Monday, November 28, 2005

Irving's Arrest: A ploy to solve his financial difficulties?

Did Irving want to be arrested? Some people think, as I suggested in my very first post on this topic [November 18th], that this whole thing may have been contrived for financial and pr motives.

According to a report in the Austrian print magazine, News , the Austrian authorities may well have been told by the student group Irving was going to visit that he was on his way. Why, one has to wonder, would they have done this? They do, after all, sympathize with Irving's views.

A columnist for the "Stuttgarter Zeitung", a daily newspaper from Stuttgart, Germany has a theory. He wonders whether Irving, who had racked up such debts from Irving v. Penguin and Lipstadt, was not courting another trial. A trial in Austria would certainly generate donations from Irving’s sympathizers.

And, I might add, it will also probably prompt donations from those who don’t sympathize with him but see him as the poster child for free speech.
And of course, it would -- as it already has -- generate tremendous publicity.

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