Lipstadt is a tue hero, stanidng up to the bully David Irving in an important libel case turning on whether Irving was or was not a Holocaust denier. The court found he was, and that blew his whole careful schtick about being just a bona fide historian with another view of the evidence.
Most of the interview was about the case and Lipstadt's courage. Then we shifted to the need to get at historical evidence whenever possible. I started to feel uncomfortable as the topic turned to the 'post-truth' era.
Then we got this:
“I am very worried that there is a general sentiment out there that you have your facts, I have my facts, and whoever yells loudest wins,” Lipstadt says. “You had it in your country with Brexit. What was that bus with £350m a week on it? In America, we had it with our election.”
I just think this is appalling that a famous historian should be quoted like this. Ironically, Lipstadt cited no evidence for her claims that the Brexit debate reached some new low of 'post-truth', andnor did she test the liberal view that the £350, claim was some particularly pernicious lie and not just routine political rhetoric. She must be aware of the dangers of equating Brexit with the Holocaust by ideological association? And can she seriously think of THIS era as'post-truth' compared to the era of Nazi Germany?
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