I haven’t really been following this, but apparently a big trial just concluded in Vienna over a right-wing British historian named David Irving who publicly denied the holocaust, in violation of a 1992 Austrian law which applies to “whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.”
Obviously, I don’t agree with this guy’s agenda of denying the holocaust. But then, neither does three years in prison really seem like an appropriate punishment either. I don’t know enough about him to make any sweeping statements about his philosophy, but based on what this article says, it sounds like he’s being convicted of a thought-crime more than anything else. He’s being punished for going against the grain of the prevailing social history and mythology, which is no different (on a conceptual level) than why Nazis sent people to the concentration camps in the first place. Clearly the spirit of the Austrian government is decidedly different than their Nazi forebears. But in trying to prevent such abuses, they seem to be committing them, albeit on a much smaller scale. Maybe it balances out on a bigger scale though - send one historian to jail, rather than allow anyone to tip the balance away from the status quo, from the current controlling mythology. Certainly seems like a tough call either way - the old question of how do you allow disruptors freedom when that freedom could bring down the house?
- END -
ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
5 Comments
Irving is a delusional nut and thouroughly unpleasant in all ways, but locking him up is just wrong. If anything this will restore his credibility and sway people into believing that he was onto something. It confirms his paranoid conspiracy ramblings about a Jewish overclass persecuting him. Before this he was finished anyway. He owed millions and would never have been able to publish again.
Maybe that’s the point?
http://www.thebirdman.org
If you are granted “freedom” by a source that is fully capable of taking it away, are you truly free?
Minding you that “the Bill of Privileges” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Irving was actually facing ten years on that charge. He got off comparatively lightly. Depending on the non-parole period (if one was set) and his behaviour, he probably won’t even serve three years.
Benway’s right, though, the jail sentence was the worst possible solution to the Irving problem. Persecuting a person for their beliefs only tends to confirm them in them, I’ve always felt, and the last thing the anti-Semites in the historical revisionist movement need is a martyr handed to them on a silver platter.