In article <1177027855.469137.142...@l77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,

snex <s...@comcast.net> wrote:

[...]

no pretending is necessary. any time a government *censors* some view,
that view is instantly lent credibility, because people inherently
distrust governments. reality bears this out, if you would only look
at past censorship.

The people of Austria, where the most important legal
tool for the fight against neo-Nazi activities today is
Para 3 of the Verbotsgesetz, don't seem to agree with you.

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/austrian/austrian-resistance-archives...

The Verbotsgesetz, which is enshrined within the Austrian
Constitution, provides for the punishment of anyone
trying to revive National Socialism. Indeed, The
uncompromising rejection of National Socialism is a
cornerstone of the Republic.

In 1984 a group of activists from the magazine "Halt" tried to register a new political
party under the name "Nationale Front" with the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry did
not recognize this party as legitimate. The party-founders then took their case to the
Constitutional Court, which rejected its appeal:

"The question of whether a revival of activity in the sense of the Verbotzgesetz exists,
can not be answered - as the Supreme Court (in reference to earlier judicature) already
aptly demonstrated in its judgement of June 25, 1986, 9 Os 132-85 - through an
accompanying description of all possible areas of activity, because the goals of the
NSDAP and its subsidiary organziations were all too manifold and multifarious. In any
case, an apology or trivialization of the (criminal) measures of the Nazi regime and the
glorification of the annexation of Austria in 1938 constitutes a revial of activity
according to the Verbotsgesetz just like any other one-sided propagandistic positive
description of National Socialist measures and goals. /.../

In the case at hand, the Minister of the Interior came to the supposition that a revival
of activity existed. He substantiated this supposition comprehensively and logically in
the contested order.

The'Provisional Program for the Nationale Front', 'Suggestions for Eliminating the
Existing System', published in Halt (No 23, Nov., 1984), clearly shows that the attempted
formation of the 'Nationale Front' represented a revival of (Nazi) activity."[58]

Another example is the repeated confiscation of newspaper "Deutsche National-Zeitung"
which comes to Austria from Munich. It is published by Gerhard Frey, founder of the
radical-right "Deutsche Volksunion". The Austrian courts have repeatedly ordered the
newspaper confiscated for denying the Holocaust. Frey filed a complaint against one such
confiscation (issue March 9, 1979, No. 4, Vol. 29) but was rebuffed by the Austrian
Supreme Court in its decision of March 6, 1980.

The Court found that many of the texts that had appeared in an article entitled
"Dangerous Doubts About Gassings"[59] were examples of the revival of Nazi activity as
seen in Para 3 of the Verbotsgesetz. It also found that the Lower Court had correctly and
objectively recognized such a "one-sided" trivialization of what Austrian courts had
already identified as the "inhuman National Socialist measures" as "in line with the
meaning of Para 3 of the Verbotsgesetz".

The Lower Court had correctly recognized the illegality of certain passages which
described conditions in the Nazi concentration camps, especially those in Auschwitz and
Birkenau, maintained that there had never been any mass-murders of Jews or other persons
in gas chambers and insisted it was all a swindle perpetrated by false witnesses.[60]

The Supreme Court's decisions were later reflected by the Vienna Criminal Court which
ruled in April 1980 that "one of the main propaganda tactics used to promote National
Socialism is to deny the historical reality of Nazi crimes, to insist they are all lies,
and, when the crimes are acknowledged, to trivialize them, and to put these crimes on the
same footing with Allied war-crimes, often doing so in the most macabre fashion."[61]

Authorities have other possibilities in addition to the constitutional regulations
mentioned above. For instance, there is a law against wearing or displaying certain
medals and symbols.[62] The introductory law to the Administrative Procedure Laws passed
by the National Assembly in February 1986 authorize every policeman to take immediate
action whenever neo-Nazi leaflets or similar material are distributed.[63]

Moreover, the Criminal Code, Para 283 of January 23, 1974, (BGBI. No. 60/1974), states
that it is illegal to agitate in any form against "any church or religious community
existing within the country, or against any group because of their race, nationality, or
ethnic background".

--
The Nizkor Project - An electronic Holocaust educational resource
David Irving vrs. Deborah Lipstadt & Penguin Books Ltd: Judgmenthttp://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/judgment-00-00.html
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/i/irving.david/libel.suit