Free Speech
Despite her acrimonious history with Holocaust denier David Irving, she has stated that she is personally opposed to the three-year prison sentence of Irving in Austria for two speeches he made in 1989, during which he allegedly claimed there had been no gas chambers at Auschwitz, as minimizing the atrocities of the Third Reich is a crime punishable with up to 10 years imprisonment in Austria. "I am uncomfortable with imprisoning people for speech. Let him go and let him fade from everyone's radar screens...Generally, I don't think Holocaust denial should be a crime. I am a free speech person, I am against censorship."
Read more about this topic: Deborah Lipstadt
Famous quotes containing the words free and/or speech:
“The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we shall not know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)