Irvingisms

I'm starting a new exemplary category, similar to Lurgee's Paradigm (1). The purpose of this is to provide useful examples of the phoney arguments deployed by Holocaust deniers. I'm naming these 'Irvingisms,' in honour of David Irving, the prominent 'hardcore disbeliever' (2), failed libel plaintiff (3), convict (4), and possible madman (5).

Most of the examples will have been dealt with more lucidly and in more detail than I will manage to do so here. But the purpose of the Irvingisms is not to provide detailed, painstaking rebuttal, but t show in broad stokes how flimsy and illogical many of the arguments used by deniers are. So when one of these examples is found in practice, the person making us of it can quickly be dismissed as a denier with nothing worthwhile to say.

1 - Lurgee's Paradigm provided examples of shoddy or disingenuous arguments concerning climate change. Anyone using such tosh to back up their argument could safely be ignored as either an imbecile or a liar. The principle and several examples of Lurgee's Paradigm a described on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/search/label/Lurgee%27s%20Paradigm
2 - Commenting on The Leuchter report, Irving stated, "... there is no significantresidue of cyanidein the brickwork. That's what converted me. When I read that in the reportin the courtroom in Toronto, I became a hard-core disbeliever." This can be found in the Transcript of the documentary, Dr Death, directed by Errol Morris (http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/m/mr-death-fred-leuchter-script.html). Given Mr Irving's propensity for launching ill-advised libel actions, I will use his own words to describe his position. Thge coining of the term 'Irvingisms' to describe this category of specious nonsense is merely a tribute to the man who has done so much to discredit the Holocaust denial movement and in no way reflects negatively on the wit, wisdom, or probity of the man himself. I'll let him do that, as he does it far better than I ever could. I seek, in my own way, to emulate his achievements in making the so-called revisionists look like imbeciles.
3 - "Irving loses Holocaust libel case," by Steve Busfield, published in The Guardian, 11th of April, 2000. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/apr/11/irving.uk)
4 - "Holocaust denier Irving is jailed," unattributed BBC article, published by the BBC, 20th of February, 2006. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm)
5 - As described previously on lefthandpalm: http://lefthandpalm.blogspot.com/2009/01/david-irving-absolutely-stark-staring.html