Historian jailed for speaking out… 17 years ago

Who else would dare to say that “freedom of expression” is a Western value? Realities are proving the contrary. Filtering Iranian web-sites in the US was not enough to show the whole picture, since America has always been a bit backward than Europe in terms of democracy. However, giving 3 years of imprisonment to a British historian (David Irving) was the best effort an Austrian court could have taken to show that “freedom of expression” is just another modern myth.

David Irving is jailed for denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. He thought, most of 6 million Holocaust victims died from different diseases rather than by Hitler’s gas chambers. But (a big BUT), it was David Irving in 1989, in 20th century. And David Irving of 2006 believes that he was wrong then and he believes that “the Nazis did murder millions of Jews”.

Nevertheless, the Austrian court, keen to wash away the stain of shame from their recent history, decided to show the powerful Jewry of the world the drastic change in their natures: now they love Jews, the very Jews they used to torture and kill, and while no one is able to return them their stolen lives, the children and grandchildren of Austrian Nazis will punish whoever dares to doubt the fact of them being murdered by Fascists, particularly Austrian Fascists. Very moving! But not convincing. And not constructive at all.

Read the title again: “Historian jailed for speaking out… 17 years ago”. It is not happening in Iran; otherwise the entire Western world would have cried foul. Nor in other parts of the so called “third world”. Europe – the greatest “defender” of freedom of speech has done it. They’ve put in jail someone not for doing something, but for saying something. This is a sheer Stalinism reviving in a wrong place and it must be confronted.

By the way, Austria provided the best subject for the Iranian International Cartoon competition ridiculing Western double-standards. I’m sure dozens of cartoons would be drawn about such a perfect example of Western double-standards.

It seems US & EU have got their own selective approach towards some notions like “democracy” and “freedom of expression”. The Iranian Cartoon Competition is not recognized as an effort to exercise cartoonists’ freedom of expression and its sites are banned in America. But Danish Mohammad cartoons are a matter of freedom of expression, according to America, however, "the artists had to feel responsibility". An Israeli terrorist party “Likud” wins the election and comes to power in order to kill Palestinians with more authority. It is a matter of democracy, for US & EU. A Palestinian terrorist (liberation) group “Hamas” wins the parliament seats and forms a government. US & EU are stunned and outraged: no way! This is not the kind of democracy we want! We don’t accept this sort of democracy. Show us a different one; otherwise we’ll impose it upon you!

All empires get lost amidst their arrogance and ignorance and fall down into a bottomless pitfall of eternity. Modern empires are following their steps by breaking their own rules and values.