Don’t know if you’ve seen this story, but it’s pretty big over in Europe right now. A discredited bigot is being sent ot jail for three years for being, well, a bigot. David Irving, a revisionist historian who has tried to paint a brighter side of Nazi Germany, was jailed for three years in Austria for denying that the Holocaust ever happened. Now, while jailing someone for their beliefs would hardly ruffle a feather in say, Nazi Germany, what makes this scary is that it’s happening in Austria. In case you were wondering, Austria is a democracy. Is there any possible argument that this guy deserves jail time for being an idiot? Should people who don’t think that man landed on the moon be imprisoned? I mean, there is overwhelming evidence that it happened, just as there is overwhleming evidence that the Holocaust happened. Should the cartoonist who drew the Mohammed cartoon be imprisoned? After all, his cartoon insulted a lot of people of a major religion, just as Irving did. Of course not. So not only has Austria pulled a fascist style move and jailed a man for his beliefs, but they have also turned a fringe historian who nobody took seriously into a martyr for anti-semites all over the world and given this idiot a platform for his despicable beliefs.
