You can't say "National Socialist" without "Socialist"

Yet another disturbing example of the way the radical left is finding common ground with Holocaust deniers and rabid Jew-haters: Australia's Melbourne Underground Film Festival plans to show several "revisionist" works on the Holocaust, including a film sympathetic to Holocaust denier (and self-proclaimed "moderate fascist") David Irving:

An alternative film festival in Australia will screen a movie presenting the controversial opinions of a Holocaust revisionist historian, after a tribunal threw out a complaint brought by a Jewish organization.

The Melbourne Underground Film Festival (MUFF) will on Thursday show an 80-minute documentary in which the author, David Irving, describes the Holocaust as a "legend" and disputes that the Nazis murdered six million European Jews during World War II.

It will form part of a sub-section of the festival program that includes presentations condemning U.S. foreign policy.
[...]
The Irving movie forms part of a sub-section of the festival's program called "The Politics of History."

It also includes a movie presentation by syndicated U.S. columnist Joseph Sobran in which, according to MUFF, the writer "deftly dissects the Israeli state's familiar pretensions, and details how the holocaust story is used to justify support for Israel."

In the same sub-section is a film in which an Arab commentator argues that, "U.S. support for Israel's brutal oppression of Palestinians is a betrayal of the ideals that Americans claim to uphold."

Yet another feature involves a Japanese scholar challenging "the one-sided history of World War II imposed by the [American] occupiers [of post-war Japan]."

MUFF describes its decisions to feature the movies as "our important defense of unpopular speech."

Irving does not dispute that many Jews died during the war, but says they had either been worked or starved to death, or shot, beaten or hanged. He dismisses the notion of gas chambers in extermination camps as a "legend."

The MUFF website states that the Irving film screening has been cancelled because of security concerns, but there's no word on whether the Sobran lecture - or a film of Robert Faurisson's "My Revisionist Method" lecture before the neo-Nazi Institute for Historical Review - has also been cancelled. (They've also belatedly added HonestReporting.com's "Relentless" - for "balance," I guess.)

The festival organizers say they don't agree with Irving's views, but that "freedom of speech" concerns have persuaded them to show the film:

We at MUFF don’t believe you should be silenced for being a historian and object to this legal intrusion into a debate that belongs in the History department of Universities. Surely Irving’s opinions could be enlightening even if he is misguided or wrong and subject to at least fruitful debate (Hegel’s dialectic method) and not censorship!! Many scholars praised Irving before the controversy hit in the late 80’s for his detailed research (ie. Hugh Trevor Roper and others) and his exclusive early access to Russian archives. The father of history Herodotus was notoriously biased, as was Sallust and many other classical historians, if we are to burn the books of biased historians…well the metaphor is clear enough. Irving is passionate and argues his case lucidly and has agreed to collaborate on a LIVE phone interview after the screening.

We at MUFF don’t agree with his opinions, more the right for him to hold them and have them. If you don’t protect unpopular speech what kind of freedom of speech do we hope to protect, exactly? See what these people have to say, talk about it and be glad you still have the right to hear them say it.

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

I, too, have criticized attempts to censor or punish the likes of David Irving. But just because I support his right to free speech does not compel me to give him a platform for his vile, bigoted opinions. Irving's right of free expression is not infringed by my refusal to link to his website, and it certainly would not be infringed by his film being refused entry into the festival. (For that matter, does anyone think a conservative movie about 9/11 or the John Howard government would be allowed at MUFF?)

The organizers are giving Irving, Faurisson and Sobran a platform for their anti-Semitic opinions because they're blinded by their hatred for the United States and "Zionism" - which, all too often, slides into blatant hatred of the Jews, period. Granada and the Australian Film Corporation, who are sponsoring the festival, should be ashamed of themselves.

Posted by damian at July 10, 2003 10:27 AM