Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Yid Vid: David Irving Does New York

Max Blumenthal, scourge of conservative conferences, turns his camera toward Holocaust denier David Irving, who recently swung by New York City for a stop on his American speaking tour. Blumenthal doesn’t have to work too hard to make his subject look ridiculous:

Irving spoke in a room at an Upper East Side church basement, but the church’s pastor told Blumenthal that event organizers were less than above-board. “Someone made a reservation to have a discussion of a book. The name was not David Irving. We knew nothing about it. We thought it would be just something nice for the community,” he explained. “And it turns out that it was David Irving. We were completely deceived. And really we’re outraged, because we do not cater to that kind of bigotry, and I’m really sorry that this happened.”

My favorite Irving quote from the video: “Adolf Hitler was being kept out of the loop and was probably not at all antisemitic by the time the war began.” Or maybe this one, on the origins of World War II: “Hitler wanted a little war, but it got out of hand.”

Blumenthal also scored some hits on professional contrarian (and Blumenthal family foe) Christopher Hitchens over his seemingly odd relationship with Irving (also discussed in passing here).

For another report on the Irving event, see this article from The New York Sun (for which Blumenthal is the main source).

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.