square, as Paul discovered by watching the movie.

raving mad, bigoted revisionist historian/brave, sexy professor/impartial arbiter of justice

see below for Trevor Lynch’s take on the movie

Here’s the interview:

and here is just a snippet from Trevor Lynch’s piece on the movie Denial, from the Unz review:

Denial is a very boring and deceptive movie about a legal case, David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, in which British World War II historian David Irving sued American Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher for libel over allegations made in her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, in which she accused Irving of being a “Holocaust denier” and a bad historian who distorted history to conform with his ideological agenda, namely the vindication of Adolf Hitler.

Of course, this being a movie, distorting history to forward a Left-liberal agenda is apparently fair game. For example, since people associate beauty with goodness and ugliness with evil, the frumpy, mannish, 50-something Deborah Lipstadt is played by the beautiful 40-something fashion-model/actress Rachel Weisz. (I seriously doubt that Deborah Lipstadt could jog, even to escape the SS, and she surely would not look as good as Rachel Weisz in tights.)

The evil Nazis and Holocaust deniers, by contrast, are uglied up by the casting department. David Irving, who was quite the ladies’ man, is played by a short, chinless, jowly, bug-eyed, thoroughly repulsive actor. The same is done to lawyer Martin O’Toole, who has a bit part (but not to lawyer Sam Dickson, whose name appears as Dixon in the credits).

The one thing that Irving v Lipstadt did not establish is that Irving is a bad historian, which is probably why the defense focused on racism and anti-Semitism. I followed the trial closely as it unfolded and carefully read historian Richard Evans’ report on Irving’s scholarship. The long list of “errors” adduced by Evans consisted mostly of differences of interpretation rather than matters of fact. Evans and two research assistants went over more than 20 of Irving’s books with a magnifying glass and found only two or three actual errors of fact. One wonders if any other historian could acquit himself as well before such minute scrutiny. Even an amateur like me can find that many mistakes on a random page of William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Unfortunately, Irving’s politically incorrect convictions, combined with Evans’ handwaving and quibbling, were enough to convict him in the eyes of the judge who decided the case. It is utterly galling that virtually every account of the trial claims that Irving was “discredited” rather than vindicated as a historian.