Free speech - Let Irving be heard for what he is

IF ONE of the principle freedoms of our democracy — the right to free speech — can be jeopardised by allowing a discredited, nasty, crank like David Irving telling us that black is white then we need to reconsider the protection that we give to that privilege.

Irving’s lifelong, bizarre and offensive campaign to try to convince us that the World War II murder of six million Jews never took place has become a kind of travelling freak show guaranteed to energise student “anti-facist” groups almost as quickly as a free beer night at the campus bar. That travelling show comes to University College Cork next Monday night.

No one, except maybe a few sad, dysfunctional, shaven-headed, anti-semite bikers, takes Irving seriously and the best way to cut the legs from under him is to let him rave at the moon. His corrupt thesis is so off the wall as to be guaranteed to collapse without any intervention by anyone from the real world.