Well someone finally came out and said it, though it took a few days to come out. Appearing on the Helen Razer Sunday morning radio show, veteran film producer Bob Weis observed that David Irving was in prison, while our own genocide denialist Keith Windschuttle was on the ABC board.
Actually it came out as “while our own ge-” Razer pushing the dump button and going to music, before Weis stormed out of the studio.
I don’t think Irving should be in prison, and I have some sympathy for Razer having to make an on-the-spot decision, but it’s about time the comparison was made – as it subsequently was, in the Agereport of the incident.
Windschuttle’s work is denialism and it would be indisputable fair comment to say so. His loopy methodology ensures that. In the aptly titled Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Windschuttle first suggests that he will be discussing only the violent Aboriginal deaths in Tasmania of which there is a written record. However later he treats these deaths as the only deaths there were. Unsurprisingly he comes up with a total figure of about 220. Use this methodology on the Holocaust and you’ll get a lot less than six million.
Indeed, Windschuttle’s supporters have been backing away from him for a while, possibly ever since they actually read the book. Witness Paddy McGuinness in June:
If there is to be a genuine debate about some aspects of Aboriginal history, any balanced discussion of such matters cannot ignore Windschuttle’s powerful critique of trends in accepted academic thinking on this subject. What he has shown incontrovertibly is that this aspect of our past is more complex and many-sided than the versions, more or less informed or ignorant, espoused by majority opinion ….(Australian, 19.06.06)
Which is pretty lame compared to the hosannas of praise heaped on the book when it was published.
It’s a shame that some of the establishment Jewish groups weren’t more willing to do what Weis has done and join the dots between one shoddy denialism and another.
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