I’m sick to my stomach.

I’m sick to my stomach because for two days I have been trying to write this little article on David Irving (and maybe you should take a look at that before you read this, or else this might not make sense), and I’m fed up.

I’ve tried my utmost to be calm and rational about it. I’ve tried to be clear and coherent. I’ve done my research. I haven’t just read what other people say about Irving. I haven’t gone on hearsay. I haven’t jumped to any conclusions. I’ve taken the time to read what Irving says himself.

And it’s disgusting. It makes me physically sick.

I’ve combed through Irving’s website and I’ve read interviews with him, and as a result I’ve had a knot in my stomach for two days. I can’t fathom it. I can’t fathom how someone could be so ignorant and bigoted and racist and repulsive and horrible… I’ve been shouting at my computer after reading his nauseating opinions on “Jewish conspiracies” and on the “fable of Auschwitz” and on the “Campaign for Real History,” and it’s all such a load of b.s. that I simply can’t understand how anyone on the face of the earth with an IQ higher than that of a carrot could actually believe this stuff.

I have been choking on his insults and lies and anti-Semitic rants. I have come to truly hate the man - and this hate makes me even more angry, because hate is a horribly ugly emotion, no matter whom it is directed at. Irving’s ugliness brings out my own ugliness. It makes me think ugly thoughts and feel ugly emotions. And I don’t like that at all.

I wish I could be cool and rational about Irving and his kind (the Holocaust deniers, the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists, the anti-Semites). There is absolutely nothing to be gained by getting so angry that speech fails me. There would be nothing to be gained if I met Irving personally and threw something at him (which is what, I’m embarrassed to say, I would probably want to do). Such impotent anger gets you nowhere. It changes nothing.

But rational arguments don’t seem to change anything either. Irving is, for all intents and purposes, an educated man. Trivial as it sounds, he should know better. But he doesn’t want to know better. A reasonable argument is not going to sway him from his impossibly misguided beliefs. He flaunts his contempt for and hatred of other human beings as if he’s proud of it.

So I find it impossible to not be furious. You couldn’t reason with a man like that. You couldn’t convince him that he was wrong. The intolerance, the hatred of “the other” is ingrained into him. His conviction in his own twisted beliefs is absolutely terrifying. I think there’s something wrong with his soul.

And what makes it even worse is that he’s passing his completely skewed view of the world on to his children by teaching them rhymes like this:

“I am a Baby Aryan/Not a Jewish or sectarian/I have no plans to marry/An Ape or Rastafarian.”

In an interview, Irving said he “wrote it because of the bounce of the words and they rhyme, not the content.” Yeah, and the moon is made of green cheese. I can’t say that those are the first words that would have popped into my head if I were trying to make up a nursery rhyme for a kid. Let’s hear it for yet another generation of people being raised racist and bigoted. That’s just what the world needs.

I’m infuriated that David Irving even exists. Irving has absolutely nothing worthwhile to contribute to the human race, and I’m furious that I have to share the planet with him.

Further reading…