Free Speech Does Not Apply to The Holocaust

The actual quote of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made on December 14th 2005 is:

""They have created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and consider it above God, religion and the prophets,"

Is that the actual quote, though, or is that a translation into English. If I remember correctly, he said it in Farsi. Anyone know the language and the quote in its original?

But anyway:

3 entries found for myth.
myth ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mth)
n.

1. a. A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society: the myth of Eros and Psyche; a creation myth.
b. Such stories considered as a group: the realm of myth.
2. A popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal: a star whose fame turned her into a myth; the pioneer myth of suburbia.
3. A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology.
4. A fictitious story, person, or thing: “German artillery superiority on the Western Front was a myth” (Leon Wolff).


Kendra, definitions 3&4 are as legit as 1&2. Why presuppose def. No. 1 is the correct one?

Because 3 and 4 are idiomatic english definitions.

You're either with the terrorists or against them.

It's not an African genocide thread either --didn't stop you.

I thought you weren't a bush appologist?

And the whole thing is a translation from Farsi into English anyway. Your point?

That IS my point.

Let them live all over the world like everyone else, or let them buy some land from someone. THey have European friends, I am sure they could have found some natve people somewhere to buy some land from with small pox blankets, liquor and beads.

So let me get this straight. You took someone to task for accepting the "wrong" definition of a word that wasn't even uttered. Right?

exactly.

It might help to read a bit of history first.

The Israelis did buy some land from someone. They bought Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region and sold it without asking anyone in Palestine. There were already many Jewish people in Jerusalem and the region, and the Zionist movement had been working on getting their homeland back since the 19th century. This wasn't a sudden freebie they were given, or a random decision to dick over the Arabic Palestinians.

Austria sentences Irving to 3 years
Mon Feb 20, 2006 7:44 PM GMT



By Mark Heinrich

VIENNA (Reuters) - An Austrian court sentenced historian David Irving to three years in prison on Monday for denying the Holocaust during a 1989 stopover in Austria, dismissing his argument that he had changed his views.

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.

"The court did not consider the defendant to have genuinely changed his mind," presiding judge Peter Liebetreu told the court after pronouncing the sentence. "The regret he showed was considered to be mere lip service to the law."

Irving, 67, said he was shocked by the sentence handed down by three judges and eight lay jurors and lodged an immediate appeal. His lawyer Elmar Kresbach said that even if Irving lost the appeal, he was likely to serve a maximum 1-1/2 to two years because of his age and status as a first-time offender.

Irving was arrested on a return visit to Austria last November, based on a warrant over lectures and a press interview he made in 1989 in the Alpine republic, where denying the Nazi genocide is a crime punishable by one to 10 years in prison.

"I'm not a Holocaust denier. Obviously, I've changed my views," Irving told reporters on his way into the court carrying a copy of "Hitler's War", among dozens of books on Nazi Germany and World War Two the self-taught historian has written.

Irving acknowledged denying in 1989 that Nazi Germany had killed millions of Jews but said he changed in his mind in 1991 after coming across personal files of Adolf Eichmann, the chief organiser of the Holocaust, during a speaking tour in Argentina.

"I said that then, based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now," he said.

"The Nazis did murder millions of Jews," added Irving, who addressed the court in fluent German.

IRVING SAYS FREE SPEECH DENIED

He argued the case against him was a denial of his right to free speech and that historians in Austria and Germany, which has similar laws against Holocaust denial, were being told by lawmakers how to write history.

"Of course this trial is a question of freedom of speech," Irving told reporters. "The law is an ass here."

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.

Austria's 1986-92 president, Kurt Waldheim, admitted to hiding his service in Nazi Germany's army in the Balkans during World War Two and became unwelcome in many countries.

State prosecutor Michael Klackl contended that Irving was a serial "falsifier of history", dressed up as a martyr by right-wing extremists, and that his courtroom admissions only paid lip service to Austrian law.

"He's continued to deny the fact that the Holocaust was genocide orchestrated from the highest ranks of the Nazi state," Klackl said, citing examples of statements Irving made in interviews during the 1990s after his supposed turnabout.

Kresbach had asked the court for leniency because he said Irving had moderated his views and posed no threat to a stable Austrian democracy six decades after World War Two.

"Irving had expected certain strictness by the court because he was a very well known case. But the sentence was too harsh. It became a bit of a (political) message trial and the message was too strong," Kresbach told reporters after sentencing.

But Klackl said Irving remained an icon for neo-Nazis and revisionist historians worldwide.

Irving was arrested while on his way to address Austrian radical rightist student fraternity Olympia.

The prosecution said he attended meetings of "revisionist" historians, those dismissing the Holocaust, even after the time of his professed insight into the truth of the genocide, in which 6 million European Jews were killed by Nazi Germany.

A British High Court ruling in 2000 rejected Irving's libel suit against an American professor and her publishers, declaring Irving "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist".

You limit your scope of imagination.

It can easily be both.

mmmkay. There's something to be said about picking your battles wisely.

If you were a jew post-WWII, would YOU have wanted to settle in southern germany?

let me know when you start.

Thank you for the faux un-necessary history lesson. They did not buy all the land, they did not buy all the land they currently occupy, they do not own all the land they steal water from. I know quite a bit about the Zionist movement and I also know that Isreal would not exist if it was not for the support from the Western World, you can review that bit of History. They would have been blow off the damn map decades ago.

Starting now. Disengaging, walking, no more wasting time or keystrokes replying to Kendra. This goes for the snarky retort you're doubtless already imagining to this post. There's also something to be said for being utterly predictable, so thanks for that.

Well the austrians and germans have made a societal descidion, enforced throught legistaltion, to render the denial of the holocuast an illegal act. It is a form of speech regulation, just as banning child pornography is. No socienty has unlimited free speech.

As it happens I disagree strongly with the austrian and german laws, because they do regulate history and force it to conform. The historical evidence that the holocuast happened is overwheleming, but I don't think society can regulate what history is. But then I am an american, not an Austrian, or German, and my society has somewhat different social norms.

So there's a bunch of people on this thread that seem to think that it's OK for Austria to act like Hitler, aka Facism. Seriously people didn't Hitler burn books because he didn't agree with the message. To bad history is lost on all of you. You can't fight idiots like this by throwing them into jail, you fight them with facts. You're just as much of an idiot as he is, if you think jail time is going to change his views. No what you've done is radicalize him. Absolutely brilliant there history challenged gits.