Not freedom but perversion of speech

OPINION EDITORIAL, The Advertiser, Thursday, 19 September 2002

Freedom of speech is essential to a functioning democracy. But everyone except absolutists, accept there are constraints. Many are imposed by (too constrictive) defamation laws. In Australia there are also the parameters provided by racial discrimination legislation.

It was the Federal Racial Discrimination Act which caused the Federal Court to order removal by the Adelaide Institute director Dr Fredrick Töben, one of the tiny and deluded band of Holocaust questioners, of offensive material from his Internet website.

The Internet is awash in fringe and downright crazy sites. Some are beyond jurisdiction to the rage, distress and sometimes fear of the targets of hate and vilification.

Whatever may be said about free speech in principle it is reasonable that Australians, born or resident, should comply with Australian law regardless of whether material in clear breach of the law is published on paper, broadcast on press and media, by word of mouth or disseminated through cyberspace.

The Internet factor added a novel element to Justice Catherine Branson’s finding but in all other respects it was consistent with the letter and spirit of law against material which is not only wrong but absurd, distressing and which is synonymous with the worst – by size and its vile, systematic organization – genocide in recorded history.

This was not freedom of speech but perversion of speech. In those terms, the court’s decision can be greeted as a victory for free thinking.

 

Fredrick Töben Replies

The editorial of 19/9 accuses us of ‘perversion of speech’ when, in fact, it is the other way round: Our work rests on physically proven facts.

Censoring our website’s content via the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) proves the perversion of those that hold the Jewish people are a race – they are not.

Our historical research should never be subject of any court action because our legal system does not look for historical truths.

However, under the powers of the RDA  we have now a state-sanctioned ideological interpretation of an historical event.

Individuals from former Communist countries know that this kind of legal precedent leads directly to the dissident prison camps called Gulags.

That The Advertiser endorses this totalitarian mindset by labeling our work as a “perversion of speech” indicates a grave moral and intellectual crisis – a bankruptcy.

The truth-content of our message has never been challenged.

Dr Fredrick Töben

Director, Adelaide Institute

As of 23 September 2002 this letter has not been published - but, of course, that of Linda Matthew's has.