Irving bottles it... Thought Crime gets him 3 yrs. in prison

[friedrich braun]

Is it fair to say that since Irving presented his views on the holocau$ during his case against Lipstadt and lost, it would've served no purpose whatsoever to present his views once again in Austria?...particularly since you cannot present your evidence in such trials without committing a crime....and having the prosecution add your new offences to its case against you. I mean, he had no way out.

[Radar]

It's alright for some of us to recommend that Irving should have "gone down with all guns blazing", but that assumes that he is a revisionist, say of the Robert Faurisson calibre. He's not and never claimed to be. I don't know what Faurisson would have done in his position but I would expect that he would not have done the crawl Irving did and I'm sorry to see that. But we can't condemn him for not being another person. And I still suspect that his statements may have been part of a "deal" that he was cheated on. If this is so, he should say it.

It is true that his views on the Holocaust are inconsistent and peculiar and always have been. He seems to want to carry water on both shoulders. As Hannover has pointed out many of his specific utterances are solid revisionist but he has always hedged, even to the extent, foolishly in my view, of admitting to "a little gassing" in the Lipstadt trial, I think to try to show how "reasonable" he was. He's no Faurisson, no Butz, no Mattogno... ok, but are any of us happy with this result? I'm not. The real criminals here are Austrian politicians without courage.

[friedrich braun]

Some important facts to keep in mind:

In Austria it's the mayor's office that pics members of the jury...and you can be sure that for such a trial your average John and Mary off the street weren't selected..In the "Nazi" trial against Binder and Radl and Schimanek, they selected Gypsies to sit on the jury. You can be certain that they selected their people for Irving very carefuly.

[Kiwichap]

I do no not understand the controvesy (here on the forum) re: Irvings latest escapade.

He was charged with Holocaust Denial,
He pleaded GUILTY.
He is in the slammer for 3 years.

Those are the facts.

I would plead guilty also. I am a Holocaust Denier. Should I lie - and plead Not Guilty?

The rest is the 'you-know-who' and their press!

I have read 14 press releases on the sentence - they all hedge differently.

If Irving recanted he would be strolling down the avenue, in the sun, enjoying a bagel courtesy the EJC.

Cheers

[Secret Anne X]

Hi,

I would just like to point out that actually nobody believes Irving's recantation in court, so it does no damage to revisionism. The court didn't believe it, the DA didn't believe it, Lipstadt didn't believe it, and neither has anyone else who has commented that I have seen.

They interviewed his twin brother, and he quoted Galileo - E pur si muove!

That's about the size of it. LOL!

[code yellow]

if one examines so-called"confessions after ww2,you will notice an obvious pattern.Kurt Gerstein,Rudolf Hoss,Adolf Eichman,David Cole,and now,David Irving.I've said it before,when someone is confronted of being

exposed of a serious lie(the holocaust and it's perps),they get desperate and go through all sorts of irrational measures to guard against it's exposure.No one is going to go through the trouble of

harrasment,violence,or imprisonment(the holocaust perps) just because someone wrote a book with an adverse view.You write them off as a nutcase.No, they(the holocaust perps)are hidding a great big lie.And it isn't only jews.

[Hyman]

Those Eurocrats sure showed the Islamic fundamentalists a thing or two about freedom of speech, didn’t they?
For the Zionist cowed commissars in Europe, transgressing against official Holocaust history is such a grievous sin that, even if you change your mind, your original thought crime still cannot go unpunished. At least the medieval clerics laid off Galileo when he recanted.

On the issue of the thought-crime law, Irving is quoted in the BBC as saying. "Of course it's a question of freedom of speech... I think within 12 months this law will have vanished from the Austrian statute book". In his write-up about the Irving sentence the IHR’s Mark Weber says, “With each passing year, “Holocaust denial” laws will be regarded as ever more bizarre and embarrassing. It is difficult to imagine that they will still be in place anywhere ten years from now.”
But who is going to reverse the laws? Certainly not the “mainstream” political parties that brought them in in the first place. If they had been motivated by justice, fair-play and respect for freedom the laws would have never been on the books. The last time a government granted more freedom of speech to its citizenry instead of trying to chip away at it was probably at the time of the American Revolution. Since then the U.S. free speech guarantee has served as an example to certain other countries, including Russia at the fall of the Soviet Union. But political parties other than the current mainstream ones in Europe will have to come to power before the thought-crime laws are reversed. The next heretic of pension age to receive a draconian sentence is likely to be Ernst Zundel.

David Irving is right now more famous (or infamous) than ever with his 3 year sentence being covered by all the mainstream news outlets. Probably most western journalists think his sentence is not justified, but that won’t cause our supposed guardians of free speech to call for his release or otherwise prevent them from quickly forgetting his imprisonment.

[friedrich braun]

When think that troubles me is Irving's statement that he changed his mind because he read Eichmann's archives. I find that hard to believe. Does anyone know what he's talking about? Does anyone here know what those archives contain and where they can be accessed? Have Revisionists addressed the content of those archives? If so, where?

[Kiwichap]

Renouf shows support

Former Australian beauty queen and controversial London socialite, Michele Renouf, turned up at the Vienna court to support British historian David Irving.

Lady Michele Renouf, the third wife of the late New Zealand financier Sir Frank Renouf, has long been an advocate of right-wing views.

Arriving in court she made her views plain to assembled media, calling for the bodies of "so-called Holocaust victims to be exhumed to see whether they died from typhoid or gas".

She praised Mr Irving for "standing up to the Zionists" before a member of the Austrian press shouted at her "Do you think your British flag entitles you to bring your Nazi propaganda into this court?"
http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id=127391®ion=3

This is rather odd, surely:

Arriving in court she made her views plain to assembled media, calling for the bodies of "so-called Holocaust victims to be exhumed to see whether they died from typhoid or gas".

Why did they not immediately arrest her for denigrating the holocaust?
Perhaps the Austrian prisons are full, and they have no room left.

[Maly Jacek]

This is quite interesting

(the sentence) is three years more than anyone should have to serve for exercising freedom of speech in a democracy... We have deep misgivings about the classification of Holocaust denial as a prosecutable offence
Editorial in the UK's The Independent

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4735496.stm

[friedrich braun]

There are some interesting comments posted on the liberal The Guardian Blog. One gets tired of seeing so much ignorance of even basic Revisionist scholarship. For e.g.:

I believe there WERE chemical plans for the poison used in the showers which had modified shower heads. There WERE contracts let by the Reich to certain manufacturers for the specialized oven equipment used and necessary to process murder on a large scale. What are you saying? That these events, which no SS or Nazi denied ever taking place as opposed to you and others with similar edge-views, were setups? Bodies of emaciated and maltreated copses did not exist? Perhaps you should work for the Serbian government as it denies Bosnia and Kosovo. Freedom of speech is one thing. Freedom to lie with the intent to deceive is not the moral equivalent.

Posted by Rick on February 21, 2006 08:53 PM.
Offensive? Unsuitable? Report this comment.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archiv ... .html#more

[Richard Perle]

That above posted comment is laughable and sadly common place. People don't know the first thing about the subject and yet they feel they are equipped to say the most awful things about us. I got compared to a pedophile yesterday.

[Maly Jacek]

Richard

Don't be surprised with such attitude.This is result of having been fed with all sorts of nonsense for last 60 years
From today's "Independent" article on Irving:

At lunch in the court canteen, one Holocaust survivor was eating a plate of spaghetti. He talked about the spell he survived in Treblinka and the 17 family members he lost during the war. "I am here because I am a part of the history this man denies,"
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article346727.ece

Unlike us an average person will simply read this and feel sorry for the yet another "surviver" without asking any question.

[Goethe]

"I am here because I am a part of the history this man denies,"

What stupidity. He's alive but claims to be part of the alleged extermination of Jews. The guy is full of it and exemplifies why they lie; they want to exalt themselves as being "part of history". No doubt he was also abducted by aliens. As Irving was quoted as saying - "Eyewitness testimony is really a matter for psychiatric evaluation."

[Radar]

Irving's claim that he changed his views after reading "Eichmann's archives" is indeed a mystery. What "archives"? Could this be a clever signal to the outside world from a man trapped in an impossible situation that we should not get too upset about his change of heart? And more subtle than claiming conversion after reading, say, the Hoess confessions.

And will he have to actually serve three years? Does anyone know? Will it be reduced by time already served or some other factor?

Will the British Government which does not have laws against free speech try to help him by securing his release at this point? They should. Is anyone in Britain organizing a protest by prominent free speech advocates regardless of their views on the Holocaust or Irving himself? One would expect that in Britain. In my view failure to do so will be a blot on Britain's reputation as a free nation.