the friend of my friend is my …
An Austrian court sentenced the 68 year old David Irving to 3 years in prison.
His crime? Holocaust denial.
Funnily enough, I was only peripherally aware of David Irving’s reputation and history as the “darling of far right groups”. My exposure to his work goes back many years; where his books were one of my few free sources on WW2. I particularly liked Irving’s biography of Erhard Milch, one of the galvanizing forces behind the Luftwaffe of the 1930s and early 1940s. If I found the slant of his portrayal slightly alarming, well … I think I dealt with it in the same way that one Amazon reviewer did – “you don’t spend four years researching someone’s life if you don’t respect them and I doubt you can spend four years with someone without ending up liking them” (source)
Accounts of his rationale for pleading guilty to the charge of holocaust denial remain blurry. In a quote attributed in one account to himself and in another to his lawyer, an argument is made that Austrian law does not leave David Irving a choice other than pleading guilty. He is also quoted as saying that he no longer holds the view that the holocaust didn’t happen – but he only changed his mind after finding papers written by Adolf Eichmann.
How similar (and yet unlike) the infamous cartoons that led to burning of flags, embassies and fake advertisements about apologies. The moment Irving was discovered in Austria, he was arrested and tried for comments made in 1989 – even if those comments were odious to the extreme. Should the editors/journalists of the Jyllands Posten expect different if they find themselves in some random Middle Eastern country? Even a decade or so from now ? If not, why not ?
Damn. I was going to type out this long rant about being able to learn something from people with otherwise odious views … be capable of being entertained by people who might have suspect motivations behind their works of fiction… but it ended up being yet another comparison between free speech as applied in Europe and elsewhere.
As I’ve quoted elsewhere (and had quoted to me in turn), freedom of speech does not imply your speech is free from consequences.
On 21-Feb-06 at 4:23 am,
elric wrote:
The Irving case is interesting in comparison to the Cartoon issue. Aside from what I mentioned in my post on the issue, the single biggest factor here is the law of the land. You don’t have churches in Saudia Arabia, you don’t deny the Holocaust in Austria, while in America you can books on the same issue off Amazon.
Ain’t it great to live in a culturally diverse world? There’s nothing like knowing people have the freedom to be complete arseholes to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
Edit: fixed link
On 21-Feb-06 at 4:24 am,
elric wrote:
p.s. apologies for the messed up link tag in the comment
On 29-Nov-07 at 7:40 pm,
The Lair / the things you can’t say wrote:
[...] (or not) is better than its suppression. For practical examples, see here or here. Yes, I do read David Irving. I think his Holocaust denial is stupid, but even slanted views are better than no views at [...]