Germans Refute Iranian Holocaust Denial

, Thomas Kruger is correct in saying that the dangerous nonsense now taking place in Tehran at the "Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision" conference must be countered. For those coming to this story for the first time, Iran has invited discredited holocaust deniers from all over the world to gather in Tehran for a conference, now ongoing. What's worse is that the Islamic republic is representing itself as a citadel of free speech. In a better world, these batty scholars might be considered fringe eccentrics, but the rise in neo-Nazi activity in Europe is cause for alarm, particularly in Germany , where neo-Nazis have aligned themselves with Iran's Ahmadinejad's hateful positions on Israel and the holocaust. Several members of the German far right were invited to attend the Tehran conference, but were not permitted to do so under German law. The restrictions on travel and speech in Germany are unfortunate and to be lamented, not least because such censorship has a way of giving ammunition to Tehran's bigots, encouraging the political paranoid, and allowing these extremists to claim a thorny crown of martyrdom. Nevertheless, Berlin's limits on speech are as nothing compared to the wholsale distortion of truth and the barely intellectualized hate mongering now taking place in Iran.