il ragno
02-27-2006, 11:53 PM
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060221.shtml
Irving Loses Again
A few years ago I had lunch with David Irving, now sentenced to three years in an Austrian prison for the crime of what in this country is called exercising free speech. Wouldn’t you know it, the Holocaust came up. He joked that in America, Holocaust memorials were sprouting up “like McDonald’s.” He added seriously, “I’m not a Holocaust denier. I’m a Holocaust skeptic.”
I’ve seen Irving several times since then, twice speaking at conferences he’d arranged, and never heard him say anything close to “Holocaust denial,” the crime he has pled guilty to. The plea spared him a full ten-year sentence.
It has become routine to refer to him as “Holocaust denier David Irving,” but nobody ever seems to quote him actually uttering a thought crime. In court the other day he confessed the “mistake” of saying “there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,” but added, “In no way did I deny the killings of millions of people by the Nazis.”
And what if he really had denied it? Ten years in prison for an opinion? His lawyer called the proceedings “a message trial.” Actually, of course, it was a blasphemy trial.
The rationale, such as it is, for the Holocaust-denial laws of Austria (and several other countries) is that if people are allowed to deny that it happened, it may happen again. By this logic, the Holocaust is most likely to recur in the United States, since we have no such laws here. Freedom of speech could lead to a second Holocaust! Thomas Jefferson has a lot to answer for.
Does that sound just a wee bit hysterical? It reminds me of the incredible uproar over Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, which, we were assured (in advance, by people who hadn’t seen it), would cause hatred of Jews and even “violence” against them.
Now that was a pretty clear test case of this peculiar theory of historical causation. And the result? Though the movie was a huge hit, it resulted in not a single incident of violence against anyone. Even one such incident would have made headlines. “See what we told you?”
But when no pogroms occurred, nobody expressed surprise, relief, or the disappointment a prophet of doom experiences when things turn out all right. Mel Gibson made a lot of money, Abe Foxman made a lot of money, nobody got hurt. You’d think everyone would be contented with the outcome.
Even the people who predicted violence didn’t really believe it, of course. Nobody in his right mind expected violence. We are so used to prophecies of violence against minorities, especially Jews, that we don’t bother keeping track of them, any more than we keep track of astrologers’ predictions. In the real world, things don’t happen that way. Predicting another Holocaust is like predicting another Reichstag fire.
Deep down, we know this sort of talk is usually absurd. But we also know that it can be risky to say so. So we let the blowhards blow. That’s how they exercise their freedom of speech.
Nobody says, or thinks, that what Irving may have said in Austria in 1989 — the site and date of his alleged “crime” — caused any violence to occur. Some rabble-rouser. He may have expressed his skepticism with rude bluntness (that would be just like him), but that wouldn’t even have tended to inspire harm. It may have inspired more skepticism, but why is that a crime?
Because to some people, on some subjects, skepticism is blasphemy, and the Holocaust is one of those subjects. Austria’s law is aimed at “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.”
Whew! That gives the prosecutor a lot of discretion, and the whole premise of the law — that expressing an opinion of a calamity can cause the same calamity to recur under entirely different conditions — is screwy.
No doubt Irving’s lawyer advised him to cut a deal in exchange for a show of contrition. He avoided ten years in the slammer, but from now on he will be, in the media, not just a “Holocaust denier,” but a “convicted” Holocaust denier or “confessed” Holocaust denier. Not much hope of “reformed,” “repentant,” or “recovering” Holocaust denier, I suppose.
Meanwhile, the Holocaust Prevention Confederation can claim another triumph. Over freedom of speech.
[I]Joseph Sobran
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060223.shtml
The Irving Danger
Now that an Austrian court has convicted the historian David Irving of Holocaust denial, lots of people are rushing to his defense, sort of. Most of them are taking the position that however odious, detestable, repugnant, abhorrent, repulsive, indefensible, dishonest, and, er, anti-Semitic he is, putting him in prison is the wrong way to deal with him.
After all, Irving could have been effectively ruined and bankrupted by other means, such as calumny. Now he has been made a “free speech martyr.”
Once a man has been convicted, or even accused, of the ultimate crime of opinion, then no matter how many highly acclaimed books he has written, on whatever subjects, his entire life’s work should go down the Memory Hole, and no decent person should pay attention to anything he has ever said. Nothing he says after transgressing against an essential article of the Official Absolute Truth could possibly be of interest anyway.
So far, only Christopher Hitchens, who has himself been accused of Holocaust denial, has pointed out that Irving has never actually denied the Holocaust. But who cares? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Irving has blasphemed against other sacred topics too. He has written three volumes on Winston Churchill, taking a caustic view of that legend. His scathing biography of Joseph Goebbels was quashed on the eve of its scheduled publication by its own publisher under intense pressure.
The historian Richard J. Evans, who testified against Irving in his famous libel trial against Deborah Lipstadt, has written a book, Lying about Hitler, arguing that Irving has grossly distorted, even lied about, the evidence. But Evans admits that the Holocaust (a term he is uneasy with) has been abused, distorted, and exploited on the other side too, as Norman Finkelstein has charged in his book The Holocaust Industry. Nothing Evans says proves that even on the most severe view, Irving deserves to be called “dangerous,” as Lipstadt has called him. Lipstadt herself now expresses qualms about jailing Irving for his opinions.
“Dangerous” to whom or what? Lipstadt has argued that when the last Holocaust survivors are gone, nobody will be left to testify that it really happened. But you might as well argue that when the last eyewitnesses of World War II are gone, the world may doubt that it ever occurred. How can a trained historian speak such nonsense?
It’s not as if Irving, or anyone else, will ever have the last word on events of that war, or any war. What is called “historical revisionism” is the normal practice of the historian, as new data come to light, old views meet challenges, and new perspectives emerge, themselves having to face controversy. Evans’s rebuttal of Irving is a good example.
Is it really necessary to quote Milton, Jefferson, and Mill again on freedom of speech? Let truth and falsehood grapple, and all that. Even the cynic may agree that in the long run, the smart money is on the truth.
The real question is why Irving’s enemies think the truth needs a handicap — the threat of prison — in order to prevail. Do the Austrian authorities really and truly believe in the Holocaust themselves, or are they just trying to get the Hitler monkey off their own backs and onto Irving’s instead?
In Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four Winston Smith is tortured until he is willing to betray his lover. As rats are set on him to chew his face, he screams, “Do it to Julia! Not me!”
Having been blackmailed with the posthumous Hitler menace for generations, the Austrians and other Europeans are, in effect, “doing it to Julia.” David Irving just happens to be the thought criminal to whom the buck can be passed; he is of course no danger to anyone, and everyone knows it — even those who pretend he is “dangerous.” But he is being punished as if he had incited riots.
Nobody goes to prison for writing wholly fabricated memoirs of the Holocaust. No law against that; it isn’t a “hate crime.” It can even be lucrative! Finkelstein, whose parents were in Buchenwald, hardly overstates the case when he speaks of “the Holocaust industry.”
On the other hand, not a single Holocaust movie has been nominated for an Academy Award this year. Is Hollywood ignoring the danger? And if so, is that David Irving’s fault?
Joseph Sobran
Irving Loses Again
A few years ago I had lunch with David Irving, now sentenced to three years in an Austrian prison for the crime of what in this country is called exercising free speech. Wouldn’t you know it, the Holocaust came up. He joked that in America, Holocaust memorials were sprouting up “like McDonald’s.” He added seriously, “I’m not a Holocaust denier. I’m a Holocaust skeptic.”
I’ve seen Irving several times since then, twice speaking at conferences he’d arranged, and never heard him say anything close to “Holocaust denial,” the crime he has pled guilty to. The plea spared him a full ten-year sentence.
It has become routine to refer to him as “Holocaust denier David Irving,” but nobody ever seems to quote him actually uttering a thought crime. In court the other day he confessed the “mistake” of saying “there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz,” but added, “In no way did I deny the killings of millions of people by the Nazis.”
And what if he really had denied it? Ten years in prison for an opinion? His lawyer called the proceedings “a message trial.” Actually, of course, it was a blasphemy trial.
The rationale, such as it is, for the Holocaust-denial laws of Austria (and several other countries) is that if people are allowed to deny that it happened, it may happen again. By this logic, the Holocaust is most likely to recur in the United States, since we have no such laws here. Freedom of speech could lead to a second Holocaust! Thomas Jefferson has a lot to answer for.
Does that sound just a wee bit hysterical? It reminds me of the incredible uproar over Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, which, we were assured (in advance, by people who hadn’t seen it), would cause hatred of Jews and even “violence” against them.
Now that was a pretty clear test case of this peculiar theory of historical causation. And the result? Though the movie was a huge hit, it resulted in not a single incident of violence against anyone. Even one such incident would have made headlines. “See what we told you?”
But when no pogroms occurred, nobody expressed surprise, relief, or the disappointment a prophet of doom experiences when things turn out all right. Mel Gibson made a lot of money, Abe Foxman made a lot of money, nobody got hurt. You’d think everyone would be contented with the outcome.
Even the people who predicted violence didn’t really believe it, of course. Nobody in his right mind expected violence. We are so used to prophecies of violence against minorities, especially Jews, that we don’t bother keeping track of them, any more than we keep track of astrologers’ predictions. In the real world, things don’t happen that way. Predicting another Holocaust is like predicting another Reichstag fire.
Deep down, we know this sort of talk is usually absurd. But we also know that it can be risky to say so. So we let the blowhards blow. That’s how they exercise their freedom of speech.
Nobody says, or thinks, that what Irving may have said in Austria in 1989 — the site and date of his alleged “crime” — caused any violence to occur. Some rabble-rouser. He may have expressed his skepticism with rude bluntness (that would be just like him), but that wouldn’t even have tended to inspire harm. It may have inspired more skepticism, but why is that a crime?
Because to some people, on some subjects, skepticism is blasphemy, and the Holocaust is one of those subjects. Austria’s law is aimed at “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.”
Whew! That gives the prosecutor a lot of discretion, and the whole premise of the law — that expressing an opinion of a calamity can cause the same calamity to recur under entirely different conditions — is screwy.
No doubt Irving’s lawyer advised him to cut a deal in exchange for a show of contrition. He avoided ten years in the slammer, but from now on he will be, in the media, not just a “Holocaust denier,” but a “convicted” Holocaust denier or “confessed” Holocaust denier. Not much hope of “reformed,” “repentant,” or “recovering” Holocaust denier, I suppose.
Meanwhile, the Holocaust Prevention Confederation can claim another triumph. Over freedom of speech.
[I]Joseph Sobran
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2006/060223.shtml
The Irving Danger
Now that an Austrian court has convicted the historian David Irving of Holocaust denial, lots of people are rushing to his defense, sort of. Most of them are taking the position that however odious, detestable, repugnant, abhorrent, repulsive, indefensible, dishonest, and, er, anti-Semitic he is, putting him in prison is the wrong way to deal with him.
After all, Irving could have been effectively ruined and bankrupted by other means, such as calumny. Now he has been made a “free speech martyr.”
Once a man has been convicted, or even accused, of the ultimate crime of opinion, then no matter how many highly acclaimed books he has written, on whatever subjects, his entire life’s work should go down the Memory Hole, and no decent person should pay attention to anything he has ever said. Nothing he says after transgressing against an essential article of the Official Absolute Truth could possibly be of interest anyway.
So far, only Christopher Hitchens, who has himself been accused of Holocaust denial, has pointed out that Irving has never actually denied the Holocaust. But who cares? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Irving has blasphemed against other sacred topics too. He has written three volumes on Winston Churchill, taking a caustic view of that legend. His scathing biography of Joseph Goebbels was quashed on the eve of its scheduled publication by its own publisher under intense pressure.
The historian Richard J. Evans, who testified against Irving in his famous libel trial against Deborah Lipstadt, has written a book, Lying about Hitler, arguing that Irving has grossly distorted, even lied about, the evidence. But Evans admits that the Holocaust (a term he is uneasy with) has been abused, distorted, and exploited on the other side too, as Norman Finkelstein has charged in his book The Holocaust Industry. Nothing Evans says proves that even on the most severe view, Irving deserves to be called “dangerous,” as Lipstadt has called him. Lipstadt herself now expresses qualms about jailing Irving for his opinions.
“Dangerous” to whom or what? Lipstadt has argued that when the last Holocaust survivors are gone, nobody will be left to testify that it really happened. But you might as well argue that when the last eyewitnesses of World War II are gone, the world may doubt that it ever occurred. How can a trained historian speak such nonsense?
It’s not as if Irving, or anyone else, will ever have the last word on events of that war, or any war. What is called “historical revisionism” is the normal practice of the historian, as new data come to light, old views meet challenges, and new perspectives emerge, themselves having to face controversy. Evans’s rebuttal of Irving is a good example.
Is it really necessary to quote Milton, Jefferson, and Mill again on freedom of speech? Let truth and falsehood grapple, and all that. Even the cynic may agree that in the long run, the smart money is on the truth.
The real question is why Irving’s enemies think the truth needs a handicap — the threat of prison — in order to prevail. Do the Austrian authorities really and truly believe in the Holocaust themselves, or are they just trying to get the Hitler monkey off their own backs and onto Irving’s instead?
In Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four Winston Smith is tortured until he is willing to betray his lover. As rats are set on him to chew his face, he screams, “Do it to Julia! Not me!”
Having been blackmailed with the posthumous Hitler menace for generations, the Austrians and other Europeans are, in effect, “doing it to Julia.” David Irving just happens to be the thought criminal to whom the buck can be passed; he is of course no danger to anyone, and everyone knows it — even those who pretend he is “dangerous.” But he is being punished as if he had incited riots.
Nobody goes to prison for writing wholly fabricated memoirs of the Holocaust. No law against that; it isn’t a “hate crime.” It can even be lucrative! Finkelstein, whose parents were in Buchenwald, hardly overstates the case when he speaks of “the Holocaust industry.”
On the other hand, not a single Holocaust movie has been nominated for an Academy Award this year. Is Hollywood ignoring the danger? And if so, is that David Irving’s fault?
Joseph Sobran