Oxford society invites Irving

By · October 15, 2007

Holocaust denier David Irving has been invited to speak to the Oxford University debating society.

The invitation from the famous Oxford Union has angered some student groups and activists, according to The Guardian.

British National Party chairman Nick Griffin and Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukoshenko also were invited to speak.

“It will be a disgrace if these discredited speakers are allowed a platform at a forum on free speech,” Oxford Jewish Society co-presidents Daniel Bloch and Steven Altmann-Richer said in a statement. “They have an embarrassing history of disregard for legal restrictions on it. It will certainly go down as a black mark on the reputation of the Oxford Union.”

“The Oxford Union is famous for its commitment to free speech, and although I do think these people have awful and abhorrent views, I do think Oxford students are intelligent enough to challenge and ridicule them,” Oxford Union President Luke Tryl told The Guardian

In 2005, Irving was sentenced to three years in an Austrian jail for speeches in which he questioned the existence of Nazi death camps and called the Auschwitz gas chambers a “fairy tale.” He lost a libel suit in Britain in 1998 against author Deborah Lipstadt, who called him a Holocaust denier.