Holocaust denier Irving is jailed

Of course antisemitism is wrong, but anti-antisemitism is more wrongerer.

Of course what happened in the second world war was extremely wrong, but using that for the rest of eternity as an excuse to control media and governments all over the world (Every government representative who visits Israel has to visit the holocaust museum first, for instance. That's very understandable, but it's still a mild form of "let's make sure nobody forgets, in case they were going to criticize us" type of brainwashing.) is only going to backfire and recreate the anti-jewish paranoia and hate that had been slowly growing since the middle ages. If it isn't too late for that already, considering what happened in the Palestinian elections and the (not vocal but still visible) support some anti-Israel sentiments are starting to get in lots of European media/population groups.

Anyway. I realise I'm biased against both sides, but I'm going to read up on the history and background of it all, once I find a clear and objective account of the whole mess. If one exists.

That said, jailing anybody for ideas propounded in academic research is shocking. Way to create a martyr, Austria.

Yeah, I don't think this turnout is an especially good one. Especially given the apparent rationale of his defense, which would otherwise be a total blow to Holocaust deniers: his whole argument was that he thought one thing, acquired more information on the matter, and learned he was wrong! (Though the sincerity of that is probably compromised by the part where he's all "I dunno, I'm not an expert on the Holocaust.")

I'm mostly just wondering about the set-up of the laws, since in cases like these they abstract themselves really far from concrete incitement of violence. I mean, the most obvious form of incitement would be standing in front of a mob and saying "get them." A still powerful one would be to print material saying stuff like, I dunno, "we must remove all Jews from our communities" -- that still carries implications and suggestions of actions. But historical revisionism, no matter how much it ties into those same systems of thought (and even when it seems really clear what the thrust of it is) ... it's still removed by a whole lot of abstract steps from concrete incitement. So I wonder how the laws are set up, and what number of steps away from the mob they actually extend.

Irving is a racist. There has been a trickle of 'amusing' letters into the Guardian from correspondents who had even been at school with Irving, who noted his early incidents of outspoken bigotry, and were hardly surprised to find him in the dock trying to Eddie Haskell his way out of it.

Laws here are to prove that the basis for the behaviour is the racist beliefs of the holder, and - whether as a palliative step or not - denying the Jews lost 6 million people when they clearly did, and asserting that they are only playing up for sympathy from the rest of us, is derogatory to both the Jews and his profession. You cannot in effect be jailed for writing "wrong history", just discredited. As a derogator of Jews, it has to be proven to the court that this stance has caused Jews to suffer, directly or through his influence of a group who then acts unlawfully.

Personallly I would sentence the fucker to three years as a cleaner at one of the camp museums and let him think about the experience of ALL the people killed there (I have a half-Roma friend whose grandfather was one of three survivors from one camp).

Yes, you're right, e.g.

"I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now,"

This is b.s. -- the Deborah Lipstadt libel trial in the UK concluded in 2000.

x-post

Is there any country that jails people for libel?

Add to that the sort of gut-level disgust that almost anyone interested in history feels about a man who, in possession of what even his enemies admit is a prodigious gift for historical research, willfully misrepresents the historical record in order to further some really pernicious ideas amounting backwards for his discipline, well-articulated enough to convince people who don't know better & give ammo to the sorts of dire Nietzschean types who form Nazi groups - well, it's easy to understand how a government might say "fuck it, let's get his ass in jail, at least it'll slow him down." Which is revenge, right, and it's ineffective as a legal strategy: what they mean, presumably, is "we wish David Irving did not exist."

x-post I think the impulse here is to discern between "dissent" and "dishonest dissent" - not legislatable, but I get the impulse, as I say

"'Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces, and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that, they condemn that person and throw them in jail.' Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Dec. 8, 2005."

Keep in mind that this is an Austrian law, not a European one. As far as I know Austria is the only European country to have this in their lawbook.

But history is constantly being re-written. Usually we rely on Academics to correct each other. I understand the points made about deliberate disinformation but I'm unhappy about the idea of Official History, especially if it's only applied to the Holocaust.

xpost, about disinformation or falsehood --

Well that would be closer to the rationale I was comparing to libel -- the idea would be that it was a demonstrable lie to claim the Holocaust did not take place, and that somehow we're not allowed to lie about anything that meaningful. But even if you accept that, it's still really hard to draw lines around. How much do you distinguish between manipulative lies (like Irving's) and being mistaken (like Irving decided to claim he was -- "not enough information")? And where do you draw the line between historical facts and interpretations thereof? And at what point does something become an indisputable "fact," anyway? (I suppose some of the rationale of laws like this is to say: "Those are all good questions in the abstract, but millions of dead human beings = the kind of cold hard fact we're willing to legislate.")

xpost NoTime otm - it's quite clear from Irving's military histories that he's utterly capable of drawing the right conclusion; it's a short step to conclude that he's stating a different one for reasons other than that he thinks it's the historical truth

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Just for the record, I'm not much in favor of these sorts of laws; I'm just trying to sort out what some potential rationales for them might be. Thinking out loud more than anything.

these are the questions walter benjamin is asking himself in my course readings for this week.

maybe a benjaminian would like to appear on irving's behalf?

Likewise. If cases like this have any point it's to make us think about the line between speech as an abstract and as an action. Comparing this with the recent Nick Griffin trial is interesting, because you could argue that Griffin's speeches were far more likely to incite actual harm.

(Can a libel mod check that last sentence please?)

It is entirely frustrating trying to get a grip on what the actual rationale behind these laws are, because no one in Austrian public life is willing to discuss them regardless of where they are along the political spectrum. I do get a gut sense that most Austrians don't like the laws as written, but that there is a real sense of international demand that such laws stay on the books -- whether this is expressed as "of course we owe this to the world" or "of course those fuckers out there would be THRILLED to pick on little old Austria again if we dared to repeal or reform these laws."

And FWIW, Holocaust denial isn't predicated on answering those sorts of questions.

xxpost

I don't see how anti-anti-semitism can be wrongerer than anti-semitism. If you think anti-semitism is wrong then surely you are an anti-anti-semitic?

I don't think I'm in favour of these laws either but really Irving gives me the creeps. Just take a look at his website - he's obsessed - I've never seen so many pictures of Hitler. He ponders the whereabouts of Himmlers glass eye at one point for fcks sake. Maybe we shouldn't lock him up but he should at least be allowed to tie his shoelaces together or something.

or maybe we could just get on with the task of intelligently refuting whatever nonsense the silly old fucker spouts, instead of - as RJG notes in an OTM way above - making him into a martyr for the right. christ, how can you be so scared of some nutcase talking bollocks that the only option is to jail him? especially given that ...

I'm dying to see how Arab media react to this. Presumably they will be capitalizing on this as proof of the "double standard" they see.

... the shit is now going to hit the fan vastly.

insanity, basically. fucking insanity.

I can definately see that, Nabisco. The thing is that 'incitement of hatred' is a lot less 'specified' then the Austrian law, which to me seems to exist solely - or for a very major part - because of the history of Austria and the way that country deals with it's history. I'm no expert on that subject, and it probably wouln't justify a law like this for me, but it probably should be taken into account. In The Netherlands, first charges should be pressed against a statement of holocaust denial by, say, a Jewish organisation, before it becomes a lawsuit. It's highly unlikely district-attorneys will act upon this alone. I'm very curious about the judges' verdict in this one though. Discrimination and denial of a fact society takes as 'historic' and 'solid' are two different things. It's like people up this thread already said rightly, how far does your right go to deny what the majority considers 'history' (as facts)? Even if denial is grounded in a discrimitory or racist belief?

I think to some on the far right and elsewhere he will be a martyr if he's imprisoned and a hero if he isn't. Refuting him doesn't get us very far. People have been doing that since day one. As Issac Davis once said "A satirical piece in the Times is one thing, but bricks and baseball bats really gets right to the point."

Hell, I don't even want that...he's not worth the effort. I just don't want to see his face for a while.

yeah but the argument was usually 'we got fucked because of all the profiteering jews'.

at what point do smug westerners realise that resorting to "logic" - and i use the word advisedly given some of the arguments on offer here - is pissing in the wind when you're dealing with religious fanatics?

So hold on, which is it? Do we use logical refutations on the nazi nutters, but that's not good enough for the muslim ones?

I couldn't agree more that the Shoah is a "holocaust apart." Arguing otherwise seems like a waste of compassion to me, at best.

That doesn't mean that other examples of modern liberal democracies' treatment of fascists--specifically, the ideological heirs of racist mass murderers--don't have something to say on this issue. Nobody claimed that the Klan enslaved anyone, or that the KKK or Segregationists are anything like equivalents to Nazi Germany. (Neither is anyone saying that today's living-and-breathing Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust, but that's another derailing point.) Still, I doubt you'd seriously instruct a black person who lived through Jim Crow that the Klan is not a living symbol of lynch mobs and (yes) slave masters. The relative tolerance for Klan speech here is extremely painful for some people. I'm not sure that even most Americans realize just how totalitarian the rural South was right up through the 1960s.

About a month before 9/11, I attended a counter-demonstration (of about 1,200) surrounding a joint Nazi-Klan demonstration (of 46) on the capitol steps in St. Paul. Both were protected speech, and in the end, the fascists just looked kind of pathetic. Last month, a cross was burned in front of a St. Paul church where the congregation is mostly black. That's not protected speech, but neither does St. Paul have a hate-speech ordinance: You have a right to express any demonstrably wrong or evil view you like so long as it doesn't extend to threatening, intimidating, or criminal conduct.

There are plenty of reasons why this situation stands. I could be wrong, but I think one of them is the legacy of the very people whom the Klan most terrorized after WWII: participants in the Civil Rights movement (including, among a white minority, many Jewish activists). For that generation, free speech was too hard-won a right to compromise on any front. Speech wasn't just one issue among many, it was the issue. Which is why Civil Rights birthed the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, which was more or less the beginning of the New Left. Not that everyone's pro-free-speech these days, but despite hype about "P.C." and the post-terror political atmosphere, you can see the influence these ideas still have, and see how that influence has been good for the country.

no. it's very simple. nazism isn't a religion. islam is. refuting someone's political beliefs isn't quite the same as refuting their core religious beliefs. i'd have thought this was, umm, logical.

and incidentally: fuck you too, enrique. i've enjoyed several debates with you about politics and society on ILE, many of which have been substantially more heated than this one; i don't see what warranted that little outburst of unnecesary abuse.

still, as a great philosopher once wrote: be like that. see if i care :p

Neo-Nazis and Irving killed 6,000,000 people? you idiot.

even when the core religious beliefs in question are supremacist?

When you criticise someone on the basis of their religious beliefs you're criticising them on the basis of their beliefs and actions which result from those beliefs. This is no different than criticising a political ideology. Or any other cultural difference which involves different beliefs and different conduct resulting from those beliefs.

And it is fundamentally different than critising someone on the basis of such arbitrary factors as what colour their skin happens to be or which country they happened to have been born in.

The latter is bigotry, the former is just about the most essential freedom there is, whether it applies to religion or politics or culture in general.

Neo-Nazis and Irving killed 6,000,000 people?
Well, not Irving personally, but he's in his 70s, yes? So people of his generation sure did. And what do you think happened to all of them? They didn't just sort of disappear at the end of the movie, and I'm sure one or two of them have links to these "neo" chaps.

so irving is jailed for being "wrong"? wow. i was wrong about something the other day; i'd better go and turn myself in.

The latter is bigotry, the former is just about the most essential freedom there is, whether it applies to religion or politics or culture in general.

the point i'm making is that, in a world increasingly polarised between - well, islam and non-islam - we need to tread very carefully indeed. very carefully.

however, i'm trying to be pragmatic here; my entire opposition to the jailing of irving is based on pragmatism. given that almost everyone else is now caught up in, cough, soi-disant philosophical arguments, i'll leave you all to it.

my overreaction re the klan i'm afraid was also misplaced; on another thread ethan had said the kkk had done far worse than the nazis -- the actual nazis, not the neo-nazis -- had ever done. the klan has killed, beaten and terrorized more people than the neo-nazis ever have, but at the same time the klan has at no point been in spitting distance of real power, and since the '60s it's had less connection with mainstream political discourse than the neo-nazis have had in austria.

i think i took a fundamentalist free-speecher line on denmark because a) it was more complicated than 'omg offensive cartoon' -- there was a backstory and b) people threatening another 7/7 deserve to be offended and c) hi dere muslim media's depiction of jews.

but the cartoons were shitty, and just the wrong side of the racist line (i have no problem whatsoever with depicting the prophet, but the whole 'bomb turban' thing stank).

irving is more dangerous than those cartoons because he has some of the trappings of the professional historian, access to all kinds of archives. refuting him really won't get rid of the neo-nazis, though. i don't know why i'm looking for some kind of stable, consistent ethical framework when there isn't one to find, really.

As a sub-editor, do you think this zero-tolerance approach should be applied to reporters in Britain's newsrooms?

Buddy, you got some newspapers and history books to read.

and on this thread ethan said that if a slavery-denier lectured to the kkk, they'd have their asses kicked so that would be ok.

and kind of: yeah, that's great; but really i'd rather see the slavery-denier jailed for slavery-denial than the ass-kicking dudes jailed for, you know, assault. and similarly you can't legislate on assholery, you can't nail it down.

where did i say the klan was worse than the nazis?

-- ,,,,,,,, (,,,...), February 23rd, 2006.

last few months -- it was a us politics thread but can't remember.

I did smack GF with a dictionary one time

warren g harding was allegedly a member of the KKK (and woodrow wilson was such a vicious racist that he might as well have been a member - e.g. his comments on "birth of a nation"). while looking it up, i found this:

Though revived only in 1915, by the mid-'20s the Klan was already a powerful force in American politics – and I don't mean just Southern politics, as the Klan of the 1870s and the 1960s was. The Klan had its headquarters in Indianapolis; the governor of Indiana was a Klansman. Oklahoma was placed under martial law as the governor tried to stamp out the Klan. Public bodies dominated by the Klan included the state government of Oregon and the city council of Anaheim, California. At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, the delegates voted down a plank condemning the Klan. It's estimated that more than one in eight Americans was a member of the Klan at its height.

(from http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhardingkkk.html)

klan mostly survived as a powerful legend in the south, a legend purposely revived when new klans were organized in the 1910s.

this is not to deny that by the late 1870s blacks had been effectively disenfranchised in most former confederate states, and that most of those states were largely governed by reactionaries and confederate apologists. but the klan's role in that reaction --the power structure of southern reaction--was almost nonexistent.

klan mostly survived as a powerful legend in the south, a legend purposely revived when new klans were organized in the 1910s.

this is not to deny that by the late 1870s blacks had been effectively disenfranchised in most former confederate states, and that most of those states were largely governed by reactionaries and confederate apologists. but the klan's role in that reaction --the power structure of southern reaction--was almost nonexistent.

sorry to be pedantic. i studied the reconstruction period in school so my ears perk up whenever someone makes a claim about that era.

"In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy. At least one tenth of the black members of the 1867-68 constitutional convention became victims of violence during Reconstruction, including seven actually murdered...Klansmen murdered three scalawag members of the Georgia legislature and drove ten others from their homes... In October 1870 a group of armed whites broke up a Republican campaign rally at Eutaw, the county seat of Greene County, Alabama, killing four blacks and wounding fifty-four. In the same month, on the day after Republicans carried Laurens County, in South Carolina's Piedmont cotton belt, a racial altercation..degenerated into a "negro chase" in which bands of whites scoured the countryside, driving 150 freedmen from their homes and committing thirteen murders...In York County, nearly the entire white male population joined the Klan and committed at least eleven murders and hundreds of whippings; by February 1871 thousands of blacks had taken theto the woods each night to avoid assault... Much Klan activity took place in those Democratic counties where local officials either belonged to the organization or refused to take action against it."

Also note that anti-klan laws were repealed after "redemption" and generalized violence against blacks became commonplace. by the naacp's conservative estimates of documented lynchings, 3,500ish between 1892 and 1922. one could add in race riots, etc. etc. but you get the idea.

point being, for a period, the klan got what it wanted and the forces that fostered the klan were running the show. true, it didn't get what it wanted by violence alone, but then neither did hitler (remember the govt was turned over to him, much as the south was just turned back over to the former slaveowners)

the myth of the klan also far predated the revival of the klan -- but it was a southern myth -- the revival of the klan was striking in its reach throughout the north.

faultless logic!

http://i36.tinypic.com/2u4sl1h.jpg

oooooooooooooooooooouch

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/the-world-is-full-of-holocaust-deniers/370870/

yeesh

depressing, scary story.