Let the Holocaust deniers speak out Ben Macintyre David Irving's repulsive views should be heard
How do you kill a poisonous idea? Do you lock it away, silence it and hope that somehow the venom will evaporate in the dark? Or do you let the evil out, expose it to argument and ridicule, and then watch it shrivel in the light?
I was glad to see David Irving walk free from an Austrian jail, podgier than when he went in, but no less pompous and pernicious. The British author and "historian" served 13 months of a three-year sentence for denying the Holocaust. Irving's ideas are repulsive and wrong. A warrant for his arrest was originally issued in 1989 after he told an Austrian audience that the Nazi gas chambers were a "fairytale"; he also claimed that Hitler had sought to protect Jews, rather than systematically murder them. ----------------------------------------------------------