New at Reason

Julian Sanchez | February 23, 2006

Michael Young asks: Is it hypocritical for Europe to trumpet the value of free speech when it comes to cartoons of Mohammed while it throws a notorious Holocaust denier in jail?

Comments

|2.23.06 @ 9:39AM|#

Answer: Yes

/didn't rtfa

Jammer|2.23.06 @ 9:46AM|#

File this under "Duh".

|2.23.06 @ 10:21AM|#

In Irving, vileness coexists with recognized talents as an archive rat and growing pathos - the latter particularly following his financial ruination when he lost a libel case against American historian Deborah Lipstadt. She had accused Irving - and managed to prove it in court - of misrepresenting evidence in his writings.

You might consider rewriting this passage to emphasize the fact that Irving sued Lipstadt and not the other way around. Penguin spent two million british pounds defending her and Irving was well aware that he would be liable for the defendant's costs if he went ahead with the action and lost. Oh, and if you consult the Guardian articles you so helpfully linked to, you will find that Irving's disastrous litigation was only the final straw for his creditors: At the time of his libel action Irving was in financial trouble having taken out five mortgages on his Mayfair flat, according to land registry records. The man never paid a penny out of his own pocket. Irving was and is bankrupt in every way and anyone who feels sympathy for the man, and not his situation, is a fool.

BTW, in a testament to her integrity, Lipstadt has said in interviews that she doesn't want to see Irving put in jail.

|2.23.06 @ 10:35AM|#

In other EU free speech news:

"German court convicts man for insulting Islam

DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) - A German court on Thursday convicted a businessman of insulting Islam by printing the word "Koran" on toilet paper and offering it to mosques."

|2.23.06 @ 10:39AM|#

At the very least, the sentencing of Irving is highly ill-timed; it will give Muslims "censorship envy," and they'll argue that the government should punish people who insult *their* ideals as much as it punishes people who deny the Holocaust.

|2.23.06 @ 11:01AM|#

Young: The cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, in contrast, did not break Danish law.

Are you sure about that? From an earlier thread on H&R:

Denmark is no paragon of free speech. Article 140 of the Criminal Code allows for a fine and up to four months of imprisonment for demeaning a "recognized religious community."

|2.23.06 @ 12:43PM|#

Those countries that ban the Nazis and Nazi symbols etc. should unban them. I agree with Tom G. Palmer that whatever rationale there was for such bans has long ceased to exist.

Allowing bigots to "proudly" proclaim their bigotry instead of hiding behind a bigoted party masquerading as a "rightist" party would have the effect of marginalizing such bigots, not giving them wind for their mill.

It is hypocritical for the EU to allow the banning of offenses against one religion while not banning offenses against another religion.

They shouldn't be banning anyone who offers a point of view outside the status quo.

|2.23.06 @ 1:31PM|#

"Jyllands-Posten in no circumstances will publish Holocaust cartoons from an Iranian newspaper," the paper said, in a statement posted on its website.

source

Do you call that 'distanced themselves'?

|2.23.06 @ 1:50PM|#

anon:

Yes, I call that "distanced themselves." But what I call it doesn't matter. And what the Jyllands-Posten said or did after the initial "outrage" doesn't matter.

What matters is that Rose took a courageous, and obviously controversial (within his own newspaper), stand first by publishing the cartoons and then by immediately giving interviews to international newspapers and cable news networks in which he politely told his critics--Muslim, Danish, American, Iranian, whoever--to fuck off because Danes like him were not going to submit to sharia in their own country.

And it worked. He was right. We now have Alan Dershowitz and Bill Bennett and Robert Scheer(!--in the SF Chronicle yesterday; I don't have the link) on the same page about that.

|2.23.06 @ 2:02PM|#

Robert Scheer "In Defense of Free Thought":

>>Speech that is not felt by some powerful group to be loathsome is hardly in need of protection. The value of an absolutist opposition to the censorship of speech, as enshrined in the US Constitution's First Amendment, is that it holds out the prospect that the right to speak will be honored even when the content of those utterances is not. What is disturbing in both the Irving and Muhammad cartoon situations is the stuttering hesitancy of many who claim to be committed to free speech to speak out in opposition to those--be they Muslim clerics or Austrian judges--who seek to limit the free expression of individuals expressing views they detest.

In both instances, the world has been presented with a teaching moment, in which the argument for free thought--that die gedanken sind frei ("thoughts are free") that the Nazis and every other absolutist dictatorship have excelled in crushing--was not advanced by those who know better. As a result, a world sorely in need of a crash course in the efficacy of free debate received nothing of the sort. Instead, the lesson has been that the suppression of ideas is valid, as long as the suppressors are convinced that they are in the right.

http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20060306&s=scheer0222

|2.23.06 @ 2:44PM|#

hepzeeba:

Rose didn't do what he did because of his belief in freedom of expression. If he was, he would have chose to publish the cartoons that insulted christians three years ago. He would have insulted a much more powerful group in his country rather than go after a small minority. He did it because he is a bigot. Nothing more, nothing less.

He had the right to do what he did. But, don't pretend that he did it for noble reasons.

|2.23.06 @ 3:07PM|#

anon:

I can't speak for what was in Rose's mind. I can only speak for his actions. On CNN, to illustrate that he was an equal-opportunity offender (in the name of free speech) he held up to the camera a cartoon his paper had published previously: a large bomb with the Star of David inside it. (Insulting enough for you? Or does the cartoon have to insult only Christians to pass your test?)

Then he tried to hold up one of the Mohammed cartoons in full view of the camera. The camera panned away to the interviewer: there was utter disbelief and panic on her face.

Meanwhile, his words were among the most eloquent and under-stated that I have ever heard (on TV) in defense of free speech.

Answer me this: if you think only in reductionist terms, why do you post to the blog of a magazine called "Reason"?