Another View of David Irving

(Originally posted February 22, 2006)

The oddly-named Neo-neocon pulls together various views of the David Irving case. She quotes Roger Boyes, who thinks Irving deserves jail, points to the differing histories of Austria and Germany, and the perceived danger of a Nazi revival, but in the end, comes down on the libertarian side of the debate:

The Irving-is-a-chump school describes him as a "fringe academic addressing a group of loopy far-right radicals wearing silly hats in a basement in Vienna". Jailing the man is supposed to award him an undeserved importance. This is a truly parochial view, given that the problem is not strange, skinheaded Austrians in lederhosen (though I worry a bit about them, too) but bearded men in turbans who have never made their peace with Israel. The European input has always been important to the development of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. The widespread Arab hatred of Jews does not derive from the Koran: it stems from the need of national liberation movements for hate figures.

European anti-Semites have fed them from the start. Palestinian nationalists aligned themselves with Nazi Germany, identifying Zionism as the enemy. As the state of Israel took shape, Arab writers (borrowing heavily from European deniers) presented the Nazi gas chambers as a flimsy myth designed to justify a land-grab.

An interesting point. But, in the end, an irrelevant one. Because the sad truth is that the damage has already been done. The horse is out of the barn, the cat is out of the bag, Humpty Dumpty has fallen off his wall and all the king's horses and all the king's men and all the jailers in Austria will not undo the influence of the European anti-Semitism that has been tainting the Arab world for much of this century.

So it seems to me that the only remedy is free speech in the theater of ideas. We must believe in the ability of truth to ultimately triumph, and in our ability to wage war against those who would preach hate and follow through on it with destruction. If Irving and his ilk have influenced Iran, the damage is long done, and the remedies lie elsewhere--unfortunately.

David Irving Is Sentenced

(First posted February 20, 2006)

I know very little about David Irving, except that he is a historian who downplayed some aspects of the Nazi mass murder of European Jews, and lost a libel trial in England to Deborah Lipstadt.

Now Mr. Irving has been convicted and sentenced to three years' imprisonment in Austria under a law that makes denial of Nazi villainy a criminal offense, for remarks he made some time ago. This conviction illustrates some differences between the European and US conceptions of freedom of speech, as I discussed in this post. In Europe and Canada, deviation from conventional wisdom on the Nazi era can be a crime. In the United States, freedom of speech extends to statements that others consider outrageous and offensive.

The Americans have the better of this argument. We have a tradition of rough-and-tumble, even scurrilous debate over politics and other matters, and are none the worse for it. In part this reflects a belief that the truth will emerge from free debate, and in part from an unwillingness to trust government to decide what speech is too dangerous or too offensive to be heard. Therefore, even though Holocaust denial is sometime associated with very unpleasant anti-Jewish sentiment, the American view of free speech leads to the conclusion that it is wrong (not to say hypocritical in the land of Kurt Waldheim) to jail Mr. Irving for his deviant views on Nazi genocide. Although Mr. Irving's views may not be worthy of defense, his right to express them is. Therefore, like him or not, like it or not, I am forced to say "Free David Irving."

Free Speech--or Safe Speech?

Within the worldwide rioting and controversy over a few cartoons published in a small Danish newspaper lurks a distinction between two approaches to freedom of speech. In the United States, there are few limits on speech about matters of public controversy. Even the libel laws have been weakened because it seemed more important to allow robust debate, at least about "public figures" than to suppress speech. Two examples illustrate the point.

In 1978, a small group of neo-Nazis decided to conduct a march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, which had a large Jewish population. Even though the march was highly offensive and could have provoked a violent reaction, in the end, the courts held that the authorities could not ban it. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), notwithstanding the many liberals of Jewish origin in its ranks, took the "First Amendment absolutist" position that however offensive, the First Amendment forbade a ban on the march.

A 1949 case, Terminiello v. Chicago, addresses that question: can the authorities ban speech that arouses the anger of others and thus is likely to cause a public disturbance. Terminiello was an extremist who sought to deliver a speech to the Christian War Veterans of America. A hostile crowd gathered, and the authorities arrested Terminiello, who was convicted of disorderly conduct. The case found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned the conviction, holding: Accordingly a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, supra, 315 U.S. at pages 571-572, 62 S.Ct. at page 769, is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. See Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, 262, 193, 159 A.L.R. 1346; Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367, 373, 1253. There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view. For the alternative would lead to standardization of ideas either by legislatures, courts, or dominant political or community groups. The job of the police, therefore, is to protect the speaker from those angered by his speech, not to arrest the speaker, even if his ideas are outrageous, to protect the public peace.

There is another view, that finds currency in Europe, and also in corners of this country, for example, some colleges and workplaces. This view is that the social harm (not to say danger of disorder) caused by speech that offends racial, religious, or other minorities, outweighs any benefit in allowing such speech, and therefore the law can prohibit or punish certain kinds of speech. An example of this kind of law is the prohibition in Canada and many European countries, on public denial of the Holocaust, and the German ban on displaying Nazi symbols.

This approach finds its strongest echoes in this country in colleges where campus codes prohibit "racist" and "sexist" speech, and workplaces where employers, fearing "hostile environment" discrimination lawsuits, prohibit certain kinds of remarks and expressions of opinion. These restrictions are often not directly imposed by government, and so are a bit different than the European and Canadian laws.

The vice in this kind of law is not only that it will lead to standardization of ideas by dominant groups, but it is likely to best protect those minorities, such as radical Muslims, who are most easily offended and most likely to react violently to opinions, words, or even cartoons they dislike. The more sensitive the minority and the more severe its reactions when offended, the more likely the law is to cater to its prejudices. For this reason, retreat from the American principle that freedom of speech and the press includes the right to say things that will offend others would be most dangerous. In our society, almost anything one might say other than "Have a nice day!" is likely to offend someone.

A society that starts suppressing ideas just to avoid hurting people's feelings, is well on its way to losing its freedom altogether. This danger is not imaginary. In Sweden, a minister was prosecuted for expressing the view that the Bible condemns homosexual conduct. In Italy, Oriana Fallaci is being prosecuted for her polemics against Islam. And so on, down the slippery slope. That is not to say that people should act in a way that offends others, or that tests the limits of free speech and the patience of the public, just to prove in the most puerile way possible that speech is free--only that the law should not prohibit speech just because some find it offensive or even infuriating.