The Importance of Being Idle

Revise This!

It is with much glee that I report renowned Holocaust "revisionist" David Iriving has been sentenced to three years imprisonment in Austria for denying the Holocaust. Good for Austria says I, the tosser deserved it. I wonder why it is that Holocaust deniers annoy me as much as they do. I suppose its because they exercise a denial of historical record AND a stunning anti-Semitism, and they do it in such a coldly calculated way. Ah well, the fuckers inside for a bit. Yay!
Weirdly the media over here has been slightly too eager to defend Irving, or at least to question the legitimacy of this ruling given his "freedom of speech". This makes me sad, that so many people (and by people I mean journalists, our poorly educated, slow thinking opinion makers) don't understand the little flags that they wave. Irving had and has total freedom of speech, he did after all have the freedom to deny that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz. What he didn't have was the freedom to speak without consequence, and I think that's what a lot of people talk about when they mention freedom of speech. Well, there's no such thing as speech without consequence, and nor should there be. I DO agree that we should all be free to express our opinions, no matter how idiotic, but there are ALWAYS consequences, and there shouldn't be any way to hide from those. I am, after all, quite free to go up to the biggest, scarriest biker that I can find and tell him that I fucked his mum up the arse while his dad watched, but nobody would be foolish enough to defend me from the inevitable kicking by saying I was merely exercising my freedom of speech. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I can't believe that people still haven't gathered that yet. So freedom of speech by all means, but can people think about their responsibilities once in a while, not just their rights?

posted by BadMonkey @ 12:02 PM