Originally posted by Da preacher
You can get a fine of 100 euro.And saying the holocaust didn't happen isn't an opinion, for it has been proved.
It only shows your political ideas, and being a Nazi should be punished as has happened.
No actually its a historical fact, but history has often been changed and proven wrong. Also again this guy doesn't say it never happened but that it didn't happen on the scale some other people claimed.
And even if it was proven without a doubt, since when is going against proven facts illegal? I could say i'm a better soccer player then the greatest soccer player in the world and I would be wrong, proven fact. Still won't go to jail for that though.
Originally posted by Da preacherHow so?
The Holocaust is different from soccer.
Originally posted by Sir Whirlysplat
In your opinion - you've already stated you don't believe the scale of the holocaust in historical records Marius.
Nope I didn't..where did I state that?
And we are argueing opinions here so..yeah...certainly...in my opinion.
Originally posted by Da preacher
The Holocaust is different from soccer.
Yes it is, but the fact remains that I'm going against given facts with an opinion and that is not illegal.
Denying the holocaust shouldn't be illegal either. Its somebody's right to deny if they want it, freedom of speech and all. But apparantly that doesn't count with certain subjects that hurt the western idea's. Its just state censorship and that is wrong.
Originally posted by Da preacher
It isn't an opinion, it is a negation of a fact .
And that's a totally misleading line to take.
You know full well that Holocaust Denial isn't being made illegal because it is incorrect, and you know full well that that is a ludicrous reason to make anything illegal.
It's made illegal because of a perception that it encourages racial hatred. But in the opinion of many, that is enormously over-zealous.
Originally posted by Ushgarak
I think you'll find the fact that it happens legally all the time makes it legally sound. There is no question that this move was illegal.Besides which, the second part of that article means that discretion can make it virtually irrelevant, even if Austria had enshrined something like that in law, which I am not really sure it has. Even in the UK, which has, Parliament has the option to make law retroactive if it wishes.
Article 7 doesn't have a discretion, it simply has an additional condition, being 'the trial and punishment of any person for any act or omission which, at the time when it was committed, was criminal according to the general principles of law recognised by civilised nations.' This is not very broad at all. The notable example of its application was the War Crimes Act of 1991, which, although not a crime per se when 'war crimes' were committed, the acts themselves fell foul of 'general principles of law recognised by civilised nations', and thus came within the teleological scope of the article.
That is not applicable here. Retrospective criminal legislation is forbidden. This is of course English law- Austria may have a different approach.
Either way, it should not happen within the EC legal system.
Originally posted by Da preacher
You can get a fine of 100 euro.And saying the holocaust didn't happen isn't an opinion, for it has been proved that it DID happen.
It only shows your political ideas, and being a Nazi should be punished as has happened.
In short... We are not allowed our own political opinions whatever they may be? Perhaps we will start arresting Communists and Socialists aswell as Nazis...
Originally posted by Grand Moff Gav
What will you do when they start areesting everybody who does not share the governments views?
I know that one....
When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun
When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting on death row
"I won't be silenced," says Irving
LONDON (Reuters) - Historian David Irving, jailed by an Austrian court for denying the Holocaust, refused on Wednesday to apologise for offending victims of the Nazi death camps and said he would not be silenced.
Irving, 67, told Sky Television he believed historians should be allowed to question official versions of history and said freedom of speech was the "right to be wrong".
"I come from a free country and I'm not going to let anybody silence me," he said.
Irving was sentenced to three years in prison on Monday for denying the murder of 6 million Jews. Austria's state prosecutor filed an appeal on Tuesday to lengthen the sentence.
"I think they are trying to silence me now," said Irving, who dismissed his trial as "theatre".
"They want to increase the sentence to silence me for even longer. They are not going to succeed I don't think."
Irving pleaded guilty, hoping for a suspended sentence, but the Vienna criminal court concluded he was only making a pretence of acknowledging Nazi Germany's genocide against Jews in order to escape a jail term.
Asked whether he regretted the offence he had caused to Holocaust survivors and their families, Irving replied:
"Freedom of speech means freedom to say things to other people that they don't want to hear. And if that causes offence to them then that's partly their problem and partially mine.
"Freedom of speech is the right to be wrong, basically. Sometimes I'm wrong," he added.
CHANGED VIEWS
Irving told Sky he did not deny the Holocaust but acknowledged that his views had changed as he had learnt more.
"I don't like the phrase 'deny the Holocaust,'" he said.
"Any sane historian is going to be entitled to open this package that the media describe as the Holocaust and look at the individual contents and say 'well, this part I believe and this part I believe and most of that I believe but there is one thing here I don't believe. And that is what I did.
"That is not denying the Holocaust. It is saying 'listen, I'm not a mug, I want to be told the truth and nothing but the truth,'" he added. "It is not so much of a change of heart, it is just a refining of your position."
Assessing his case on Monday, the presiding judge decided Irving had not genuinely changed his position and had shown regret only to pay "lip service to the law" in Austria.
Irving, a self-taught historian who has written dozens of books on Nazi Germany and World War Two, has appealed.
He was arrested on a return visit to Austria last November, based on a warrant over lectures and a press interview he gave in 1989 in the Alpine republic, where denying the Nazi genocide is a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Austria is keen to show it is tough on Holocaust denial since a significant number of Nazi leaders including Adolf Hitler came from Austria, and Jews and other critics accused the country of glossing over its past for decades after the war.
A British High Court ruling in 2000 rejected an Irving libel suit against an American professor and her publishers, declaring Irving "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist".