David Irving

Hello and welcome to American Dissident Voices, the weekly voice of the National Alliance. I'm Shaun Walker.

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Today, I would like to discuss some events which are part of an ongoing trend which is increasing in volume and severity. On the 11th of November, in the province of Styria, Austria, David Irving was arrested. Mr. Irving is a famous man, but he didn't become famous for doing anything illegal, quite far from it. So, you might ask, why was Mr. Irving arrested in Austria? Did he get involved in some criminal enterprise? Did he do something really stupid that he regrets? Did Mr. Irving forget to pay a speeding ticket? Actually, Mr. Irving was arrested for a warrant that has been outstanding since 1989. Think about that for a second. In America we have a seven year statute of limitation on most crimes. In some places like Los Angles, California, they reduced their non-violent misdemeanors to a two year statute of limitations because they have so many criminals they couldn't keep up with it. So, what was it that Mr. Irving did 16 years ago that was so wrong to justify a 16 year outstanding warrant?

He did what every one of us does every single day. He said and wrote some things which he believes to be true. For those of us living in America, the idea that a person can go to jail for saying something, is far fetched. Of course, we all know there are some limitations on what we can say or do: For example, we can't threaten violence against someone. It is also illegal to encourage people to commit a crime. For example, you can give a speech and say: "We are not going to permit Tyson's Food to employ illegal aliens. We are going to shut them down." That is legal. But, if you give a speech and say: "We are going right over to Tyson's Chicken headquarters right now, just across the street, and will shut them down." And, if a mob of people do go across the street and do this by illegal means, the person that publicly encouraged the mob action is guilty of a crime, even if they didn't engage in the actual mob action.

Telling lies about a person so that it harms their public image can be also be punished civilly. Another activity which can easily be deemed as illegal is with regards to the President of America. Just about anything said or written can be studied by the Secret Service and, if they deem it a threat, you can be arrested. This is a draconian security measure that most Americans don't even know about.

In America, we are allowed to write about people without their permission, so long as we do not defame them. We may expose something illegal that those people did, but if we are wrong, we can then be sued for libel. This is a necessary measure to prevent people from spreading false, malicious or spiteful information.

With Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press comes the responsibility of accuracy. But, there is a gray-area to these freedoms.

Let's say that someone writes an article calling a woman a slut for having extra-marital sex. In Victorian times, in England, such an accusation was enough to ruin a woman socially, so the statements had to be backed by evidence. But, if the statement was false, then the lady victimized by such could sue for damages.

Most everyone knows this, but there is more to it. In America today, just because something is true, does not mean you can write about it, if it causes harm to some person. How does a person exercise Freedom of the Press and report on people and groups as a societal watchdog, without annoying the person who is being reported on? Well, if there is proof to a crime, then the watchdog reporting is vindicated and praised. When the watchdog reporter is found to be in error, a retraction is issued and sometimes a financial settlement is awarded to the person harmed by the erroneous report.

The gray area comes with the issue of 'harassment.' When does the watch-dog reporting turn into personal harassment? There have been many cases where written or spoken words which caused harm against people, were deemed wrong by courts and damages have been awarded. When a person is a non-public figure, there does have to be a method of regulating what is responsible reporting and what is malicious harassment. But, the legal system in the US has so many huge flaws; there is no clear-cut line as to what this is. Basically, it boils down to how much money a person can afford for a good lawyer. A good lawyer can take spiteful conversation, present it as personal slander, and win a settlement. But, this is such a huge gray-area in our legal system, that there is no real litmus test to it and no desire from the ruling power structure to resolve this issue. And this gray-area exists in most national legal systems.

Actually, ever since writing was invented, there have always been things written about that annoyed other people. Even in ancient Egypt, there were many power struggles. Often after one pharaoh was replaced, many of his laws were overturned, even public images replaced. There were cases where spoken words by one pharaoh were outlawed by the subsequent pharaoh to help with the consolidation of political power by the new head of state.

But, America's freedom comes from the Age of Enlightenment. America's founding fathers knew that governments used power to control people, and this included the power of the media.

But, with the Age of Enlightenment thinking, the government was regarded only as a group of people who are public servants to the people of the nation. They were not deemed to be of any higher level of citizenry, but of an equal status with all of citizens. With that, a method for rotating in new people and removing people from public office was created. The concept of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press were then highly elevated to the status as the keepers of freedom. It was believed that only through free speech and the press, could any accountability of government be had. Therefore, the media took on a very important role in society. But, one problem with this occurred. What happens if the ruling powers that be take control of the media? What if methods are used to suppress new media outlets from forming that are independent of the ruling power structure? Could underhanded methods be used by the ruling power to squash dissident media which is harshly critical of the existing governmental policies and the people in government? Yes, and this has now happened.

There are many forms of public communication. The first and oldest is speaking to a group. In countries that currently outlaw free speech, such as Germany, a person can say just about anything in the privacy of their home, but can be tried for a laundry-list of offenses, in the most draconian manner if they say something in a public speech, or even at a small private meeting that is being used for political organizing. Germany doesn't have any real freedom.

Other forms of communication are newspapers, TV, radio, recorded audio, books, Internet sites and even e-mail. But in some countries even these formats are monitored and certain statements can be ruled as illegal.

Let's recap the two main points here. The first is that the media can be used to harass or libel a person by printing false reports about that person, or, in some rare cases, by printing the truth about non-public people, which reports information that is substantively correct, but causes harm to the person for no good reason. The second point is that the ruling governments throughout time have wanted to suppress freedom of public communications, in which certain information would cause difficulties if the public knew about it.

There is one third point that I haven't touch on here, but it is important to understand. This deals with national secrets.

Spies are everywhere in the world today, from corporate headquarters to the floor of the Pentagon. There are private spies to keep track of the wives of the rich and famous, to international spies who steal patent secrets and sell them to the highest bidders. The world is full of spies. And, every nation on earth employs a variety of spies to spy on other nations. Because of this, all nations keep aspects of their government a secret from the public. But herein lies an inherent problem. What aspects of the government's secrets are really a secret from other countries or from its own citizens?

A case in point is with the current Iraq war and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) propaganda. It is obvious to everyone now, that the George Bush regime in America and the Tony Blair regime in Great Britain exaggerated those WMD reports and, most likely, fabricated others. But, freedom to communicate this information was not possible, because the national governments would not release the evidence to the public to be scrutinized. They said it was for national security. After Iraq was swiftly conquered, the excuse to hide the evidence of WMDs because of national security was no longer valid, and all the evidence now clearly shows that Bush and Blair lied about the whole thing. They had an agenda to go to war, so they created the most ridiculous stories about Iraq having WMDs which could attack America, Great Britain and all of Europe at any minute. Really, they were such simple, silly lies, that anyone who stopped to scrutinize the matter could see right through them. But, the lies worked and the rest is history.

This just shows the power of governmental control over evidence. It has a great deal of power and now tens of thousands of people are dead or maimed for life because these so-called leaders kept secrets from the public and lied.

Now, let's tie these three topics together.

One, media can be used to harm people maliciously.

Two, a free media is needed as a societal watchdog to thwart crimes and social problems, both public and private.

And, the third point is that corrupt rulers will use governmental authority to suppress free communication to stifle certain information that they don't want the public to know about.

With these topics, let's get back to the arrest of David Irving. Mr. Irving committed none, not one of the offenses listed above, either 16 years ago or ever in his life.

Mr. Irving is currently the greatest living historian on the topic of World War Two. And he has uncovered many bits of information that were unknown. World War Two, just like the Iraq war, was largely classified as secret by the various national governments. There were official news releases that the government would feed to the media and, because of the war; it was illegal to communicate certain types of information. After the war ended people wanted to know the truth, and because of the complexity and size of the Second World War, there was a vast array of conflicting information. In fact, there are groups of people today who invent new information on that war and the controversial subjects surrounding it. The most famous of this false information occurred over 20 years ago, when a diary was discovered and it was announced to the world that it was the authentic diary of Adolf Hitler. David Irving was consulted by a huge army of media agencies and he firmly stated that the diary was a forgery. Within one year the hoopla had died down, and the diary, which had been believed by every other prominent historian to be real, was shown to be a fraud.

But, how does one know what the truth is about so many topics during that important historical event? Well, we need capable people to report it. Every person is going to be biased to some degree, so there will naturally be different versions and personal bias to come from each historian on that and every topic. Everyone knows that the various governments involved in World War Two kept secrets. When the war ended, those secrets needed to be exposed to public scrutiny. The public requires a free media to be the society watchdogs and find out the truth. Newspaper and TV journalists do short-term investigating into issues and historians do long-term, in-depth investigations into subjects.

And Mr. Irving, as a respected and brilliant historian, has uncovered some of the most interesting and important aspects of the Second World War. And as a responsible historian, he wrote about his findings. What he didn't write, was about the alleged systematic attempt to completely annihilate the Jewish race in the event now called the Holocaust. Mr. Irving has uncovered some aspects of persecution of Jews, such as arbitrary executions in the Baltic nations, but he hasn't been able to find any evidence of homicidal gas-chambers. And, even though Mr. Irving has never written a book about the Holocaust, he was called before a Canadian court of law and questioned about the details of the Holocaust. Mr. Irving's testimony under oath has never been called into question. Everything that Mr. Irving said under oath was truthful and the Canadian government has never tried to challenge the accuracy of his testimony. But, in Austria, freedom of communication is limited to the subject matter. Mr. Irving, who has published over 30 books which have sold millions of copies, and who has spoken at hundreds of historical symposiums as well as given countless media interviews when the media needed information on World War Two, has broken the law in Austria. The law is so totally Orwellian, that it actually defies logic to even have such a piece of legislation. It is like standing in reality and suddenly finding oneself in the Twilight Zone.

The three topics I discussed explain this arrest. The ruling power structure will classify information as secret that they don't want the public to know about. When the media gets the information, it is their duty to report it. When the media chooses to cover up the information, they then prove that they are not independent, but rather a part of the ruling power structure. And the really Orwellian thing is this: David Irving is being charged under the guise that freedom of speech and the press cannot be abused by lying or harassing someone. In Canada, the government has admitted that David Irving never lied under oath, but, get this: the government of Canada has ruled that "truth is no defense." The government of Canada has decided that any stated opinion about the Holocaust story, in which the Jews complain about, is harassment and bothersome, therefore illegal. They take this from the twisted logic that a malicious newspaper writer can possible victimize a person by writing stories about them which allegedly causes harm.

So the alleged Holocaust, which is made up of many conflicting accounts, cannot be publicly scrutinized. This would actually make a great, I mean absolutely great episode of the Twilight Zone, but it's real. There is no logical way that any person can say that a war-time governmental version of the alleged Holocaust is without errors. There is no logical way that a person or a group of people can claim that they are being harassed by anyone who writes about a historical event. There is no logical or moral way that any government can punish people who write dissenting views on any topic, including the Holocaust. And in fact, there is no person who is being harassed. It is entirely illogical to even suggest that a group of people, in this case it is the Jews, can have a world-wide copyright on anything spoken or written for this historical event. And if someone does speak or write something that is different than the mainstream opinion, how can that person be guilty of committing a crime? There is no victim. For a Jew to say that they don't like what is written, does not make them a victim if it doesn't even mention them by name. The only way a spoken or written communication that is ever deemed illegal in America is when there is a named person who is clearly identified.

If someone writes a book about the Catholic Church and the horrors of the Inquisition, a Catholic cannot file a libel suit because they don't like the information. That is just ludicrous. If someone writes that the Inquisition was non-violent and only lasted for two days, there is no way any person is harassed or harmed.

To be annoyed by written and spoken words is an inevitable reality of people having different opinions. But, there are only three times that the spoken or written words are ever ruled to be illegal in any country. The first two are when revealing national secrets and when there is a specific person being harassed. The third case is when a corrupt, ruling power structure is trying to squash public dissent and suppress information.

This then, brings to light the question of who is the ruling power structure. This is because only a corrupt power structure uses the instruments of governmental authority to maintain their grip on power. David Irving wasn't arrested because he told the truth under oath in a Canadian court of law. David Irving wasn't arrested because he failed to write about the so-called Holocaust in his many best-selling books. No, David Irving was arrested, and now languishes in prison because his books and public speeches are a threat to the ruling power structure. David Irving, because of his ability and integrity, is a public watchdog and is providing the public with the truth about the corruption and lies of the ruling power structure. They know he is a threat and want to punish him for what he writes and says, and even for things that he refuses to write about.

David Irving is a prisoner of a corrupt system because he is honest. We all need to support Mr. Irving and we can start by writing protest letters to the Austrian government. The cowards who now suppress David Irving's books and imprison him will go after you and I next, but only if they can get away with silencing Mr. Irving. We owe it to Mr. Irving to help him. We owe it to the freedom of our various nations and to our children's future freedom. Send a letter to the Austrian Embassy in America to:

Austrian Embassy, USA
3524 International Ct, NW
Washington, DC 20008

Stand up for truth and freedom. Please support Mr. Irving.

Thanks for listening to me today.

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