Bugger.
I find myself having to be on the side of a fascist.
This trial verdict is a gift to fascist recruiters.
The German and Austrian denial laws were pragmatic, intended by the people who wrote them (mostly British and American occupiers) to provide an easy way to suppress Nazism. No-one in Germany in 1948 openly said they were a Nazi not if they wanted to be able to see daylight without bars in front of it so this made a convenient proxy. They made a lot of sense in those countries in the 1940s and 50s.
Now David Irving is probably a piece of foul Nazi scum who deserves a kicking. And his speeches in 1989 or whenever probably weren't his considered opinion as a historian (whatever that's worth) but rhetorical devices designed to stir up nationalist and racist feeling in an audience who were up for it already.
But we all say things that we probably deserve to get locked up for. Or which someone somewhere thinks we all deserve to get locked up for.
And, pragmatically, I don't think there is very likely to be a fascist or Nazi party running any major western or central European state in the near future - though there is a small chance. And I don't think its at all likely that any fascist or Nazi party here in Britain will ever be of any real significance at all - though there is a tiny chance.
But even a tiny chance of something really really bad is worth worrying about. And that tiny chance gets larger if we lock up lying racist bastards like Irving just for being lying racist bastards. Because it enlarges into exactly the soft spots in our society that the racists and nationalists are constantly prodding: the tabloid newspaper nonsense about us being overrun by immigrants or welfare scroungers or asylum seekers, the right-wing "political correctness" lie that somehow the meek have already inherited the earth and are making it impossible for middle class white men to run things the way we want, the general attempt to make people feel like victims so they will be easier to manipulate.
All over Europe fascist shitbags will be saying "if they don't have anything to hide, why did they make it illegal to talk about this? What are they trying to cover up". Not to mention a few million Muslims saying "Hah-hah we knew you didn't mean it about free speech - you can abuse the Muslims and the government pretends it can't send you to jail because of Free Speech but when the Jews are getting stick we all see who is really in charge"
So purely pragmatically, even if it wasn't the right thing to do - and it is the right thing to do because that's the sort of thing They do and We are better than them - it makes sense not to lock him up for this. Expose him, embarrass him, let him make a fool of himself in public. His own mouth shames him better than any prison sentence could.
To someone vulnerable to believing right-wing lies this prison sentence will give Irving's opinions a weight they do not deserve, just because of the trouble the courts have gone to to suppress them: "Maybe there is something in it after all? If there wasn't, why would they bother?"