THE FOLLOWING nasty specimen vilifying David Irving was published in The Australia/Israel Review, December 1999. The author, Jeremy Jones, is a pathological liar who frequently writes in this journal. [Click for a 1998 attack on Mr Irving by The Australia/Israel Review | Click for index to Jeremy Jones and his libellous activities]

The Review, Melbourne, December 1999, page 3

DENIAL ON TRIAL

by Jeremy Jones

Holocaust Denial commenced while the graves of the Nazis' victims were still warm. From the outset it had dual aims -- to rehabilitate Nazism and to cause deep offence, hurt and pain to those who survived the Nazi terrors and who lost friends and relatives in the Shoah.

If to read about the activities of Holocaust deniers no longer brings about shock, it may well be because it has become a familiar, if no less repugnant, commonplace amongst antisemites.

Holocaust Denial has never been part of any academic or legitimate historical debate. Its advocates inhabit the nether world of Nazi apologists, neo-Nazi revivalists and insane conspiracy theorists. It continues to maintain its place in the armoury of antisemitism due to its proven ability to cause grief and pain to Jews and to give occasional publicity and prominence to its public proponents.

The trial and conviction in Germany of Adelaide's Frederick Toben on the basis of material he sent from Australia into Germany which parroted Holocaust Denial mainstays, gave that particular purveyor of anti-historical material a brief moment in the spotlight

Fortunately, most of the media reporting emanating from Australia, as against Germany, noted the fact that the Adelaide Institute, Toben's personal internet-based "organisation", does not merely argue that a seemingly supernatural conspiracy has foisted a belief in Nazi evil on the world's collective conscience.

The Site also carries defamations of Jewish religious teachings, distortions of historic and sacred documents, while indicating an obsession with the promotion at the pathetic misrepresentation of history. anthropology, sociology and political science which equates Jews and Judaism with Communists and Bolshevism. Toben and his supporters had made it quite clear that the Adelaide Institute director knew of German law and the high chance that he would face prosecution in Germany, once he made known his presence there to the legal authorities.

From what is already on the public record concerning this case, it is conceivable that the [Deborah Lipstadt] trial will be long and complex.

In the manner of a kidnapper who walked into a police station to tell the officer on duty that he had a child hostage and had come to engage the law officer in a philosophical discussion on the merits of the criminalisation of kidnapping, Toben identified himself as a person who had committed acts which were criminal and now sought the opportunity to discuss their legality.

It remains an open question as to whether or not Toben thinks of all others as fools or expects to be treated with the clemency one may give to a fool, What is not in doubt is that the German prosecutor had no real option but to seek a prison term for his unwanted Australian visitor, or that the judge was gentle in the penalty he disbursed.

Once found guilty in court, Toben joined a select company of non-German citizens who have received criminal records on the basis of their Holocaust Denial.

The most notorious person in this category is the British writer David Irving. David Irving moved from a position of writing books, drenched in historic trivia, covering aspects of the Second World War to an international pariah, due to his advocacy of selected misrepresentations from the Holocaust Denial quiver. For this he has earned the adulation of old and unreconstructed Nazis and young and unrestrained neo-Nazis, while moving ever further away from respect within the discipline of history.

Just as Toben has recently spent some days in court, David Irving will be in court, commencing in January, in London, having initiated libel action against American academic Deborah Lipstadt.

Professor Lipstadt published the first significant popular study of Holocaust Denial and deniers, focusing on its pernicious political ends. In it, she delivered a hostile judgement on David Irving and his tenuous relationship to the discipline of history, and less tenuous relationship with a variety of unsavoury claques and characters. From what is already on the public record concerning this case, it is conceivable that the trial will be long and complex.

Given the recourse to libel law by David Irving, it is ironic that prosecution for Holocaust Denial has been presented by its advocates as a free speech litmus test for liberal societies. Germany, with a sense of special responsibility far the Nazi era, has not swallowed that argument and has asserted that, like other forms of speech which defame and endanger people, Holocaust Denial is subject to the rigours of law enforcement. Quite properly , human rights groups have not in this instance been dragooned into defending Toben as a 'prisoner of conscience'.

More than year ago Toben faced a public inquiry into the mater at on his website, following a complaint from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry under Australia's Racial Hatred laws. At the time Toben seemed most set when he found that it was his actions, and not the Shoah itself, which was on trial. It is vital that, when such trials are reported in the media that [sic] the focus remain firmly on offences against civilised standards by Holocaust deniers, rather than presenting them with a soap box on which to spread further hatred.

JEREMY JONES

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