It’s interesting to see that David Irving, the holocaust-denying Briton, has now been released by the Austrian authorities. It raises some challenging questions about other European countries’ attitude to freedom of speech, and the use of Nazi symbols and texts.

Irving describes himself as a historian, which he’s free to do, but he of course has no credentials in academia or peer respect. It’s a bit like me saying I’m a literary critic because I’ve written a review of a book. And his ideas are, of course, foolish, and would be laughable if they weren’t so offensive.

But this is one of those cases where the law shouldn’t prosecute merely on the basis of offense. Irving’s legal troubles here result from his own attempts to sue his critics for libel, resulting in truly eminent historians of the Nazi regime, such as Richard Evans, taking to the dock to testify against him. In Austria, however, he was banned under laws discouraging the promotion of neo-Nazi holocaust-denial.

In this article, I’m thinking of ‘thought crime’ that is not directly inciting violence – laws for which are well-justified. One can imagine that such activity could go hand-in-hand with the crime of incitement to violence, but being stupid and saying offensive things should never in itself be a crime. There would be a good many people guilty of it if it were. As such, I regret Irving’s imprisonment, if only because it gives him the oxygen of publicity and suggests he is a serious figure worth prosecuting, rather than deriding, for his views.

Such laws, existing over Germany and Austria are fundamentally illiberal, anachronistic, and out-dated. We all know why their there, but can’t former Nazi countries’ European neighbours now trust them? I think we can, and so it’s time for them to trust their own citizens. In Germany, ownership of Mein Kampf and the display of swastikas is severely punished by law. One friend of mine, studying History here at Oxford used to smuggle her copy of Mein Kampf back-and-forth from Germany when revising over the vacation, because the text – set by our Faculty – was illegal there.

David Irving’s case is the political equivalent of a endangered hagfish; while we’re all keen in life to help cuddly kittens, people’s emotions are less stirred up by animals like hagfish. Similarly, we don’t like to defend a principle when it’s being tested by such an unsympathetic character as him. Yet, as much as a fool as Irving’s work shows him to be, I wish the British government had pursued his case as a British citizen detained abroad under such illiberal laws.

And I hope in the future more sympathetic cases – perhaps such as a young woman like my friend, studying the UK, if she had been caught – will be used by the British government to oppose such grotesque laws operating within Europe. Outside of Basil Fawlty, no Britons genuinely think the Germans are a nation of closet Nazis whose expression must be curtailed by draconian law. The far-right are always best destroyed by allowing them the rope to hang themselves. Suppression makes them seem credible, mysterious and interesting, and lets them remain a blank canvass on which people paint their own fears. Seeing their pathetic creed in the light of day is the best way to confront extremists… and it’s also, by principle, the only right choice in a liberal society.

As Lothar Hobelt, an Austrian academic quoted by the BBC in February, said: “This is a silly law by silly people for silly people… having a law that says you mustn’t question a particular historical instance, if anything, creates doubt about it, because if an argument has to be protected by the force of law, it means it’s a weak argument.”

We should trust in the strength of evidence and common sense that the holocaust did happen on the acknowledged scale, and with the horror respected historians accord it. Germans and Austrians should trust themselves, and we should certainly protest at the use of such laws against British subjects and students. Even if that does mean defending a right of the almost-indefensible David Irving.