I don’t know how long it will be available online but I’ve just listened to an extraordinary BBC documentary about the David Irving/Deborah Lipstadt libel trial. It’s even more interesting in light of the fact that Irving is now sitting in a jail cell in Austria.
For the record I don’t think anyone should be jailed for expressing an opinion as long as it does not lead directly to the harming of others. As David T at Harry’s Place said the other day:
Speech which does not directly and deliberately incite, or command the commission of other substantive criminal offences against persons or their property should not be criminalised. Anybody who is criminalised as a result of such speech must be defended. The nature of a speaker’s character, or his associations, or his motives, or even the value of the speech in question is irrelevant to that judgement. Free speech cannot be defended at all, if we only do so in an ad hominem or selective manner.
Irving’s views are vile. But I want to see them demolished not silenced or punished.
As the BBC documentary points out, the libel trial publicly proved Irving to be a falsifier, an anti-Semite, and a Holocaust denier with links to the far right. It also exposed delicious tidbits of information about Irving such as the revealingly malicious little ditty that he composed for his daughter:
I am a Baby Aryan
Not Jewish or Sectarian
I have no plans to marry an
Ape or Rastafarian.
Listen to the documentary and you will hear a deluded, pompous, arrogant, stubborn individual who will never change his mind and for whom every form of opposition is part of a wider Jewish conspiracy. He’s a nutjob who craves publicity. And where better to get it than from the confines of a jail cell?
From the BBC yesterday:
Jailed British historian David Irving has again said he does not believe Hitler presided over a systematic attempt to exterminate Jews in Europe.
Paul
In my opinion freedom of speech should always be treated equal, for example the woman that lost her son, I can’t remember her name got arrested for wearing a shirt of Bush, in the UK you can’t protest in around the parliament square without giving prior notice to the police.
And if I get back to Irvine, I know he is an educated and British. In his opinion he can write about something without keeping the fact accurate I don’t think that is right. There were millions of people that died because of Hitler, just because he is allowed to be opinionated in the USA, Austria have a different law from the one in the USA, hence he has to adhere to that.
I’m off Ethiopian origin, but having been to in the UK for the past 13 years and attending the Education system from school to Uni now - I appreciate that everyone have the freedom to speak, the media almost runs the country-this can’t be replaced and I do appreciate that, but sometimes there have to be common sense on what is right and wrong to say……that may affect the people.
Cheers Ermiyas
Cheers Ermiyas
Big Apple Blog Festival - March 6, 2006
Welcome to the Big Apple Blog Festival (BABF), a representative roundup of this week’s posts by NYC bloggers. The Big Apple Blog Festival likes to go on tour … if you don’t like what we covered here, and if…