This is why the European laws against Holocaust denial are completely counter-productive. They just provide a media spotlight (and therefore a voice) to these sinister charlatans—and worse, allow them to legitimately accuse the establishment of silencing them. Every turn in David Irving's legal fortunes has provided another opportunity for him to play the victim and spew his filth into extended microphones. From The Australian [2], Dec. 21, emphasis added (superfluously, we hope):
Holocaust denier to 'fight back'
A day after his release from jail, British Holocaust-denier David Irving called Friday for a boycott of Austrian and German historians until legislation that led to his imprisonment is repealed. "I'm now going to fight back,'' Irving, 68, told a central London news conference 24 hours after his expulsion from Austria, where he spent 13 months behind bars for challenging the Holocaust. "I'm calling for an international boycott of German and Austrian historians until they put pressure on their governments to end the Stalinist legislation which puts historians in prison for expressing the wrong opinions about history - politically incorrect opinions."
An unrepentant Irving said he would "use the same methods" as those he claimed had been part of a "worldwide attempt" to silence him, discredit his views and stifle a free academic debate on the subject. "You can't have a genuine consensus of historians on a subject like the Holocaust, the origins of World War II or Pearl Harbour or whatever it is if the proponents of one argument are given the knighthoods and the money and their opponents are locked up in prison...
"I want a free debate. I'm prepared to debate anybody on my views on the Holocaust, on my views on Pearl Harbour." The military historian said the campaign would take the form of lobbying universities and academic journals either not to employ or invited certain Austrian and German historians because they had "effectively been polluted."
"They're not able to think straight anymore," he added.
Irving repeated the assertion that led to his conviction in an Austrian court last year, namely that Adolf Hitler was not party to the Nazi genocide of European Jewry and that the number of those killed was exaggerated. He accepted that some of his opinions over the years had been wrong - such as there were no killings in the Auschwitz concentration camp - and repeated his statement at his trial last February that the Holocaust had taken place.
But he maintained that "conformist" historians had not properly researched the issue thoroughly -- or were frightened to.
"I don't like being called a Holocaust denier. It makes my blood boil. But what can I do about it? It's a smear," he said. Irving claimed he was being vilified by an unspecified "enemy" to make their "campaign'' more successful. Asked if he was anti-Semitic, he said: "I like to think I'm not."
Irving then went on to repeat his view that "Mel Gibson was right" - a reference to the actor's drunken rantings in July, which caused worldwide uproar, that Jews were responsible for causing all the wars of the world. "'In vino veritas'," said Irving, adding that he believed Gibson was articulating what "a lot of ordinary thinking people are beginning to think."
He added: "I'm sure the Jews don't need to have me as a friend. It's in their own interests that I'm saying these things. "They should ask themselves the question: why have they been so hated for the last 3000 years, that there has been pogrom after pogrom in country after country? It's the one question they have been shy of."
See our last posts on David Irving [3], Holocaust denial [4] and other assorted Nazis [5]. See also our last post on supposedly non-existent resurgent anti-Semitism [6].
