TotallyJewish.com: No Right To Free Speech

[MikeWB]

TotallyJewish.com - No Right To Free Speech

http://www.totallyjewish.com

The Right To Free Speech

Thursday 11th 2008f December 2008

Freedom of speech - widely held as an inalienable right and a fundamental principle of democracy, those who seek to limit it in any way, shape or form are seen as the first step on a perillous road that ultimately leads towards dictatorship, discrimination and persecution.

Nevertheless, for all the moral weight we invest in it, we accept that there must be some restrictions. Where freedom of speech infringes on other such inalienable rights, we are prepared to erect boundaries. Those, for example, who abuse it to preach hatred and to incite violence find their actions curbed by society.

But what of those who preach views that are simply incorrect or unpalatable? Those like David Irving who in a documentary screened on television this week expressed "scepticism about what happened at Auschwitz, what happened in the other so-called 'gassing centres' because there's forensic evidence, eyewitness problems and this kind of thing"; David Irving who tells us that the evidence he based his first book about the Fuhrer on threw up "not a single document linking Hitler with decisions on the Holocaust, except negative decisons - 'This mustn't happen'; 'that's not to be done.' spare that man' - where I say he's putting out his hand to protect the Jews or individual Jews."

David Irving, who insists that as he's delved deeper he's changed his views about the Holocaust and accepts there was a genocide, but adds: "Adolf Hitler, I still maintain, knew virtually nothing of what was happening to the Western European Jews."

Distasteful these views may be, but we allow him to propound them, even though there are those in our society who may know no better and may believe them; those who see the seemingly avuncular academic in a documentary featuring people tortured, exiled and imprisoned for questioning the corrupt militias and dictators who ruled their countries, and perceive Irving to be just as much a victim as the other interviewees.

For his part, he plays down his status as a 'poster boy' for freedom of speech. But nonetheless that is what Irving has become: at the Oxford Union last year and now in An Independent Mind. Should we ban him from speaking? Should we take that first step on the perilous road? Should we turn Irving into a martyr for the right to freedom of speech? Absolutely not.

But should we encourage people to think twice before giving him a platform that confers a degree of legitimacy? And should we urge them to consider their audience, suggesting they may want to offer facts that dispel the myths he propogates? Absolutely.

Irving may be 'an independent mind', but that does not mean we have to hear his opinions independently of the truth.m/news/TJ_leader/?content_id=10744