Free speech withers under a storm of religious rage and historical lies
Many dropped their long-cherished claims to freedom of expression and caved in unthinkingly to a diktat from the east.
It appears we may not depict the Prophet Mohammed in any way, even when there is no intention to offend on our part. What happens when some radical sect of Islam declares that infidels may not even utter the name of the Prophet, much less depict him in a drawing? We will comply of course.
Last Monday brought a fresh expression of the new order. In a Viennese courtroom, historian David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison for denying the Holocaust in two speeches he made in Austria in 1989.
Austria’s 1947 law prohibits the “public denial, belittling or justification of National Socialist crimes.” Germany has similar laws, and so have a number of other European countries.
In a 1977 book, Hitler’s War, Irving claimed the Fuhrer knew nothing about the Holocaust until late 1943. He has also argued that, while the Nazis may have killed up to four million people, there was no systematic annihilation involving gas chambers. These were merely used to delouse corpses and objects.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Irving says his views have changed. “History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989.”
Somewhat cryptically, he now refers to the Holocaust as “the Jewish tragedy in World War II.” The problem with the Muslim cartoon controversy and the David Irving saga is that, in both cases, it is difficult to sympathise with those whose artistic or historical works have given such offence. Faced with villainy expressing itself, we are less likely to stand up for free speech.
Some of the cartoons of Mohammed were, after all, needlessly provocative and offensive. Not surprisingly, a majority of people contacted by a Sunday newspaper backed Mary McAleese’s statement in Saudi Arabia that Irish people were horrified by the cartoons. For the same reason, very few people feel any urge to break David Irving out of his Austrian jail. His lie about the Holocaust gives more sinister Holocaust deniers - the people who spread conspiracy theories that Anne Frank’s Diary was a hoax and that the gas chambers were secretly built after the war - intellectual cover for a bizarre and subversive agenda.
But the uncomfortable fact remains that a man is going to prison in western Europe for the offence of telling a lie. Not only that, but he could have got a sentence of up to 10 years.
Perhaps it would have been better to allow Mr Irving tell his lies. His incarceration by an Austrian court has undermined the claims for free expression which at least some western commentators were willing to make during the cartoons controversy.
“What about freedom of expression when anti-semitism is involved?” is the rather pointed question now posed by Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa. “Then it is not freedom of expression. Then it is a crime. Yet when Islam is insulted, certain powers raise the issue of freedom of expression.”
Amr Moussa would also derive comfort from the views of Prof Hajo Funke, a German historian who testified against David Irving in a libel trial in 2000.
“In Germany and in Austria there is a moral obligation to fight the kind of propaganda peddled by Irving. We can’t afford the luxury of the Anglo-Saxon freedom of speech argument in this regard,” he says.
But if freedom of speech is a mere ‘Anglo-Saxon’ concept, whose writ doesn’t even run on mainland Europe, we can hardly be surprised at Muslim efforts to ensure that cartoons of Mohammed may never be published again. Muslim campaigners could even argue that denying the Holocaust is less harmful than lampooning Mohammed.
THE difference is this: Irving’s lie is in the realm of knowable things. It can be disproved by research, by eyewitness testimony and television footage. Having been proved wrong, he is exposed to ridicule among his peers. He may suffer in his professional capacity, perhaps by being denied prestigious teaching posts. He can be ignored as a crank by the media. Assuming that the falsity of his claims is demonstrable, all these sanctions are possible, and they are infinitely preferable to the draconian measure of denying him his liberty.
The realm of the religiously sacred, on the other hand, is neither completely knowable nor debunkable using our reason alone. True, people may disapprove of religion out of personal conviction, and they may seek to discredit faith by pointing to the sins of its adherents.
All of that is open to argument on every side, and those who have religious faith need no other protection than the freedom to argue for their beliefs. But religion is also deeply personal and goes to the heart of the believer’s identity and personal happiness. To mock or decry the religiously sacred for the sake of giving offence or showing disrespect is to attack the believer on ground partially untravelled by reason. Certainly, our reason can point us towards the existence of God, even a loving God, but faith is necessary for accepting the inspiration behind scripture, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Immaculate Conception or, in the Islamic world, Mohammed’s status as God’s prophet.
Because reason cannot conclude such arguments either way, there is no earthly arbiter to restore fair play when people’s sacred traditions are mocked.
He with the largest megaphone wins, and the scope for giving more and more offence is unlimited. Such a situation is perhaps more destructive of social order than anything that can be said about the Holocaust because the personal dignity of the religious believer is affronted in a way that leaves him without redress.
The Austrian authorities would have done better to listen to the historian Deborah Lipstadt whose criticisms of Irving led him to sue her - unsuccessfully - for libel. In general, Lipstadt opposes laws that criminalise Holocaust denial. “We don’t have laws against other kinds of spoken craziness... if you’re a medical quack and you hurt someone, there’s a law against that. But if you stand on the street corner preaching that you have an elixir that cures cancer and saves lives, no one throws you in jail.”
She believes Irving could gain undeserved publicity for his views, and that he could become a martyr for free speech. Far better to let him “fade from everyone’s radar screens.”
But what about the more serious problem? If you jail the likes of David Irving for denying the Holocaust, what other restrictions on free speech might, over time, gain the backing of the criminal law?
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