The cowardly Nazi

David Irving has plead guilty to charges of Holocuast denial in an Austrian criminal court. Even in Hitler's home country, I do not think denying the Holocaust should be a crime any more than other pseudo-intellectual pursuits, like young-earth creationism or 9/11 conspiracy theorizing. But now that he's facing jail time, this self-proclaimed "moderate fascist" is renouncing his own legacy in a desperate attempt to save the freedom he'd gladly deny the rest of us:

...Irving's defence will argue in mitigation, to an eight-member jury and panel of three judges, that the emergence of new documents had made him revise his views since 1989.

This morning, outside court, Irving told reporters: "History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989. Yes, there were gas chambers. Millions of Jews died, there is no question. I don't know the figures. I'm not an expert on the Holocaust."

Irving said he considered it "ridiculous" that he was standing trial for remarks made 17 years ago. Handcuffed and wearing a navy blue suit, he arrived at the court carrying a copy of one of his most controversial books, Hitler's War, which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

Shortly later in court, speaking in German, he said: "I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz."

He said, however, that he had never written a book specifically about the Holocaust, which he called "just a fragment of my area of interest". "In no way did I deny the killings of millions of people by the Nazis," Irving claimed.
[...]
Irving, who is the author of nearly 30 books, has contended that most of the people who died at concentration camps such as Auschwitz succumbed to diseases such as typhus rather than being murdered.

Someone should tell the people in charge of Irving's website about his sudden change of heart, because it still features reams and reams of "revisionist" material about the Holocaust, most of written or compiled well after 1989. Now that his liberty is on the line, Irving the brave free-speech martyr reveals himself to be nothing but a pathetic, simpering coward.

Update: Irving's desperation move didn't work: he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment.

Historian Deborah Lipstadt, whom Irving unsuccessfully sued for libel in 2000, says Irving should not be incarcerated because of his opinions:

Laws that ban ideas, no matter how vile the ideas, are distasteful to academics, and even those academics who ended Mr. Irving's mainstream career have come out to defend him today.

"If you had told me, a few months ago, that I would be demanding David Irving's release one day, I would have called you insane," Ms. Lipstadt told the German magazine Der Spiegel this week.

But she is defending him. "I'm against censorship -- no one stands to benefit from the throwing of this guy into prison."

The trial occurs at a moment when Europe is concerned with fundamental questions of freedom of speech. The attack by fundamentalist Muslims on Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed has raised a question that has long dogged the German and Austrian anti-Nazi laws: If you prohibit certain topics of speech, can you really say you have a free society?

As a German newspaper editor said, in response to his decision to run the Mohammed cartoons, every society is entitled to its own taboos. I agree, but that doesn't mean they should be criminalized.

Update II: Stephen Pollard: "Irving is not a martyr. He is not a prisoner of conscience. His cause is not in any way noble. But he is wrongly imprisoned."

Update III: Oliver Kamm has more. And even Warren Kinsella, a passionate defender of laws against Holocaust denial and hate speech, is iffy about sending Irving to jail.

Posted by damian at February 20, 2006 11:46 AM | TrackBack