Monday, February 20, 2006

Fighting Stupidity With Stupidity

According to an article in the Times Online, UK, an Austrian law was apparently designed to prohibit stupidity:

The British revisionist historian David Irving said today that he would plead guilty to criminal charges of denying the Holocaust, as he went on trial at a court in Vienna.

Mr. Irving faces a maximum sentence of ten years in jail under strict Austrian laws making it an offence to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust. He has been held without bail since November on charges stemming from two speeches he made to Austrian rightwingers in 1989.

But, speaking to reporters as he was escorted into the courthouse, Mr Irving said that he was no longer questioning the deaths of millions of Jews in Nazi death camps during the Second World War.

"I am not a Holocaust denier. My views have changed," he said. "History is a constantly growing tree: the more you learn, the more documents are available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989.


Via: Apesnake, who deftly wrote: ”You can not suppress ignorance by law anymore than you can suppress the truth.”