3 YEARS FOR DAVID ERVING FOR DENYING THE (HOLOCAUST)

[screembloodymurder]

This is going to serve as a precedent for jailing those who do not accept the governments position on 911. Mark my words. Those who do not accept the history will be rounded up and jailed.

[NYCGirl]

1. Huh? Did we suddenly become Austria?

You do realize that Erving was sentenced because of a law in Austria, right?

[Demoiselle]

12. Austria went hand in hand with Germany during the Nazi era...

I believe that that is the reason for the law...which is an attempt to shut down any neo-Nazi movements before they gather steam. I think that Germany (former West or East or both) has a similar law. I agree that it's unfortunate to set up such censorship in a free country...but man, these guys have history and probably enough angry thugs in their population to justify such a law, eom. Neo Nazis are showing their ugly mugs all over Europe...small numbers to be sure, but already enflamed by Muslim populations (slight irony there, huh) and, of course, there has been synagogue desecration and threats against Jews--an anti semitic murder in Paris recently. I don't think this specific case means anything for our country.

[enigma000]

2. Austria can't set a precedent for US law n/t

[screembloodymurder]

15. Laws can be proposed and passed.

I'm not making a prediction. I've heard people say that certain 911 groups should be arrested, convicted and placed in camps.
The closer these groups get to the truth the the more likely they will be silenced. The idea that you can be jailed for questioning history is extremely dangerous. We all know that those who win write the history. When your history consists of nothing but lies you cannot let others expose those lies.

[NYCGirl]

16. But the Austrian law is exactly the opposite. (And I don't think it's a

good law, BTW.) In Austria, they try those who LIE about the true history.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. You *are* making a prediction

"This is going to serve as a precedent for jailing those who do not accept the governments position on 911. Mark my words. Those who do not accept the history will be rounded up and jailed."

If that;'s not a prediction, then what is?

[screembloodymurder]

25. It's an observation.

I'm already seeing the other side use this justification to try to silence critics.

[screembloodymurder]

17. I'm not saying it's a legal precedent.

It's the introduction and acceptance of the idea that is dangerous to Democracy everywhere. The idea that history, once written, cannot be challenged is a direct attack on free thinking and speech.

[enigma000]

23. But we censor thinking and speech all the time

Think of the ex-President of Harvard who made an off the cuff remark on how women may not be as suited to some subjects as men - now he's out of a job. How many American news outlets have shown those cartoons yet? You can't say anything good about Bush on this site and stay long. A cabinet member made a comment about how black migration after Katrina might have a beneficial economic effect for these people (moving from poor New Orleans to wealthier states) - he was criticized.

and if you even suggest Tom Cruise may still be sane, you defiantly are ostrosized...........

I guess its not censorship, just low-grade punishment.

As for 9-11 conspiracies, there are still Pearl Harbour conspiracies. Its just that in the middle of WWII, it may not have been a wise move to express those type of opinions........

[screembloodymurder]

26. Is he in jail?

I don't think so.

[Egalitariat]

40. I thought the Supremes were looking to int'l law for precedent now...

Wasn't there a recent debate about whether the Supreme Court should look to int'l law for precedent?

[SmokingJacket]

3. Can a decision by a foreign government be used as a precedent?

I'm more worried about what our own government is doing, rather than what Austria is doing.

[danalytical]

7. actually

that question is constantly asked in the context of the judicial branch. It was used as an issue in the 2004 elections. Repugs claim that their "strict constructionists" do not accept international or foreign laws as precedent, while claiming "liberal" judges do. It's debateable.

I think this was a bad decision for Austria. Hate speech is not desireable, and even in some cases dangerous. But putting people in prison for YEARS for thought/speech crimes??? No sir, I don't like where that's headed.

[SmokingJacket]

9. I'm not a big fan of their decision, either.

However, I don't think what they do will have any bearing at all on our laws.

International law is very different from the laws of particular foreign countries.

[MadHound]

4. While I have no love, or even liking, for Holocaust deniers

Jailing a man for simply speaking his mind is beyond the pale. Debate the man in public, make him look the fool, but don't jail him for what he thinks.

And you're right, this could be coming to a country near us in short order.

[Taxloss]

5. Are you serious?

For a start, it's Irving, not Erving. Second, he was jailed in Austria, not the USA. Third, this case has no effect on US law. Fourth, are you suggesting that he might have been right to deny the Holocaust? Fifth, are you equating an terrorist attack on the USA with the Holocaust? And sixth, :crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:?

[Hamlette]

13. thanks taxloss for trying to set things straight here

holocaust denial, of whom Irving is a leader, is about how fringe groups distort history to make a politic point. When Debra Lipstadt said, in her book Denying the Holocaust, that Irving was wrong in his attempts to say it never happened, Irving sued her for slander in England. Although he lost the suit, it cost Lipstadt and her publisher tons of time and money to defend against this guy.

It is a crime in several countries to deny the holocaust (Canada is one...there was a suit up there...see the docomentary movie Mr. Death which mentions it) because it is a skin head deal and ends up being antisemetic, as it is in the ME right now.

There are tons of books about this, including one on the Lipstadt/Irving trial called History on Trial. To equate this to evolution or other free speech shows a dreadful lack of information. Read up on this issue, you might change your mind.

[Taxloss]

21. I read Lipstadt's book, and followed that case with interest,

I think that case (the Lipstadt case) was a good example of how to police free speech.

[Leopolds Ghost]

30. Speech is either Free or not Free. We WILL NOT police speech like EU does

BZZZT! Thanks for playing!

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. Then it's not free

because of libel laws, etc. If you insist in absolutes, then the USA does not have free speech.

[Taxloss]

39. So the outing of Valerie Plame was entirely legal?

Surely that's free speech.

Ooops! Extra time.

[Marie26]

14. Well done! nt

[screembloodymurder]

19. First, I don't care if it's Joe Blow.

Second, I didn't call it legal precedent. Third, laws can be changed just ask Bush. Fourth, no, but I defend his right to say whatever he thinks. Fifth, I'm saying this idea that history, once written, cannot be challenged is applicable to any event at any time. The sentence is absurd.

[Taxloss]

24. Do you have any idea how big a political issue the Holocaust is

in Austria? It was only 60 years ago, and the entire country was directly implicated. The ultra-right is itching to make a resurgence in Austria, as the success of Jorg Haider shows. Holocaust denial simply cannot be permitted to take root in Austrian civil society.

Now, to compare that state of affairs with a handful of conspiracy theorists who think that Bush blew up the WTC is utterly absurd. You have no idea what you are comparing here - this isn't apples and oranges, it's apples and bicycles.

[Leopolds Ghost]

31. Permitted by whom? Folks'd say the same thing if 911 theorists were a huge

Part of the US population.

[Leopolds Ghost]

33. To be clear, you can't "not permit" pernicious ideas. You must challenge

them openly in public.

That's not possible if you drive them underground. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If Neo-Nazis are such a huge part of the population then what you're really saying is they have the right to turn the same laws against you if and when they are democratically elected (like the terrorists Hamas in Palestine).

Europeans can't have it both ways. They set a piss-poor example on free speech, as the Danish cartoon issue shows.

[Taxloss]

41. I would recommend the Deborah Lipstadt book mentioned above.

And criticising European standards of free speech is all very well if you acknowledge the abysmal record that the USA has on the same score. By all means pour scorn, but you're throwing stones in a glass house of your own. The country that established the Hayes Code has no right to lecture others on free speech. The country of McCarthyism has no right to lecture others on free speech. In America, you can get all the free speech that you can afford to pay for.

[Hamlette]

38. are you saying "history" doesn't change?

history is completely interpretive and changes with the times.

The problem with holocaust deniers is their motive. There is no reason to deny the holocaust except to rehabilitiate Nazism and rekindle anti semitism.

[Harald Ragnarsson]

43. Let's address this strawman first, shall we?

This author never denied the Holocaust happened. In my understanding, he made claims as to the number of dead and that in his opinion mass gassing in "gas chambers" had not taken place. To me this is a much different question that saying "no Jews died in camps in WWII" which to me WOULD be Holocaust Denial and I don't read anyone saying that anywhere, even this 68 year old guy going to jail in Austria.

It's not "you can't deny the Holocaust happened" that's being said, it's "you can't question any aspect of the story known as the Holocaust" and that is not right. It becomes almost a new religion at that point, with doctrine and punishment for heresy.

And yes, there are many that call for laws like this to be put in place in this country and of course I say that should never happen.

[muriel_volestrangler]

47. The legal verdict in the UK is that he was a holocaust denier

The mistake presaged Justice Gray’s verdict. Ruling for Lipstadt and her publishers, the justice argued that it was “incontrovertible that Irving qualifies as a Holocaust denier.” He described Irving as an “anti-Semite,” explaining that “(Irving’s) words are directed against Jews, either individually or collectively, in the sense that they are by turns hostile, critical, offensive and derisory in their references to Semitic people, their characteristics and appearances.” He also noted that Irving had associated with the extreme right-wing National Alliance, saying, “In my view Irving cannot fail to have become aware that the National Alliance is a neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic organization. The regularity of Irving’s contacts with the National Alliance and its officers confirms Irving’s sympathetic attitude towards an organization whose tenets would be abhorrent to most people.” Finally and most importantly, Justice Gray ruled conclusively on Irving’s historical methods, stating:

I have found that in numerous respects, Irving has misstated historical evidence; adopted positions which run counter to the weight of the evidence; given credence to unreliable evidence and disregarded or dismissed credible evidence.…In my opinion there is a force in the opinion expressed by Evans that all Irving’s historiographical “errors” converge, in the sense that they all tend to exonerate Hitler or to reflect Irving’s partisanship for the Nazi leaders. If indeed they were genuine errors or mistakes, one would not expect to find this consistency….Mistakes and misconceptions such as these appear to be by their nature unlikely to have been innocent. They are more consistent with a willingness on Irving’s part to knowingly misrepresent or manipulate or put a “spin” on the evidence so as to make it conform with his own preconceptions.

http://www.adl.org/holocaust/irving.asp

And here's a quote from Irving (from the same source):

Ridicule alone isn’t enough, you’ve got to be tasteless about it. You’ve got to say things like “More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.” Now you think that’s tasteless, what about this? I’m forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try and kid people that they were in these concentration camps, it’s called the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and other liars, A-S-S-H-O-L-E-S. Can’t get more tasteless than that, but you’ve got to be tasteless because these people deserve our contempt.

No, it's not "you can't question any aspect".

The Austrian law subjects to prosecution anyone who "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."

http://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=176438

[Harald Ragnarsson]

49. Well, the newspaper reports of his trial in Austria

said he was convicted of giving speeches in Austria YEARS AGO, in which he said the 6 million number was too high and the showers things were not used as gas chambers.

If Britian now wants to have their turn with him for his "hate speech" then it should make you wonder what it is he is saying that someone finds so dangerous.

For me the idea you might hear or read this mans thoughts and suddenly find yourself going out and burning synagogs and killing Jews is kind of preposterous and I don't need to be "protected", thanks. I'm sure it's done with the best intentions and all, but no thanks anyway.

[Hamlette]

50. actually, Irving IS a Holocaust denier, as that term is defined.

and that was the whole point of the trial against Lipstadt. Lipstadt called him a Holocaust denier in her book. He sued her for libel in England where SHE has the burden of proof. The judge found that Lipstadt proved he is a Holocaust denier.

The authority on Irving and his Holocaust denial is Richard Evans who wrote a book about the trial (I've not read it but I read Lipstadt's book on the trial). Evans teaches modern history at Cambridge. His report concludes:

A close examination of Irving's speeches and writings since the late 1980s indicates that there is no doubt at all that he has become a Holocaust denier. He clearly holds all four central beliefs of the deniers as defined above.

snip

Irving continues to assert, as he had already done prior to 1988, that the Nazi state had no concerted policy of exterminating Europe's Jews; all the Nazi leadership, Hitler at its head, wished to do was to deport them to Eastern Europe. He alleges that the Holocaust is a myth invented by Allied propaganda during the war and sustained since then by Jews who wish to use it to gain political and financial support for the state of Israel or even for themselves.

The full report prepared by Evans for the trial can be found here: http://www.hdot.org/nsindex.html

As to Jews dying in camps in WWII I think Irving would deny it, or say that it happened as a result of disease or allied bombing.

Outlawing Holocaust denial is a problem. The problem is, as in the last sentance quoted above, is the political nature of Holocaust denial. Does it cross the line into the arena of crying fire in a croweded theater? It has in those countries where it was made a crime.

[BlueEyedSon]

6. How about jail time for evolution-deniers....?

[danalytical]

8. LOL

I kinda like that. ;)

[screembloodymurder]

22. How about jail time for those that don't believe Christ

died on the cross and arose.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

10. Again?

What was wrong with the twelve other identical threads on this subject?

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

11. Aside From The Statistics, You're Partially Correct....

Well, apart from the fact 6 MILLION people were killed in the Holocaust, and it was executed by an entire specific Country, who had a leader bent on world domination. Whereas 9/11 resulted in less than 3,000(I'm not minimizing) deaths, and was not confined to one ethnic/religious group, nor was a specific country directly involved.

But I see our free speech rights affected in many ways, although this guy is a bit beyond help. This sentence serves him right.

[HERVEPA]

20. 6,000,000 Jews, 11,000,000 people ...

total are the generally used numbers.

To compare the Holocaust Denial laws in Germany and Austria to what is happening in U.S makes absolutely no sense, regardless of whether you think the Holocaust Denial laws are wrong.

A little historical perspective, please.

(A visit to the Holocaust Museum in DC might help).

[screembloodymurder]

27. How about this perspective?

Given their disastrous history of being too lenient with fringe political ideologues, it is perhaps understandable that countries such as Germany and Austria have sought to crack down on rabble-rousers whose "hate speech" can and has led to violence and pogroms. In some cases, the slippery slope has only a few paces between calling the Holocaust a "Zionist lie" and the neo-Nazi desecration of Jewish property.

And as we have witnessed repeatedly, Europeans have a different history and culture of free speech than we do in this country. In Germany, for example, the "Auschwitz lie" law makes it a crime to "defame the memory of the dead." In Britain, libel law requires the defendant to prove that he or she did not libel the plaintiff - unlike U.S. law, which puts the onus on the plaintiff - and the British recently debated the merits of banning religious hate speech. In France, it is illegal to challenge the existence of the "crimes against humanity" as they were defined by the military tribunal at Nuremberg; another law, on the books until just a few weeks ago, required that France's colonial history (which was not always "humane") had to be taught in a "positive" light.

Freedom is a principle that must be applied indiscriminately. We have to defend Irving in order to defend ourselves. Once the laws are in place to jail dissidents of Holocaust history, what's to stop such laws from being applied to dissenters of religious or political histories, or to skepticism of any sort that deviates from the accepted canon?

No one should be required to facilitate the expression of Holocaust denial, but neither should there be what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called the "silence coerced by law - the argument of force in its worst form."

The point was poignantly made in Robert Bolt's play, "A Man for All Seasons," in which William Roper and Sir Thomas More debate the relative balance between evil and freedom:

Roper: So now you'd give the devil benefit of law.

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?

Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that.

More: Oh? And when the law was down - and the devil turned round on you - where would you hide? Yes, I'd give the devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

[Avalux]

28. Sorry - the analogy doesn't work.

Austrians have every right to jail this asshole, who knew if he went back there he'd be arrested. He thought it might be fun to stir things up (that's what his girlfriend said on NPR).

We did not live during those times and cannot possibly imagine what the Austrians went through with Hitler in their midst - and then there's the millions of people he killed.

Has nothing to do with forcing someone to accept history; has everything to do with insulting a country who lived through hell and remembers history.

On 9th March 1938, the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg announced a plebiscite on the independence of Austria.

Adolf Hitler took this as an opportunity to take action against the Austrian State. Schuschnigg was pressed to resign. The National Socialist Arthur Seyss-Inquart took over the chancellorship and formed a new government. The Austrian National Socialists took power in Austria.

On the morning of 12th March 1938, troops of the German Wehrmacht and the SS crossed the German-Austrian border. On 13th March 1938, Hitler announced in Linz the legislation on the “Anschluss” (Annexation) of Austria into the German Reich.

During the great celebrations in all of Austria, many potential opponents of the regime were arrested, as well as the Jews who were expropriated and deprived of civil rights. National Socialist rule was established now in Austria through propaganda, terror and enticements.

http://www.linz.at/archiv/nationalsoz/ekapitel3.html

[Ovett]

34. So insulting a country is a jailable offense?

Wow, I think this is a scary precedent to accept. I think some might argue there is insulting of this country all the time, and it's protected by free speech.

[Avalux]

36. They have a law, he knew the law.

We can simplify it to that if you like. I tried to explain my point.

[Harald Ragnarsson]

44. Hitler was an Austrian n/t

[The Magistrate]

29. Excellent News, Sir

The wretch deserves every day of it, and then some. He knew the laws in Austria, and their purpose, before he went there and ran his pestilential mouth....

[RDU Socialist]

32. Guess why this is absolute nonsense?

Unlike countries in the Europian Union, the Constitution doesn't provide statutes allowing for reduction of civil liberties such as believing and discussing conspiracy theories like MIHOP and horrific idiocy like Holocaust Revisionism/Denial without a Constitutional Amendment to do so. The belief that holocaust denial and 9/11 denial could be made illegal is absolutely nonsensical because of the explicit nature of the first amendment's guaranteeing of freedom of speech.

[xultar]

35. I can't wait to start lockin up White folks who Deny the millions of Black

folk killed during slavery.

YEAH HOO!

LOCK'em UP!

Then we can start locking up the white folk who put the Japanese in Dention Camps!!!!!

YEAH HOO!!

[WinkyDink]

42. The Holocaust was proven even by the Nazis' own cameras and records.

To compare this to the conspiracy theories of 9/11 is specious reasoning.

Not that Bushco doesn't want to round us up, however.

[supernova]

45. How do you equate Holocaust denial with 9/11?

That frankly doesn't make sense.

[spanone]

46. Even though I think he's crazy, Can you NOT have an opinion???

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

48. THIS is what Herr Irving is denying - photos

This isn't about "free speech", or history, it's about a criminal trying to reshape history to make it palatable and "understandable" to people who either participated in, or were victimized by, genocide.