The retrospective thought police
David Irving is to stand trial for comments he made in the eighties regarding the holocaust. The small matter that Irving has now publicly stated that he was wrong and that he no longer holds the beliefs for which he is being prosecuted is deemed irrelevant. Irving held and articulated beliefs that deviated from the accepted version of history and for that he will be punished.A spokesman from the Austrian Ministry of Justice did not say today:
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”Make no mistake; Irving is a pretty nasty piece of work with some unsavoury opinions and associates. For this he should rightly be criticised. But it is not the job of any state institution, or indeed any state, to hold Irving to account for his views. In a free society, that role falls to the individual to form his own opinion and the media to articulate the facts. State imposed censorship or even its bastard child, self-censorship, do not a sustainable society make.
Imagine our surprise if in a couple years time those nice quiet Iranians who’ve never said anything that deviates from our idyllic view of life start chucking nukes at Israel.
“Oh, I’m sorry Mr Ahmadinejad, we didn’t realise that you were a crazy anti-Semitic holocaust-denier. If we’d known we might have not let you have those nuclear weapons, only it seemed impolite to ask”
Yes it can be a bit uncomfortable and it might even put you off your dinner, but we need to know what other people think. It makes the whole business of trying to get along with one another a lot simpler.
You see, I was always uncomfortable with the idea of denying the Holocaust as a crime. As a scientist, I think any fact should be able to stand up to refutation repeatedly. If (as I, and most Austrians believe it did) the Holocaust did happen, someone saying it didn't shouldn't change that - it should be easily demonstrated that it did, though good taste in satire says I won't suggest how to demonstrate it.
Someone saying 'Kill all Jews' on the other hand, is probably not good form (did David Irving say that?). That's incitement to religious hatred, and, seven years after you start doing it publicly, that gets you locked up, hooks for hands or not. Fundamentally, though, telling people all X deserve to die, where X is the gender, racial, religious, sexual, criminal or trade-unionist group of your choice, doesn't actually kill them. If we're going to allow complete freedom of expression, can people happily publish newspapers with the headline 'Kill all X' as long as they don't actually kill anyone? I'm not sure I'm 100% comfortable with total freedom of expression.
Posted by
Matt |
Mon Feb 20, 05:24:00 pm
I agree with Ben and Matt. It’s dangerous, it’s offensive and its stupid to jail someone for expressing a belief about the past. Particularly, if that doesn't stand up to any form of criticism.
It is also based on a slightly primitive view of history, as if Irving will swing us from holocaust yes, to holocaust no. As if Irish people can't think Cromwell was a prick, if British people think he was lovely.
The point with all of these various and convoluted incitement laws, for me at least, is that they attempt to prevent the kind of discourse that would lead directly to Human Rights being violated. That would lead to violence or discrimination.
Incidentally, the EU was up in arms recently over something very similar. When the Turkish author Orphan Pamuk suggested that the slaying of Armenians by Turkish forces at the turn of the century was genocide he was put on trial for "insulting Turkishness". The EU described the outcome of the trial as a litmus test for Turkish membership, citing freedom of speech. Pamuk was later released without charge.
Posted by
Anonymous |
Wed Feb 22, 11:34:00 am