http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/05/plame_hypocriti.shtml#013754
>...From the gutter, the Cole-Hitchens fight has descended into the
sewer. Now Cole is quoting a letter by an anonymous "insider" on his
blog that is both inaccurate (Hitchens never "threw in" with David
Irving) and, indeed, borderline libelous
http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-no-journalist-insider-person.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=hitchens%20cole%20irving
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/dance-hitchens-dance_b_1707.html
>...Dear Mr. Blumenthal,
If you're going to cite various texts in support of your assertion that Christopher Hitchens has a "habit of enabling holocaust deniers" then expect readers to check your citations.
In one article you cite, Hitchens wrote,
"Let us not waste any time on Robert Faurisson. He is an insanitary figure who maintains contact with neo-Nazi circles and whose project is the rehabilitation, in pseudoscholarly form, of the Third Reich."
In following your link to David Irving's site I find Hitchens quoted by Irving not in support of Irving's ridiculous views on the Holocaust , but criticizing legitimate historians of Churchill who fail to (in Hitchen's view) acknowledge Irving as a source. Irving cites Hitchens, who wrote:
"Here one must negotiate the toxic figure of David Irving." and "Irving has tainted himself with the one thing of which no serious person can even be suspected: a sympathy for the Nazi cause. "
This doesn't seem like the words a fellow traveler in Holocaust denial would write about two of the movements leading figures.
In reading all the links you cited, Hitchens comes off as someone who has absolutely no intention of "enabling holocaust deniers" other than to say that even a madman or a liar can be correct about a point of fact and if the evidence is compelling enough we should make the effort to find out if he's correct.
In your article you then go on to call "unbelievable" Hitchen's assertion to Michael Berenbaum that the the stories of soap being made from the fat of Jewish corpses had been debunked. Then you implied Hitchens believed it because Faurisson debunked it .
I'd heard before that the soap story wasn't true and I thought for a moment I might have been taken in third-hand by some revisionist crap. So I did an internet search and found that the soap story had been disproven, or at least not authenticated, by among others Michael Berenbaum himself. You can read it for yourself at:
www.jewishjournal.com/old/cover.berenbaum.1.14.0.htm
At this point I just have to believe you're being deliberately mendacious. It seems to me that you want to imply that Hitchen's has sympathy for Faurisson's and Irving's views and that because he's eaten lunch with them he ascribes to their belief that the Holocaust never happened. If you believe these things then say them. Don't pussy foot around with all this guilt by association. Have the courage of your convictions and state your case clearly. Unless you're afraid to. And if you are then you really are "cowardly."
And as for "dancing" how many more sidesteps are you capable of doing in a single article?
Michael Jonascu
-- Michael Pugliese