Irving is a crucial source for much important information on the war and in 2018 I explained why the results of a high-profile lawsuit against Deborah Lipstadt had demonstrated that his historical research was extremely reliable:
These zealous ethnic-activists began a coordinated campaign to pressure Irving’s prestigious publishers into dropping his books, while also disrupting his frequent international speaking tours and even lobbying countries to bar him from entry. They maintained a drumbeat of media vilification, continually blackening his name and his research skills, even going so far as to denounce him as a “Nazi” and a “Hitler-lover,” just as had similarly been done in the case of Prof. Wilson.
That legal battle was certainly a David-and-Goliath affair, with wealthy Jewish movie producers and corporate executives providing a huge war-chest of $13 million to Lipstadt’s side, allowing her to fund a veritable army of 40 researchers and legal experts, captained by one of Britain’s most successful Jewish divorce lawyers. By contrast, Irving, being an impecunious historian, was forced to defend himself without benefit of legal counsel.

歐文是許多關(guān)于戰(zhàn)爭的重要信息的重要來源，2018年，我解釋了為什么針對黛博拉·利普施塔特(Deborah Lipstadt)的高調(diào)訴訟的結(jié)果表明，他的歷史研究非?？煽浚?br /> 這些熱心的種族活動(dòng)家開始了一場協(xié)調(diào)一致的運(yùn)動(dòng)，迫使歐文的著名出版商放棄他的書，同時(shí)也擾亂了他頻繁的國際巡回演講，甚至游說各國禁止他入境。他們在媒體上大肆誹謗，不斷抹黑他的名聲和他的研究能力，甚至譴責(zé)他是“納粹分子”和“希特勒的支持者”，就像在威爾遜教授身上所做的那樣。
這場法律之戰(zhàn)無疑是大衛(wèi)和歌利亞的對決，富有的猶太電影制片人和公司高管為利普施塔特一方提供了1300萬美元的巨額資金，使她能夠資助一支由40名研究人員和法律專家組成的真正的軍隊(duì)，由英國最成功的猶太離婚律師之一擔(dān)任隊(duì)長。相比之下，歐文作為一個(gè)身無分文的歷史學(xué)家，被迫在沒有法律顧問的情況下為自己辯護(hù)。

In real life unlike in fable, the Goliaths of this world are almost invariably triumphant, and this case was no exception, with Irving being driven into personal bankruptcy, resulting in the loss of his fine central London home. But seen from the longer perspective of history, I think the victory of his tormentors was a remarkably Pyrrhic one. Although the target of their unleashed hatred was Irving’s alleged “Holocaust denial,” as near as I can tell, that particular topic was almost entirely absent from all of Irving’s dozens of books, and exactly that very silence was what had provoked their spittle-flecked outrage. Therefore, lacking such a clear target, their lavishly-funded corps of researchers and fact-checkers instead spent a year or more apparently performing a line-by-line and footnote-by-footnote review of everything Irving had ever published, seeking to locate every single historical error that could possibly cast him in a bad professional light. With almost limitless money and manpower, they even utilized the process of legal discovery to subpoena and read the thousands of pages in his bound personal diaries and correspondence, thereby hoping to find some evidence of his “wicked thoughts.” Denial, a 2016 Hollywood film co-written by Lipstadt, may provide a reasonable outline of the sequence of events as seen from her perspective.

在現(xiàn)實(shí)生活中，不像在寓言，這個(gè)世界的歌利亞幾乎總是勝利的，這個(gè)例子也不例外，歐文被逼破產(chǎn)，導(dǎo)致他失去了他在倫敦市中心的好房子。但從更長遠(yuǎn)的歷史角度來看，我認(rèn)為折磨他的人的勝利是一場極其得不償失的勝利。
盡管他們發(fā)泄仇恨的目標(biāo)是歐文所謂的“否認(rèn)大屠殺”，但據(jù)我所知，這個(gè)特定的話題幾乎完全沒有出現(xiàn)在歐文的所有幾十本書中，正是這種沉默激起了他們唾沫飛濺的憤怒。因此，由于缺乏這樣一個(gè)明確的目標(biāo)，他們慷慨資助的研究人員和事實(shí)核查人員反而花了一年或更長時(shí)間，對歐文發(fā)表過的所有文章進(jìn)行了逐行、逐腳注的審查，試圖找出每一個(gè)可能給他帶來不良職業(yè)形象的歷史錯(cuò)誤。他們動(dòng)用了幾乎無限的財(cái)力和人力，甚至利用法律程序傳喚并閱讀了他裝訂的數(shù)千頁個(gè)人日記和信件，以期找到他“邪惡思想”的一些證據(jù)?！斗裾J(rèn)》（Denial，）這部2016年由利普施塔特參與編劇的好萊塢電影，可能會從她的角度為事件的發(fā)生順序提供一個(gè)合理的輪廓。（注：見開篇圖）

Yet despite such massive financial and human resources, they apparently came up almost entirely empty, at least if Lipstadt’s triumphalist 2005 book History on Trial may be credited. Across four decades of research and writing, which had produced numerous controversial historical claims of the most astonishing nature, they only managed to find a couple of dozen rather minor alleged errors of fact or interpretation, most of these ambiguous or disputed. And the worst they discovered after reading every page of the many linear meters of Irving’s personal diaries was that he had once composed a short “racially insensitive” ditty for his infant daughter, a trivial item which they naturally then trumpeted as proof that he was a “racist.” Thus, they seemingly admitted that Irving’s enormous corpus of historical texts was perhaps 99.9% accurate.
I think this silence of “the dog that didn’t bark” echoes with thunderclap volume. I’m not aware of any other academic scholar in the entire history of the world who has had all his decades of lifetime work subjected to such painstakingly exhaustive hostile scrutiny. And since Irving apparently passed that test with such flying colors, I think we can regard almost every astonishing claim in all of his books—as recapitulated in his videos—as absolutely accurate.

然而，盡管有如此龐大的財(cái)力和人力資源，他們顯然幾乎一無所獲，至少如果利普施塔特2005年的必勝之作《審判的歷史》(History on Trial)值得稱贊的話。在四十年的研究和寫作中，他們產(chǎn)生了許多具有最驚人性質(zhì)的爭議性歷史主張，但他們只發(fā)現(xiàn)了幾十個(gè)相當(dāng)小的事實(shí)或解釋錯(cuò)誤，其中大多數(shù)都是模棱兩可或有爭議的。
在閱讀了歐文的個(gè)人日記的每一頁之后，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)最糟糕的是，他曾經(jīng)為他年幼的女兒寫過一首“對種族不敏感”的小曲，這是一件微不足道的事情，他們自然而然地把它吹捧為他是一個(gè)“種族主義者”的證據(jù)。因此，他們似乎承認(rèn)歐文龐大的歷史文本語料庫可能有99.9%的準(zhǔn)確性。
我認(rèn)為這種“不叫的狗”的沉默回響著雷鳴般的音量。我不知道在整個(gè)世界史上還有哪位學(xué)術(shù)學(xué)者畢生數(shù)十年的研究都受到如此精心、詳盡、充滿敵意的審視。既然歐文顯然以如此出色的成績通過了這個(gè)測試，我想我們可以認(rèn)為他所有書中幾乎每一個(gè)驚人的主張——就像他的視頻中重復(fù)的那樣——都是絕對準(zhǔn)確的。

Question 3: The Purge of Antiwar Intellectuals
In the 1940s, there was a purge of antiwar intellectuals and pundits similar to the purge of critics of US policy in social media today. Can you briefly explain what happened, who was targeted, and whether the first amendment should apply in times of national crisis?
Ron Unz—Around 2000, I began a project to digitize the archives of many of our leading publications of the last 150 years and I was astonished to discover that some of our most influential figures from the years prior to World War II had been “disappeared” so completely that I’d never heard of them. This played a major role in my growing suspicions that the standard narrative I’d always accepted was false, and I later described the situation using the analogy of the notorious historical lies of the old Soviet unx:
I sometimes imagined myself a little like an earnest young Soviet researcher of the 1970s who began digging into the musty files of long-forgotten Kremlin archives and made some stunning discoveries.

問題3：對反戰(zhàn)知識分子的清洗
上世紀(jì)40年代，對反戰(zhàn)知識分子和權(quán)威人士進(jìn)行了清洗，類似于今天在社交媒體上對美國政策批評者的清洗。你能簡單解釋一下發(fā)生了什么，誰是目標(biāo)，以及第一修正案是否適用于國家危機(jī)時(shí)期嗎?
Ron Unz——2000年左右，我開始了一個(gè)項(xiàng)目，將過去150年來我們許多主要出版物的檔案數(shù)字化，我驚訝地發(fā)現(xiàn)，二戰(zhàn)前我們一些最有影響力的人物已經(jīng)完全“消失”了，以至于我從未聽說過他們。這讓我越來越懷疑我一直接受的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)敘述是錯(cuò)誤的，后來我用舊蘇聯(lián)臭名昭著的歷史謊言來描述這種情況:
有時(shí)，我想象自己有點(diǎn)像上世紀(jì)70年代一位熱心的年輕蘇聯(lián)研究人員，他開始鉆研那些早已被遺忘的克里姆林宮檔案中發(fā)霉的文件，并取得了一些驚人的發(fā)現(xiàn)。

Trotsky was apparently not the notorious Nazi spy and traitor portrayed in all the textbooks, but instead had been the right-hand man of the sainted Lenin himself during the glorious days of the great Bolshevik Revolution, and for some years afterward had remained in the topmost ranks of the Party elite. And who were these other figures—Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov—who also spent those early years at the very top of the com...st hierarchy? In history courses, they had barely rated a few mentions, as minor Capitalist agents who were quickly unmasked and paid for their treachery with their lives. How could the great Lenin, father of the Revolution, have been such an idiot to have surrounded himself almost exclusively with traitors and spies?
But unlike their Stalinist analogs from a couple of years earlier, the American victims who disappeared around 1940 were neither shot nor Gulaged, but merely excluded from the mainstream media that defines our reality, thereby being blotted out from our memory so that future generations gradually forgot that they had ever lived.

托洛茨基顯然不是所有教科書中描繪的臭名昭著的納粹間諜和叛徒，相反，在偉大的布爾什維克革命的光輝歲月里，托洛茨基是神圣的列寧本人的得力助手，之后的幾年里，托洛茨基一直是黨內(nèi)精英的最高層。季諾維也夫、加米涅夫、布哈林、李可夫這些早年也在共產(chǎn)黨最高層的人物是誰?在歷史課上，他們幾乎沒有被提及過，只是被當(dāng)作資本主義的小代理人，很快被揭穿，并為他們的背叛付出了生命的代價(jià)。偉大的列寧，革命之父，怎么會如此愚蠢，身邊幾乎全是叛徒和間諜?
但與幾年前斯大林主義的同類不同，1940年左右失蹤的美國受害者既沒有被槍殺，也沒有被勞改，而只是被排除在定義我們現(xiàn)實(shí)的主流媒體之外，因此被從我們的記憶中抹去，以至于后代逐漸忘記了他們曾經(jīng)存在過。

A leading example of such a “disappeared” American was journalist John T. Flynn, probably almost unknown today but whose stature had once been enormous. As I wrote last year:
So imagine my surprise at discovering that throughout the 1930s he had been one of the single most influential liberal voices in American society, a writer on economics and politics whose status may have roughly approximated that of Paul Krugman, though with a strong muck-raking tinge. His weekly column in The New Republic allowed him to serve as a lodestar for America’s progressive elites, while his regular appearances in Colliers, an illustrated mass circulation weekly reaching many millions of Americans, provided him a platform comparable to that of an major television personality in the later heyday of network TV.
To some extent, Flynn’s prominence may be obxtively quantified. A few years ago, I happened to mention his name to a well-read and committed liberal born in the 1930s, and she unsurprisingly drew a complete blank, but wondered if he might have been a little like Walter Lippmann, the very famous columnist of that era. When I checked, I saw that across the hundreds of periodicals in my archiving system, there were just 23 articles by Lippmann from the 1930s but fully 489 by Flynn.

記者約翰·T·弗林(John T. Flynn)就是這樣一個(gè)“消失”的美國人的典型例子，他今天可能幾乎不為人知，但他的聲望曾經(jīng)很高。正如我去年寫的那樣:



……因此，想象一下，當(dāng)我發(fā)現(xiàn)在整個(gè)20世紀(jì)30年代，他一直是美國社會中最有影響力的自由主義聲音之一時(shí)，我的驚訝之情吧。他是一位經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)和政治學(xué)作家，其地位可能與保羅·克魯格曼(Paul Krugman)大致相當(dāng)，盡管他帶有強(qiáng)烈的揭發(fā)丑聞色彩。
他在《新共和》(The New Republic)上的每周專欄使他成為美國進(jìn)步精英的指路明燈，而他在《高力》(Colliers)上的定期露面，為他提供了一個(gè)平臺，可以與后來網(wǎng)絡(luò)電視全盛期的一位主要電視名人相提并論?！陡吡Α肥且环萦胁鍒D的大規(guī)模發(fā)行周刊，擁有數(shù)百萬美國人。
在某種程度上，弗林的突出可能是客觀量化的。幾年前，我碰巧向一位上世紀(jì)30年代出生、博學(xué)多才、堅(jiān)定的自由派人士提起他的名字，不出所料，她的腦海里一片空白，但想知道他是否有點(diǎn)像沃爾特·李普曼（Walter Lippmann），那個(gè)時(shí)代非常著名的專欄作家。
當(dāng)我查了一下，我發(fā)現(xiàn)在我的存檔系統(tǒng)里的數(shù)百種期刊中，只有23篇李普曼在20世紀(jì)30年代發(fā)表的文章，而弗林卻有489篇。

An even stronger American parallel to Taylor was that of historian Harry Elmer Barnes, a figure almost unknown to me, but in his day an academic of great influence and stature:
Imagine my shock at later discovering that Barnes had actually been one of the most frequent early contributors to Foreign Affairs, serving as a primary book reviewer for that venerable publication from its 1922 founding onward, while his stature as one of America’s premier liberal academics was indicated by his scores of appearances in The Nation and The New Republic throughout that decade. Indeed, he is credited with having played a central role in “revising” the history of the First World War so as to remove the cartoonish picture of unspeakable German wickedness left behind as a legacy of the dishonest wartime propaganda produced by the opposing British and American governments. And his professional stature was demonstrated by his thirty-five or more books, many of them influential academic volumes, along with his numerous articles in The American Historical Review, Political Science Quarterly, and other leading journals.

與泰勒相比，美國歷史學(xué)家哈里·埃爾默·巴恩斯(Harry Elmer Barnes)的影響力更大，我?guī)缀醪徽J(rèn)識他，但在他那個(gè)時(shí)代，他是一位極具影響力和聲望的學(xué)者:
想象一下，當(dāng)我后來發(fā)現(xiàn)巴恩斯實(shí)際上是《外交事務(wù)》早期最頻繁的撰稿人之一時(shí)，我的震驚之情。



從1922年《外交事務(wù)》創(chuàng)刊以來，巴恩斯就一直擔(dān)任該雜志的主要書評人，而在那十年里，他在《國家》和《新共和》上的大量露面，表明了他作為美國最重要的自由派學(xué)者之一的地位。
事實(shí)上，他被認(rèn)為在“修改”第一次世界大戰(zhàn)歷史方面發(fā)揮了核心作用，以消除作為對立的英美政府不誠實(shí)的戰(zhàn)時(shí)宣傳遺產(chǎn)而留下的難以形容的”德國邪惡”的卡通形象。他的專業(yè)地位體現(xiàn)在他的35本或更多的書中，其中許多是有影響力的學(xué)術(shù)著作，以及他在《美國歷史評論》、《政治學(xué)季刊》和其他主要期刊上的大量文章。

A few years ago I happened to mention Barnes to an eminent American academic scholar whose general focus in political science and foreign policy was quite similar, and yet the name meant nothing. By the end of the 1930s, Barnes had become a leading critic of America’s proposed involvement in World War II, and was permanently “disappeared” as a consequence, barred from all mainstream media outlets, while a major newspaper chain was heavily pressured into abruptly terminating his long-running syndicated national column in May 1940.
Many of Barnes’ friends and allies fell in the same ideological purge, which he described in his own writings and which continued after the end of the war:

幾年前，我碰巧向一位杰出的美國學(xué)術(shù)學(xué)者提起巴恩斯，他對政治學(xué)和外交政策的總體關(guān)注與巴恩斯非常相似，但這個(gè)名字（對他）毫無意義。到20世紀(jì)30年代末，巴恩斯已經(jīng)成為美國參與第二次世界大戰(zhàn)的主要批評者，并因此永久“消失”，被所有主流媒體拒之外，而一家大型連鎖報(bào)紙?jiān)诰薮髩毫ο拢?940年5月突然終止了他長期存在的全國性聯(lián)合專欄。
巴恩斯的許多朋友和盟友都陷入了同樣的意識形態(tài)清洗，他在自己的作品中描述了這種清洗，這種清洗在戰(zhàn)爭結(jié)束后仍在繼續(xù):

Over a dozen years after his disappearance from our national media, Barnes managed to publish Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, a lengthy collection of essays by scholars and other experts discussing the circumstances surrounding America’s entrance into World War II, and have it produced and distributed by a small printer in Idaho. His own contribution was a 30,000 word essay entitled “Revisionism and the Historical Blackout” and discussed the tremendous obstacles faced by the dissident thinkers of that period.
The book itself was dedicated to the memory of his friend, historian Charles A. Beard. Since the early years of the 20th century, Beard had ranked as an intellectual figure of the greatest stature and influence, co-founder of The New School in New York and serving terms as president of both The American Historical Association and The American Political Science Association. As a leading supporter of the New Deal economic policies, he was overwhelmingly lauded for his views.

在巴恩斯從全國媒體上消失十幾年后，他設(shè)法出版了《為了永久和平的永久戰(zhàn)爭》，這是一本由學(xué)者和其他專家討論美國加入第二次世界大戰(zhàn)的情況的長篇文集，并由愛達(dá)荷州的一家小印刷廠制作和發(fā)行。他自己的貢獻(xiàn)是一篇3萬字的文章，題為《修正主義與歷史黑暗》，討論了那個(gè)時(shí)期持不同政見的思想家所面臨的巨大障礙。
這本書本身就是為了紀(jì)念他的朋友，歷史學(xué)家查爾斯·A·比爾德。自20世紀(jì)初以來，比爾德一直被列為最有聲望和影響力的知識分子，他是紐約新學(xué)派的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人，并擔(dān)任過美國歷史協(xié)會和美國政治科學(xué)協(xié)會的主席。作為“新政”(New Deal)經(jīng)濟(jì)政策的主要支持者，他的觀點(diǎn)受到了壓倒性的贊揚(yáng)。

Yet once he turned against Roosevelt’s bellicose foreign policy, publishers shut their doors to him, and only his personal friendship with the head of the Yale University Press allowed his critical 1948 volume President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 to even appear in print. Beard’s stellar reputation seems to have begun a rapid decline from that point onward, so that by 1968 historian Richard Hofstadter could write: “Today Beard’s reputation stands like an imposing ruin in the landscape of American historiography. What was once the grandest house in the province is now a ravaged survival”. Indeed, Beard’s once-dominant “economic interpretation of history” might these days almost be dismissed as promoting “dangerous conspiracy theories,” and I suspect few non-historians have even heard of him.
Another major contributor to the Barnes volume was William Henry Chamberlin, who for decades had been ranked among America’s leading foreign policy journalists, with more than 15 books to his credit, most of them widely and favorably reviewed. Yet America’s Second Crusade, his critical 1950 analysis of America’s entry into World War II, failed to find a mainstream publisher, and when it did appear was widely ignored by reviewers.

然而，一旦他轉(zhuǎn)而反對羅斯福好戰(zhàn)的外交政策，出版商就對他關(guān)上了大門，只有他與耶魯大學(xué)出版社負(fù)責(zé)人的私人友誼才能讓他在1948年出版的批評性著作《羅斯福總統(tǒng)和戰(zhàn)爭的來臨，1941》得以出版。從那時(shí)起，比爾德的卓越聲譽(yù)似乎開始迅速下降，到1968年，歷史學(xué)家理查德·霍夫施塔特寫道:
“今天，比爾德的名聲就像美國史學(xué)界的一片廢墟。這里曾經(jīng)是該省最宏偉的房子，現(xiàn)在卻滿目瘡痍?！?br /> 的確，比爾德曾經(jīng)占主導(dǎo)地位的“歷史的經(jīng)濟(jì)解釋”如今可能幾乎被視為宣揚(yáng)“危險(xiǎn)的陰謀論”而被駁回，而且我懷疑幾乎沒有除歷史學(xué)家之外的人聽說過他。
另一位主要貢獻(xiàn)者是威廉·亨利·張伯倫(William Henry Chamberlin)，幾十年來，他一直被列為美國外交政策方面的主要記者之一，出版了超過15本著作，其中大多數(shù)都得到了廣泛好評。然而，他在1950年出版的《美國的第二次十字軍東征》(America’s Second Crusade)——他對美國加入第二次世界大戰(zhàn)的批判性分析——卻未能找到主流出版商，即使出版了，也被評論家們普遍忽視。

Prior to its publication, his byline had regularly run in our most influential national magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and Harpers. But afterward, his writing was almost entirely confined to small circulation newsletters and periodicals, appealing to narrow conservative or libertarian audiences.
In these days of the Internet, anyone can easily establish a website to publish his views, thus making them immediately available to everyone in the world. Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter can bring interesting or controversial material to the attention of millions with just a couple of mouse-clicks, completely bypassing the need for the support of establishmentarian intermediaries. It is easy for us to forget just how extremely challenging the dissemination of dissenting ideas remained back in the days of print, paper, and ink, and recognize that an individual purged from his regular outlet might require many years to regain any significant foothold for the distribution of his work.

在出版之前，他的署名經(jīng)常出現(xiàn)在我們最有影響力的全國性雜志上，比如《大西洋月刊》和《哈珀斯》。但后來，他的作品幾乎完全局限于發(fā)行量較小的時(shí)事通訊和期刊，吸引了狹隘的保守派或自由主義者讀者。
在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的這些日子里，任何人都可以很容易地建立一個(gè)網(wǎng)站來發(fā)表他的觀點(diǎn)，從而使他們立即提供給世界上的每個(gè)人。Facebook和Twitter等社交媒體只需點(diǎn)擊幾下鼠標(biāo)，就能將有趣或有爭議的材料帶到數(shù)百萬人的視線中，完全不需要權(quán)威中介機(jī)構(gòu)的支持。我們很容易忘記，在印刷、紙張和墨水的時(shí)代，傳播不同意見是多么具有挑戰(zhàn)性，我們也很容易認(rèn)識到，一個(gè)從日常渠道中被清除的人可能需要很多年才能重新獲得一個(gè)重要的立足點(diǎn)來傳播他的作品。
（未完待續(xù)，第三篇預(yù)告：《戰(zhàn)后德國和珍珠港襲擊》）