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Free Speech Is For Everyone - Even David Irving |
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by Charles Glass Rense Entered into the database on Thursday, December 01st, 2005 @ 19:02:39 MST |
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Will it be illegal one day to say that the US committed war crimes
in Iraq? David Irving has stated that Hitler knew nothing of the genocide of Europe's Jews.
It is a crank outburst here, but a crime in Austria, Germany, Poland and France. The United Nations General Assembly passed by unanimous consent a resolution on
1 November that "Rejects any denial of the Holocaust as a historic event,
either in full or in part". If a historian says - as the leading Holocaust
historian of our time, Raul Hilberg, does say - that the number of Jews murdered
by the Nazis was 5.2 million rather than the six million, will he be tried before
an international tribunal for denying the orthodox version "in part"?
Should historic inquiry cease, because the UN and the courts of Austria and Germany
have stated their position on the Holocaust? That is no way to suppress fascism.
It is fascism. "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right
includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and
impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations General
Assembly Resolution, 10 December 1948. One of my first stories as a reporter for The Observer was a student strike in
1977 at the London School of Economics. Whenever a fellow student spoke against
the strikers, they chanted, "No free speech for fascists". It had never
occurred to me that free speech should be denied to anyone - fascist, communist
or vegetarian. That was 1977, and I have since witnessed free speech denied to
both those with whom I agree and those whose views repel me. But my belief in
freedom of expression requires me to defend the right of both to speak. Otherwise,
what is this free speech I believe in? The freedom to agree? So, get ready. I am about to defend the right - remember, the right, not the views
- of David Irving, who today languishes in an Austrian holding cell for the crime
of stating a view that most of us find disgusting. He has stated that Hitler knew
nothing of the genocide of Europe's Jews. It is a crank outburst here, but a crime
in Austria, Germany, Poland and France. Another anti-Semitic, and much more vicious,
Holocaust denier, Ernst Zundel, awaits trial in Germany on a similar charge. Irving is a historian of the Second World War, who has uncovered important Wehrmacht
documents, but defended the Nazis. He supported Zundel in court - not his right
to speak, but what Zundel actually said: that the Holocaust was a myth. This places
them both beyond the realm of reasonable argument. Their errors could be demonstrated
in open debate - as historians have done with Irving's work. Indeed, open debate
- without fear of imprisonment and fines - helps to make an open society. Most of us spoke out in favour of someone who affirmed another genocide. The Turkish
government charged the novelist Orhan Pamuk with what can only be called "holocaust
confirmation" for asserting that Turkey committed genocide against its Armenian
population during and after the First World War. I think Pamuk was right, and
I was among many to sign petitions for him. Turkey's citizens should not be obliged
to adhere to any orthodoxy. Nor do I believe that Turkey has a right to prosecute
those who accuse its armed forces of crimes against the country's Kurdish population.
Outside Turkey, this is an easy (and obvious) position to assume. But within the
European Community, how many in the literary and human rights worlds who rallied
to Pamuk's defence have stood up for the right of two men with whom they disagree
to have their say? I have a free speech hero, a Jewish lawyer in the United States who would never
dare deny that Jews were massacred in their millions by Germany. David Goldberger
is a law professor at Ohio State University, but in 1977 he worked for the American
Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has an honourable record defending American blacks
in the South and free speech throughout the country. Holocaust survivors in 1977
sought to ban a parade by American Nazis through a Chicago suburb. Goldberg represented
the Nazis' right to free expression, and he was pilloried for it. But he believed
in the constitutional right to express views that he found odious. Similarly, a conservative Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Charles Evans
Hughes, wrote in 1931 in the case of Near vs Ohio: "The rights of the best
of men are secured only as the rights of the vilest and most abhorrent are protected." Perhaps nothing is more vile and abhorrent than denying the genocides of our time,
whether Armenian, Jewish or Rwandan. But nothing could be more fatal to our rights
to speak and to write than for us to deny others the right to deny our dearest
beliefs. One day, will it be illegal to assert (or deny) that the United States
committed war crimes in Iraq? The United Nations General Assembly passed by unanimous consent a resolution on
1 November that "Rejects any denial of the Holocaust as a historic event,
either in full or in part". If a historian says - as the leading Holocaust
historian of our time, Raul Hilberg, does say - that the number of Jews murdered
by the Nazis was 5.2 million rather than the six million, will he be tried before
an international tribunal for denying the orthodox version "in part"?
Should historic inquiry cease, because the UN and the courts of Austria and Germany
have stated their position on the Holocaust? That is no way to suppress fascism. It is fascism. |