In the case of British Holocaust denier David Irving—”sentenced to three years in prison Monday after admitting to an Austrian court that he denied the Holocaust”– neo-neocon comes down on the side of free speech, though not without a bit of honest soul-searching:
The controversy over yesterday’s David Irving conviction, and the more general question of whether Holocaust denial should be a criminal offense, seem on the surface to be no-brainers, easily resolvable by saying that the principle of free speech dictates that Irving should be given a get out of jail free card, and that the crime itself be wiped off the books.
That’s my knee-jerk answer, and the answer of most of those who wrote in the comments section here.
But, as with almost everything on earth, the actual situation is a bit more complicated than that. First, a little background.
When I started doing the research for this post, I was surprised to find that Holocaust Denial is not a crime in just Germany and Austria, as I’d previously thought. Ten European countries, plus Israel, have established criminal penalties for it:
There are laws against public espousal of Holocaust denial in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland.
The first thing I noticed is that Holocaust Denial itself is not a crime; it’s the public pronouncement of it that is penalized. The speech itself is allowed; what is not allowed is to say it publicly in front of groups–that is, to preach it. It may seem a small distinction, but it’s an interesting one.
The second thing I noticed was that, with the exception of Switzerland (and of course Israel, which represents an obvious special case), the countries involved have characteristics that Great Britain, the US, and Canada do not share: their experience of Nazism or of Nazi occupation in WWII.
To Germans and Austrians the danger of public promulgation of Holocaust denial may indeed (especially when the laws were first passed) have seemed like the danger of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Likewise—although to a lesser extent—to countries such as Poland, who have reason to know the Holocaust in a way that countries such as Britain and the US never can, Holocaust denial may seem a particular affront and a special danger. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound;” and so it is much easier for countries who have not experienced such a cataclysmic upheaval to be absolutist about protecting freedom of speech.
[…]
Holocaust denial, seen in this light, is a continuation of Nazi thought, and was in fact part of the Nazi plan–and, if allowed to grow and spread, might represent their final triumph. And so (to continue to use the fire metaphor) the who espouse criminalizing it want to snuff it out while it’s still a harmless little brush fire. Because they know that brush fires can grow into–well, into Holocausts.
The Anglosphere has no direct experience of that, fortunately for us. And it has a stronger tradition of freedom of speech.
My personal opinion on Holocaust denial is aligned with that tradition: I believe that it should not be criminalized. I believe it shouldn’t be a crime in the Anglosphere, nor should it (at this late date) be one in Europe.
But I also see Guttenplan’s point about why Europeans are particularly sensitive to this issue, and why they come down harder on Holocaust deniers: these European countries (and Israel) are the ones who’ve been burned.
As for David Irving (remember him?), the Wikipedia article has some interesting background information:
The Holocaust denial movement grew into full strength in the 1970s with the publication of Arthur Butz’ The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry in 1976 and David Irving’s Hitler’s War in 1977. These books, seen as the basis of much of the deniers’ arguments, brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold.
So, far from being a peripheral figure in the movement, Irving has been instrumental in fanning the flames for quite some time.
In addition, the Austrian government has a special reason for wanting him in jail–and that is that he has openly defied its warnings. Austria issued the warrant against him in 1989, and informed him that if he returned he’d be arrested. And so he did, and so he was[…]
So, what about the argument that arresting Irving only gives him publicity, and sympathy for his new status as a free speech martyr? A good point, in my opinion. But here’s a differing one that broadens the geographic context of Irving’s influence:
The fact is, however, that Irving and his ilk have become dangerous. The interests of the European and North American Holocaust deniers – from Ernst Zundel (on trial in Germany) to the French “scholar” Robert Faurisson – are merging with those of the anti-Semitic ideologists of Arab nationalism and Iranian theocratic rule. If Irving walks free from the Wien-Josefstadt Prison next week he will soon be packing his suitcase for the Holocaust conference in Tehran.
The German authorities have already sensibly confiscated the passport of Horst Mahler – a neo-Nazi who has been advising Zundel on his courtroom defence – to prevent him travelling to Iran. Will we do the same for Irving? Of course not. Suspected English football hooligans will be under virtual house arrest during the World Cup, but Irving, as usual, will be free to travel anywhere. You know: freedom of speech.
The Irving-is-a-chump school describes him as a “fringe academic addressing a group of loopy far-right radicals wearing silly hats in a basement in Vienna”. Jailing the man is supposed to award him an undeserved importance. This is a truly parochial view, given that the problem is not strange, skinheaded Austrians in lederhosen (though I worry a bit about them, too) but bearded men in turbans who have never made their peace with Israel. The European input has always been important to the development of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. The widespread Arab hatred of Jews does not derive from the Koran: it stems from the need of national liberation movements for hate figures.
European anti-Semites have fed them from the start. Palestinian nationalists aligned themselves with Nazi Germany, identifying Zionism as the enemy. As the state of Israel took shape, Arab writers (borrowing heavily from European deniers) presented the Nazi gas chambers as a flimsy myth designed to justify a land-grab.
An interesting point. But, in the end, an irrelevant one. Because the sad truth is that the damage has already been done. The horse is out of the barn, the cat is out of the bag, Humpty Dumpty has fallen off his wall and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men and all the jailers in Austria will not undo the influence of the European anti-Semitism that has been tainting the Arab world for much of this century.
So it seems to me that the only remedy is free speech in the theater of ideas. We must believe in the ability of truth to ultimately triumph, and in our ability to wage war against those who would preach hate and follow through on it with destruction. If Irving and his ilk have influenced Iran, the damage is long done, and the remedies lie elsewhere–unfortunately.
We are careful, in the west, to differentiate between allowable free speech and what crosses over into incitement—and simple academic Holocaust denial, though pernicious, and though likely to incite evil thoughts someone among some group of people predisposed to believe such “scholarship”—is still best handled by deluging such shoddy academic masturbation with the mountains of evidence that militate against it.
Speech is defeated by speech—and should be, up until the point where that remedy is no longer plausible or effective, and a turn toward violence is inevitable.
In most cases, ancillary acts carried out as a result of the beliefs themselves are enough for law enforcement to involve themselves in what is otherwise a speech issue (the desecration of graves or synagogues, the harrassment or assault on Jews, etc.); which is why so long as the belief remains a fringe belief in the west, I can see no reason at all to fight it with bans and prison time (though I understand the impulse, and recognize the peculiar history that makes such a choice seem wise).
In the end, I don’t Irving’s conviction makes him into a free-speech martyr (though it will, perhaps, turn him into an academic martyr in some circles); instead, I believe it will further solidify his reputation among certain western fringe groups who, if we have indeed learned our lessons, are relatively powerless, though certainly hurtful.
What I fear—and why I support the free speech solution (in which people like Irving are publicly humiliated for their poor research, their wild conjecture, and their barely cohesive conspiracy theories)—is that by imprisoning Irving, the stage has been effectively set for the criminalization of other instances of “public hate speech,” which, in an intellectual millieu of hard multiculturalism and the celebration of “diversity” through the kinds of identity politics that allow individual groups to construct and defend any perceived affronts to the group, is sure to end in the kind of absurd relativism that has been too long insinuating itself into western liberalism.
I always thought of laws against the public denial of the Holocaust as the criminalization of lying.
We have laws against theft, laws against jaywalking, against driving too fast, and against waving your private parts around in public.
But but but but… this is free speech! Well, we have laws against false advertising. We have laws against copyright infringement. We have laws against perjury. We have laws against inciting to riot.
Like it or not, we have laws regulating who can say what during political campaigns. Laws against Holocaust-denial don’t fluster me much, compared to the latter.
But Holocaust-denial is a question free speech, and a question of the degree of public harm that comes from it.
I remain undecided… but I’m not going to weep for David Irving.
TW: The father of our country would not have tolerated a liar. I don’t see why I should.
This is a really sticky one.
@RussBut but but but… this is free speech! Well, we have laws against false advertising. We have laws against copyright infringement. We have laws against perjury. We have laws against inciting to riot.
Like it or not, we have laws regulating who can say what during political campaigns. Laws against Holocaust-denial don’t fluster me much, compared to the latter.
This almost covers it all. However, we must also include that outright lies are NOT “protected speech”. It is illegal, but not criminal. We can sue for slander and libel and put the liar into the uncomfortable position of proving that what he/she says is true.
Is Holocaust Denial an “opinion” or an outright lie? It appears that there are a lot of people on the scene, especially in Europe and the Middle East, who assume that the Holocaust is false and regard that as an opinion and not a “lie”. But they are not accounting for the thousands of witnesses who were not Jewish and would have no reason to connive with “Zionists” to support a lie.
The problem now is that those thousands of eye-witnesses are dying off. I had a personal friend from the Resistance who was held in Auschwitz as a political prisoner and told me some things that I could never withstand if I had seen them myself and held them in my personal memory. But this woman died a few years ago at the age of 92. The witnesses who can give testimony in this matter, the political prisoners and the liberators, including the thousands of soldiers in the liberating armies from the US, UK, and USSR, are aging rapidly.
To totally ignore the testimony of all of these thousands of non-Jewish witnesses is so assinine it would be laughable if the original crime had not been so devestating. But to criminalize denial may be going to far. I’d rather see the deniers sued down to their last Euro.
I think Holocaust deniers should be ridiculed, not thrown in jail. Personally, I get a kick when really ignorant people open their mouths – like all those 9/11 theorists who say it was the JOOOOOS, or the CIA. It’s hilarious. When Arabs argue that they should have a “right” to debate the Holocaust – I (hate it) but I agree. But, we also have the right to publish cartoons making fun of Allah or whatever we want as well.
Outright lies are told all the time – is it just some lies that we don’t want told? Blacks in Detroit we told during the last election cycle that Bush was going to take away their right to vote. I want to know who I can sue.
What we are fighting here is ignorance not truth.
Actually no, this is a case where it really is as simple as the knee-jerk reaction. It is those who outlaw denial, not those who deny, who emulate the facists.
I visited Auschwitz and Berkinow when I studied in Krakow. I’m not big on emotions, but I could honestly feel the pain and evil still permeating from those sites 60 years later.
Irving is a moron, but not quite a criminal. Regardless of incitement, it’s a free speech issue.
I’m an American instead of an Austrian because of Nazism. I exist because that state accepted my grandparents’ money in exchange for their lives.
My only famous relation, Gustav Mahler, was compelled to renounce Judaism and pretend to be a Catholic so that he would be allowed to work in Vienna. Now Irving has to pretend not to be a Nazi to keep out of jail there.
Austria’s “peculiar history” is an unpeculiar history of government-enforced shows of conformity, the ritual humiliation of its people for any disharmony with the state’s image of its People. Nazism was an extreme, literalized example of thisâ€â€not an excuse for more of it.
So long as Holocaust deniers are imprisoned for saying what they think, even “publicly humiliat[ing]” them is immoral. They are martyrsâ€â€unworthy but real, made not born. Accepting the state’s rhetoric of pernicious infection, even to shy away from its disinfectant implications, is a total loss. We’ve heard the song before, haven’t we?
Irving’s a laughable asshole who didn’t kill half of us. Those states did. Never, ever apologize for them. If they put Irving on our side, we take him. Without disclaimer.
So I take back “laughable asshole.” He’s a man. Give them an inch, and they’ll take millions.
A lie can hurt. This happens to be one of those types of lies. Irving will have 3 years to think about why this is so. I bet he doesn’t. Think or do the entire 3 years.
You are not entitled to lie at the expense of others, and you shouldn’t lie at all given that we have been commanded not to.
I am for the exercise of free will as expressed through free speech, but I am not allowed to endanger you by lying. If I do, society has a right to protect itself.
I’ve spent the best part of the evening reading about the Irving case, and I’d just like to congratulate you on perhaps the best-argued, most well-reasoned post I’ve yet come across. Thanks.
I’ve not read Irving’s book, but I have read plenty of commentary on it that label it a joke. Apparently it is the sort of unresearched hysterical tripe you read in the comment section of the Daily Kos, not a historical work to be taken seriously.
But this sort of speech (drivel) must be met with speech, like Jeff states in his post. Had early Nazism been countered with effective ideals, it would have died a quick death.When the Nazi movement turned to violence, it should have been met with violence rather than Chamberlain’s appeasement. The analogy to today’s response to radical islam should be apparent.
Irving’s muck is nothing more than speech, and it should be countered by firm historical debate.
I am interested in these bits right here:
America doesn’t have a centuries-old tradition of anti-Semitism. Europe does. America doesn’t have former colonies scattered throughought the Middle East and Africa. Europe does.
There is a direct causal link between what is happening in the Middle East now and the demonstrable history of European imperialism, an imperialism that was just as clumsy in reality as the Stridently Moral claim America’s “imperialism” is today. Regardless of how you view the Arabic culture’s responsibility for its own development, it would be naive to think that massive European political and military interference, to the point of creating the borders of nations almost overnight, could be without negative consequence.
Then Europe, charged with parenting its former colonial children, botched the job. They raised delinquents and then turned them loose on the rest of the world.
Today, America is in the business of cleaning up the mess left by the European powers, and it’s a business we’ve been forced into by a 16-acre crater in downtown Manhattan.
So the Austrians try to salve their consciences by throwing a 67-year old crackpot in jail?
Fuck them.
Irving made a point of traveling to one of, I think, TWO countries in the world where his words would be considered at felony, at the invitation of a group of the spiritual children of the pigs who ran the camps in the first place.
In cop talk, that’s described as “felony stupid.”
@Ian “America doesn’t have a centuries-old tradition of anti-Semitism.”
Actually, we do… America was discovered in 1492, with the Florida mainland discovered in 1513, so our history goes further back than 1776. Our brand of anti-Semitism just isn’t as virulent and potentially explosive as Europe’s.
Otherwise, I agree with your post. And excellent read, and dead on as to our having to clean up Europe’s messes in the Middle East.
mamapajamas, what we don’t have is the centuries-old tradition of having our screwups… smiled at, not even worth throwing back in our faces.
The defining life-event, the initiation, of a European ruler for centuries was going, hat in hand, to the people he’d just squeezed into a ghetto or denied property rights, to borrow money. European Jews, under incredible pressure, developed a set of socioeconomic systems that worked, as opposed to the fantasies of Nobility and primogeniture and all that rot; as a result you could starve ‘em, you could kill ‘em, you could make ‘em eat sand out of the road or take silly names, but somehow it always worked out that saving, investment, and trade produced money, and war, castles, and cloth-of-gold nightshirts consumed it. And the Jews were polite about it. Generous, even! Insufferable. Intolerable.
Leftovers from that generated crappy attitudes over here, but those like myself that made a lot of noise had very few Jews to work on—I’d met and spoken to Muslims long before I ever encountered a Jew in person. In most of the country it expressed itself in exclusion, Jews couldn’t join the Country Club and the like. They went ahead and prospered anyway, like they do, and most Americans were too busy making money and life themselves to get too hot and bothered about it. Besides, we had successive waves of newbies to look down on.
It is, by definition, anti-Semitism, and can and should be dissed and discarded. Compared to making them wear distinctive clothing so everyone could be sure who to spit on, it wasn’t much, I think. Anyone who claims America is pure in any category is full of shit, but there are differing levels of contamination, and we never really had the continual reminders that Jews are smarter than the general run of Europeans that generated the real hostility.
Regards,
Ric
This an example of how free speech must have limits. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Al Gore or David Irving. Certain types of speech should not be, cannot be permitted. Surely there must be a way to pass sensible anti-sedition legislation that would stop people like Al Gore from blaspheming the government.
No. there isn’t.
I am not sure my initial assesment of this case was correct. I am, having read more on the case, inclined to think this was an act of tyranny by Austria.
Which leaves me at a curious place, because the action of writing this book, which is a lie that could lead to horrible consequences, should have some consequence itself, shouldn’t it? Is the answer that we just leave it to G-d to punish this sin while we counter the lie with truth?
David Irving was NOT sentenced to three years in prison. I can prove it.
Not anymore I don’t. I gave this matter some thought, and came to the conclusion that the criminalization of lying (the superset containing the specific item “Holocaust denial”) particularly in an era when so much of what people take for The Truth is subjectively arrived at, is simply a non-starter.
Who’s to say that the next idea to be declared The Officially Undeniable Truth won’t be founded on the evidence of millions of witnesses?
Who’s to say that the next Truth won’t be, in fact, substantiated by any actual evidence whatsoever?
Who’s to then say that denying or disagreeing with that version of The Truth won’t be criminalized?
Who is to say? When you’re talking about objective and subjective Truth, well, that’s rather the whole point, isn’t it? And frankly, I’d rather let people say things that are objectively untrue than head down any path that might lead to criminalizing disagreement about what is True.
So: Irving might say things that point to his being a complete shitheel, but he should be free to say things that point to his being a complete shitheel.
Hmmm.
Frankly I think the criminalization of Holocaust deniers is wrong because it turns the court system into a defacto Ministry of Truth. Something that they are already wont to do anyways. Let’s not encourage them.