Letter to The Editor - The European Union of jailing Holocaust revisionists is an affront to the principle of free speech

To The Australian          Janet Albrechtsen sounds very authoritarian in her criticism of Jeremy Corbyn's attitude to Jewish interests ("UK rejects descent into chaos", 14-15/12). Opposition to an alleged Jewish "banker cartel" and disagreement with the currently accepted understanding of the Holocaust do not necessarily involve hostility to Jews generally. These attitudes may be justified as rejection of high-level self-interested manipulations by extraordinarily powerful financiers and reassessment of the nature and extent of Nazi Germany's mistreatment of Jewish persons between 1933 and 1945. Albrechtsen's reference to a definition of anti-Semitism that is "globally respected" can also be challenged. There is very considerable intellectually based opposition, worldwide, to the current trend of treating the Holocaust as a kind of ersatz religion whose dogmas may not be challenged. Moreover, the present practice in the European Union of jailing Holocaust revisionists is an affront to the principle of free speech, yet Albrechtsen ignores this wickedness completely.
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic