Post by Tamrin on Apr 24, 2014 9:32:40 GMT 10
The Unpersuadables, by Will Storr
(excerpt of review by Michael Shermer, eSKEPTIC
(excerpt of review by Michael Shermer, eSKEPTIC
Of all the characters I’ve met in a quarter century spent researching the margins of science and society, there has never been anyone quite as enigmatic as David Irving, the British raconteur and historical revisionist of all things World War II, including and especially Hitler’s role in the Holocaust, which may or may not have happened, but if it did the Führer didn’t know about it, or if he did he couldn’t do anything to stop it. What about Hitler’s notorious anti-Semitism and his declaration of war against the Jews?, I once asked him. “Without Hitler, the State of Israel probably would not exist today so to that extent he was probably the Jews’ greatest friend.” Right. This from the man who once sued a historian for calling him a Holocaust denier, but then claimed, “More women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.” Irving lost his case in court, no doubt harmed when he slipped and referred to the Judge not as “Your Honor” but as “Mein Führer.” That might explain another one-liner that I’m sure I’m not the only person he’s told after shaking hands: “This hand has shaken more hands that shook Hitler’s hand than anyone else in the world.”
Irving is one of a pantheon of unconventional characters featured in Will Storr’s The Unpersuadables. Storr’s style is to get close to his subjects by spending enough time with them so that they let down their guard and tell him what they’re really thinking. For example, Storr joined Irving on a week-long tour of Nazi concentration camps, which he narrates in an engaging first-person style that takes the reader right into the gas chamber at Majdanek where Irving announces to his group and anyone else in ear-shot, “This is a mock-up of a gas chamber. Those cylinders are carbon dioxide not carbon monoxide. A typical Polish botch job. There are handles on the inside of these doors,” suggesting that the prisoners could have just let themselves out.
Storr’s purpose is to understand more than it is to debunk, but he gives his readers enough information to test the verisimilitude of his characters claims. For example, he examined those door hinges more closely to find that “there were bolts on the outside, two of them, huge ones, each attached to clasps that would have locked the door closed over airtight seals.” Storr adds that Irving “saw the handle and he used it to angrily damn the manifest truth. He saw the handle. What happened in his mind when he saw the bolts?” Was Irving, Storr wonders rhetorically, “a liar or deluded? Evil or mistaken?” Storr finds his answer in a cognitive process called the confirmation bias, where we look for and find confirming evidence for our beliefs and ignore or rationalize away disconfirming evidence. We all do this. We remember in great detail stories and studies that support our political preferences, forgetting all counter examples. We tend to befriend people who think like us and so reinforce our beliefs. It’s a cognitive bias not restricted to the unpersuadables, but when you’re dealing with sensitive topics like the Holocaust the bias is especially noticeable.
The beliefs that drive the confirmation bias in the first place come from a deeper place. “Follow the sacredness,” the psychologist Jonathan Haidt told Storr. “Find out what people believe to be sacred, and when you look around there you will find rampant irrationality.”
Irving is one of a pantheon of unconventional characters featured in Will Storr’s The Unpersuadables. Storr’s style is to get close to his subjects by spending enough time with them so that they let down their guard and tell him what they’re really thinking. For example, Storr joined Irving on a week-long tour of Nazi concentration camps, which he narrates in an engaging first-person style that takes the reader right into the gas chamber at Majdanek where Irving announces to his group and anyone else in ear-shot, “This is a mock-up of a gas chamber. Those cylinders are carbon dioxide not carbon monoxide. A typical Polish botch job. There are handles on the inside of these doors,” suggesting that the prisoners could have just let themselves out.
Storr’s purpose is to understand more than it is to debunk, but he gives his readers enough information to test the verisimilitude of his characters claims. For example, he examined those door hinges more closely to find that “there were bolts on the outside, two of them, huge ones, each attached to clasps that would have locked the door closed over airtight seals.” Storr adds that Irving “saw the handle and he used it to angrily damn the manifest truth. He saw the handle. What happened in his mind when he saw the bolts?” Was Irving, Storr wonders rhetorically, “a liar or deluded? Evil or mistaken?” Storr finds his answer in a cognitive process called the confirmation bias, where we look for and find confirming evidence for our beliefs and ignore or rationalize away disconfirming evidence. We all do this. We remember in great detail stories and studies that support our political preferences, forgetting all counter examples. We tend to befriend people who think like us and so reinforce our beliefs. It’s a cognitive bias not restricted to the unpersuadables, but when you’re dealing with sensitive topics like the Holocaust the bias is especially noticeable.
The beliefs that drive the confirmation bias in the first place come from a deeper place. “Follow the sacredness,” the psychologist Jonathan Haidt told Storr. “Find out what people believe to be sacred, and when you look around there you will find rampant irrationality.”
