Deborah Lipstadt on the Irving Sentence
What a good thing it is that Deborah Lipstadt has a blog. It is, needless to say, full of interest right now. She was floored yesterday by Irving’s sentence. She gave us her first thoughts and then further thoughts, she was summoned to talk to the BBC and then unsummoned because they switched to bird flu. Livelier than the average blog, you must admit – and also involved in centrally important issues. Truth, for instance, and evidence, and documentation, records, history, lies and the uncovering of lies.
After having a long conversation with a reporter who was in the courtroom, I have learned that it seemed to him – quite clearly so – that the judge was really angry about Irving’s claims to have “changed his views” as of the 1990s. “The judge had read every page of every transcript of your trial. He knew the judgment. He knew the experts’ findings,” this reporter said to me. “The judge knew that in 2000 Irving was in court suing you. He knew that Irving’s claims to have seen the light and to no longer be a denier as of the 1990s was rot and that Irving was playing with the court.”
Once again, as he did at my trial, Irving seemed to behave in a way that said: “I can do whatever I want, say whatever I want and get away with it.” The problem is, he can’t. While I may disagree with Holocaust denial laws, while I may be disturbed by the sentence, David Irving cannot seem to grasp that there are consequences to his actions.
Judges don’t like it when people play with the court. We saw that in Judge Jones’s verdict, and we see it again here.
So, out of curiosity, how do you reconcile your vigorous advocacy of free speech rights for the Danish cartoonists and your earlier apparent approval of locking Irving up.
As much as I despise Irving and as long as I’ve been in the Internet trenches fighting denial, I fear that yesterday was a dark day indeed for free speech in Europe. That someone can be jailed for three years (possibly more–the prosecutor is appealing) just for speech is truly frightening.
So how and when could the Austrians have repealed the law – the only other alternative ? Hobson’s choice, bearing in mind the influence and importance of the far right in their political structure, I think they were stuck with getting heavy on him in case the rest of the world saw a little crooked cross rising out of the mountains… this Doesn’t mean Irving’s not a repugnant Nazi sympathiser. Nor does it mean anyone else’s laws need changing one scratch.
I heartily agree with Deborah Lipstadt on her uncompromising support for free speech.
I’m in no position to tell the Germans and Austrians how to handle their problems with far right political parties, but I don’t support their solution yet I don’t have time to educate myself on the alternatives. So I’m not going to argue about that.
In the UK today, the arguments Lipstadt makes about vigorous defence of the truth, and by extension, vigorous defence of true liberal values, against racist claims of the BNP, is the way to fight them. Likewise the Islamic chauvinists and their bullying ways. In real life, while “incitement to hatred” is proscribed, the Islamists should be at least as vigorously prosecuted as white racists.
But the real take-home point in all of this is that if you don’t criminalise speech unless it directly incites violence you have a very clear-cut position which cannot be hijacked by bullies who play “victim” like the Islamic chauvinists who grasp at the thinnest straws to proclaim a right to preferential treatment.
Orac, I’ve told you before – it’s not that I “approve” of locking Irving up. As a matter of fact I flinched when I heard the sentence. It’s that I think that Germany and Austria have some valid reasons to outlaw Holocaust denial. That is a different claim.
Furthermore, it is perfectly possible to argue that there are no good grounds for censoring the Danish cartoons while there are good grounds for censoring Holocaust denial. The two things are different, and have different reasons and arguments. Just a blanket ‘free speech no matter what’ is way too easy, and even Islamists are right to point out that almost no one believes in it anyway.
If you’re going to keep doing a ‘gotcha’ on this could you at least bother to pay attention to what I’m actually saying?
“But the real take-home point in all of this is that if you don’t criminalise speech unless it directly incites violence you have a very clear-cut position which cannot be hijacked by bullies”
Yes. But on the other hand, there isn’t necessarily a bright line between speech that directly incites violence and speech that indirectly incites violence. Years and years of anti-Semitism or anti-[whatever]ism can end up with slaughter parties.
“Years and years of anti-Semitism or anti-[whatever]ism can ” be fought with words in much the same way that the US Dept. of Health and eventually most other relevant institutions and organizations in the U.S. fought the tobacco companies’ denials that smoking caused cancer.
Direct incitement to violence requires a more immediate and more likely physical response. That is the reason for proscribing it.
I recognize that holocaust denial or blaming immigrants or blacks for a society’s problems is not the same as the tobacco companies’ commercial reasons for denying the smoking-cancer link. Racists can attract followers and grow, so the society still has to fight them, but not by taking away their right to say what they think.
Just a blanket ‘free speech no matter what’ is way too easy, and even Islamists are right to point out that almost no one believes in it anyway.
Precisely — just leave out the ‘almost’. The majority of voters certainly doesn’t, since ‘free speech’ stricto sensu doesn’t exist in any democratic country apart from the United States.
Irving is basically a martyr of double standards.
It is a crime to deny or belittle the Holocaust in many European countries. There are reasonable arguments pro and contra, or at least reasonable people have opposing views on the matter.
But AFAIK nowhere is it a crime to deny or belittle the Gulag.
THAT is the $64000 moral question.
Sauce for the Nazi goose, sauce for the Commie gander.
Precisely — just leave out the ‘almost’. The majority of voters certainly doesn’t, since ‘free speech’ stricto sensu doesn’t exist in any democratic country apart from the United States.
So we don’t want it?
Are you saying that since the majority of voters in Europe don’t believe in free speech, and only the United States has truly free speech, we would be better off without it?
Juan, are you saying that the US has blanket ‘free speech no matter what’? But it doesn’t; of course it doesn’t; and nor should it.
Farther back –
“Racists can attract followers and grow, so the society still has to fight them, but not by taking away their right to say what they think.”
Well – but what follows from that then? Because racists can not merely attract followers and grow, they can then go on to seize power and kill entire populations. Again, it’s just too easy to say we have to fight them, but not [ever, under any circumstances] by silencing them. There are times when people saying what they think can produce mass slaughters. What about that?
OB, a long process is required to work people up to the point where they will carry out mass slaughter. I am not suggesting the a society remain idle during that time and only act when violence is incited. But a society has many tools at its disposal.
Look at how the civil rights struggle was carried out in the U.S. Nobody even thought about outlawing the n-word, yet it, and the racism it symbolised, became increasingly unacceptable due to laws regulating concrete things like employment and educational practices and a lot of verbal attacks on racism. A vast public dialogue took place about racial discrimination and decided it was unacceptable. That didn’t make it go away, of course, but it changed things very significantly for the better.
Proscribing the expression of sentiments or opinions is an attempt to avoid the discussion you would have to have otherwise.
The reward for having the discussion is that you get to know the people involved a bit better. And you don’t have to define what the hollow phrase “incitement to hatred” means. I mean, you can’t even define satisfactorily the state of mind called hatred much less what words incite that state of mind.
And look at the kind of stuff that is thrown up as incitement to hatred. Those bloody cartoons ridiculed a holy man. In no way does that incite people to hate Muslims. When I first heard of the “incitement to hatred” legislation in this country (UK) I thought it referred to things done by white people that would make black people hate them! That is what hateful and racist things do. If you try to take “incitement to hatred” seriously it falls apart.
Juan, hmmm. I’d like to think what you say is true, but I can’t. It doesn’t always require a long process to work people up to the point where they will carry out mass slaughter – that was one of the things that was so unnerving about Bosnia: how fast people went from being neighbours and friends to being génocidaires. Look at Rwanda and Bosnia rather than at the US civil rights movement. (Or for that matter, rather than looking at the US civil rights movement and the status of blacks in 1960, look at the status of blacks in 1855. There’s no magic mechanism that makes things always come out right.)
“Proscribing the expression of sentiments or opinions is an attempt to avoid the discussion you would have to have otherwise.”
What’s to discuss? Group hatreds aren’t always rational, to put it mildly. Sometimes there is no discussion to have; all there is is prevention.
Obviously I agree that the cartoons are not an example of incitement to hatred – what else have I been saying for two weeks? But it doesn’t follow that I think nothing is an incitement to hatred.
My opinion is that people should have their say. However, there must be consistency and imprisoning Irving after allowing the cartoons sends a clear messege of prejudice to muslims. I assume the Irving case is possibly fuel for further riots and disdain over the cartoons.
Austria allowed the cartoons but disallowed the holocaust denial. A clear double standard.
I have an article about this at Blogcritics
Jamal
Jamal,
But it’s not a clear double standard. A double standard would be, for instance, refusal to publish cartoons about Moses or Isaiah. It’s necessary to compare comparable things. Mass murder of real people is not the same subject as the status of a religious prophet.
A better comparison would be Bosnia or Kosovo imprisoning someone who denied there was a massacre at Srebrenica, and people who cheered when Irving was imprisoned booing when the Bosnian denier was imprisoned – that would be a double standard (assuming the standards of justice in the two courts were reasonably similar). This is not a double standard, because the details are much too different.
And another point. At Blogcritics you say ‘It appears that Austria did not have a problem with its newspapers publishing the anti-Islamic cartoons, therefore constituting a clear double standard.’ But Austrian newspapers are not a branch of the government, whereas the court system is a branch of the government – so again, that’s just a bad comparison.