ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY

43 (Fall 2006): 51-64

THE JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN FORENSIC ASSOCIATION

ARGUMENT IN HOLOCAUST DENIAL: THE

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HISTORICAL
CASUISTRY AND DENIAL CASUISTRY
Jaime Wright
This essay examines casuistry as it works in argumentative processes and effects. Instead of dismissing all
casuistic practices as inherently evil, it is important to study casuistry's functioning for two reasons: casuistry
is a necessary and inevitable feature oflanguage and casuistry is effective. I argue that there are good and malign
forms of casuistic reasoning, and I distinguish between them by comparing and contrasting historical casuistry
with the practice of Holocaust denial In particular, I examine the libel suit brought by Holocaust denier David
Irving against Penguin Publishers and Deborah Lipstadt. Key words: casuistry, argument, rhetoric,
history. Holocaust denial

Casuistry and rhetoric both are terms long maligned for their unpredictability and ethical
bendability.' The debate about rhetorical ethics is ancient and ongoing-as is the debate
surrounding the appropriate use and application of casuistry. Since the sixteenth century,
casuistry has been considered a flawed approach to moral decision-making, consigned by
Pascal and Ramus to the arenas of argumentative nonsense, the worst excuse for ethical
laxity and individual immorality. It is a "form of ethical problem solving with a dubious
pedigree" (Miller 7). Recendy, however, casuistry has been rehabilitated. Albert R. Jonsen
and Stephen Toulmin describe it sympathetically as
the analysis of moral issues, using procedures of reasoning based on paradigms and analogies, leading to the
formulation of expert opinions about the existence and stringency of moral obligations, framed in terms of
rules or maxims that are general but not universal or invariable, since they hold good with certainty only in
the typical conditions of the agent and the circumstances of action. (257)

The key to legitimate casuistic reasoning is the human ability to relate and compare disparate
objects and events appropriately, without splitting hairs. Discussing the range and limits of

Jaime Wright, Department of Communication Studies, University of Texas at Austin.]aime Wright is now at Department of
Speech, Communication Sciences, and Theatre, St. John's University. A previous version of this essay received a top
paper award from the Argumentation and Forensics Division at the annual meeting of the National Communication
Association, Boston, MA, November, 2005. The author would like to thank Randall Lake and the anonymous
reviewers for their help and suggestions. Correspondence conceming this article should be addressed to Jaime
Wright, Department of Speech, Communication Sciences, and Theatre, St. John's University, SJH 344B, 8000 Utopia
Parkway, Queens, New York 11439. E-mail: jaimelwright@[Link]
' For a discussion of casuistry's ethics, see Jonsen and Toulmin's The Abuse of Casuistry. On the ancient debate
surrounding rhetorical ethics, see Hyde's The Ethos of Rhetoric.
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argument by example, John Arthos describes the Catholic Church's use of casuistry during
the Middle Ages as exaggerations of situational, specific reasoning: "the vast and sprawling
casebooks of canon law were exercises in the art of qualification" (332).
Casuistry is a consideration of the situatedness of situations, a nod to the contingencies of
life, and it is rhetorical in that it has the power to shape and alter our perception of "fitting"
responses and propriety: "Because of the complexity of reality and the variation of circum-
stances, immutable laws are not immediately helpful in determining the disposition of a case.
Thus, a body of examples model prudent discrimination in confiicting and ambiguous
decisions of conscience" (Arthos 332). These models of prudent discrimination demonstrate
the ethical difficulties that casuists confront. When facing what Bitzer called an exigency,
requiring judgment and decision, one has not only a logical responsibihty to compare the
present situation with previous precedents but also a moral responsibility to balance and
evaluate each decision as it comes.
It is important for scholars of argument and rhetoric to study casuistry (whether used for
good or ill) for two reasons. First, casuistry is a necessary and inescapable attribute of
language (Burke, Rhetoric 72-73). Casuistic stretching^ is a function of language that enables
social and collective meaning (Burke, Attitudes 229). Rhetoric, as the determination of
persuasive means in any given situation, recognizes the space between certainty (syllogisms)
and probability (enthymemes). Without this space, if only formal logic was acceptable, how
would communication occur? How would history get told? Where would be the room for
error and revision, correction and reapplication? Professors employ casuistry to relate old
ideas to new ones. Politicians employ casuistry to form coalitions. Parents employ casuistry
to get children in bed on time. Casuistic reasoning is intimately related to the process and
business of language. If truths could not be stretched, and logic could not be expanded,
language would be impoverished. Common ground between audiences and speakers would
prove impossible because we cannot always stand in the same space, at the same time, with
the same perspective.
The second reason to study casuistry is because casuistry is convincing. Pascal was
outraged at what he believed to be the immoral (and random) rationalizations of the
Church in part because they were so effective. Situational reasoning accommodates the
contingencies, particularities, and uniqueness of exigencies. Bitzer's discussion of the
rhetorical situation reveals the casuistry required of effective rhetors (5-6). That being
said, the rhetorical value of casuistry, its argumentative efficacy, can be demonstrated by
careful examination of its operation in specific rhetorical situations. Such examination
reveals not only examples of casuistic arguments but also standards for evaluating their
ethicality and effectiveness. By studying casuistry in its ethical and unethical forms we
learn about the places where people shop for arguments and the form and function of
convincing arguments.
This essay examines the process of argument as well as its effects. I do not claim that all
casuistry is bad or, necessarily, that all casuistry is good. What I do want to suggest, though,
is that there are good cuid bad forms of casuistic reasoning, and I lay out the differences
between them by studying a recent instance of casuistic stretching: the libel suit brought by
Holocaust denier David Irving against Penguin I\iblishers and Deborah Lipstadt.

^ Casuistic stretching is Kenneth Burke's term, which I discuss later in this section. To limit confusion, let us think
of casuistry as an umbrella term for situational reasoning and casuistic stretching as the rhetorical mechanism that
enables the bending of meaning and exchange of qualities. If metaphorical language is casuistic, then the mechanism
by which its meaning is bent is simile. Similes, that is, casuistically stretch metaphorical meaning.
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ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY WRIGHT

David Irving is a prominent Holocaust denier/British writer, who was mentioned, briefly,
in Lipstadt's 1993 Denying the Holocaust. In July, 1996, he sued both Lipstadt and her
publishers, claiming that his career and reputation had been harmed when Lipstadt identi-
fied him as a key figure in Holocaust denial, or the global movement to rehabilitate the Nazis.
In an attempt to turn the tables in his own favor, Irving chose to bring the suit in a British
rather than American court because British libel laws favor the plaintiff: Lipstadt would have
to prove that what she wrote was true, rather than Irving having to prove that it was
deliberately false.
The trial began in London on January 11, 2000. Libel defense in a British court is always
a difficult task; this trial, however, was a particularly important (and complicated) case
(Hasian, "Holocaust" 130). Because Irving's main contention is that the gas chambers are a
grand, conspiratorial hoax, Lipstadt needed to prove her own claims in particular and the
reality of the Holocaust in general. In essence, this trial
was a battle neither side could afford to lose. Irving, who represented himself, risked his reputation as well as
his livelihood. Defeat would mean professional ruin, and probable bankruptcy. For Lipstadt and her British
publisher (and co-defendant) Penguin Books, the stakes were even higher. Irving's strategy of putting the
Holocaust itself on trial meant that Lipstadt and her lawyers had to defend not just her veracity, but the
integrity of all of those caught up in the Nazi onslaught. (Guttenplan 2)

In an effort to move his version of the past into the limelight, Irving put history on trial,
forcing Holocaust denial into a legal and academic position ostensibly equal to careful
historical methodology. Challenging historians to meet him in a courtroom, Irving provided
deniers a potential entree to legitimate historical discussions. Had Irving prevailed, the
veracity of historical facts that most of us take for granted—that Hitler killed millions, that the
Nazi factory of death was frightening, bureaucratic and efficient, that European Jews were
decimated by a decade-long campaign to exterminate them (Guttenplan 2-3)—and the
validity of accepted methods of historical research would have been seriously weakened.
Such a ruling would have been a solid victory for deniers and a crushing blow to analytical
historical methodology.
Studies of Holocaust denial as a persuasive and dangerous rhetoric cannot be overvalued.
Because history is revised constantly (properly so, as new discoveries are made), critical
historical investigation is a protean, mutable pursuit. Holocaust denial becomes increasingly
convincing against the contemporary backdrop of historical revision. Pierre Vidal-Naquet
argues that historical and rhetorical changes in the language used to describe genocidal
events turn genocide into a spectacle, a pure language event better fit for mass consumption
(98). This does not prevent assessment of changes in denial rhetoric; instead, critics and
consumers must recognize and adapt to shifts in historical understanding of the Holocaust.
As time passes, carrying us farther from the epiphanic moments of the 1940s and 1950s,
we can rely no longer on familiar routes of perception; as Holocaust deniers renovate their
language and reconstruct their images, we must be vigilant in our evaluation of their
rhetorical and political moves. Michael Marrus defines the difficulties facing historians and
scholars: "In time, as a result [of the deaths of survivors and witnesses], the mystification
[surrounding the Holocaust] will be dispelled and is bound to be replaced by the historical
perspective. Doubtless some of the exercises that result will be misguided. But the alterna-
tive, silence, is surely the counsel of despair-yielding the field to falsification or oblivion" (7).
Despite the possibility of misdirection, an ongoing process of adaptation seems a safer, more
legitimate course than acquiescing to politically driven assaults on history.
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ARGUMENT IN HOLOCAUST DENIAL FALL 2006

One form of vigilance consists in thorough examination of the Holocaust denial move-
ment's language and arguments (Hasian, "Canadian" 44, 48). In doing so, we necessarily
enter the realm of casuistry, which is necessary to language but ethically slippery. With an
eye to the tensions between necessary situational adaptation and ethical reasoning, I explore
casuistry in three places: argument theory, historical research, and Holocaust denial. First, I
provide a more expansive description of casuistry. Next I examine the function of casuistry
in scholarly historical research. Finally, I examine an instance of casuistry used for ill: David
Irving's closing remarks at trial. By comparing the ethical practice of casuistry, in historical
research, with its unethical practice, in denial casuistry, I hope to illuminate some methods
available to analyze and evaluate casuistry in discussions of the past.

CASUISTRY

A form of reasoning located between the logical pull of precedent and the moral push of
situational appropriateness, casuistry superbly reveals argument and conviction at work. To
argue successfully (e.g., to convince an audience), one must pinpoint and activate connec-
tions between historical precedent (warrant) and situational understanding (claim). A good
arguer, unlike a good analytic philosopher, must be a good casuist. And, despite the latter's
claims, a good casuist is not necessarily morally bankrupt (Strong 327). Situational reasoning,
however, is fraught with ethical dangers (see McKinney; Miller). In order to reason well
casuistically, one must compare and contrast historical decisions and judgments with novel
situations.^
Scholars long have acknowledged the simultaneous value and danger of casuistic stretch-
ing. Plato viewed casuistry as "a deviation and a deficiency, due to the imperfect way in
which worldly reality embodies and represents the ideal, whereas for Aristode the exception,
far from weakening the law, actually improves and corrects it" (Mahoney 235-36). Because
he, unlike Plato, separated the theoretical from the practical, Aristotle viewed case-by-case
reasoning as "corrective of both a legalistic literalism and an overly legalistic severity"
(McKinney 466). This dilemma still lies at the heart of the contemporary debate about
casuistry.* Carson Strong proposes that casuistry, rather than top-down reasoning from
principles, is central to moral decision making: "When casuistry is used (and is successful),
for example, it is the casuistic reasoning that brings one to a decision about how to assign
priorities; only then is one in a position to proceed with the task of deciding how the
principles ought to be specified" (327). Unlike "idealized," "atemporal," and "necessary"
concerns like geometry, practical matters are sticky and inelegant (Jonsen and Toulmin
25-28). As a rhetorical response to exigency, situational reasoning shapes not only moral
discussion and decision making but also the ways in which these decisions are implemented.
A study of casuistry includes both the method and results of situational reasoning. To show
how method and results are inextricably linked, let us turn now to the question of how to talk
about history ethically.

•^ Legal decisions exemplify casuistry in action: each decision must consider both precedent and current situation.
Casuistry also is a kind of job requirement in scholarly research, especially in historical research. Our understanding
of the past is never cemented; we are always exploring the ins and outs of the past in order better to understand its
relation to our present situation. I unpack the relationship between casuistry and history subsequently.
•* The definition of rhetoric at work in this project is Cicero's: "The duty of an orator is to speak in a style fitted to
convince [ad persuadendum accommodate)" (I, xxxi, 138). This definition has the virtue that it includes ideas of
propriety as well as conviction, both of which are situational (casuistic) in nature.
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RHETORIC, HISTORY, AND CASUISTRY

As an argumentative endeavor, history must be both appropriate and convincing. Appro-
priateness is required because the very nature of historical investigation involves questioning,
revision, and redirection. Historiography, the story of history, puts the events of the past into
a narrative that brings levels of meaning and importance to events that depend upon their
manner of selection and description and the audience to whom they are presented. History
as story must adhere to certain ethical standards created and maintained by historians-
historiography, in other words, is the practice of explaining history appropriately. History as
story also must respond to the exigency of the human desire for understanding: historians,
who study historical events, craft descriptions of these events, and present these descriptions
to appropriate audiences, must deliver fitting responses.
History as argument also must convince (Alonso 8). Conviction comes in part from the
language of history; historians exercise a language of scientific reasoning, from which their
ethos derives (Najarian 80). Citing evidence, employing proofs based on this evidence, and
reasoning soundly, historians and historiographers assume the responsibility of telling us
what happened, when it happened, and why.
Kenneth Burke proposed that history could not be told or understood without the
judicious apphcation of casuistry. Casuistry, to Burke, is more than a mode of moral
reasoning: it is a necessary function of language, involving the deliberate bending of an
argument's topic and scope. Casuistries engage in varying degrees of rhetorical manipula-
tion, promoting changes in thinking, belief, and interpretation:
The general and the particular directions of rhetoric overlap insofar as all unique cases will necessarily involve
the application of the universal topics to the particular matter at hand, and insofar as even situations
considered very broadly may possess uniqueness. (Since any one particular era in history, for instance, will be
unlike any other in its exact combination of cultural factors, historiography seems naturally vowed to a measure
of rhetorical casuistry, however scientific may be the pretensions of historians, economists, sociologists, etc.,
though the scientific pretensions themselves might be less effective rhetorically if such enterprise were
formally recognized as involved in the rhetoric of casuistry.) (Grammar 596-97, emphasis added)

Historiography requires a kind of casuistic reasoning: historians constantly revise narratives

of events as they uncover new information and documentation.
Such mutability of casuistic reasoning lends itself to casuistic stretching, which Burke defines
as "introduc[ing] new principles while theoretically remaining faithful to old principles"
[Attitudes 229). Examples of casuistic stretching include definition and redefinition, the
"transference of words from one category of associations to another" and unification of
opposites such as "morality and amorality" in a "higher abstraction" [Attitudes 22)0-32). "The
process of casuistic stretching," Burke admonishes, "must itself be subjected to continually
conscious attention" [Attitudes 232). Casuistic stretching is unavoidable—it is a symptom of
language, the process of naming, defining, and categorizing elements of our world. As Burke
notes, such omnipresence demands care. To use language and casuistry ethically (especially
in situation-to-situation reasoning), speakers and arguers must be conscious of both how
casuistry is working in language and what those casuistic stretchings are doing to the
language they create.
The story of history is a story of shifting motives and meaning. History, to Burke, is a
group of "collective poems"-a series of creations and explanations. In order to study those
collective poems successfully, we must examine "the productive and mental patterns devel-
oped by aggregates" because no history stands by itself: the collectivity of these poems is the
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key [Attitudes 111). Every story of the past builds (or depends) upon the stories that came
before and after it. In a move from individual strategies to collective ones, the emphasis shifts
from the "poetic to the historical" [Attitudes 111). The fluidity of history is a point of interest
for Burke; he explores the concept that an ending of one story becomes the beginning of
another tale.'' These perspectival shifts demonstrate the casuistic stretch of historiography.
He tells the story of historical understanding as if it were a play in several acts, moving
reasonably from scene to scene. The emphasis in these historical scenes, then, is on the idea
of reasonable movement.
That history constantly is constructed and reconstructed is, at this point, fairly obvious.*'
The goal of this essay is not to re-cover that ground. Instead, we should pay attention to the
connections among and collections of historical events. History, made into a long, contin-
uous narrative, is the performance of reasonable connections-between actors, between
events, between wars, between catastrophes. For Burke, the human endeavor is to explain
with reasons the way the world works. History is one way of doing that. Without casuistry,
the connections between what was and what is could not be seen. That is a great power
(Hasian and Frank 97). But, Burke warns us, that power carries heavy responsibility, and
telling history is one of those responsibilities we must bear ethically. Legitimate historians
accept this responsibility:
Historians are the ones who should be described as revisionists. To receive a Ph.D. and become a professional
historian, one must write an original work with research based on primary documents and new sources . . .
revising knowledge about that event only . .. Holocaust deniers claim that there is a force field of dogma
around the Holocaust .. . Nothing could be further from the truth. (Shermer and Grobman xvi)

Holocaust deniers cite such revisions as "proof" that the Holocaust did not occur and that the
promulgation of Holocaust studies is part of a Zionist conspiracy in academe. Because there
is constant revision, deniers say, there is constant deception. But historiography is necessarily
casuistic: history depends upon reinterpretation and evaluation, which need not be decep-
tive. Evaluation of casuistic argument is difficult, therefore, because it often hinges on the
arguer's motivations rather than the argument's form. However, just as casuistry does not
mean deception, difficult does not mean impossible. Therefore, in the following case study, I
explore the differences between historical casuistry done ethically and denier casuistry done
deceptively.

HOLOCAUST DENIAL
Consideration of the rhetorical and perceptual effects of history on our understanding of
the present brings us to Irving's libel suit. Initially, it is important to understand the elements
of Holocaust denial, which Richard J. Evans defines as
a thin but seemingly continuous line of writing since the Second World War that has sought to deny the
existence of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other extermination camps, to minimize the murder of Jews
killed by the Nazis until it becomes equivalent to that of the Germans killed by the Allies, to explain away the

^ In "The Rhetorics of the Past: History, Argument, and Collective Memory," Gronbeck explores the rhetorical
fluidity required to make history a narrative: "Key to narrativization is the casting of a context that frames the
historical enterprise generally and seemingly identifies and organizes a series of past events so that they can be . . .
bound together into a story" (52).
*• E. Culpepper Clark and Raymie McKerrow discuss the rhetorical nature of history as story: "[HJistory's grip is
ontological, not in any essentialist way . . . but rather from an argumentative perspective. The way the discourse is
constructed establishes its ontology. Because history is chronological, it is presumed to be causal .. . [EJxpressed
history is rhetoric and . . . as a rhetorical construction, history is allied, albeit tenuously, with the fictive arts" (33-34).
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killings as incidental by-products of a vicious war rather than the result of central planning in Berlin, and to
claim that the evidence for the extermination, the gas chambers, and all the rest of it had mostly been
concocted after the war. (1-2)'

Denial rhetoric often is assumed to be totally illogical. In Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut
likens the totalitarian mind "unto a system of gears whose teeth have heen filed off at
random. Such a snaggle-toothed thought machine . . . whirls with the jerky, gaudy point-
lessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell. . . The missing teeth, of course, are simple, obvious truths,
truths available and comprehensible even to ten year olds" (162). Such a simplistic under-
standing of Holocaust denial should be avoided. As I demonstrate below, denial arguments
have grown increasingly sophisticated, supple, and dangerous.
The antecedents of contemporary Holocaust denial lie in a seemingly unrelated event-the
First World War. Holocaust denial is an outgrowth of World War I revisionism. After the
conclusion of the Great War, a group of disenchanted historians began to question the
validity of the victors' version of events. Some members of this group were apologists for
Germany while others merely sought less propagandistic ways of describing events. In any
event, there were arguably legitimate reasons to question the dominant interpretation of
events. The victors, revisionists concluded, had exaggerated, or even falsified, much evi-
dence of German atrocities in an effort to increase political power, facilitate economic
recovery, and fortify national pride:
[World War I] revisionists did not just exonerate Germany; they excoriated [the victors], accusing them of
behaving duplicitously before and after the war. In their view, the British and French, anxious to lure the
United States into the war, prevented it from learning about the very real German desire for peace and the
"reasonable and statesmanlike" proposals offered by the Germans in order to avert war . .. According to the
revisionists, even when World War I ended the [victors] continued to behave in a deceptive fashion and
refused to consider evidence that contradicted the notion of sole German war guilt. (Lipstadt 33)

Although some of their research was biased and incorrect, "much of the revisionist argument
was historically quite sound" (Lipstadt 33).
These doubts surrounding German atrocities during World War I set the stage for
Holocaust denial following World War II. After all, couldn't these incredible charges of
extermination of the Jews be equally untrue? The earliest deniers might better be called
Holocaust defenders. People like Paul Rassinier, Maurice Bardeche (prominent French fas-
cists), Austin J. App, and Harry Elmer Barnes were intent on defending Nazi anti-Semitism.^
For the first two or three decades after the war, they formulated moral apologias for the
debilitated country of Germany. They also launched outright attacks on the Jewish people:
"Distorting the truth, they blamed Jews for Germany's financial and political plight and
made the wildly exaggerated claim that Jews had been the prime beneficiaries of the chaos
of Weimar. Jews were disloyal citizens, likely to be subversive and spies" (Lipstadt 52). These
early deniers exploited a general miasma of disbelief (especially in the United States)
surrounding revelations about National Socialist activities during the war. Rather than
denying the Holocaust, they justified it.

' Holocaust denial's anti-Semitism is fundamental (Lipstadt 57). Denial rhetoric excoriates and implicates the
Jewish people as a collective. All other motivations, including opposition to democracy, anti-Americanism, pro-fascist
political agendas, and apologias for Germany and the National Socialists, are subordinate.
" Several key players in the early denial movement originally were World War I revisionists. Barnes was the most
prominent "direct link between the two generations of American revisionists and the Holocaust deniers" (Lipstadt 67).
For further discussion of these deniers, see Lipstadt, especially ch. 1-2.
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Many contemporary arguments proceed from these earliest instances of Holocaust denial
(Lipstadt 47-55). The motives of the denial movement, however, have evolved over time. As
details of the camps became more widely known and accepted, a second wave of deniers
realized that pretending that the Nazis were right (rather than anti-Semitic) no longer was
tenable and brought their own motives into disrepute: "So, instead, they began to 'concede'
that the Nazis were anti-Semitic. They even claimed to deplore anti-Semitism, all the while
engaging in it themselves. They acknowledged that some Jews may have died as a result of
Nazi mistreatment but continued to argue that there was no Holocaust" (Lipstadt 52). In
short, more recent deniers have adopted an argumentative strategy of imitation and distrac-
tion. Rather than defense and attack, they strive to maintain an air of objectivity while
playing upon the old biases and prejudices of uninformed audiences.
This second wave of deniers is, arguably, represented in the person of David Irving. There
are three reasons to treat Irving as an exemplar of contemporary denial. First, Irving
exemplifies the tactics of denial. In a thorough examination of his career, Richard Evans
shows how Irving's conclusions have changed over the past two decades (104-48). In his first
works about the war, Irving discussed the import and impact of Nazi death machinery. His
Hitler's War,firstpublished in 1977, has been reprinted several times. The 1991 version does
not refer to either death camps or a Nazi program ofJewish extermination (Evans 111). Such
omissions are fundamental to Holocaust denial.
In addition, that Irving has worked as a historian for decades makes him a bridge between
historical and denial casuistries. To demonstrate the argumentative differences between
these two kinds of casuistries, it is helpful to observe them in the same person. It is easier to
notice these differences when, as it were, they stand next to one another.
A final reason to study Irving as representative of denial argumentation is that the libel
trial was a key moment. The trial was much discussed among historians, journalists, rheto-
ricians, and legal theorists (Evans 238-65). Further, British libel laws turned the trial into a
test not only of the Holocaust but of historical method. A judgment for Irving would have
dealt a terrible blow not only to the memory of survivors and victims but to historical
methodology: "[I]t was not [just] memory that triumphed, and it was not merely the evidence
of tens of thousands of witnesses that was vindicated. For the judgment was above all . . . a
victory for history, for historical truth and historical scholarship" (Evans 265). Although
Irving did not prevail, his arguments still may convince. That the concerted efforts of
professional historians were needed to disprove them emphasizes the danger of Irving's
arguments: "The potential readers of Irving's books are in no way trained historians. He
wrote and writes for people who interest themselves in the Second World War in their spare
time" (Eva Menasses, qtd. in Evans 265).

DENIAL CASUISTRY
I examine two forms of denial casuistry in Irving's closing remarks at trial. First, I analyze
the denial casuistry of Method, which employs a myopic method of particularization in
which idiosyncratic conclusions and isolated bits of evidence are more reliable than con-
sensus reached through peer review. Second, I analyze the denial casuistry of Redefinition,
which involves bending analogies and stretching labels. Each of these casuistries reflects
larger denial goals (explained above). Moreover, each relies on the other: in order to
redefine historical terms, deniers must attack historical method and, in order to attack
historical method, deniers must question and problematize labels.
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Method

The defense's goal at trial was to prove that Irving is, in fact, a Holocaust denier; Irving's
goal, on the other hand, was to prove his historical credentials (Evans 205). The defense
needed to demonstrate that Irving does not engage in historical casuistry and, instead,
employs denial casuistry. The fundamental rhetorical issue, therefore, concerns the meth-
odology of history.
In his closing remarks, Irving both attacks others' historical methods and defends his own
research. His remarks casuistically stretch the meaning of method: historical casuistry
depends upon expert agreement while denial casuistry privileges individual conclusions.
Irving contends:
These Defendants have reportedly spent some $6 milhon, and 20 man-years or more, in researching this case:
this blinding and expensive spotlight has been focused on the narrowest of issues, yet it has still generated
more noise than illumination. I heard the expert witnesses who were paraded before us use phrases like the
"consensus of expert opinion" as their source so often—in fact, I did a check, the word "consensus" occurs 40
times in the daily transcripts of this trial-that I began to wonder what the archives were for. I suggest that these
experts were more expert in reporting each other's opinions and those of people who agree with them than
in what the archives actually contain and what they do not contain which is equally important. ("Shofar" 65)

Here Irving draws attention to the difficulties of historical scholarship but, rather than
acknowledging how individual scholars face these difficulties, he rebukes other historians for
merely reporting each others' opinions. Historical casuistry employs peer review; although
nothing in history is indisputable, conclusions can be generally agreed upon. Irving's
reliance on individual interpretation negates the value of peer review in safeguarding
research, checking facts, and reaching consensus. Denial casuistry, instead, enables dismissal
of documents, erasure of contrary evidence, and silencing of opposing viewpoints.
Unlike the peer-review method of historical casuistry, denial casuistry is myopic. Its
preoccupation with individual notes, diaries, and personal translations, and its acceptance of
solitary (as opposed to collaborative) research, produce a kind of insular history. Although
the historical casuist must investigate these materials as well, she will not limit her study to
them. Nor will she be satisfied with her personal interpretations. Individual interpretations
have a place in any discussion of history, but these interpretations must be validated within
a larger pursuit of consensus. What one person may miss, others may see.
Later, Irving invokes reluctant testimony in service of a tu quoque argument:
[A] somewhat reluctant and even curmudgeonly Professor Donald Watt. . . used these words: "I must say, I
hope that I am never subjected to the kind of examination that Mr. Irving's books have been subjected to by
the defence witnesses. I have a very strong feeling that there are other senior historicalfigures,including some
to whom I owed a great deal of my own career, whose work would not stand up, or not all of whose work
would stand up, to this kind of examination."
I am not throwing myself on the charity of this court, my Lord, but I am asking that the court should be
reasonable in the standards that it sets. That effectively is a line that Professor Watt has supported me in. It
is fair to say, of course, that I had to subpoena Donald Watt .. . What he was saying was that whatever
mistakes or whatever unconventional interpretations of mine, the Defendants have revealed with their
multi-million dollar research, and I am going to admit some mistakes that I have made, not many, this does
not invalidate me as an historian, or my historical methods and conclusions. ("Shofar" 67)

His repeated references to the defense's costly research position Irving as a "dissident
historian" (Guttenplan 28) outmanned by wealthy opponents. Interestingly, invoking Watt's
testimony cuts against Irving's dismissal of historical consensus; enlisting Watt in his cause
casuistically stretches his own position on historical method in order to suit his interests.
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ARGUMENT IN HOLOCAUST DENIAL FALL 2006

Importantly, Watt's statement is invoked in order to suggest that all historians make
mistakes. In the face of direct challenge, denial casuistry often resorts to claiming the
invariably human element in, and fallibility of, historical research. Irving emphasizes the
"humanness" of historical methods, suggesting that others have made so many mistakes that
they cannot see the truth: there were no gas chambers. Many historians who are very active
in the field of Holocaust historiography testified for the defense. Irving, in turn, cross-
examined them. The incomprehensibility of Nazi actions and our own beliefs about human
interaction put these defense witnesses in a difficult position: "The truth is that nothing about
Auschwitz is easy, even today. The sheer scale of killing is difficult for the mind to grasp"
(Guttenplan 182).
In a standard denial move (Guttenplan 28), Irving also defends his own method as the vital
one:

A judgment rendered against me will make this paralysis in the writing of history definitive; from then on, no
one will dare to discuss who exactly was involved in each stage of the Holocaust—rather like in Germany now,
you cannot do it any more-or how extensive it was. From then on, discussion will revolve around "safe"
subjects, like sacred texts in the Middle Ages, or Marx in the old Soviet Union, or the Koran in some
fundamentalist state today. Every historian will know that his critique needs to stop sharply at the boundaries
defined by certain authorities. He will have a choice; accept the official version, holus-bolus; or stop being an
historian. ("Shofar" 51)

Here Irving portrays himself as the lone voice of reason, one who dares to swim against the
tide of enforced conformism by investigating, no matter where such investigation may lead.
As Shermer and Grobman observe, however, historical casuistry by nature questions and
revises knowledge of the past. Construing the current, bottom-up consensus among histori-
ans as top-down, "official" dogma casuistically stretches the former in ways both untrue and
unhelpful. First, what constitutes a "safe" subject is unclear. Medieval texts, Marxism, and so
on, remain vahd and important subjects of inquiry and debate. Second, equating Lipstadt's
personal comment that Irving is a Holocaust denier with Germany's legal limitations on hate
speech is, quite literally, a stretch.
A final denial casuistry of method is functional: instead of responding, in print or at
conferences, to charges of academic malpractice, deniers sue. Remembering that Irving is
the plaintiff, the one who seeks to limit free speech, is vital to understanding this maneuver.
Irving accuses the defense of abrogating his right to free speech, painting himself as the
victim, when, in fact, he is the one who forced the issue:

I had to pinch myself to recall that it was Irving who had launched the court case; Irving who was attempting
to silence his critics; Irving who wanted a book withdrawn from circulation and pulped, its author and
publisher ordered to pay him damages and costs, and undertakings given that the criticisms they made of his
work should never be repeated. Defending yourself in these circumstances is a matter of necessity, not a matter
of choice. (Evans 27)

Historical casuistry is debated in print and on paper; rarely do historians seek to resolve
historiographic disagreements in court. Taking the matter to court casuistically stretches the
process of academic research into an adversarial one. In the libel trial, Irving's attack on
historical method took the form of a legal challenge to free speech, disguised as a defense of
it.
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ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY WRIGHT

Redefinition

Casuistry, as Jonsen and Toulmin describe it, reasons about both process and situation.
Historical casuistry acknowledges that previous conclusions and discoveries must be con-
sulted. Historians engage in debate and discussion in order to understand past events (Evans
18-19). Denial casuistry, however, is preoccupied with the present, especially the current,
allegedly hostile, political climate. Irving's closing remarks consistently redefine the issue,
shifting the court's attention from past events to present politics.
First, Irving shifts attention from the events of the Holocaust to a label:
The phrase "Holocaust denier", which the Second Defendant boasts of having invented, is an Orwellian
stigma. It is not a very helpful phrase. It does not diminish or extend thought or knowledge on this tragic
subject. Its universal adoption within the space of a few years by media, academia government [sic] and even
academics seems to indicate something of the international endeavour of which I shall shortly make brief
mention. It is, in my submission, a key to the whole case. ("Shofar" 65)

Here Irving features the label in order simultaneously to belitde it (as "unhelpful") and
emphasize its danger (as "Orwellian"). Lipstadt's label, he implies, diminishes not only his
standing as a historian but historiography itself: this "unhelpful" phrase extends neither
"thought [n]or knowledge." Finally, just as he dismissed the consensus of scholarly opinion
about the Holocaust, here Irving criticizes the label's popularity. Its "universal adoption"
does not make the label true; on the contrary, it signals an "international endeavor"-read:
conspiracy-to silence historians like him.
Next, Irving emphasizes Hider's innocence:
Allow me to rub this point in: What I actually wrote and printed and published in my flagship study [Hitler's
War] was that Hitler was clearly responsible for the Holocaust both by virtue of being head of state and by
having done so much by his speeches and organisation to start it off.
Where I differed from many historians was in denying that there was any documentary proof of detailed
direction and initiation of the mass murders by Hitler, and I am glad to say two months in that respect has
not brought us any closer. The view was considered to be heretical at the time. But this lack of wartime
documentary evidence for Hitler's involvement is now widely accepted. ("Shofar" 73)

This presentation illustrates deniers' myopic near-obsession with the "wartime documents"
that could assign blame. Irving's allegation redefines not only "wartime documentary
evidence" but also "involvement" and "responsibility." Irving implies that his opponents
must be part of a great conspiracy to fabricate the Holocaust because Hitler left no note
saying, "I did it." What would an admission of guilt look like? What would wartime
documentary evidence demonstrating Hider's "direction and initiation" of the slaughter
need to say?^
Later, Irving again shifts attention from history to present events, this time to attacks on
him and his family:
By that time my family and I had been subjected to a catalogue of insults by the leaders of these various bodies.
If a writer's books are banned and burnt, his bookshops are smashed, his hands are manacled, his person
insulted, his printers are burnt down, his access to the world's archives is denied, his family's livelihood is
destroyed, his phone lines are jammed with obscene and threatening phone calls, death threats, his house is
beset by violent, angry mobs, the walls and posts around his address are plastered with stickers inciting the

" Continuing, Irving reiterates part of his cross-examination of Richard Evans, demanding, again and again, the
"wartime documents" that prove the existence of gas chambers, and demanding to know where these documents
might be found ("Shofar" 74). Irving persists in demanding a vast quantity of documents without ever indicating what
those documents would need to look like in order to satisfy him.
62

ARGUMENT IN HOLOCAUST DENIAL FALL 2006

public to violence against him . .. then it ill-behoves [sic] people to offer cheap criticism if the writer finally
commits the occasional indiscretion and lapse in referring to the people who are doing it to him. ("Shofar"
186-87)

This passage is rich with redefinition and redirection. Irving describes his persecution at the
hands of vague and numerous enemies. This time, his self-portrait as a besieged defender of
truth and free speech enlists the imagery of the pogroms and Krystallnacht. His reference to
"cheap criticism" is another attempt to belitde the denier label rather than disprove it.
Finally, Irving's statement works to highlight the dangerous and unprofessional responses
to his scholarship-he is attacked and threatened, on a variety of levels, by the "people"
(read: Jews) he occasionally refers to in a derogatory manner. This excerpt is a simultaneous
rejection and defense of Irving's past anti-Semitic remarks.'° Obvious racism, he knows,
makes his criticism weak; however, if he can prove the conspiracy claims (that he is, in fact,
heing persecuted by a particular group of people), then his historical interpretation might not
seem so unhinged. The turn in this quotation is a tricky one for Irving: he must demonstrate
the ongoing attacks by Jews and substantiate these claims with proof of their deliberate
attacks on his person and scholarship. Therefore, he redefines his attackers as "those people"
and "leaders of these various bodies." Throughout the trial, Irving tried to draw attention to
the Jewishness of the defense. Evans, referring to the unique situation faced by the defense
in finding credible historian-witnesses, writes, "Regrettable though it was, there was clearly
something to be said for ensuring that most of them were not Jewish, since Irving would
undoubtedly try to make something out of it if they were" (29). The essay mentions that
denial casuistry is driven by anti-Semitism-this quotation is an attempted redefinition of that
anti-Semitism. Irving, by contextualizing his hatred of "those people," attempts to redefine
Lipstadt and Penguin as the attackers rather than the victims.

CONCLUSION

Casuistry assumes many forms and occurs in many contexts. Historiography must ac-
knowledge the possibility of change in the historical record as new discoveries are made and
old understandings are reevaluated. There is some danger in this, of course, and so new
discoveries and interpretations must be tested against the conclusions of old, using accepted
methods. Denial casuistry works differently. Whereas historical casuistry is a process of
analysis and rebuttal, denial casuistry is a process of attack and questioning. Historical
casuistry's goal is to bolster or challenge others' conclusions in an attempt to understand the
past more completely and accurately. Denial casuistry's goal is to bolster or challenge others'
humanity in an attempt to configure the present.
The arguments of Holocaust denial are important to study because they reveal both
denial's method, such as its individualistic and myopic style of history, and its strategies of
redefinition regarding, for example, what counts as evidence and who is the victim. These
features, in turn, illuminate the motivations of the denial movement.
Irving V. Penguin and Lipstadt offers a comparative case study of two very different forms of
casuistic stretching because Irving takes pains to examine the process (and inevitable
fallibility) of historical casuistry. But, whatever its risks, casuistry is unavoidable when

'" Previously, Irving is said to have claimed that more people died in the back of Ted Kennedy's car than in the
gas chambers at Auschwitz. Although this is a paraphrase, both Lipstadt and Evans mention Irving's references to
Jews as liars and conspirators. This quotation is only one instance of his constant anti-Semitism.
 63

ARGUMENTATION AND ADVOCACY WRIGHT

studying the past. Denial casuistry, on the other hand, distracts from the past: it rejects
accepted methods and the principle of consensus, and dismisses discussion and debate.
Historical casuistry is the process of analyzing the past. Denial casuistry simulates ethical
historiography in order to erase careful historical study.
Over the course of this project, I have found myself dangerously close to calling every-
thing casuistry. I do not mean to do so. Any intellectual pursuit involves an element of
situational reasoning: we must be willing to change our minds when better evidence comes
along. But there is an ethical limit to mutability. To prevent the wholesale erasure of the past,
certain tests and standards of evaluation are required. As biased and spotty as sometimes it
may be, history is designed to stretch. If something is missing (or amiss), historical casuistry
hopefully will notice. If there is prejudice, historians must call attention to it and locate it
within the larger project of historiography itself Denial casuistry can explain historiographic
error only as proof of contemporary conspiracy.
By exploiting the casuistic nature of historiography-its application of situational reasoning
in a search for fitting narratives—denial casuistry inserts itself into discussion and debate
about the past. Certainly, we must be alert to the perils of such debate. At the same time,
there is more to see than this one dark facet of casuistry. Future research might give greater
consideration to casuistry's benefits. Much like medicine, biology, neurobiology, and med-
ical ethics, the rhetoric of historiography deserves deeper exploration. As the ever-changing
face of history shows, the quest for historical understanding is necessarily casuistic; the
insidious encroachment of Holocaust denial is only one of many possibilities.

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