Holocaust denier: 3-year jail term

[Salv]

What's the difference? Each claim is just one man's personal opinion regarding a set of facts. Why should a man be imprisoned for holding or voicing beliefs which are likely (or certainly) wrong?

And remember, if you think that people SHOULD be able to be thrown in prison for such an offense, what is to stop the government from imprisoning people who believe in Satanism or Christianity or Phrenology or the Flat-Earth Theory or any number of unprovable beliefs?

The difference is that one ("they deserved it") is merely an opinion, while the other ("it never happened anyway") is a deliberate denial of the truth. Denying the Holocaust, in the face of overwhelming proof of its existence, in order to paint the Nazis in a better light isn't an opinion.

Did anyone really think that Irving was sincere in his belief that the Holocaust never happened?

And as I've already said I don't consider Irvings offence to be the voicing of a controversial opinion, so I don't agree with your parallel of prison terms for Satanists etc.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

The difference is that one ("they deserved it") is merely an opinion, while the other ("it never happened anyway") is a deliberate denial of the truth. Denying the Holocaust, in the face of overwhelming proof of its existence, in order to paint the Nazis in a better light isn't an opinion.

By definition believing/saying that "The Holocaust never happened" is an opinion. That is just based on what the word opinion means.

I am not sure what you are arguing exactly but you can't argue that what he held wasn't an opinion. And by the way, phrenology and the flat-earth theory are also deliberate denials are the truth.

Your argument that this isn't a free speech issue is false, based on what free-speech doctrine consists of. Free speech isn't just having the belief inside your head, it covers your ability to voice your opinion. Nobody (yet) is able to regulate what you think inside your head. Your contention that you can think whatever you want so long as you don't say or publish it is an inherent violation of free speech rights by definition.

 

[falcodriver]

What exactly is being argued? To say there can be no limits on free speech is unrealistic. If someone yells "bomb" on board an aircraft, is that person within his rights? A society has to set the bounds of what is acceptable. The Supreme Court has reviewed these cases time and time again.

The particular argument here is in reference to some scumbag that has been sentenced to prison for his works. Whether the sentence is to harsh is for another debate, he is quilty of the crime of slander, and of the most disgusting sort. I dare say no one here would defend this maggot and his work. There are cases that warrant the protection of free speech, this is not one of them!

Hacker

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

What exactly is being argued? To say there can be no limits on free speech is unrealistic. If someone yells "bomb" on board an aircraft, is that person within his rights? A society has to set the bounds of what is acceptable. The Supreme Court has reviewed these cases time and time again.

The yelling "bomb" on a plane, or more common yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre example do not show where the limit should be placed on political, scientific or other idea-based speech. It merely recognizes the fact that people via their using their voice can commit criminal offenses or torts. Yelling such things as "bomb" or "fire" in those situations will almost certainly lead to a civil action in torts or criminal prosecution for inciting a riot or some other offense. There is really no need for a free speech doctrine to take these utterances into account because like the idea of a "hate crime" they are already covered by other areas of the law.

The particular argument here is in reference to some scumbag that has been sentenced to prison for his works. Whether the sentence is to harsh is for another debate, he is quilty of the crime of slander, and of the most disgusting sort. I dare say no one here would defend this maggot and his work. There are cases that warrant the protection of free speech, this is not one of them!

Hacker

I won't defend his work but I'll defend his right to publish it. As to slander, I don't think he has committed such an offense. I am sure if he had someone would have sued him for damages already. And as with the "fire/bomb" examples, if his speech rises to the level of slander it is not protected anyway and there is no longer a free speech issue.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Sometimes I think that stupid people -- jackasses -- should be sent to prison. No Holocaust? Off to Leavenworth. No evolution of species? Throw away the key.

 

[falcodriver]

...... someone would have sued him for damages already.

Thanks to his beloved idols, most are dead.

Society has right, a moral imperative to protect those who can not protect themselves, be it the dead or the living. I understand your position, obviously I don't agree in this instance, but finding the balance is never clear cut. ( in this situation, a bit more clear cut to me !)

Hacker

 

[Bebop]

Having those beliefs isn't evil, true, but disseminating them in public and publishing them, thereby publicly calling into doubt the suffering of millions of extermination camp victims and survivors is, I believe, an evil act. As I said before, Irving has not been imprisoned for being a "wrong" thinker. Considering his punishment as an assault on "freedom of speech" is ill-judged.

Let me ask this: Should people that believe Charles Manson was correct in his way of thinking and that the Tate-LaBianca murders never happened and write a book saying so, be imprisoned because it is calling into doubt the suffering of a few people, not millions? What leads you to say someone believing anything, right or wrong, deserves jail time? Is it the fact that it affected millions? Are you comparing his book to yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater? Would it make a difference to you if he was deemed mentaly ill when he wrote the book? I honestly do not understand how what someone screams about publicly could warrant jail time. Denying the Holocaust is like denying that African Americans were ever enslaved in this country. You can't jail everyone that has history incorrect and stands on a soap box to prove it. It is insulting to intelligent people everywhere. All you have to do is visit the death camps. They still smell of death.

 

[jbrown173]

Sending this guy to prison is just as bad as the Nazis sending someone to prison because they were a Communist or a Catholic or a Jew.

I think you have to be more careful with this kind of statement. I agree that a person shouldn't be thrown in jail for what they say or write -- even in the case of a scumbag like Irving who does his best to defile and slander people and even do real harm to society. But the Nazis, of course, did more than simply put people in jail. Jailing Jews just for being Jews was just a first step toward the already articulated campaign of genocide that was to follow. Communists and Catholics were jailed and exterminated largely because they were courageous enough to voice their dissent and so they 'had' to be destroyed. Implying a moral equivalence between that and the jailing of Holocaust deniers is at best not valid.

If your point is simply that Jailing Irving takes Austria closer to the unjust authoritarian strain in its history rather than farther away from it as it presumably intends, then I think that's a good point and I would agree.

I do think that if Irving calls Holocaust historians and/or the surviving families of Holocaust victims liars then they should sue him and his publishing house for slander. That's the only way I can see involving the legal system in such a thing.

 

[Salv]

By definition believing/saying that "The Holocaust never happened" is an opinion. That is just based on what the word opinion means.

I am not sure what you are arguing exactly but you can't argue that what he held wasn't an opinion. And by the way, phrenology and the flat-earth theory are also deliberate denials are the truth.

Your argument that this isn't a free speech issue is false, based on what free-speech doctrine consists of. Free speech isn't just having the belief inside your head, it covers your ability to voice your opinion. Nobody (yet) is able to regulate what you think inside your head. Your contention that you can think whatever you want so long as you don't say or publish it is an inherent violation of free speech rights by definition.

I'm arguing that I don't think Irving truly believed the lies he was peddling. There exists far too much evidence of the Holocaust for an apparently intelligent man like Irving to truly believe it never happened. What I'm arguing is that Irving is a Nazi apologist who deliberately set out to minimise the horrors perpetrated by his heroes by attempting to prove that they didn't actually murder millions of people. I'm arguing that he wasn't voicing an opinion (because I don't think he can have ever truly held that opinion) but rather he was deliberately spreading lies.

What it comes down to is this: if we believe that Irving was sincere in his denial of the Holocaust then we have to accept that he was voicing his true opinion, an opinion to which he is fully entitled; if we believe that he was not sincere, but rather was deliberately lying in his denial of the Holocaust, then he wasn't voicing his true opinion. I can't believe that he was sincere, and so I can't bring myself to defend his right to an opinion that I don't believe he truly held.

Should people that believe Charles Manson was correct in his way of thinking and that the Tate-LaBianca murders never happened and write a book saying so, be imprisoned because it is calling into doubt the suffering of a few people, not millions?

There's a difference, as I said above. I don't think Irving actually believed his own lies.

Todays Guardian has an editorial by David Cesarani - research professor in history at Royal Holloway University in Surrey, and author of Eichmann: His Life and Crimes - arguing the case far more eloquently than I could hope to:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1715176,00.html

This is a particulalry strong paragraph:

Irving has not gone to prison for defending truth. There is not the slightest resemblance between him and the courageous journalists in China, genuine martyrs for free speech, imprisoned for criticising a totalitarian regime. He is no impartial seeker after knowledge. He writes what amounts to propaganda for the neo-Nazi cause. This cannot even be defended as slanted history with a claim on our indulgence. It is an incitement to hatred.

 

[Alan Eardley]

The book in question

I wonder, has anyone posting in this thread actually read David Irving's book?

 

[MudInYerEye]

I wonder, has anyone posting in this thread actually read David Irving's book?

He's written at least thirty. Which one are you referring to?

 

[Alan Eardley]

Irving's publications

The one which is (erroneously) being cited in some of the UK press as the reason for him being banned from Austria and for his imprisonment - "Hitler's War" published in 1977.

 

[Salv]

I wonder, has anyone posting in this thread actually read David Irving's book?

I haven't read the book but, as you say, his books are not the reason for his imprisonment.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

He's just stupid.

 

[falcodriver]

He's just stupid.

If you get "stupid" enough, you need to be removed from society !


Hacker

 

[Marc Chevalier]

He's a jackass. Criminally so.

 

[MudInYerEye]

He's a jackass. Criminally so.

The new Iranian president is gaining on him. What a maroon!

 

[nightandthecity]

Stupidity is not a criminal offence. If it is to become a criminal offence there won?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t be enough free people left to staff the jails.

Salv - whether Irving believed his ideas or not is irrelevant: the issue is his right to express them. However, I don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t doubt that he did believe them. People will believe anything they want to believe, no matter how incredible. You only have to look at the popularity of religion and nationalism to see this.

The only way to effectively combat ideas is by free and open debate. Indeed, it?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s ironic that such debate actually led Irving to abandon his ideas after the Lipstadt case. I doubt if putting him in prison would have had the same effect then, and I doubt if it will make a single holocaust denier change their mind now.

Once you suppress debate any old rubbish can - and does - fester and grow. In this case, for example, a lot of people with little or no knowledge of WW2 history are going to start thinking ?¢‚Ǩ?ìwhat is the Austrian government trying to hide?¢‚Ǩ? while the neo-Nazis strutt about throwing our arguments in favour of free speech and enlightenment values back in our faces.

Make no mistake: Irving has been sentenced for thought crime. This is serious. Once you start sending people to prison for what they think, you have opened the most dangerous door there is in the fragile wall of liberal democracy. There is a natural tendency of states - any state - to want to get rid of annoying ideas and annoying voices, and there?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s no reason to think it will stop at holocaust deniers.

Whilst Irving was in the dock in Austria a perfect mirror image case was being tried in Turkey. Irving?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s crime was denying a genocide. The writer Orhan Pamuk?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s crime was to claim that Turkish forces committed a genocide against millions of Armenians between 1895 and 1915. Irving was wrong, Pamuk was right, but in both cases the real offence was to go against majority opinion and an officially approved view of history. If you are going to imprison the Irvings there is a very good chance you will end up imprisoning the Pamuks.

 

[nightandthecity]

The new Iranian president is gaining on him. What a maroon!

ah yes...stupid presidents.....this could open up a long and entertaining discussion!

Personally I'd sooner lock up a few Presidents than David Irving. They are far more dangerous.

 

[herringbonekid]

night and the city, i still think there is a difference between free speech and mouthing offensive, racist garbage without thought as to the effects on others. if a person doesn't have the sense or decency to keep potentially explosive ideas to themselves then those ideas can be seen as deliberate incitement, and they should have to deal with the consequences, whether that is getting attacked in the street or sent to jail.

also, irving KNEW that holocaust-denial was a sentenceable crime in austria yet he still tried to air his views in that country. he flouted the law and lost.