LOUIS PIERARD
No right-thinking person ought to have entertained the ludicrous ideas of self-confessed holocaust denier David Irving.
The historian, whose offensive writings have for years caused international controversy (and which induced the New Zealand Government to bar him from a speaking engagement lest his message pollute our minds) was this week
jailed in Austria for denying the holocaust.
Despite belatedly accepting that the gas chambers did indeed exist and that millions of Jews were murdered by Nazis, and throwing himself at the mercy of the Austrian courts, Mr Irving is now serving a three-year sentence. Austria, perhaps by way of overcompensating for having provided the architect of the "final solution", has piled one offence upon another.
A law that jails people who have obnoxious views is one worthy of the fuehrer himself. It is not much of an improvement on a Muslim fatwa that (when honoured) results in the slaughter of those deemed to have insulted Islam. Freedom of expression is a very tender flower and it must be protected, even if that expression is unpleasant. The Austrian prohibition directly challenges that freedom - no less so than the shrieking threats from the imams over the Danish cartoons.
The crime Mr Irving denied was one of the most vile in human history. But that doesn't change the principle. What distinguishes Mr Irving's imprisonment from that of political dissidents or Falun Gong followers in China? One expects the Chinese government is no less offended by their opinions than is Austria's by the Nazi apologist now also behind bars.
Holocaust denial is one of those barmy conspiracy theories that infect the minds of the credulous and of intellectual slobs. (If one attributes the woes of the world to cabals and conspiracies it reaffirms one's own powerlessness and absolves the believer of effort to understand or change matters).
There is no shortage of holocaust deniers, even outside Iran. The world is full of people with very odd beliefs, many of them highly offensive. They can't all be locked up for what they think.
David Irving had already been disgraced and discredited. The fact that he recanted should have sufficed.
One of the ironies of prohibiting ideas is that beliefs do not fade with the imprisonment of their adherents. Far from being salutary, Austria's decision will give strength to holocaust deniers, who will see Mr Irving as a noble martyr to the cause.
As it did for Hitler after the Anschluss in 1938, Austria has given Mr Irving an authority he never deserved.
