David Irving pleads guilty to Holocaust denial - in Austria

[Marina]

Looks like his nasty career is at an end

Irving trial

Very glad someone has managed to make criminal charges stick to Irving

here

Very moving.

He didn't just have a wrong opinion though did he? He deliberatley misinterpreted and ignored evidence which other historians, (stupidly) diseminated themselves until his 'theories' seemed to look persuasive. It was only the slander trial that uncovered his real motives and his tricks.

Yes, he had the wrong opinion and he was an absolute disgrace as an historian. But other historians cover up facts as well you know, and ignore evidence that doesn't fit in with their pet theories. Part of me is attracted to the idea of sending them all to prison - we'd get far more accurate biographies for a start - but in my saner moments, I know that's somewhat draconian. Sending this creep to prison makes him look more significant than he is, imo, and will interest a whole load more nutters in holocaust conspiracy theories, who would otherwise have stuck to harmless nonsense like aliens doing anal probes. I really don't think prison is an appropriate means of dealing with him or his ilk.

well, he may ger a few anal probes while he is in prison I suppose

I think making himeslf look a total and utter prat and being exposed to th world as a first class racicit and crap historian was in some ways the best punishment for this utter arse.

I think it's a good thing that people don't really consider him an historian any more.

agree

I can't see how holocaust denial is an different from anti-semitism. I agree with the idea that Holocaust Day should include other atrcities in history though.

Depends on your definition of holocaust denial MT. Noman Finkelstein has been called a holocaust denier because he questions the actual figures, and both his parents were in concentration camps in the second world war. I very much doubt that he's an anti-Semite though, although I'm sure the rabid faction of Zionism would describe him as a self-hating Jew.

I have huge problems with locking hum up, and the irony is indeed deep being Austria.
Not because of their past, but their present, given that Austria elects known Nazis to positions of power. Having observed Austrian politics, I'm glad we have nukes. Anyone who has leaders who address SS reunions is screwed at a very basic level.

Also it's easy to forget that Irving is a really crap holocaust denier. Part of his denial is that the Germans simply couldn't have moved them about, which is just silly given that the German railways regularly moved millions You should read his stuff, it's garbage. Follows a well known pattern. The most damning book on Nazism is Mein Kampf, which I'm told is in parts hard to tranlate into English because the source is so incoherent. I tried reading it as a teenager, gave up. However the footnotes in most editions are actually quite funny "this may not be true", "this person was dead at the time the author claimed to have spoken with him", sort of thing.

Allowing people to deny the holocaust is a good way of spotting moronic fascists at a distance.

Frankly it would not shock me if the standard figure of 6 million turned out to be wrong. Sadly there is a degree of competitive victimhood here. Remember the Catholics setting up a nunnery at Auschwitz ? Or the way that people sympathetic to Israel justify it's own atrocities by claiming that they need to bomb refugee camps to prevent "another holocaust".

But if we imagine that "only" 5 million people were murderered, would that be OK in some sense ?
3 million ? Given that one is not allowed in many places to question the official truth, what if there had been some silly error, and "only" 600,000 had died ? Is that OK ?
Don't see it myself.

The abiding lesson of Nazism is that they lost.

I also think we need to look at what we mean by "free speech".
Any fool can tolerate stuff he agrees with, or at least that he believes others should agree with.
The test of a mature society is that people can say things that many others don't like. The alternative is some variation on China or Iran.