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Austria Holds Holocaust Denier

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mjs82
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18 Nov 2005, 4:57 am

From BBC News 17/11:

Quote:
British revisionist historian David Irving is being held in Austria under laws against denying the Holocaust.
An interior ministry spokesman said police in the province of Styria acted on a warrant issued in 1989 to arrest him last Friday.

Mr Irving was on his way to give a lecture in the capital, Vienna.

In his books, Mr Irving has argued that the scale of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis in World War II has been exaggerated.

He also claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler knew nothing of the Holocaust.

He told a libel hearing in London in 2000 that there had been no gas chambers at the Auschwitz camp.

He lost the case and the judge branded him "an active Holocaust denier".

'Anti-Semitic'

A spokesman for the Austrian interior ministry, Rudolf Gollia, told the BBC that Mr Irving was first taken to the town of Graz, but was now in custody in Vienna.

Anti-Nazi groups in the UK congratulated the Austrian government.

The chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Lord Greville Janner, said he hoped the move would "lead to a successful prosecution".

The head of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust said denial was not a matter of opinion.

"Austrian law demands incisive action to protect its citizens from a repeat of the past," he added.

Mr Irving was previously arrested in Austria in 1984.

This time, the historian was stopped near the town of Hartberg while reportedly on his way to address a students' club in Vienna.

Mr Irving came into the spotlight in 2000 when he sued US academic Deborah Lipstadt for describing him as a "Holocaust denier" in her 1994 work Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.

Giving his verdict, the British judge said Mr Irving was "an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism".



Sean
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18 Nov 2005, 5:08 am

Hardly anybody takes them seriously anyway. They will ultimately just end up doing more to make a martyr of the guy than they will to preserve history. Furthermore, lots of atrocious events get sugar coated or blatantly altered over time, so what makes the holocaust so special out of all humanity' other misdeeds?

Note: I'm perfectly aware that the holocaust happened. I just think that people get too worked up and overreactive about it.



ed
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18 Nov 2005, 5:42 am

Gee, Sean, I dunno... :roll:

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Remnant
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18 Nov 2005, 6:43 am

Out of all the people who tell us that the Holocaust actually happened, which party has not practiced at least one of the following: genocide, lying including deceitful propaganda, willful incompetence and negligence, censorship, terrorism, chemical warfare, attacks against civilian populations, and nuclear blackmail? It would even be fair to ask which of these parties has done less than any five of these things.

What reasons do we have to trust those who have told us that there was such a thing as the Holocaust? Is it because they will jail us if we do not believe? I hate to think that the only reason that I believe is because it has been repeated to me so many times and because someone will harm me if I decide that I have reason not to believe. So many things in my life are like that. Anyone want to read a list?

How many of the Jewish Defense League have been jailed for terrorist bombings in the United States now?

There are ways to win the credibility war. There are ways to gain a reputation for telling the truth. Telling the truth and actually earning the crediblity does not seem to be on either list.



Happeh
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18 Nov 2005, 7:33 am

Sean wrote:
Hardly anybody takes them seriously anyway. .


If they are not taken seriously, why is it that someone goes to all the trouble to deport them or arrest them?

This is the third man in the past 6 months or so to be arrested or jailed for this offense. 2 of the men were extradited from the USA against their wishes to Germany where they are serving jail time.

What happened to free speech?



Happeh
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18 Nov 2005, 7:35 am

Remnant wrote:
How many of the Jewish Defense League have been jailed for terrorist bombings in the United States now?


2 of them that I know of. Both supposedly died in prison. Though if their deaths were faked and they were given new identities in Israel is impossible for anyone to know.



Happeh
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18 Nov 2005, 7:37 am

ed wrote:
Gee, Sean, I dunno... :roll:

Image


Interesting picture. Where is that from? The massacre of muslims in Bosnia? The massacre of Hutu's in Rwanda? The massacre of Cambodians in Cambodia? The massacre of Iraqis in Iraq?

Sure piles of dead bodies are ugly. We got piles of dead bodies from a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago.

How come only "holocaust" piles of bodies from 60 years ago are important enough to make monthly TV speicals on?



Remnant
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18 Nov 2005, 7:54 am

Happeh, it makes a person want to question. What do the authorities have to hide this time? In this case I personally think that it was complicity. The ones who are most rabid about making sure that we "never forget" and that we "nie weider" can hardly be suspected of ordering it, can they? And of course Germany has the atonement thing going. This stuff can gain them a lot of mileage in their own denials of other acts.

I don't trust ANY religionists.



hecate
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18 Nov 2005, 7:58 am

:? i thought irving had already been to court about his holocaust denial theories (and it was proven that he was wrong)?



Happeh
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18 Nov 2005, 8:43 am

hecate wrote:
:? i thought irving had already been to court about his holocaust denial theories (and it was proven that he was wrong)?


Proven by the powerful people with money? The ones that put anyone who does not do what they say into jail? Like this British man?

Bush proved there were WMD in Iraq.

Oh. Wait a minute. That was a lie wasn't it?

So I guess Authorities, like the ones that proved Irving wrong, lie to attain their goals. Don't they?



Happeh
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18 Nov 2005, 8:44 am

Remnant wrote:
Happeh, it makes a person want to question. What do the authorities have to hide this time? In this case I personally think that it was complicity. The ones who are most rabid about making sure that we "never forget" and that we "nie weider" can hardly be suspected of ordering it, can they? And of course Germany has the atonement thing going. This stuff can gain them a lot of mileage in their own denials of other acts.

I don't trust ANY religionists.


I do not understand your point.



ed
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18 Nov 2005, 10:30 am

You people are scaring me. :?


http://www.holocaust-history.org/



Machloket
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18 Nov 2005, 12:49 pm

Sean wrote:
Note: I'm perfectly aware that the holocaust happened. I just think that people get too worked up and overreactive about it.

The reason people get worked up is most American and European Jews lost family members to those nazi bastards. For an example, my grandmother had 179 cousins, aunts, uncles, etc in Poland prior to the nazi invasion. Only 1 person survived the war, many of the rest reside permantly in Treblinka. If you want to read what happened there first-hand, you can read this but you're warned now it's very graphic.
As for Happeh, you've made it abundantly clear you hate Jews. The odd thing is, that as an Aspie you'd fall under "Mental Defective" and be sent to a place like Treblinka by your nazi friends. Grow up.

Machloket



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18 Nov 2005, 1:09 pm

I think the Holocaust is a powerful reminder of what humans will do to one another for the shallowest of reasons. If the memory of the Holocaust could prevent things like that from happening again, that would be great. The problem is that people think 'never again' in terms of the future instead of the present. It should be 'never again' now, it should be no more diamond wars in Africa, no concentration camps in Korea...

Incidentally, if you want to deny the Holocaust, I could claim with roughly equal validity that the first Gulf War never happened. Hey, it's inconvenient, let's forget about it, right? :roll: And Vietnam, that was faked by the hippies to make it look like the U.S.A. liked war too much. And Rwanda-Burundi was just amateur photographers and lots of fake blood. They got a bit overly enthusiastic about sending the footage to international newscasters.

Do you realise how stupid that sounds? Well, now you know what it's like to listen to a Holocaust denier.



Happeh
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18 Nov 2005, 1:12 pm

Machloket wrote:
As for Happeh, you've made it abundantly clear you hate Jews. The odd thing is, that as an Aspie you'd fall under "Mental Defective" and be sent to a place like Treblinka by your nazi friends. Grow up.

Machloket


I did? When did I do that? Or is that just you painting me with the label you want people to think of when they think of me?



Happeh
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18 Nov 2005, 1:17 pm

DrizzleMan wrote:
Incidentally, if you want to deny the Holocaust, I could claim with roughly equal validity that the first Gulf War never happened. Hey, it's inconvenient, let's forget about it, right? :roll: And Vietnam, that was faked by the hippies to make it look like the U.S.A. liked war too much. And Rwanda-Burundi was just amateur photographers and lots of fake blood. They got a bit overly enthusiastic about sending the footage to international newscasters.

Do you realise how stupid that sounds? Well, now you know what it's like to listen to a Holocaust denier.


Your comparisons make no sense.

I watched the first Iraq war on TV. You cannot claim the Gulf War never happened. There is video TV footage of it. Ruwanda was on TV too. You cannot claim that was made up. Vietnam? Yep. That was on TV too.

Where is your video TV footage of people and gas chambers from WWII? What's that? There is no such footage? Hmmm. So I should just take your word for it? And you would never lie to me of course. Nor could you be honestly mistaken. Nor could you have been lied to yourself.

;)