Why can't we question about the Holocaust? BBC Radio, 2009

factcheka
Published on Mar 18, 2021
The BBC World Service in February 2009 broadcast an extraordinary progamme entitled â€œWhy Canâ€™t We Question About The Holocaustâ€. This Question was debated on worldwide radio during an hour-long show in which the two contenders, the British champion of normal historical revisionist source criticism without exception Lady MichÃ¨le Renouf, versus the Jewish American â€œHolocaustâ€ extermination theorist Professor Deborah Lipstadt, were invited to answer phone-in queries from the BBCâ€™s global audience. The prompt for this one-off free speech opportunity on this exceptionalist topic arose as follows.

On 25th February 2009 the traditional Roman Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson made worldwide headlines when he arrived at Heathrow Airport following his expulsion from Argentina, where he had taught at a seminary for five years. These extraordinary events were due to Bishop Williamson expressing his opinion on recent â€˜revisionistâ€™ scholarship regarding the alleged homicidal gassing of six million European Jews, supposedly on the orders of Adolf Hitler â€“ a version of history which has been effectively trademarked and sacralised as â€˜the Holocaustâ€™.

Expressing doubts about the new universal religion of Holocaustianity, or even calling for its emotional claims to be forensically substantiated by critical examination of historical sources and scientific analysis of evidence, has become a crime in many European countries (though not yet in the UK). Bishop Williamson had been ambushed by a Swedish television crew in Germany, one of the countries where expression of â€˜revisionistâ€™ opinions is illegal.
In the hours after Bishop Williamsonâ€™s arrival in London, Lady MichÃ¨le Renouf â€“ who had mobilised a legal team the previous year to defend Australian revisionist Dr Fredrick TÃ¶ben and defeat the German governmentâ€™s attempt to prompt English law, via the â€˜ back doorâ€™, to â€œharmonise" with Germanyâ€™s â€œHolocaust-denial lawsâ€ by extraditing him from the UK on a European Arrest Warrant - was interviewed on two of the BBCâ€™s flagship radio programmes.

First, on the main lunchtime news bulletin The World at One, Lady Renouf debated the issues raised by the Williamson case with Lord Janner (the former Labour MP Greville Janner), vice-president of the World Jewish Congress and co-founder of the Holocaust Educational Trust. Lord Janner was then among the most eminent leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community, though he was disgraced by allegations of paedophile abuse in the the years before his death in 2015.

In the evening of the same day, historical 'revisionistâ€™ supporter Lady Renouf was one of the two main guests in an hour-long debate - â€œWhy Canâ€™t We Question About The Holocaust?â€ - and phone-in on the BBC World Service, alongside American academic Deborah Lipstadt, whose allegations against British historian David Irving were the basis of a famous libel case in 2000. Irvingâ€™s case, in turn, had relied upon the ground-breaking trials in Toronto Canada in the late 1980s when revisionist scientific findings and â€œHolocaustâ€ eye-witnesses exposed in cross-examination that the many testimonies and claims deployed â€œpoetic licenceâ€. Ever since, open objective forensic scrutiny of the scientific issues remains off-limits and emotionally barred from normal historical source critical debate. Even the "International Guidelines for Teaching About The Holocaustâ€ insist on Page 11 that: â€œCare should be taken not to disprove the deniersâ€™ position through normal historical debate and rational arguementâ€. Exceptionalist laws seek to progress the prosecution of all reasonable investigation as the â€œcriminalâ€ act of heretics.