Sentencing David Irving to three years in prison for denying the holocaust, which is what an Austrian court did today, borders on the absurd. The bottom line is that for as long as Irving has been getting any meaningful media attention, it has been a well established fact that he is borderline material, a historian on the fringe. That to me is his life sentence. So far, this sentiment seems to be echoed by many other noteworthy bloggers - check out LaShawn Barber, Tigerhawk - but the most pointed question comes from Natalie Solent:

Islamofascists will say that if Holocaust denial can be criminalised why not depiction of their prophet?

Exactly, and it echoes my earlier comments in the wake of the cartoon crisis about freedom of speech and I won't repeat them again. But, what bothers me enormously about this case is that it is an Austrian court that goes to these lengths to put Irving in prison, and that, it is doing so under a law that dates back to only 1992. That is some four decades after what should have been the completion of Austria's de-nazification.

However, absolving yourself of a very incriminating past has not been a particularly easy journey for Austria, especially not given its enthusiastic and disproportionate contribution to the holocaust. So, adopting the rigid law in 1992 may well have been an effort to "Europeanize" Austria and to placate the European Union which it joined in 1995. And as we know now, the EU has a certain fondness for regulating and monitoring free expression.

NOTE: The Dutch experience in WWII especially has been tainted by Austrian Nazis, but that is just some complimentary history for those interested, and I couldn’t resist bringing it up. Don't take it as a bias against all things Austrian.