Noted International Expert Grabs Holocaust Speech Gag by the Horns

Jacob Mchangama, Danish lawyer and historian of free speech and its abridgement by

governments today, has finally called the beast by its name. In the October 3 edition of Foreign Policy, his distinguished byline appears under the title “First They Came for the Holocaust Deniers, and I Did Not Speak Out.” As a Holocaust revisionist, I regard this as a major breakthrough, with the H word appearing in an article by Mchangama in an outlet as widely read as Foreign Policy. To be sure, Mchangama does not remotely address the possibility that the revisionists might be right on any score, but he clearly and persuasively outlines just what tyranny and oppression can and does so easily follow on the heels of what many might at first regard as only a “reasonable” restriction on freedom of speech.

Mchangama has been defending freedom of speech against the global tidal wave lately washing it away for years, first in articles carried by the Hoover Institution, then later in the National Review, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal and many other outlets that would not let a Holocaust revisionist within a mile of any of their august pages. Up until now, however, Mchangama has addressed only the spreading threat posed by criminalization of “hate speech” and “group defamation.” This is the first article in which I see him taking on “Holocaust denial,” the ugly mate of the other forms of speech suppression and now, for all to see on many fronts, busy breeding still more and larger of its evil spawn.

The end of free speech, says Mchangama, is in plain sight from here, and it will arrive soon and stealthily unless it is vigorously opposed.

To the extent permitted by law, of course.