holocaust denial

David Irving, the British "historian" and holocaust denier is an idiot. He is his own worst enemy. His most severe legal troubles stem from his own stupidity.

To wit:

1. His biggest legal problems in the UK were when he took American academic Deborah Lipstadt to court for libel, when she called him a holocaust denier. In court, it was proven that he was a holocaust denier, and he lost.

2. Austria banned him from the country. He knew that there was essentially a national restraining order in place, and knew there was a warrant for his arrest stemming from a previous holocaust denial incident within Austria. He went anyway and got thrown in the poky.

In each case, he's been the author of his own downfall (as well as the author of some very dubious stuff he calls "real history").

Still, I don't think he should be in jail for holocaust denial. He was sentenced to three years in prison, and Austrian prosecutors are appealing against the sentence saying he should be chucked in for the maximum ten. This despite the fact that he plead guilty, recanted on the denial, and apologised for hurt and affront. (Though to be fair, I don't put much weight on his mea culpa)

Now, I think people who publicly deny the facts of the holocaust should be lampooned and discredited or perhaps just denied the oxygen of publicity.. I don't think they should be thrown in jail - made a martyr to their stupid cause. I don't think that people should be thrown in jail for what they write and say...(mostly, there is the issue of child porn and direct incitement to violence).

Most commentators in the UK are sort of defending his "right to be wrong", but I don't think many on the Left or Right are shedding too many tears. I have to admit I'm not either, I find him abhorrent.

But in the wake of the Danish Mohammed cartoons, I find his incarceration for three years disturbing. Very disturbing. There's been an escalation of penalties for offending others - and as one person is punished for offending an orthodoxy or breaking a taboo, so all the other orthodoxies clamor for their own protection under the law. It's a dangerous climate for free-thinkers as well as vile campaigners.

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The other night, the Vol-in-Law took me to a lecture on multi-culturalism and the law (he sure knows how to show a gal a good time) by Professor Ralph Grillo an anthropologist. He took us through the Bezhti affair (a play found offensive by some Sikhs who smashed in the Birmingham rep) and covered the Danish cartoons as well.

He seemed to be coming from the premise that we really oughtn't to be offending anyone...and that free speech was a good thing generally, but it was better not to offend. He was speaking in a law lecture series, but no one could quite pin him down to what he thought the law ought to be. At one point he was pressed...who has the right not to be offended, religious adherents? (yes), members of ethnic minorities? (yes), various nationalities? (yes). He never answered the question of why religion (a system of belief, i.e. thought) deserved any gentler treatment than any other system of thought or belief (utilitarianism, liberalism, conservatism, Darwinism) that all have to take their knocks.

I'd rather think that we all have the positive right to be offended. Yes, you can say what you like, but I have the right to object, to argue back and to feel aggrieved. As I said above, when we start going down the road of protecting the precious sensitivities, everyone wants their sensitivity protected, too, until finally we're paralysed by it and can't speak out when things are really wrong.

Tags: Free Speech, Austria, Holocaust, irving, holocaust denial