Irving released
David Irving, the revisionist historian who was jailed in Austria last year on “holocaust denial” charges, has been released. The pudgy peddlar of porkies had served 13 months in a Vienna jail.
Better out than in. As Ben Macintyre puts it in The Times:
It is far better that Irving should be at liberty to spout his vile nonsense, and derided for it. Let him traipse back to Britain, demanding an academic boycott of Austria and Germany, which everyone will ignore. Then his ideas can slide back into the intellectual mud where they belong. We need to hear the poisonous ideas to realise how wrong they are.
It is hard to make fun of people properly if they are banged up in a cell.
The holcaust never happened, sprouts are delicacy every kids will enjoy this holiday and pigs really can fly. Oh please come back Mr Irving – we need a laugh about now!
Is it too late for him to get a suitable part in Panto? Or how about Celebrity Big Brother?
I think it’s a good thing that he’s out. It will remind me what a revolting man he is .
His incarceration does bring it home to us that we’re in so much danger of being banged up for what we believe. While we may believe what he believes is a load of crap, if we wish for him to be banged up for saying it we’re inviting that fate for ourselves as soon as we find ourselves in genuine disagreement with a law that says you can’t say this or can’t say that.
I think those two Christians from the North who nuttily demanded that Christian literature be put alongside gay literature in some gay project or other they complained about should not have been questioned by police (unless they were some sort of threat we weren’t told about). They had every right to complain about the fact that local taxpayers’ spondulicks were being spent on pooftahs (and of course the council had every right to tell them where to get off), and we must preserve that freedom of expression (usual caveats, of course). There but for the grace of NuLabour’s twattish lawmaking go I, and all that.
I think you’re right, Andy. I mean, if the police are going to spend hours questioning every reactionary halfwit with medieval social views, the entire legal system would grind to a halt as soon as they read the ITV Ceefax letters page.
Course, if they ring the right council and complain about their imaginary beliefs being hurt (by those wicked gay folks) they might just get 10 grand of TAXPAYER’S money towards their hair-brained ideas.
I AM SOOOOOOO OFFENDED!
I demand an apology and ten grand.
You nonchantly throw in the word “pudgy” to describe this lunatic thus identifying all height challenged people (I am not overweight I am undertall) with smug self centred fantasists.
Retract now!