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Europe
'Holocaust denier' Irving to plead guilty in Austria (updated!)
2006-02-20
David Irving, the British historian, is expected to plead guilty to a charge of denying the Holocaust at his trial in Austria today.

Irving's lawyer said his client would admit the accusation when he goes on trial in Vienna. Irving was arrested in Austria on November 11 last year when he arrived to give a lecture to students, and has remained in custody. Austrian laws states that Holocaust denial is a crime.

The charges stemmed from speeches Irving delivered in 1989 in the Austrian capital Vienna and in the southern town of Leoben.

Irving has in the past faced allegations of spreading anti-Semitic and racist ideas. He is the author of nearly 30 books, including Hitler's War, which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

He once insisted that Adolf Hitler knew nothing about the systematic slaughter of six million Jews, and reportedly said there was "not one shred of evidence" that the Nazis carried out their Final Solution on such a scale.

He has also questioned the use of large-scale gas chambers to exterminate the Jews, and has claimed that the numbers of those who perished are far lower than those generally accepted.

But the BBC reported that Irving wrote a letter from his prison cell claiming that some of his views on gas chambers had changed.
let's see if he uses the trial to grandstand and stir up trouble
Update noon CST: Irving gets three years in prison.
Posted by:lotp

#14  What if holocust denial was made into a Cartoon Z? Maybe then? Or does than bring the fear of consistent hobgoblins?

If the cartoon is satirical of Holocaust denial, I'm all for it. I'll readily admit that I have strong feelings about the subject. My mother survived the Nazi occupation of Denmark and made d@mn sure we kids understood what the Nazis were about, to the tune of taking all three of her children to see a screening of "Night and Fog" when we were very young.

If you have never seen "Night and Fog", I suggest that you rent a copy and view it. Just not after a full meal.

Finally, I concur that we should all be glad to live in a country where we can agree to disagree, and that none of our arguments can be used to land us in jail.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-02-20 23:28  

#13  This week has shown us that free speech is not served by restrictions based on offensiveness. Ensuring that the holocaust is remembered and never repeated is best served by allowing people to speak and proving the liars wrong. When ranting haters speak, they reveal and discredit themselves in the eyes of all except a handful of nutters. This is inevitable and just because it is sickening and offensive does not mean that it can be legislated away. Jailing crack-pots gives them more importance and status than they deserve.
The only exceptions to free speech should be slander and incitement to murder, such as preaching jihad in a time of war. I guess that Austria and Germany may have a case for extending such exceptions to cover outlawing denial but these exceptions create problems, such as we're seeing now. Irving is deliberately trying to paint himself as a free speech martyr instead of as demented pseudo-historian fantasist. Unfortunately he'll have some success. I think he should not be jailed and they should allow him to go to Tehran to participate in Holocaust Denial conventions Ahmadinejad. I am not so cynical as to believe that the majority of the world's people, even the Islamic ones, will be pesuaded to believe the lies of such a group of raving loonies. Give them the rope to hang themselves rhetorically and politically.
Posted by: Monsieur Moonbat   2006-02-20 21:28  

#12  What if holocust denial was made into a Cartoon Z? Maybe then? Or does than bring the fear of consistent hobgoblins?
Posted by: 6   2006-02-20 19:57  

#11  Reference for that figure on Soviet deaths during WWII, Besoeker?

IIRC the official casualties for the USSR are usually given as less then 26 million soldiers and civilians killed and approx. 14 million soldier wounded. If you add the 32 million or so who were starved by Stalin in the forced collectivization of farms in the runup to the war you still don't get anywhere near 200 million ....

I'd be interested in any citations for the higher figure, if you have one. My father's family is Ukrainian and we had family still there during that war.
Posted by: lotp   2006-02-20 19:43  

#10  War is a bitch, world war is even more brutal. People get whacked, sometimes boatloads of em. Somewhere around 200 million Russians never made it through WWII. Not minimizing genocide, but I too am happy NOT to live in a country where one's opinion or belief lands you in jail.
Posted by: Besoeker   2006-02-20 19:36  

#9  Zenster:
Sincerely, your comment in #5 is the most concise and succinct viewpoints regarding this issue I’ve ever read. I just happen to respectfully disagree. Like it or not, ranking the importance of events is subjective. Therefore assigning motives based on an arbitrary degree of significance is presumptuous. Indifference doesn’t necessarily imply endorsement. And anyway you slice it; denial is not the same approval. I personally don’t believe some of the “facts” stated by the ‘9-11 Commission’. That doesn’t mean I condone mass-murder or that I’m anti-American. And I’m thankful that I live in a country that doesn’t consider it a crime for publicly stating my opinion.
Posted by: DepotGuy   2006-02-20 19:31  

#8  Depot Guy, the Holocaust ranks as one of the most searing examples of man's inhumanity to man. Those who seek to downplay its enormity or palliate its historical existence exhibit a wish to reduce the vital lesson that we, as a people, must carry away from this ugly episode of our past. It is tantamount to a crime against humanity to willfully participate in minimizing or de-emphasizing any aspect of this brutal slaughter. Attempts to do so are essentially an act of condoning genocide. To condone effectively is to advocate and advocating genocide is a heinous act.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-02-20 17:54  

#7  Zenster, You just said a mouthful. A mouthful of what IÂ’m not sure. But very eloquent non the less.
Posted by: DepotGuy   2006-02-20 17:43  

#6  This put him away before the Iranian meeting to deny the holocaust, too.
Posted by: lotp   2006-02-20 17:22  

#5  Denial of the obvious should carry it's own penalty, it shouldn't be imposed by the state.

Not when there are implications of condoning genocide or favorable revisionism of historically well-established anti-Semetic politics.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-02-20 17:19  

#4  This is insane. Denial of the obvious should carry it's own penalty, it shouldn't be imposed by the state.
Posted by: 6   2006-02-20 16:16  

#3  Re: the update - So he was willing to "change" his views to get 7 years knocked off his possible sentence.

Have fun in jail, asshole. I'm sure you'll find a lot of kindred jerks there.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2006-02-20 15:25  

#2  Remember nowÂ… “Hate Crimes” are not “Thought Crimes”.
ItÂ’s just when you publicly state your opinions about certain issues in some places is when it can get tricky.
Posted by: DepotGuy   2006-02-20 12:24  

#1  doesn't sound like there will be a trial. sounds like he's throwing himself on the mercy of the court. the real question is, what sort of punisment he will receive. supposedly, the crime carries as much as a 10-year sentence.

We'll see.
Posted by: PlanetDan   2006-02-20 08:40  

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