I found the following in the prologue to a book of readings for a Western Civ course:

"A flagrant example of writers of history misusing sources and distorting evidence in order to fortify their own prejudices is the recent case of British Historian David Irving, author of numerous books on World War II, several of them well reviewed. Increasingly Irving revealed an undisguised admiration for Hitler and an antipathy toward Jews, which led him to minimize and disguise atrocities committed by the Third Reich. Addressing neo-Nazi audiences in several lands he asserted that the Holocaust is "a major fraud. . . . There were no gas chambers. They were fakes and frauds." In LYING ABOUT HITLER: HISTORY, HOLOCAUST AND THE DAVID IRVING TRIAL(2001), Richard J. Evans, a specialist in modern German History with a broad background in archival research, exposed instance after instance of how Irving, in his attempt to whitewash Hitler, misquoted sources, "misrepresented data, . . . skewed documents [and] ignored or deliberately suppressed material when it ran counter to his arguments. . . . [W]hen I followed Irving's claims and statemets back to the original documents on which they purported to rest . . . Irving's work in this respect was revealed as a house of cards, a vast apparatus o f deception and deceit."
(Marvin Perry, SOURCES OF THE WESTERN TRADITION Brief Edition, 2006, Boston, Vol II, p xvi)

What immediately struck me is that this passage applies whole-cloth to Mormon apologists. Anyone who has spent time following Nibley's footnotes finds that he "misrepresented data, . . . skewed documents [and] ignored or deliberately suppressed material when it ran counter to his arguments."

When you are trying to portray someone who engaged in criminal behavior as a "prophet of God" then an honest search for where the evidence leads just won't do. You have to judge your result by how Mormons will like it, much as Irving's work is valued by neo-Nazis for validating their faith in their favorite criminal.

For example, when Mormons bring up supposed early marriage ages in the early 1800s aren't they trying to "minimize and disguise atrocities committed by" Joseph Smith?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2011 11:05PM by baura.

I've read David Irving's book about the bombing of Dresden several times. His estimates for the number of people who were killed were inflated and based on Nazi propaganda:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving#The_Destruction_of_Dresden

From my viewpoint as a German –
Dresden, Hamburg etc… today it would be a War Crime.

But be honest, this regime back than was just without any respect for live. Not for their own people and not for others.

I’ll think that Mr. Irving is mislead. There are may be some circumstances that feed the opinion that there was something good in this regime. Right, no one is only bad.

Bud to give mass murderers excuses is just disgusting.

What I learned from this part of German history? Well don’t go for the one and only leader. Don’t go for the one and only party. Run from people that have the only truth and nothing but the only truth.

My Grandpa told me. When people show up and tell you they had found or had a revelation that never a human being on earth had found or reviled before, when people tell you they have the only truth than run.
When strangers show up and tell you they love you without having a single glow who you are and when they tell you they would do something good for the entire human society, than is it the moment that you should run as far as you can, because than it becomes for sure really ugly.
Run and hid and it doesn’t matter if this is a political group, a group of scientist or a religious group.

That is what I learned from my Grandpa.
Mr. Irving is an disgusting man, he is so disgusting that I can feel sorry for him.

That was a word of a German that have known ancestors that suffered from this hell.

Hugh Nibley's creativity with history makes Irving seem small time. My Nazi Germany history class took note of Irving as one whose prejudices color his interpretation of events (for instance, he says more Jews were killed by bullets in the Eastern front than in the concentration camps)-- he at least uses archival evidence for his facts.

Nibley is known to invent his facts out of whole cloth or based on fabricated evidence (hieroglyphs of horses in ancient America). He also cannot differentiate between cultures of the past and simply says "ancients believed . . . " as though the Babylonians were undifferentiated from the Greeks or Hebrews.

Irving reduces the number of Jews killed to 4 Million.
Nibley places a non-existant culture on a continent.
Which is the greater stretch?

Sorry people, I don’t really wanna spoil the party.
But it hurts! My family has suffered under the NAZI Regime. What difference does it make if 10 Millions, 8 Millions ….. human beings, Man, Women, Children where tortured, had to suffer human experimenting with chemicals, biological, medical and all this beyond any imagination and than slaughtered less than animals.
This Idiots turned entire Europe into a big Slater house. How many Russian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovaks, Polish, Spaniels, Italians, Germans, Frances, Belgian, Dutch, British, Americans, Canadians, Australians etc.eyc. have to suffer until the word stops to discuss if they had their numbers right.
It hurts and offends when anyone starts to relativity plays the pain.
There are great web pages from the German Nationalistic Party (NDP) they do such discussions and celebrate the leaders birthday. But be careful the German gov is watching them very tight.
No I am not sorry to spoil the party.