From The Miami Herald, 2/24/06:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13947798.htm
Posted on Fri, Feb. 24, 2006
Let Irving the anti-Semite `howl his idiocy in freedom'
BY RICHARD COHEN,
On a cold and black night, I went to hear the Holocaust denier David
Irving speak at the University of Colorado.
I arrived early to get a good seat, and soon after me came five huge
young men, all of them looking like skinheads.
I glared at them, and they glared at me.
For a moment I feared there and then that I was going to meet my
maker, but it turned out that when Irving himself started to speak,
the skinheads of my fertile imagination rose as one, unfurled an
Israeli flag and announced themselves as Jewish protesters -- a near
case of my being a casualty of friendly fire.
Had it not been for those protesters, a handful of the just plain
curious, and me, Irving could have held his lecture in a nearby broom
closet.
He is a man of justifiably small following, a claque of bigots so
addled by the virus of Jew-hatred that they cannot see the evidence
before their own eyes.
The many pictures of the Holocaust, the films, the artifacts, the
testimony of victims and perpetrators alike is to them proof of a
different kind: the ability of Jews to hoodwink the world. It never
happened. The Holocaust is a lie.
Now Irving has admitted the lie is his.
There were gas chambers at Auschwitz, he now admits.
The Jews there did not die of disease but were murdered outright and
then fed into the ovens.
This confession of truth was extracted by a dilemma.
Irving was facing jail time in Austria for the crime of denying the
Holocaust.
His penitence got him very little.
A judge hit him with a three-year sentence.
A little delicious satisfaction is allowed.
Irving is a liar.
He is an anti-Semite.
He has squandered his considerable gifts at dreary research for the
glad rags of demagoguery.
He had a Web page.
He gave lectures.
He sued and was sued.
He picked the pockets of the gullible.
Years ago, he mistook justifiable criticism by some Jews as an attack
by an entire people.
This is the odd talent of the anti-Semite: to see all by seeing one.
Still, it is troubling to fight fire with fire -- a fascist mentality
with fascist laws.
At the very heart of totalitarianism is an absolute fear of dissent.
Dissenting ideas are not allowed.
Anti-Semitism is an idea.
It is a bad one, an odious one, but it is one all the same.
The current Austrian government enforces a law against Holocaust
denial, but it is the descendant of a government that once enforced
the laws of the Holocaust itself.
True, the law is an attempt to ensure that the old days do not return,
but it is always a bad idea to leave such legislation on the books.
Article 48 of Germany's pre-Nazi Weimar constitution allowed the
president to rule by decree in times of emergency.
The law was abused in the Weimar era and then, of course, by Hitler.
It got him on his feet as a dictator.
The remarkable thing about bad laws is their plasticity: anyone can
bend them to their needs.
Germany, France and other European countries also have laws regarding
Holocaust denial.
These are some of the same countries who hold Turkey in sneering
contempt for its law forbidding any insult to ''Turkishness'' --
specifically references to the massacre of Armenians during World War
I and the more recent trouble with the Kurds.
To many Europeans, this is proof of Turkey's alien ways and a reason
it should not be admitted into the European Union.
It does not occur to many Europeans that Turkey is merely protecting
its version of history as Austria and the others protect theirs.
Truth, of course, matters -- but what also matters, critically if not
paramountly, is the effort to impose it by government fiat.
It is easy enough to dismiss Irving and say that he doesn't matter.
Without his governmental tormentors, that would certainly be the case.
But what makes him dangerous is not his ideas, but the official,
censorious, response to them.
He is muscled up solely by virtue of the forces arrayed against him.
These governments have transformed the imbecilic into something
exotically taboo.
By banning these ideas, the various European governments accord them a
certain respect: See, why are they afraid of us? It must be because
what we say is true.
Let Irving howl his idiocy in freedom.
He doesn't deserve to be jailed.
He deserves to be ignored.
---
George W. Bush _is_ a Christian. Get over it!
"Choke to death, Pink." - FLR
"Nice Christian attitude." -- Fred Hall
"Choke to death _please_. Better?" -- FLR
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