Show M Free speech even if it hurts hurt 4 Michael Shermer Los Angeles Times More women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedys Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a agas agas agas gas chamber at Auschwitz Is this line more offensive to Jews than an editorial cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with a turban turban turban tur tur- tur- tur ban bomb is to Muslims Apparently it is because the editorial editorial editorial edito edito- rial cartoonists are still free whereas the man who made this statement British author David Irving was sentenced this week to three years in inan inan inan an Austrian jail for violating a law that says it is a crime if a person denies grossly trivializes approves or seeks to justify the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity That Irving has been and probably still is a Holocaust denier is indis indis- In 1994 I interviewed him for a book on Holocaust denial and he told me that no more than half a million Jews died during World War II and most of those because of disease dis- dis disease disease dis dis- ease and starvation In 2000 Irving I lost his libel ibel suit in Britain against an anI I author and the judge in the case called him an an active Holocaust i denier Semitic anti-Semitic and racist And in April 2005 I attended a lecture lecture lecture lec lec- lec- lec ture he gave at an event sponsored by bythe bythe bythe the Institute for Historical Review the leading voice of Holocaust denial in the US U.S. There he joked about the Chappaquiddick line and holding his right arm up boasted This hand has shaken more hands that shook Hitler's hand than anyone else in the world The important question here is not whether Irving is a Holocaust denier he is or whether he offends people with what he says he does but why anyone anywhere should be imprisoned imprisoned imprisoned for expressing dissenting views or saying offensive things Today you may be imprisoned or fined for dissenting from the accepted Holocaust history in the following countries Australia Austria Belgium Canada Czech Republic France Germany Israel Lithuania New Zealand Poland Romania Slovakia and Switzerland Given their disastrous history of being too lenient with fringe political ideologues it is perhaps understandable understand understand- able that countries such as Germany and Austria have sought to crack crackdown crackdown crackdown down on rousers rabble-rousers whose hate speech can and has led to violence and pogroms In some cases the slippery slippery slippery slip slip- pery slope has only a few paces between calling the Holocaust a Zionist lie and the neo-Nazi neo dese dese- cration of Jewish property An And as we have witnessed repeatedly repeatedly repeat repeat- edly Europeans have a different history history history his his- tory and culture of free speech than we do in the US U.S. In Germany for example the Auschwitz lie law makes it a crime to defame the memory of the dead In Britain libel law requires the defendant to prove that he or she did not libel the plaintiff unlike US U.S. law which puts the onus on the plaintiff and the British recently debated the merits merits merits mer mer- its of banning religious hate speech In France it is illegal to challenge the existence of the crimes against humanity as they were defined by bythe bythe bythe the military tribunal at Nuremberg another law on the books until just a afew afew afew few weeks ago required that Frances France's colonial history which was not always humane had to be taught in a positive light In traditionally liberal Canada there are hate anti laws against spreading false news In late 1992 Irving went to Canada to receive the George Orwell Award from a conservative conservative conservative conser conser- speech free-speech organization whereupon he was arrested and deported on the grounds that his German court conviction for denying the Holocaust made him a likely candidate candidate candidate can can- for future speech hate-speech viola viola- Even in the land of Thomas Jefferson and the First Amendment freedom of speech does not always ring On Feb 3 1995 Irving was invited by the Berkeley Coalition for Free Speech to lecture at the University of California Berkeley More than protesters prevented Irving and the ticket holders from entering That however is quite different from passing a law that bars him from speaking Austria's treatment of Irving as apolitical a apolitical apolitical political dissident should offend both the people who defend the rights of political cartoonists to express their opinion of Islamic terrorists and the civil libertarians who leaped to the defense of University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill when he exercised his right to call the victims of 9 11 little Why doesn't it Why arent aren't freedom lovers everywhere offended by Irvings Irving's court conviction Freedom is a principle that must be applied indiscriminately We have to defend Irving in order to defend our our- selves Once the laws are in place to jail dissidents of Holocaust history what's to stop such laws from being applied to dissenters of religious or political histories or to skepticism of any sort that deviates from the accepted canon No one should be required to facilitate facilitate facilitate facil facil- the expression of Holocaust denial but neither should there be what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called the silence coerced by law the argument of force in its worst form The point was poignantly made in Robert Bolts Bolt's play A A Man for All Seasons in which William Roper and Sir Thomas More debate the relative relative relative rel rel- rel- rel balance between evil and freedom freedom freedom free free- dom Roper So now you'd give the devil benefit of law More Yes What would you do Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil Roper Id I'd cut down every law in England to do that More Oh And when the law was down and the devil turned round where would hide Yes on you you Id I'd give the devil benefit of law for formy formy formy my own safety's sake Call David Irving the devil if yo you like the principle of free speech gives you the right to do so But we must give the devil his due Let Irving go for our own safety's sake Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine a monthly columnist for Scientific American and the author of Denying History Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It |