freedom of speech is unequivocal

Another interesting free speech “acid test” has been in the news lately — that of “Holocaust denier” David Irving, who was was sentenced to three years in jail by an Austrian judge for denying [...] the existence of the gas chambers of the Second World War and the murder of six million Jews.

I write “acid test” in scare quotes because Irving’s case isn’t really a groundbreaking test of the limits of free speech, since he was tried in Austria, where it is against the law to deny that the Holocaust occurred (Germany too, btw).

Although what Irving postulates is both ludicrous and in the worst possible taste, he should still be allowed to say and think what he believes. Had this happened in America, he’d be a free man today. The German/Austrian law is pretty stupid, in my opinion, and Irving is an example of what happens when a society decides to censor itself from “dangerous” opinions.

The last paragraph was incomplete, in my opinion:

By evening, Irving was a broken man, his career at an end. Distraught and stunned, he was escorted from the courtroom to return to his 19th-century cell.

It should have been appended with “by the thought police”.