Adelaide Institute - Legal Action Against The Institute

Legal Action Against The Institute

The Adelaide Institute website triggered the arrest of Fredrick Töben in Germany in April 1999. Töben was sentenced to 7 months in prison, but had already served seven months during trial, and was released upon payment of a $5000 bond-Kaution.

The Institute's website drew the attention of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) in 2000 after HREOC found that the Adelaide Institute had breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act by publishing material on the website, the consequences of which were "vilificatory, bullying, insulting and offensive" to the Jewish population; HREOC ordered Töben to close the site and apologise to the people he had offended but because rulings of the HREOC are not enforceable at law, the case was then brought before the Federal Court of Australia, which ordered in 2002 that certain material be removed from the Adelaide Institute web site.

The Order of the Federal Court of Australia was that the Adelaide Institute should remove from its website any material which conveys one or any of the following imputations:

• there is serious doubt that the Holocaust occurred
• it is unlikely that there were homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz
• Jewish people who are offended by and challenge Holocaust denial are of limited intelligence
• some Jewish people, for improper purposes, including financial gain, have exaggerated the number of Jews killed during World War II and the circumstances in which they were killed

Electronic Frontiers Australia spoke out against the ruling, taking the view that "when encountering racist or hateful speech, the best remedy to be applied is generally more speech, not enforced silence." One of the reasons mentioned is that suppressing such content results in perception that the speaker must have something important to say, and "massively increased interest in what would otherwise be marginal ideas."