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Michael Wutton comments, Saturday, August 4, 2007, on the proliference of anti-revisionist legislation in Europe.
A proliferation of anti-revisionist laws I'VE RECENTLY sent some very comprehensive information on "Holocaust denial" laws to the webmaster of the Jailing Opinions website. Can I just ask as to whether you were specifically prosecuted under section 3g of the Verbotsgesetz (identification with or reactivating the N.S.D.A.P, or under 3h which is against denying, approving, justifying or trivialising the Holocaust, as I was detailing examples where the law has been applied. As your own work has proven though, you have to do the field work and go the extra mile. It's not hard to find the text of the laws themselves (which are now in place in thirteen European countries and Israel) but it is much harder and - at least at first - shocking to find the circumstances in which the laws were promulgated. The German law against defaming the dead, for example, had its powers limited by the Bundesgerichtshof (supreme court of appeal) in early 1994 when they ruled it couldn't be used against Holocaust denial in general, but had to specifically defame those who had died in a camp or as a direct result of National Socialism, so can it really be a coincidence that they had a sweeping law against denial passed six months later
Lastly it's extraordinarily hard to find out when the laws were actually passed, as before it requires the extra-mile...no prizes for guessing where it started:
I WAS prosecuted in Vienna under section 3g; on the day that the court ordered my release (right), December 20, 2006, the prosecutor was frantically trying to get a second prosecution active under 3h, because I had spoken with the BBC Today programme a day or two after the February 2006 trial. Maximum sentence under 3h is twenty years or even life imrpisonment for a repeat offender.
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![[]](../../online/std/dings/list.gif){kind=small}
Photo
right: David Irving goes on Trial in Austria's
biggest courtroom (below), February 20,
2005
It's
the same in Austria and in 1992 when Holocaust
denial was expressely criminalised the sentence was
amended because it allowed for 5-10 years prison,
so by winding down the penalty to 1 year but
increasing the maximum to 20 years the Austrians
were openly aiming at preventing jury reluctance to
pass harsh sentences. It's an example one sees time
and time again, like in Romania, the most recent
country where 'negationism' of the Holocaust has
been criminalised, and how for years the senate
debated over whether or not the law should exempt
the denial of Romanian involvement in the Jewish
persecution.
David
Irving answers: 
David Irving