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.

It is difficult for anyone touched by the great crimes of wartime Germany to have to listen to this tragic man’s lunacy, but what’s the alternative? A return to the suppression that eventually led to the atrocities that Irving’s willful and sinister ignorance denies?

Though it is a cliche it is also a truth — the day you force silence on Irving and his likes they have won. If our resolve, our belief in humanity and inclusion are so weak as to be undermined by this clown we really don’t understand what those principles are worth.

If we are to ban the reprehensible Irving how could we stop, say, the Beef Committee of the IFA insisting that all vegetarians wear a carrot as a pendant — as Jews were forced to wear the Star of David — to signify their treason towards of one of our country’s cornerstone industries?

Could we stop IFA storm troopers coming in the night and spraying images of parsnips and artichokes on the windows of vegetarian restaurants? How could we prevent the “redistribution” of the property of vegetarians? How could we prevent their exile to carnivore central in Argentina? Where, on arrival, they would be offered showers...

Yes, it is that ridiculous to suggest that he should be banned. If freedom of speech is threatened by Irving we must thank him for pointing it out and immediately move to strengthen the position the principle enjoys. If anyone thinks Irving is right we need to review how we teach history.

Let him speak, let him be seen for what he is.