I thought Julian Baggini had made a rare slip recently. He’s asked whether or not he should debate David Irving on the subject of free speech. The notoriously litigious Irving, who was described by a judge at a libel trial as “an active Holocaust denier” who “for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence” has become a bizarre poster child for free speech following his arrest for holocaust denial in Austria. I can’t see how logically you get from one state to the other.

As an example I was born. Because I’ve gone through this process, does that confer some special understanding which now makes me an expert on childbirth? What about a 14 year-old kid caught by the rozzers after spraying graffiti in a railway siding? Is he an expert on the social conditions of the inner cities? If not, then why does being jailed automatically confer expertise on free speech to David Irving? Especially when his actions after this have been to try and intimidate those who disagree with politics into silence. In October Irving was threatening the Jewish Chronicle with libel action. In December he was rumbling on about starting proceedings against Deborah Lipstadt again. More >