- 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.
-
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