In 1919, a famous case was brought against a man, Charles Schenck, in the United States. The case, farcically titled: ‘Schenck V. United States‘, came about as a result of the Defendant’s actions in distributing leaflets (in Yiddish, no less) attacking the draft in the 15,000 documents he printed – to persons either eligible for the draft or – get this – also opposed to the draft.
Anyone worth his salt has at least perused the history of the First World War, the unnecessary slaughter of some 40 million due to some inbred monarchical quibbling (the Kaiser and King George were first cousins – grandsons of Queen Victoria) It may not be said, after all, that there was some kind of nobility of justification for the war. With no Nazis or Holocaust on which to retrospectively rely when the necessity of the war was called into question, it remains an uncharged disgrace – the product of imperialist jingoism. It was unwarranted and thus contemptible. To have forced draft young men (having guilted them with propaganda and Uncle Sam’s accusatory finger in the States) is callous beyond belief. It is a war crime.
Anyway, so Schenck is hauled before the court and charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Where Schenck argued that the draft was ostensibly tantamount to slavery, the court countered by alluding (he was not charged with treason) that he was a spy. In his preposterous, unreasoned and unsound judgement, the famous (infamous?) Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr. speculated that Schenck’s crime had exempted itself from the protection of the First Amendment. Holmes posited that he could not be exculpated using the old ‘freedom of speech’ chestnut because, as he now infamously suggested, it was equivalent ‘to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre’. Schenck posed a ‘clear and present danger’ (the source of the famous expression) that would precipitate ‘substantive evils’ – he was sentenced to 6 months in prison and found dead shortly thereafter.
In 2005, David Irving, the controversial historian, was apprehended and sentenced to 3 years in solitary confinement for violation of the Austrian Verbotsgesetz law committed 16 years prior, in 1989. The Law’s specifics are ambiguous, it being an over-reactionary Stalinist-era piece of legislation – but essentially denying or diminishing the Holocaust (capital h?) is against the law. This is reminiscent of the German law, Volksverhetzung, where ‘stirring up the populace’ is prohibited. Perhaps something is lost in translation. In 1992, Irving was convicted of this crime also – principally due to his ‘denial’ of the Holocaust.
Now I have just read an excellent book called ‘History, Justice and the David Irving Libel Case’ by D.D. Guttenplan wherein he gives an account of the libel action brought by Irving on an American historian, Deborah Lipstadt – for labelling him a ‘Holocaust denier’ in her book ‘Denying the Holocaust‘. In the case, Irving forced Penguin (the Defendant – against the Claimant – not Plaintiff, a relic of old English law) to essentially prove or establish the literal veracity of the Holocaust (or really parts of it, as it was claimed that Irving had denied the Holocaust in his published works) Now I have not read Irving’s work, but from the transcript of the case, the term ‘Holocaust-denier’ is not one I would attribute to Irving. Anyway, I’m not defending Irving’s very controversial stance on history. The fact is that, for questioning, for example, the numbers involved in the Holocaust (or Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek etc) or questioning eye-witness testimony, or indeed Irving’s attempt to make Himmler, not Hitler as its sole architect – one can be thrown into prison.
Let me illustrate my point: If I were to wander around Grafton Street with a megaphone, and with ‘The Famine Never Happened’ or ‘The Famine Was Grossly Exaggerated’ emblazoned across a cardboard sign I was wearing, I would be heckled, ridiculed (like those religious fellows) or even assaulted. However, I would be allowed to express my revisionist view, despite its insensitivity to a probable majority. Notwithstanding the populace’s understandable objections, I retain the right to express my opinion. I revel in it. Hopefully, unlike the evidently featherweight U.S. constitution, Ireland’s courts will have the balls to stick to their guns should the occasion ask it of them.
Finally, I would just like to express my disgust at what I’m going to call ‘ecclesiatical-correctness’. Once again, as with a plethora of other issues, it is the Muslims who are at fault and are the bullseye in my metaphorical idealistic dartboard once again. When, in 1988, Salman Rushdie published his (from what I hear) literary masterpiece: the Satanic Verses, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran (of whose literacy I am gravely skeptical), who claims to be a ‘Shi’a scholar’, issued a ‘fatwa’: a grotesque, antediluvian death-order. Now before I continue, I have researched the matter and yes, it is rare that the word ‘fatwa’ carries this meaning, but in this instance it most certainly DID. Thus began a murderous campaign that resulted in the death of the Japanese Publisher, Hitoshi Igarashi (stabbed multiple times) and three other foreign-language interpreters or publishers were stabbed repeatedly, but lived – just about. On the whim of a demagogue, a rabble, half-a-billion strong, was roused. If the common-sense view that fanaticism is correlated with lack of education is taken, it follows that the vast, vast majority of these ‘people’ were illiterate and could not possibly have understood/interpreted the book itself. It was based entirely on the supposition that the Ayatollah was the moral dictator (a man whose father lowered the marriage age to 9 years old)
in 2004, Danish cartoonists drew several hilarious strips depicting the prophet Mohammed in various hilarious situations (including the one about heaven running out of virgins) that I’m sure were the subject of hilarity to all those who read them. Except the barbarous cretins (the same is true of all religious people who believe in proselytism) who called for the death of the publishers as well as a kind of Danish Kristallnacht. This sordid behaviour was met with outrageous moral ambivalence. The mainstream media lamented the lack of sensitivity, and indeed, went as far as implying Rushdie was deserving of this Bronze-Age Muslim attack, being a Muslim himself.
An islamic troll/mullah in Pakistan offered $1,000,000 as a reward for the cartoonist’s head. Do you think this incitement to murder will be/was punished? Think again. It is incidents like these that cause the word ‘Muslim’ to be regarded as pejorative. That an obscure Danish magazine – expressing free speech, no less – could cause the muslim community to attack all things Danish with such acharnement beggars belief. It testifies to the Islamic contempt for free speech and deviation from the direct word of an illiterate Arabic merchant.
So, in closing, I believe that freedom of speech is all-to-often taken for granted. Those miscreants who oppose freedom of expression should be extirpated from social discourse, if not shunned from society all together. The allusion should not be wasted on you! Without seeming to state the obvious, remember that in the aforementioned cases, as recently as 2005, legislation exists that forbids free expression. This must stop.
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