He who argues that peaceful dissidents on historical issues should be deprived of their civil rights for their diverging views, that is: incarcerated, is – if given the power to im-plement his intentions – nothing else but a tyrant (if enacting laws to support his oppres-sive deeds) or a terrorist (if acting outside the law).
I. A Peaceful Dissident’s Ordeal
Imagine that you are a scientist who has summarized the results of fifteen years of research in a book – and that shortly after publishing this book you are arrested and thrown into prison exactly for this. Imagine further that you are aware with incontrovertible certainty that in the scheduled trial you and your defense attorneys will be forbidden, under threat of prosecution, to prove any factual claims made in that book; that all other motions to introduce supporting evidence will be rejected as well; that all the courts up to the highest appellate will support such conduct; that only a very few of your research colleagues will dare to confirm the legitimacy and quality of your book because they fear similar persecution; but that the efforts of these few colleagues will be in vain as well; and finally that the news media, the so-called “guardians of freedom of speech,” will join the prosecution in demanding your merciless punishment. In such a situation as this, how would you “defend” yourself in court?
This is precisely the Kafkaesque situation in which I found myself at the end of 2005 after having been abruptly and violently separated from my wife and child by U.S. Immigration authorities in Chicago,1 deported to Germany and immediately thrown into jail to await trial, on account of my book Lectures on the Holocaust, which I had published in the summer of 2005, and for Web pages promoting this and other similar books. This was no plot against me personally, though, because this is the same situation everyone faces who clashes with Germany’s law penalizing the “denial of the Holocaust.” The situation is similar in many other nations, most of them in Europe.
Various defense attorneys unanimously assured me that all defense was doomed in principle and that I would have to reckon with a prison sentence close to the maximum term (five years). Other attorneys advised me to recant my political views and feign remorse and contrition, which might gain me the clemency of the Court.
Renouncing my scientific convictions was not an acceptable option for me, though. A defense based on the facts of the case was impossible, and if attempted regardless, it merely would have exacerbated my situation, because in trying to prove that my views are correct I would have repeated once more the very crime of violating state dogma for which I was on trial in the first place.
