David Irvine's Sentence - How fair was it ?

[TheBaldyMan]

There is a lot of heat on this topic and the views are very diverse, I wouldn't say that there are sides on this matter, it seems everyone has an opinion of their own on this one. Let's get an idea of where we stand.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. okay... I'll go first...

chickens. :P

I think it was about right.

He went into a country and made a speech he knew would get him busted.

Now, in my humble personal opinion, he should be able to say whatever the hell he wants to (disregarding personal threats) and just be shunned by sane society. But he walked into a country where he knew he would be breaking the law. 3 years for stupidity.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. I agree with you.

I voted the same way you did.

Had he been in the US, then the sentence would have made no sense. However, he knowingly violated the laws of Austria. I also agree that he should be able to say what he wants in regards to the Holocaust, but not if that countries laws say he can't.

[autorank]

3. This would be David Irvine, the holocaust denier...is he still walking

around. If so then the sentence is too mild. I really don't care what happens to him. He's a major league POS IMHO.

[sandnsea]

4. You gotta be kidding me

We're supposed to stand up in indignation over the free press right to draw a monstrous cartoon, despite the slander of religion being outlawed in some of the same countries it was printed in; and support sending someone to prison for 3 years for what he says.

Madness. Just complete global, psychotic snap.

[TheBaldyMan]

6. I have to admit, I voted for a harsher sentence

he re-entered Austria to lecture to groups af neo-nazis, has toured various countries repeating his false account also to neo-nazi groups. His reasons for these activities are claimed to be completely innocent, the neos being the only group willing to give him a fair hearing. But the real effect of his various lecture tours was to promote the statement - there was no Holocaust, it was a myth.

I find this statement equally nauseating when it comes from either a disgraced British historian or the President of Iran. This is not free speech, this is a calculated stirring of racial disquiet. I have changed my view in the last hours because I have found out more about the subject and find that I am less sympathetic to Mr. Irvine the more I find out.

It also strikes me that he has miscalculated the court's response to his case. Yes it was an exemplary sentence but he wants to be made an example of, he actively courted this decision.

[sandnsea]

7. I'm not sympathetic

But I do find the whole thing hypocritical simce Austria printed the cartoons and the Austrian President specifically addressed freedom of the press. Ones the same as the other, religious hate speech.

[TheBaldyMan]

8. to my mind those cartoons were culturally insensitive but not

that objectionable to a westerner, I thought that three of them were excellent cartoons. Caricaturists are usually far more derogatory about western sacred cows. I wouldn't have classified any of them as 'religious hate' cartoons, if anything they poked fun at the bigots who used it as an excuse for religious hate.

[sandnsea]

10. "to a westerner"

Well gee, they weren't directed at westerners now were they. good grief. how utterly juvenile.

[TheBaldyMan]

11. they were printed in Oct 2005 in a Danish newspaper

for western consumption. When I viewed the cartoons I did it through western eyes. I don't even know how they re-emerged in the current furore, personally I love satirical cartoons and thought that three especially were great, all three said more about the people that view them than a whole article in a newspaper could.

There is nothing juvenile about charicature in newspapers, satire sometimes is very dark indeed. In fact, some of the ONLY press criticism of the Bush regime was coming from cartoonists when the rest of the media sat deaf, dumb and blind to the excesses of the current US administration.

The whole history of cartoons dating back to the days of Gilreay and Hogarth is steeped in deeply offensive imagery, it was meant to be offensive and unflattering. Most late 18thC charicature makes todays fare look rather tame.

Newspapers in Arab and other moslem countries regularly carry images that are deeply offensive to Jews and Christians as well as governments. Arab cartoonists have been the target of violence or imprisonment, a few have been assassinated for drawing a picture. Islam is not an exclusively iconoclastic faith and has a visual tradition of its own, including great figurative art and depictions of the prophet himself, there are still churches in Europe that bear the scars of iconoclastic defacement from the reformation. To this day there are sects of Chrisians who have diametrically opposed views on religious imagery. Why should we expect Islam to be monolithic, Christianity never has been.

This whole mess has been orchestrated by all sides, sometimes as a badly judged PR stunt another as a cynical show of opposition to the West, again as a craven sop to an unconvinced Umma. People have died, not because of the imagery but because of ruthless exploitation by power hungry bastards who use it as an excuse.

Like it or not charicature is a Western form of expression with a long history, depiction of religious figures is embedded within Western culture, this is reflected in an awful lot visual imagery including cartoons. My visual lexicon pre-dates Islam, remember most of Christian symbolism is Graeco-Roman in origin, a lot is far more ancient than that.

on edit: OK so I can't spell charicature, so sure me.

[Lexingtonian]

5. I grew up in that part of the world

and that law has damn good reason to it. 'Moral contempt' does not begin to describe what I have for things I've seen and heard and know, I'm no outsider there. Outbreaks I've seen were wretchedly disgusting and a moral travesty. It does horrible things to the heart and soul to even watch. If you don't believe in the idea of desecration, you will after that kind of an experience.

They can probably relax these laws around 2025, when the last of the perpetrators and True Believers is in the ground. And they can repeal it twenty years after that, when the older children of the perps and True Believers, who tend to carry on parents' beliefs as an identity, have joined them in the dust.

Irving deserves the three years. I'm sure he'll get put on a plane to Britain in six months or a year after an adequate charade and bureaucratic go-slow by both governments, though. The Austrians don't care about him in a deep way, they just don't want their own assholes feeling encouraged to act up.

[roguevalley]

9. they have problems there with gangs of idiots that eat this stuff up.

they have decided to smack nazi sympathizers hard to keep the anti-semitic acts down. There is a lot of violence among these people and he deserved to get his stupid head lobbed off. Anyone who denies the holocaust is an asshole. The pres of Iran is too. He's egging on world war three.

[guidod]

12. I voted on the first one...

...I believe in free speech. It may be against the law in Austria but it shouldn't be. I always stand up for free speech.

[TheBaldyMan]

13. kick for the night shift n/t