Irving - Martyr for Stupid

David Irving, a historian who denies the holocaust, has been jailed for three years in Austria.

A Jewish lawyer on the Today programme this morning said that Irving's bigotry was a step on the road to hateful action against Jews, and therefore constituted a kind of incitement. He said this sort of thing was what led to Fascism.

I must ask the question: what is the biggest step on the road to Fascism, hate-speech, or the invoking of laws that erode civil liberties? Surely that is precisely what Hitler did - he hijacked a supposed threat to encourage Germans to hand over their rights to freedom of speech and movement. That was the first step, not the hateful speech.

Now, I don't want to deny that bigotry can lead to more bigotry, and sometimes violence; that miseducation can be damaging. But I don't see how there can be anything worse than censorship in this dilemma. This kind of utter nonsense can be fought with education, I don't think it can ever be fought successfully with criminalisation.

Irving was sensibly convicted under Austrian law, and he brought it upon himself by going back and talking there when he knew he could be arrested. But the law is wrong. The similarities with the Mohammed caricature fiasco are clear. Freedom of speech must win every time, but it especially must win in these extreme cases.