Free Irving

David Irving is pretty much a huge asshole, but what happened to him is terribly, terribly wrong.\nIrving is a British WWII historian. He achieved early fame for his examination of the firebombing of Dresden, and wrote an international bestseller about it. While the number of deaths he attributed to the firebombing has since been proven much lower, I give Irving credit for questioning the morality of relentlessly carpet-bombing cities and their civilian populations.\nHowever, Irving is much better known for being a neo-Nazi, Hitler-sympathizing Holocaust denier. His claims include the following: Hitler did not even know about the extermination of the Jews until 1943; the Nazis did not use gas chambers to systematically murder Jews; six million Jews did not die during WWII; and most Jews who died at concentration camps succumbed to disease and not to execution. He even once claimed that more women died in Senator Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in gas chambers at Auschwitz.\nHe's wrong, and his claims are demonstrably false and morally vile. That doesn't mean he deserves to be jailed, though. But he has been.\nIrving was arrested in Austria last November under a warrant issued in 1989 after he made two speeches featuring claims similar to the ones above. He was charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust. In court, he pleaded guilty and admitted that he was wrong. He said his views have since changed and he now acknowledges that Jews were killed in gas chambers during the Holocaust. Nevertheless, this week he was sentenced to three years in prison.Three years in jail?\nIrving expressed a despicable view about a despicable event. But these laws (similar laws exist in Germany) are anathema to the Western concept of free speech. I've said it before and I'll say it again as many times as I have to: Free speech means you can be wrong, ignorant, vile or stupid. Locking someone in jail for expressing a view that is wrong is utterly unjustifiable. I don't care that there is a historical reason why Germany and Austria are particularly sensitive to Irving's position; such laws are \nsimply wrong.\nFurthermore, this ruling will only confirm suspicions that the West has double standards regarding free speech. The ruling makes it difficult to assuage Muslim accusations that when someone uses freedom of speech in a way offensive to Jews, we will rush to lock him up, but when someone uses freedom of speech to make cartoons offensive to Muslims, we will rush to print and reprint them in as many media as we can. And as long as we have laws and court cases like these, such accusations will ring true.\nEspecially after the Danish cartoon controversy, now is the time to support the freedom of speech, not abandon it. Free David Irving now. We cannot lecture the Muslim world on speech abroad while we forsake it at home.