In the Year 2365

Right-wing nut David Irving, a British historian, was sentenced in Austria yesterday to three years in jail for denying that the Holocaust occurred. Apparently, it’s against the law in Austria to “diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust”. My question: did anyone go to jail for having passed that law in the first place? I appreciate that the postwar Austrian psyche needed a means to distance itself from one of the most barbaric acts in human history; but, nonetheless, that is one dumb-ass piece of legislation.

First, no one can, in fact, diminish or justify the Holocaust. Someone can make a run at it, but no one can pull it off. Other than a few skinheads in a forest outside Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and a few other right-wing nuts camped out in the Black Forest, no one is even going to tune in for the attempt. Sure, someone can deny that the Holocaust happened, but that’s just another piece of wacko babble the likes of which can be heard on about two million topics a year somewhere in the free world. How many concentration camps would it take to lock up all the people who spit up some form of verbal vomit every day?

Austria needs to calm down and give some consideration to the idea of free speech, even repugnant, ignorant-as-a-stump speech. Upholding that freedom and others like it is the best means to fight against the rise of another Baden Baden Reich. Throwing people in jail for saying unbelievably stupid things puts every Austrian at risk. Where are the boundaries for laws of this nature; what is the logical extension of the reasoning behind such laws? How about a law in the U.S. that makes it a crime for someone to claim that slavery never existed in Alabama; that the U.S. never used nuclear weapons in Japan; that man never walked on the moon; that JFK wasn’t shot by a lone gunman from the Texas School Book Depository; that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction in 2003; or that Fox News is fair and balanced? Okay, I admit that the last one in that list has some appeal.

This episode sounds a little like the law of the Inquisition that landed Galileo in trouble in 1633 for denying that the earth is the center of the universe. G.G., as he was known to his friends, thought he had the support of Pope Urban VIII but G.G. naively overlooked the fact that Urban thought that he was the center of the universe. As G.G. was sentenced to jail he is widely believed to have been the first person to declare, “We must do something to stop Urban blight!” Fortunately, all was made right when, 359 years later, Pope John Paul II officially announced that Urban VIII was acting like his boyhood hero, Henry VIII, and had “mishandled the case”. Good call, JPII.

So, David Irving can count on this Austrian blooper being made right in the year 2365. Unlike Galileo, however, nothing will ever make Mr. Irving right. Like others of his ilk, he’s way too far right to ever be right.

On the bright side, if Zager and Evans ever decide to retool their song, they have a new lyric they can work in the mix.

“In the year 2365, when dumb laws were set aside…”