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I'm not sticking up for Irving. The man is clearly a scum, a bigot, and a liar. I just wonder whether legal prosecution is the correct answer to such people.

Where we may disagree is that I don't think a resurgence of Nazism or right-wing antisemitism is nearly as big a danger in Austria today as leftist antisemitism. As a matter of fact, it's not clear at all that Nazi was, as liberals pretend, a conservative aberration. It resembles Communism much more closely than it resembles any kind of rational conservatism, and it is well known that Mussolini started out as a Communist.

The worst present danger to Jews in Europe is the coalition of leftists and Islamists. If the Jews once again have to flee Europe, I expect that is what they will be fleeing from--the sort of thing we have just seen in the French riots.

If there is any danger from the right, it is the constant habit that the socialists have of demonizing the right. They do this, basically, for political reasons, so the centrists will always feel obliged to form coalition governments with the left rather than the right. We saw that with Haider. If the socialists and centrists leave people no where else to go to solve the Muslim immigration crisis, for instance, then they will probably eventually turn to the bigots, because they are the only ones who are suggesting a solution. In other words, if something like fascism rises again, it will not be from nostalgia, but from desperation.

If the socialists and centrists leave people nowhere else to go to solve the Muslim immigration crisis, for instance, then they will probably eventually turn to the bigots,

Precisely. Irving, Zundel and their like are reprehensible. But to act as if they are the threat, rather than the mullahs, is foolhardy in the extreme.

In other words, if something like fascism rises again, it will not be from nostalgia, but from desperation.

That's a good observation.

Conditions are what cause different kinds of governments to arise, not idealism of itself.

The repression of free exchange of ideas is like the repression of relgion or of democratic thinking the Soviet Union.

What is to fear if one is doing the right thing, compared to the danger of repressing the free exchange of ideas?

People should remember that we often bring about the very thing we most fear by being too much afraid of it.

You're right insofar as the threat in Europe is concerned: the odd bonding between the Left and the Islamic extremists is both unsettling and illogical. Reason for the Left, in both Europe and here in the US, has left the building. However, I don't discriminate overmuch when it comes to the bad guys. They all serve the same master. It's like that pop-up gopher game in arcades, the one my kids played when they were younger: whenever the little rodents show their heads, one hits them with a hammer.