Prosecuting lies: Confused account

Re Austria Refuses Bail to Briton Accused of Denying Holocaust, by Richard Bernstein, New York Times, November 26, 2005:

There are so many malicious lies in the world! Austria has an interesting approach to preventing at least one variety, the denial of the Nazi Holocaust: They've simply made it illegal. (Germany, France, Belgium and Poland have similar laws.)

This Times article reports that British historian David Irving, who was charged in Austria on Nov. 11 with violating the law, has just been denied bail and will therefore remain in jail. The statements at issue were made in speeches Irving delivered in Austria in 1989.

The article includes several paragraphs in which the views of Irving's lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, are presented:

Mr. Irving's lawyer, Elmar Kresbach, has said in interviews in recent days that Mr. Irving has retracted some of his views, including his opinion about the gas chambers....

"He changed some of the views he is so famous for," Mr. Kresbach said in an interview with The Associated Press. "He told me, 'Look, there was a certain period when I drew conclusions from individual sources which are maybe provocative or could be misinterpreted or could be even wrong.' "

Mr. Kresbach said that Mr. Irving had in recent times examined archives in the Soviet Union that led him to conclude that the gas chambers existed after all, The Associated Press reported.

What's puzzling is that these statements by Irving's lawyer appear to be totally irrelevant to the legal case. After all, if the lie was a crime, then a crime has still been committed even if the person changes his mind later. The article itself suggests this, but only after several intervening paragraphs:

A spokesman for the prosecutor's office, Otto Schneider, ... said that Mr. Irving's stated retraction of some of his views through his lawyer would make no legal difference in the present case.

The article thus creates confusion about the legal issues.

The content of the intervening paragraphs is also puzzling — indeed, almost inscrutable. They purport to describe two sides of a debate that Irving's arrest has provoked in Austria. But both sides are scarcely intelligible in the article's rendering:

Christian Fleck, an Austrian sociologist, wrote a long article in Der Standard, a Viennese daily, on Wednesday saying that Mr. Irving had committed "an opinion offense against which it is not appropriate to evoke the danger of the resurrection" of the Nazi Party.

Responding to Mr. Fleck, Hans Raucher, a columnist for the same newspaper, wrote: "The denial of the Holocaust in a systematic public form is no 'opinion offense.' It is the attempt to dilute the essence of Nazi rule in front of a consenting or at least undecided audience and thus to turn National Socialism into something positive."

Can you figure out what this means? It's near-gibberish as the Times presents it, with no context or explanation.

This is probably what's meant:

1. Fleck is saying that others have exaggerated the danger of Irving's statements by claiming that they threaten to resurrect the Nazi Party. Fleck is declaring, in response, that those claims are "inappropriate," and that Irving's statements are not so important — that they are a mere "opinion offense."

2. Raucher's response to Fleck is that the label "opinion offense" incorrectly minimizes the danger of Irving's statements. Denying the Holocaust means "dilut[ing] the essence of Nazi rule." Doing so before a receptive audience means giving the audience the impression that Nazism was positive.

Or to put it more simply: Fleck says the lies wouldn't be influential; Raucher says they would be — which is of course the first question that arises when discussing a law against lies. But is the Austrian debate really as trivial as the Times portrays it?