Austria: Holocaust Denier David Irving Sentenced to 3-Year Prison Term
Monday February 20, 2006
Category: Free Speech | Human Rights in Europe
Some of you may remember the 2000 libel case unsuccessfully filed by British white supremacist David Irving against Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, charging that she had harmed his reputation as a historian. Although he managed to get the case filed in the UK, where it is far easier to prove libel than in the United States, Irving lost decisively in a ruling in which the judge declared him to be "an anti-semite and a racist."
Now Irving is in the news again, but this time on the other site of the courtroom. An Austrian judge has sentenced him to three years in prison for a 1989 speech he gave in Vienna, in which he denied the Holocaust--a criminal charge in Austria, where Hitler's army slaughtered 122,000 people in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camps.
It's hard to shed any tears for Irving, but this does speak to differences between the United States, which has a First Amendment that protects hate speech, and in much of Europe, where hate speech is considered a crime that can be prosecuted. U.S. civil libertarians are concerned that at some point the United States may allow First Amendment exceptions in cases of hate speech, opening the floodgates for future restrictions on free speech.
What do you think? Tell us in the forums.
Some of you may remember the 2000 libel case unsuccessfully filed by British white supremacist David Irving against Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, charging that she had harmed his reputation as a historian. Although he managed to get the case filed in the UK, where it is far easier to prove libel than in the United States, Irving lost decisively in a ruling in which the judge declared him to be "an anti-semite and a racist."
Now Irving is in the news again, but this time on the other site of the courtroom. An Austrian judge has sentenced him to three years in prison for a 1989 speech he gave in Vienna, in which he denied the Holocaust--a criminal charge in Austria, where Hitler's army slaughtered 122,000 people in the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camps.
It's hard to shed any tears for Irving, but this does speak to differences between the United States, which has a First Amendment that protects hate speech, and in much of Europe, where hate speech is considered a crime that can be prosecuted. U.S. civil libertarians are concerned that at some point the United States may allow First Amendment exceptions in cases of hate speech, opening the floodgates for future restrictions on free speech.
What do you think? Tell us in the forums.
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