More On Freedom of Speech

The news is definitely working in my favor, as far as perpetuating the topic of Freedom of Speech goes.

In short, the story is that David Irving, a conservative British historian, received a 3 year prison sentence in Austria for publicly denying that there were gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp. His statement violates an Austrian law, saying it's a crime "to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust." Read the article here.

In America this obviously isn't a crime. And I really can't think of an equivalent, though I would like to know if there is a similar limit on freedom of speech here. Should a progressive country like Austria (or Germany) put a restriction on freedom of speech in this case? I obviously can't completely empathize because I'm not from a previously Nazi ruled country. However, it seems to me, usually, that suppressing speech can cause cult followings and it creates martyrs. And the other thing I worry about Germany/Austria is the general tendency of people not wanting to discuss the past. It's naturally hard for people to talk when their grandparents served under Hitler, but I think that you have to keep the memories a little fresh if you want to prevent it from happening again.

Which leads me to another story. I was listening to NPR this morning (Yes, I am extremely boring) and I was listening to an interview with a 25 year old in Moscow. They were asking him about his opinion of Stalin, and he replied that Stalin was "a true man" and that he always wanted the best for Russia. His reply to the mention of Stalin's brutality was "you can't make an omelette without cracking a few eggs." Apparently, with the currently very bad situation in Russia and lack of teaching the truth about the USSR, there's a sort of Stalinist mysticism going around, especially with young people. If that's not scary as hell, I don't what is. Oh yeah, Iran.