Irving (not Frazer!) jailed!

[I, Cosh]

Let's face it, the guy clearly set out to build a tawdry little career and a modicum of infamy by espousing something he obviously knew was untrue.

This was all fine and dandy as long as he confined himself to dear old Blighty. The funniest thing about this whole sorry episode is how he completely changed his tune the moment he realised that the Austrians were taking him seriously.

Enjoy your stay. Tosser.

[Funt Solo]

He wasn't convicted for "using his academic credentials to help ... ultra right wing ... parties".  He was convicted of the crime of holocaust denial.  Had it been the former, I might have more sympathy for the verdict.

I still think that because he's clearly telling mistruths (as anyone can find out by cross-referencing his nonsense with just about any other historical data) then there's no need to lock him up.  

All that achieves is to drive underground his form of falsehood - and I'd rather have it in clear view, where it can be openly discussed and dismissed.

[Dudley]

Presumably Austrian police intend to lock up representatives of the University of Cairo, which publishes The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion as non-fiction alongside Holocaust denail texts?  Oh, and I trust that there is no Iranian embassy?

[Carlsborg Expert]

This , of course brings in the comparisons between what is freedom of speech and what is tenuous propoganda.

[Matt Timson]

Just to put it in greater perspective, I've just heard on the radio that a 29 year old got two years for raping a twelve year old.

It's not that I don't think Irving doesn't deserve to be punished, because I do- but three years (and btw, while he's trying to get it reduced, the Austrian Government is actually trying to get it increased) is a bit excessive and wasteful of their own time and money.  I'd have given the fucker a choice between three years and the most humungous fine imaginable- to be paid to some charity along the lines of 'holocaust survivors' or something- before topping it off with a deportation order that would remain in force for life.

Bottom line:

Having an incredibly stupid and unpleasant opinion:  Three years.

Raping a child:  Two years.

Neither of these sentences makes any sense to me.

[DavidXBrunt]

Blake Morrison has pointed out the iniquity of sentencing between the killers of Jamie Bulger and the next case tried in the same court and before the same judge.

The next case involved a father murdering his own child and he got a senrence a ftaction of the length of Thompson and Venables. He's also managed to remain anonymous.

Now I'm not suggesting that V and T shouldn't have got their sentence but if a father kills his own child shouldn't he have got the same sentence or longer?

It's a strange thing, the justicial system and sentencing.

[paulvonscott]

Well, they sent Hitler to jail, there he wrote Mein Kampf and later went on to destroy Europe.  So lets hope they don't let him write anyhting while he's inside.

Austria are responsible for their own laws which is fair enough, just as they were responsible for Adolf in the first place.  It's not hard to understand that that might give your country a much more severe view on all of this.

But it seems to me that once he made a public statement admitting he was wrong, and his information has been publicly proven to be inaccurate and misleading to the satisfaction of all, then a more just sentence might have have been a suspended three year sentence.  Or a shorther sentence, with the rest suspended.  So if he tries it again, it's the stripey hole for him.

As well as providing a serious warning to people who look to fake or discredit evidence in order to fuel neo-nazis.

If he had advocated the Final Solution as something worthy, rather than it just didn't happen, then a three years sentence would have been extremely leniant in my viewpoint.

Or you could just join McJuve's Death Squad and exterminate him, presumably in some sort of ironic gas chamber.

[Satanist]

I am genuinely interested in how he can intelligently explain away many of the facts regarding the holocaust, for instance...

Auschwitz? Well that was just like a German version of Butlins...for Nazis.

[Banners]

Current BBC Site Ticker...

"Two sisters shot dead at a barbecue were unlawfully killed, coroner rules."

Gotta love those perceptive coroners.

M@

[Noisybast]

I often try to pretend The Final Solution never happened.
The artwork was shite, and the story was a blatant marketing ploy to shift a few extra progs...





Thank you - I'm here all week. Try the Prawns.

[GordonR]

"I am genuinely interested in how he can intelligently explain away many of the facts regarding the holocaust"


The argument usually goes something like this:

Most of the people in the camps died of stuff like typphus or TB, which also swept through the concentrations camps set up by the British in the Boer War and also the camps the Americans used to inter Japanese-Americans during WW2, 'cos disease outbreaks always happen when you cram lots of people together in makeshift unsanitary conditions.  A few isolated atrocities may have happened, but that was to do with all those other horrible Nazis, and not Hitler, who didn't know anything about any of it.  And anyway, it wasn't even 6 million people that died - probably more like 2 or 3 million - so that makes it okay, yeah?

[Dudley]

I am genuinely interested in how he can intelligently explain away many of the facts regarding the holocaust, for instance...

Originally, Irving's contention was simply that Hitler had not been informed of the Holocaust, not that it didn't happen.  Irving also felt that the lack of definite evidence for the numbers claimed suggested that these numbers had been enhanced for political purposes.

He later embraced the Leuchter report (see link below), and thought that it had largely disproved the idea that there had been a planned mass execution programme.  Leuchter has since been shown to be bogus.

By the mid 80's, Irving's reputation was virtually destroyed among serious historians.  His original contribution, on the firebombing of Dresden, had been gradually chipped away and was now no longer taken seriously.  Finding himself increasingly with an audience only on the extreme right, Irving gave himself over fully to racist, ignorant, ill-thought-out tirades against "international Jewry" and Trevor MacDonald.  

You couldn't exactly argue that any of this amounts to intelligent explanations.  The fact is that, were it not for the reluctance of news channels to get themselves sued by a notoriously litigious man, he would always be described as "racist idiot David Irving".  Describing him as a historian is like describing this week's 2000AD as a Nobel Prize winning novel.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_A._Leuchter" target="_blank">Fred A. Leuchter