Last week in Britain a historian , David Irvine lost a very costly libel case link . Irvine while not saying that the holocaust didn’t happen does say that the extent of the killings were nowhere near then level of 6 million . He also thinks that what people should be looking at is why so many people hated the Jews throughout history .
I also remember seeing a film called "Manufacturing Consent " about the political activist Noam Chomsky where he wrote a letter in support of a French author who wrote a book stating that the holocaust didn’t happen and it was all fabricated after the war by Jews and the American government . In the film Chomsky ( a Jew who believes that to deny the holocaust is giving up your humanity ) was supporting the mans right to free speech . And this the point of this post . Should we let these people publish these books or should they be censored for the greater good .
I haven’t made my mind up on this point so maybe a good debate would help me decide , so over to you .
If you christians were more like your Christ the world would be a better place
-Mahatma Gandhi
I think it’s important to point out that this court case took place in Britain, where they don’t have the First Amendment. Americans adore the First Amendment, but it would be unfair to think that all nations should or do obey it.
It’s probably worthwhile mentioning that the French author was arrested because it’s against the law to deny the holocaust in France .
Also the letter was then used in the foreword of the book without Chomskys permission.
If you christians were more like your Christ the world would be a better place
-Mahatma Gandhi
KYLA – I don’t know why you think the American embracement of the First Amendment is important in this context. I don’t see that it is.
God knows I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong, but the author (Irving) was the plaintiff in this case – the suer, not the sue-ee. He alleged that he was libelled when other researchers (specifically, an American woman, if I’m remembering the details correctly) called his historical revisionism – the Holocaust did not happen; it’s all a product of a vast Jewish conspiracy – exactly what it is – a steaming pile of bullshit (my words, not theirs). He sued, and he lost, because the judge found that Irving’s work was bullshit and that Irving had “deliberately distorted and wilfully mistranslated documents, consciously used discredited testimony and falsified historical statistics.” (From the B.B.C. article, linked above.)
If this had occurred in the U.S., it likely would have played out in much the same way. The First Amendment would protect Irving’s right to publish his book and protect his critics’ right to rip it to shreds – unless Irving could prove that their criticism was libelous or slanderous. He couldn’t prove that in Britian, and there’s no reason to believe he could prove it over here.
As far as the OP is concerned, I personally believe very strongly in the power and necessity of the First Amendment. When you ask whether we “should” allow such drivel to be published, you need to ask who you would trust to decide what is meritorious and publishable and what is not. I think it is far better to allow any old piece of crap to be published, in the hopes that intelligence and education will allow the public to recognize crap when it sees it. Will everyone? Probably not. Some will read it and believe it is true. But I’d rather have that than have the government deciding for me what I can or cannot read.
I was waiting to see if this would come up and I’m glad to see it did.
Yes it took place here in the a UK but I wondered if it would be reported in other countries.I have my proof that Americans are not as insular as our media would have us believe.
David Irving is a very intelligent man and is quite exceptional in the way he has argued his case over the years.He has been taken on several times but has managed to cloud the issues enough to avoid his critics.
This man is more than a holocaust denier and is known to hold other ,equally contentious ,views.
His writing has been quoted by other types of organisations as proof and justification of their ideals.
I hope you can read into what I’m saying here and why I don’t elaborate further.
His views and those of his supporters ,I believe ,are dangerous.
It is interesting to note that there have been several racist attacks here just lately
Those in Telford spring to mind as do the assaults on the white boyfriend of a black British athlete.
I would not be at all surprised to find that the individuals concerned and the organisation behind them hold similar views to David Irving.
jodih is spot on. This isn’t really about free speech as mentioned in the OP. Irving was suing Professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin books - this link describes the background to the trial. Incidentally, he’d already been banned from entering Germany and Australia, and was denied entry into Canada in 1993.
The case was not about whether Irving should be allowed to make his claims, but whether his being called on it by Lipstadt amounted to libel. He really had very little chance if media reports were anything to go on. Both The Guardian, a national newspaper, and Private Eye, a satirical magazine, reported him accidentally addressing Judge Charles Gray as “Mein Fuhrer” at one point. Another point was the fact that he’d taught his infant daughter the following rhyme (from The Independent):
From an interview in The Independent this weekend, after the judgement against him:
I’d also like to point out that for the truly interested, there’s an awful lot of unpleasant rubbish floating around on the internet supporting Irving. In trying to dig up some facts, I came across this one and Irving’s own self-promoting site here.
If your proof is that I started the tread then I sorry to tell you that I’m Irish and this case was pretty big news here . However, I will say that my time on this board has shown me that there are a lot of Americans that are very knowledgeable about European news/history .
I believe we should let him print his books.
Of course I would no longer shop at a bookstore that sold his books.
Why can we not have a discussion about free speech without mentioning the 1st amendment?
This case took place in England!
What does the 1st amendment have to do with anything?
Of course, I could be biased. I started a thread in GD in which I dared to question the constitution. And I got hammered. What was that thread called again?
Oh yeah…
BURN THE CONSTITUTION!
(Thought I might help yojimbo out by stirring up a debate. He did ask for 1.)
Just putting my 2sense in.
Tyranny,* like Hell*,* is not easily conquered*.
-Thomas Paine (fugitive slave catcher)
One the one hand, there are “holocaust deniers” who are simply rascist morons. Onr the other hand, there are those who cast legitimate doubts on the extent of the holocaust, and are tarred with the same brush.
I started a thread here a while ago: holocaust *, which asked the questions 1. How good are the estimates of six million? and 2. Why are the deaths of millions of NON-jews in the Holocaust downplayed? I have asked these before, and been attacked as antisemitic and racist. To the kudos of this board, while we did have a VERY lively debate, no-one went so far as to deride me or my queries as racist.
If you admit the Holocaust, but just argue it was more like 3 million, or attack the radical zionist propaganda that ignores the other holocaust deaths, you have a reasonable point to make. Denying the Holocaust is just wrong.
The Februrary 2000 issue of the Atlantic has a brilliant article on the trial. Written before the case went to court, of course, but it lays out the issues well.
Again this case has nothing to do with the first amendment, but with libel, to repeat some of the posters. Irving chose to file suit in England and indeed waited until Lipstadts comments on him were published there. He did so because English libel laws are much more favorable to the plaintiff than American laws. In England the defendant must prove her remarks are not libelous, in America the plaintiff must prove that they are.
When Irving lost he had to pay court costs, which I believe were high. This is why it seemed that Lipstadt had been suing him, when it was the other way around
Daniel, let’s try to retain some credibility, shall we? The 6 million estimate is an estimate; it may be off by (say) 10%, so it could be only 5.5 million. It is NOT off by as much as 50% (the “3 million” figure you toss off.)
You want to proclaim that you are not a racist and not feeble-minded, and you don’t want to be tarred with the Holocaust-denier brush, then be damn careful to be reasonably accurate in your generalizations.
Anecdote: there is a chemistry professor at a major university near Chicago who is a leading Holocaust denier. There was a big scandal when his tenure came up, and the university committee decided that his political opinions, odious though they may be, were irrelevant. I think they took the wrong tack: if his historical “scholarship” was so shoddy, why do they assume that his chemistry research was any better? If he was willing to make up “historical” results, why do they assume he wouldn’t make up the results of his chemistry experiments?
If I were on the committee, I woulda thrown the book at him – not because he holds dangerous political opinions, but because he lied in documents of purported “scholarship.”
CK, before you accuse people of being slow to understand what makes others accuse them of being Holocaust deniers, you might want to read their posts. Daniel did not say that the Holocaust claimed 3-million.
On another note, the <b>Holocaust claimed closer to 11-12 million lives<b>, probably less than half of which were Jewish. I can at least partially sympathize with the claim that a commonly held public myth was that the Holocaust was intended solely or even mostly for the extermination of Jews.
On a final tangent note, why does everyone complain when somebody brings up the 1st Amendment in relation to other countries? I think that the constitution is one of the most politically important documents ever created and creates a relatively ideal political framework. People say that we take the 1st Amendment for granted when people are killed, tortured, or put in prison for holding views contrary to those of the government and encourage reform in third world countries, why should this be different for any 1st world country, granted that this was clearly not the case?
You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.
So why should we care about the Holocaust at all? What it really comes down to is that the Nazis didn’t respect differing religious or political views. Americans take it for granted that on shouldn’t kill someone else just because of that person’s religion, but why should Americans expect other countries to follow that ideal?
CKDextHavn:
Perhaps you should tell that to the Holocaust Remberance promoters. I’ve seen as many as three significant digits given for the number of Jews killed by the Holocaust.
CKD: YOU’RE an administrator?!? And yos can’t even read my post correctly w/o saying I’m a feeble minded racist? I NEVER said there were only 3 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. I said that if someone came up with some estimates/figures that HE thought showed a “MERE” 3 million, this would be an interesting debate, and that we all could discuss that like intelligent, rational human beings. WITHOUT calling him a racist moron.
But it seems SOME can’t even discuss any possibility of there being ANY error in the “gospel”.
In my thread re holocaust, I pretty much accept a figure of 5-6 million Jewish dead, but I want to add nearly a million Gypsies, and up to 10 million Slavs, plus tens of thousands of others.
I want SOME to stop DENYING that anyone other than Jews got hit hard by the Holocaust. These folks are almost as bad as the racist morons who deny the “Holocaust”.
The defendant was employed at an American university (though I think she might be Australian).
Kyla & Ryan,
As others have pointed out, this has nothing to do with the First Amendment. It was a civil case brought by Irving against Lipstadt. My understanding is that the US has defamation laws as well (cf the recent events on this board).
Daniel, you said: <<If you admit the Holocaust, but just argue it was more like 3 million, or attack the radical zionist propaganda that ignores the other holocaust deaths, you have a reasonable point to make.>>
And my point was that your hypothetical figure of 3 million is not within the realm of statistical error. My message was, as you’ll recall, “be careful with your generalizations.”
Some of you give the impression that there is no alternative to the First Amendmant and other countries ways of ensuring free speech are not as effective.
All democracies have some means of ensuring free speech ,they simply would not be democracies if they did otherwise.
In the UK you can say or publish what you like as long as it is not unsubstantiated deformation of charactor.
.The restrictions we have are probably the same as yours, that is, material which is prejudicial to the security of the nation(The Official Secrets Act), material that is intellectual property, or material that is likely to cause hatred or assist crime as defined by the Criminal Justice Act.
There are other categories such as making false and misleading claims that are covered by things such as the Sale of Goods Act etc…
Stuff produced by racist groups can be brought under the scope of legislation somewhere but it is rarely done ,for the same reasons it is not done in the US.
I think that when we have racially motivated murders the publishers of such material should be made to face the consequencies of their actions,as far as I’m concerned they crossed the line.
Causality is difficult to prove and matyrdom is sometimes the aim of some of this scum.
Tell you what though, the racists would be eaten alive in jail ,now that I do know .
If by “this” you mean the case cited in the OP, I agree with you. If you mean “this thread” I disagree. The First Amendment has entered the discussion, I was responding to that. I really don’t understand what your point is. You don’t like people responding to other people’s posts about the First Amendment, so you respond to other people’s posts about the First Amendment?
You got hammered because you didn’t present your arguments very clearly. When counter-arguments were posted, you tended to agree with them.
Michael Shermer’s book Why People Believe Weird Things has excellent information on the Holocaust deniers movement, including brief biographical sketches of some of the major players and an outstanding discussion of denier methodology and the convergence of evidence which proves the reality of the Holocaust. I was poking around very briefly on The Skeptic Society homepage but didn’t see any exyensive discussion there of Holocaust denial beyond an open letter to the deniers from several years ago, but a search using “Shermer skeptic” as search terms brings up a lot of hits.